Hasil untuk "Neurophysiology and neuropsychology"

Jenna H. Chin, Madeleine K. Wyburd, Vladislav Ayzenberg et al.

Partinen E, Ylikoski A, Sieminski M et al.

Eemil Partinen,1– 4 Ari Ylikoski,5 Mariusz Sieminski,6 Madli Kaps,7 Markku Partinen,2,4 Christer Hublin8 1Sleep Disorder Outpatient Clinic, Department of Psychiatry, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland; 2Helsinki Sleep Clinic, Terveystalo Healthcare, Helsinki, Finland; 3Department of Neurology, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland; 4Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Clinicum, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; 5The Social Insurance Institution of Finland (KELA), Helsinki, Finland; 6Department of Emergency Medicine, Medical University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland; 7Department of Psychiatry, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland; 8Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, FinlandCorrespondence: Eemil Partinen, Email eemil.partinen@helsinki.fiAim: Sleep disturbances are a common non-motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and may occur already in the prodromal phase. In the general population, shorter sleep duration is linked to higher mortality, while longer sleep duration has been associated with an increased risk of developing PD. We examined the relationships between sleep duration, chronotype, and mortality in patients with PD.Methods: A total of 855 randomly selected patients with PD completed a structured questionnaire including self-reported sleep duration and chronotype. Mortality data were collected from the national death registry.Results: Altogether 435 subjects (238 men; 54.7%) were included. The mean follow-up time was 4.3 (0.3– 7.0) years, during which 99 participants had died. In a univariable model, longer sleep duration was associated with higher mortality [HR 1.31, 95% confidence interval (1.15– 1.49), P< 0.0001]. In a fully adjusted model, longer sleep duration [HR 1.17 (1.01– 1.35), P=0.035], older age, male gender, PD duration and depression were associated with higher mortality. BMI and high physical activity were associated with lower mortality. Although short sleep showed an association with mortality in univariable analyses, this association did not persist after multivariable adjustment [HR 0.82 (0.52– 1.30), P=0.401]. Chronotype was not associated with mortality. Long sleepers were older, had lower mean levodopa-dose, took more naps, and were sleepier than short sleepers.Conclusion: Self-reported longer sleep duration was associated with higher mortality in patients with Parkinson’s disease, whereas chronotype was not associated with mortality. This does not imply a protective effect of shorter sleep duration. Further studies are needed to clarify whether sleep duration reflects disease-related factors, behavioral patterns, or progression of Parkinson’s disease.Keywords: Parkinson’s disease, mortality, sleep duration, sleep apnea, restless legs, sleep length, chronotype, morningness, eveningness

Tang YL, Chen HB, Liu P et al.

Ying-Lan Tang,1 Hao-bo Chen,1 Peng Liu,1 Yan-hui Liao,1,2 An Xie1 1Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan Normal University (Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital), Changsha, Hunan, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Psychiatry, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: An Xie, Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan Normal University (Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital), 61 Jiefang West Road, Changsha, Hunan, 410005, People’s Republic of China, Tel/Fax +86-0731-81866132, Email xiean@hunnu.edu.cn Yan-hui Liao, Department of Psychiatry, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, 3 East Qingchun Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310016, People’s Republic of China, Email liaoyanhui@zju.edu.cnBackground: Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has led to widespread sleep disturbances, yet the link between post-COVID sleep problems and glymphatic-system function remains unclear.Methods: Between January and March 2023, we enrolled 59 participants with newly developed sleep disorder after COVID-19 (COVID_SD; 24 males; median age 28 years) and 39 age-/sex-matched participants without such problems after COVID-19(COVID_NSD; 15 males; median age 25 y). Sleep quality was assessed with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI; 0– 21, higher = poorer). All volunteers underwent brain magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI), including diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI), and computation of the DTI analysis along the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS) index. At two-month follow-up, 41 COVID_SD and 25 COVID_NSD participants were rescanned.Results: Baseline bilateral ALPS indices were lower in COVID_SD than in COVID_NSD (left 1.23 ± 0.08 vs 1.29 ± 0.11, p = 0.033; right 1.29 ± 0.08 vs 1.33 ± 0.11, p = 0.013). PSQI correlated negatively with ALPS (left r = – 0.636, p = 0.0002; right r = – 0.539, p < 0.0001). Over two months, ALPS increased and PSQI decreased, indicating partial recovery of glymphatic function alongside improved sleep.Conclusion: Impaired glymphatic clearance is strongly associated with poorer sleep quality in participants with post-COVID sleep problems; improvement in sleep parallels restoration of DTI-ALPS indices.Keywords: COVID-19, glymphatic system, diffusion-tensor imaging, DTI-ALPS, Pittsburgh sleep quality index, sleep quality

Sagor C. Roy, Madhu Babu Pasula, Subash Sapkota et al.

Abstract The diffusible gas nitric oxide (NO) and amino acid γ-gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) exert contrary effects on glucose counterregulation in the male rat, but how these neurochemical signals integrate within ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus (VMN) neural circuitries remains unclear. Female rat dorsomedial (VMNdm) and ventrolateral (VMNvl) GABAergic neurons express neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) mRNA; notably these subpopulations exhibit dissimilar nNOS transcriptional responses to insulin-induced hypoglycemia (IIH). Here, nNOS gene knockdown tools were used to examine whether one or both VMN GABA neuron groups may be a target for nitrergic control of basal and hypoglycemic counterregulatory hormone secretion in the male. Data show that VMN nNOS gene knockdown respectively up- or down-regulated counterregulatory hormone profiles in eu- versus hypoglycemic male rats. Single-cell multiplex qPCR analysis of laser-catapult-microdissected GABA neurons showed that IIH elevated nNOS gene expression in GABA neurons from each VMN division, yet nNOS siRNA pretreatment attenuated distinctive IIH-associated transmitter marker gene expression patterns in VMNdm versus VMNvl GABAergic neurons. nNOS gene silencing had similar effects on glucokinase and glucose transporter gene responses to IIH in each GABA neuron subpopulation but elicited division-specific effects on mRNA encoding 5-AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) alpha/catalytic subunits and the lactate membrane receptor GPR81/HCAR1. Current findings provide original evidence that VMN NO may impose bi-directional, glucose status-contingent control of counterregulatory hormone outflow in the male rat. Data moreover imply that during IIH, NO may control distinctive sources of metabolic sensory regulatory stimuli in VMNdm versus VMNvl GABA neurons and may shape unique counterregulation-controlling neurochemical transmission by each cell population.

Anthony V. Nguyen, Jose M. Soto, Yilu Zhang et al.

Objective: Subdural hematomas (SDH) requiring surgery are associated with significant morbidity in elderly patients. We describe a novel technique/incision for minimizing invasiveness and duration, minimizing recurrence by allowing for resection of subdural membranes and coagulation of the middle meningeal artery (MMA), and providing ease of conversion to a larger craniotomy if needed. Methods: This was a retrospective review of patients who underwent the technique between 2020–2024. We examined the incidence of recurrence requiring re-intervention and additionally compared the cost of supplies/implants of the mini-craniotomy against other craniotomies performed for SDH evacuation and MMA embolization. Results: Fifteen patients (mean age 71.8 years) underwent the novel mini-craniotomy for evacuation of mixed-density chronic SDHs. The mean SDH thickness and midline shift was 18.7 and 6.3 mm respectively. All patients had radiologic evidence of subdural membranes preoperatively. No patients developed symptomatic recurrence requiring surgical evacuation. The mean supply/implant cost of the mini-craniotomy was additionally significantly less than the cost of other craniotomies for SDH evacuation. Conclusion: The described mini-craniotomy is safe, effective, utilizes a small incision, allows for MMA coagulation, provides access to coagulate and resect subdural membranes, can easily be turned into a larger trauma-sized craniotomy if necessary, and optimizes wound healing.

Lishan Fang, Hua-Lin Huang, Shengyuan Ruan et al.

This paper demonstrates that third-order real symmetric tensors cannot be classified up to equivalence by their eigenvalues only, thereby resolving a problem posed by Qi in 2006. By applying Harrison's center theory, we derive equivalence classes of $2 \times 2 \times 2$ symmetric tensors via the one-to-one correspondence with the canonical forms of their associated binary cubics. For such tensors, we compute the explicit characteristic polynomials and discover two previously unknown coefficients using the combination resultant. Pairs of third-order real symmetric tensors of all dimensions with identical eigenvalues but belonging to different equivalence classes are constructed to illustrate the inapplicability of eigenvalues for classification.

Giuseppe Silano, Daniel Bonilla Licea, Hajar El Hammouti et al.

A new class of Multi-Rotor Aerial Vehicles (MRAVs), known as omnidirectional MRAVs (o-MRAVs), has gained attention for their ability to independently control 3D position and orientation. This capability enhances robust planning and control in aerial communication networks, enabling more adaptive trajectory planning and precise antenna alignment without additional mechanical components. These features are particularly valuable in uncertain environments, where disturbances such as wind and interference affect communication stability. This paper examines o-MRAVs in the context of robust aerial network planning, comparing them with the more common under-actuated MRAVs (u-MRAVs). Key applications, including physical layer security, optical communications, and network densification, are highlighted, demonstrating the potential of o-MRAVs to improve reliability and efficiency in dynamic communication scenarios.

Florencia Anunziata, Cynthia Cisneros, Maria Isabella Natale Castillo et al.

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, a multi-site prospective longitudinal cohort study, will examine human brain, cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional development beginning prenatally and planned through early childhood. Central to its mission of reducing health disparities is the establishment of the Spanish Language and Culture Committee (SLCC) within the HBCD framework, a significant step towards demographic representation and inclusivity in research. By addressing linguistic and sociocultural barriers and embracing the diverse identities of Hispanic/Latine individuals nationwide, the SLCC aims to promote inclusion, equity, and representation of all Hispanic/Latine subgroups, a population that has been historically misrepresented in health research. In this paper we describe the role of the SLCC in advocating for Hispanic/Latine families within the study, ensuring their inclusion from inception. This report also provides an overview of the SLCC organization, workflow, challenges and lessons learned thus far to reduce stigma and improve study outcomes, highlighting recruitment and retention strategies for the Hispanic/Latine population, and expanding outreach to promote inclusion across diverse Hispanic/Latine subgroups in the United States.

Michał Sobstyl, Paweł Jezierski, Magdalena Konopko et al.

Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is an autosomal dominant disorder caused by mutations in the tumor suppressor genes TSC1 or TSC2. TSC is characterized by the formation of multiple tumors in various organs. The most common neurological manifestation of the disorder is epilepsy present in 79–90% of cases. At least one-third of TSC patients develop drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) which remains a great challenge for clinicians. Neuromodulation is an option in cases of multifocal epilepsy, epilepsy originating in eloquent areas, or the inability to identify the ictal onset zone. Deep brain stimulation of the anterior thalamic nucleus (ANT-DBS) may be used in the treatment of multifocal DRE. Here, we present a case of a patient with multifocal DRE caused by TSC, who was treated with ANT-DBS. A follow-up period of eight months showed that the patient's multifocal DRE was successfully treated by ANT-DBS.

Xin Liu, Jiamin Wu, and Wenfei Yang et al.

Pre-trained Vision-Language Models (VLMs), like CLIP, exhibit strong generalization ability to downstream tasks but struggle in few-shot scenarios. Existing prompting techniques primarily focus on global text and image representations, yet overlooking multi-modal attribute characteristics. This limitation hinders the model's ability to perceive fine-grained visual details and restricts its generalization ability to a broader range of unseen classes. To address this issue, we propose a Multi-modal Attribute Prompting method (MAP) by jointly exploring textual attribute prompting, visual attribute prompting, and attribute-level alignment. The proposed MAP enjoys several merits. First, we introduce learnable visual attribute prompts enhanced by textual attribute semantics to adaptively capture visual attributes for images from unknown categories, boosting fine-grained visual perception capabilities for CLIP. Second, the proposed attribute-level alignment complements the global alignment to enhance the robustness of cross-modal alignment for open-vocabulary objects. To our knowledge, this is the first work to establish cross-modal attribute-level alignment for CLIP-based few-shot adaptation. Extensive experimental results on 11 datasets demonstrate that our method performs favorably against state-of-the-art approaches.

Sam Cockle, Jane Ogden

AbstractPatients’ expectations of cancer treatment could impact on their treatment experiences. Research in this area tends to focus on a particular aspect of expectations, and no suitable measure exists to explore patients’ expectations and experiences of treatment. The current study developed and validated two new, matched, measures: The Expectations of Cancer Treatment Questionnaire (EXPECT-CTQ) and the Experiences of Cancer Treatment (EXPER-CTQ). Items were generated using the previous expectations literature, alongside findings from qualitative interviews, and refined with assistance from cancer patients and a wider pool of researchers. A sample of 200 cancer patients completed the measures, and factor analysis was performed to validate the EXPECT-CTQ, resulting in a 39-item measure with subscales assessing treatment efficacy, physical side-effects, psychological side-effects, and the impact of treatment on daily life, social life and self-care. The EXPER-CTQ was matched to the EXPECT-CTQ, excluding the treatment efficacy subscale, resulting in a 36-item measure. Reliability analyses were conducted on both measures with good results (α > 0.6). Analyses of the expectations-experiences relationship encompassing a broad range of expectations showed that expectations are positively associated with experiences of cancer treatment. These two new measures are suitable for use in future research exploring both expectations and experiences of treatment for cancer and the implications of gaps between these constructs.

Figorilli M, Meloni M, Lanza G et al.

Michela Figorilli,1 Mario Meloni,2 Giuseppe Lanza,3,4 Elisa Casaglia,1 Rosamaria Lecca,1 Francesca Lea Saibene,2 Patrizia Congiu,1 Monica Puligheddu1 1Sleep Disorder Research Center, Department of Medical Sciences and Public Health, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy; 2IRCCS, Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi ONLUS, Milan, Italy; 3Department of Surgery and Medical-Surgical Specialties, University of Catania, Catania, Italy; 4Clinical Neurophysiology Research Unit, Oasi Research Institute-IRCCS, Troina, ItalyCorrespondence: Monica Puligheddu, Sleep Disorder Research Center, Department of Medical Sciences and Public Health, SS 554 Km 4500, 09042 Monserrato CA, Cagliari, Italy, 09042, Tel +07051096001, Email puligheddu@unica.itAbstract: Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is the result of the loss of physiological inhibition of muscle tone during REM sleep, characterized by dream-enacting behavior and widely recognized as a prodromal manifestation of alpha-synucleinopathies. Indeed, patients with isolated RBD (iRBD) have an extremely high estimated risk to develop a neurodegenerative disease after a long follow up. Nevertheless, in comparison with PD patients without RBD (PDnoRBD), the occurrence of RBD in the context of PD (PDRBD) seems to identify a unique, more malignant phenotype, characterized by a more severe burden of disease in terms of both motor and non-motor symptoms and increased risk for cognitive decline. However, while some medications (eg, melatonin, clonazepam, etc.) and non-pharmacological options have been found to have some therapeutic benefits on RBD there is no available treatment able to modify the disease course or, at least, slow down the neurodegenerative process underlying phenoconversion. In this scenario, the long prodromal phase may allow an early therapeutic window and, therefore, the identification of multimodal biomarkers of disease onset and progression is becoming increasingly crucial. To date, several clinical (motor, cognitive, olfactory, visual, and autonomic features) neurophysiological, neuroimaging, biological (biofluids or tissue biopsy), and genetic biomarkers have been identified and proposed, also in combination, as possible diagnostic or prognostic markers, along with a potential role for some of them as outcome measures and index of treatment response. In this review, we provide an insight into the present knowledge on both existing and future biomarkers of iRBD and highlight the difference with PDRBD and PDnoRBD, including currently available treatment options.Keywords: Parkinson’s disease, REM sleep behavior disorder, synucleinopathy, biomarkers, neurodegeneration

Graham H. Diering

Sleep is a conserved and essential process that supports learning and memory. Synapses are a major target of sleep function and a locus of sleep need. Evidence in the literature suggests that the need for sleep has a cellular or microcircuit level basis, and that sleep need can accumulate within localized brain regions as a function of waking activity. Activation of sleep promoting kinases and accumulation of synaptic phosphorylation was recently shown to be part of the molecular basis for the localized sleep need. A prominent hypothesis in the field suggests that some benefits of sleep are mediated by a broad but selective weakening, or scaling-down, of synaptic strength during sleep in order to offset increased excitability from synaptic potentiation during wake. The literature also shows that synapses can be strengthened during sleep, raising the question of what molecular mechanisms may allow for selection of synaptic plasticity types during sleep. Here I describe mechanisms of action of the scaling factors Arc and Homer1a in selective plasticity and links with sleep need. Arc and Homer1a are induced in neurons in response to waking neuronal activity and accumulate with time spent awake. I suggest that during sleep, Arc and Homer1a drive broad weakening of synapses through homeostatic scaling-down, but in a manner that is sensitive to the plasticity history of individual synapses, based on patterned phosphorylation of synaptic proteins. Therefore, Arc and Homer1a may offer insights into the intricate links between a cellular basis of sleep need and memory consolidation during sleep.

Sreyan Ghosh, Ashish Seth, and Deepak Mittal et al.

Inspired by the recent progress in self-supervised learning for computer vision, in this paper we introduce DeLoRes, a new general-purpose audio representation learning approach. Our main objective is to make our network learn representations in a resource-constrained setting (both data and compute), that can generalize well across a diverse set of downstream tasks. Inspired from the Barlow Twins objective function, we propose to learn embeddings that are invariant to distortions of an input audio sample, while making sure that they contain non-redundant information about the sample. To achieve this, we measure the cross-correlation matrix between the outputs of two identical networks fed with distorted versions of an audio segment sampled from an audio file and make it as close to the identity matrix as possible. We use a combination of a small subset of the large-scale AudioSet dataset and FSD50K for self-supervised learning and are able to learn with less than half the parameters compared to state-of-the-art algorithms. For evaluation, we transfer these learned representations to 9 downstream classification tasks, including speech, music, and animal sounds, and show competitive results under different evaluation setups. In addition to being simple and intuitive, our pre-training algorithm is amenable to compute through its inherent nature of construction and does not require careful implementation details to avoid trivial or degenerate solutions. Furthermore, we conduct ablation studies on our results and make all our code and pre-trained models publicly available https://github.com/Speech-Lab-IITM/DeLoRes.

Saeed Montazeri Moghadam, Päivi Nevalainen, Nathan J. Stevenson et al.

Objective: To develop and validate an automated method for bedside monitoring of sleep state fluctuations in neonatal intensive care units. Methods: A deep learning -based algorithm was designed and trained using 53 EEG recordings from a long-term (a)EEG monitoring in 30 near-term neonates. The results were validated using an external dataset from 30 polysomnography recordings. In addition to training and validating a single EEG channel quiet sleep detector, we constructed Sleep State Trend (SST), a bedside-ready means for visualizing classifier outputs. Results: The accuracy of quiet sleep detection in the training data was 90%, and the accuracy was comparable (85-86%) in all bipolar derivations available from the 4-electrode recordings. The algorithm generalized well to an external dataset, showing 81% overall accuracy despite different signal derivations. SST allowed an intuitive, clear visualization of the classifier output. Conclusions: Fluctuations in sleep states can be detected at high fidelity from a single EEG channel, and the results can be visualized as a transparent and intuitive trend in the bedside monitors. Significance: The Sleep State Trend (SST) may provide caregivers a real-time view of sleep state fluctuations and its cyclicity.

Maryam Moshtaghy Sharifzadeh, Ahmad Mansouri, Zahra Bagherzadeh Golmakani

Aim and Background: Processing speed plays an important role in specific learning disorder. Therefore, the aim of present study was to investigate the mediating role of processing speed in the relationship between working memory and phonological awareness with reading in students with reading disorder. Methods and Materials: The present study is a descriptive correlational study. The statistical population of this study included all students with specific learning disorder-reading from the end of the first grade to the fifth grade of elementary school in the seven districts of Mashhad and referring to special centers for learning disabilities in Mashhad in the academic year 2019-2020. The sample consisted of 150 students with specific learning disorder- reading who were selected by convenience sampling. To collect the data, reading and dyslexia test (NEMA), phonological awareness test (PAT) and The Wechsler intelligence scale for children, fourth edition (WISC-IV) were used. Research data were analyzed using PLS and SPSS statistical software as well as structural equation modeling. Findings: The findings showed that there is a relationship between working memory, phonological awareness, processing speed and reading of students with reading disorder. Processing speed mediated the relationship between working memory and reading of students with reading disorder. Also, processing speed mediated the relationship between phonological awareness and reading of students. Conclusions: The results showed that processing speed is mediated the relationship between working memory and phonological awareness with reading of students with reading disorders. Paying attention to these processes and the interventions related with them can help improve students' reading disorder.

Ludwig Holleis, Joseph Prestigiacomo, Zhijie Fan et al.

The leading order nonlinear (NL) susceptibility, $χ_3$, in a paramagnet is negative and diverges as $T \rightarrow 0$. This divergence is destroyed when spins correlate and the NL response provides unique insights into magnetic order. Dimensionality, exchange interaction, and preponderance of quantum effects all imprint their signatures in the NL magnetic response. Here, we study the NL susceptibilities in the proximate Kitaev magnet $α$-RuCl$_3$ which differs from the expected antiferromagnetic behavior. For $T< T_c$ = 7.5 K and field $B$ in the ab-plane, we obtain contrasting NL responses in low ($<$ 2 ${T}$) and high field regions. For low fields the NL behavior is dominated by a quadratic response (positive $χ_2$), which shows a rapid rise below $T_c$. This large $χ_2 >0$ implies a broken sublattice symmetry of magnetic order at low temperatures. Classical Monte Carlo (CMC) simulations in the standard ${K-H-Γ}$ model secure such a quadratic ${B}$ dependence of ${M}$, only for ${T}$ $\approx$ ${T}_c$ with $χ_2$ being zero as ${T}$ $\rightarrow$ 0. It is also zero for all temperatures in exact diagonalization calculations. On the other hand, we find an exclusive cubic term ($χ_3$) describes the high field NL behavior well. $χ_3$ is large and positive both below and above ${T}_c$ crossing zero only for ${T}$ $>$ 50 K. In contrast, for $B$~$\parallel$~c-axis, no separate low/high field behaviors is measured and only a much smaller $χ_3$ is apparent.

Suranjan Goswami, Satish Kumar Singh, and Bidyut B. Chaudhuri

Thermal Images profile the passive radiation of objects and capture them in grayscale images. Such images have a very different distribution of data compared to optical colored images. We present here a work that produces a grayscale thermo-optical fused mask given a thermal input. This is a deep learning based pioneering work since to the best of our knowledge, there exists no other work on thermal-optical grayscale fusion. Our method is also unique in the sense that the deep learning method we are proposing here works on the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) domain instead of the gray level domain. As a part of this work, we also present a new and unique database for obtaining the region of interest in thermal images based on an existing thermal visual paired database, containing the Region of Interest on 5 different classes of data. Finally, we are proposing a simple low cost overhead statistical measure for identifying the region of interest in the fused images, which we call as the Region of Fusion (RoF). Experiments on the database show encouraging results in identifying the region of interest in the fused images. We also show that they can be processed better in the mixed form rather than with only thermal images.

John C. Flournoy, Nandita Vijayakumar, Theresa W. Cheng et al.

The past decade has seen growing concern about research practices in cognitive neuroscience, and psychology more broadly, that shake our confidence in many inferences in these fields. We consider how these issues affect developmental cognitive neuroscience, with the goal of progressing our field to support strong and defensible inferences from our neurobiological data. This manuscript focuses on the importance of distinguishing between confirmatory versus exploratory data analysis approaches in developmental cognitive neuroscience. Regarding confirmatory research, we discuss problems with analytic flexibility, appropriately instantiating hypotheses, and controlling the error rate given how we threshold data and correct for multiple comparisons. To counterbalance these concerns with confirmatory analyses, we present two complementary strategies. First, we discuss the advantages of working within an exploratory analysis framework, including estimating and reporting effect sizes, using parcellations, and conducting specification curve analyses. Second, we summarize defensible approaches for null hypothesis significance testing in confirmatory analyses, focusing on transparent and reproducible practices in our field. Specific recommendations are given, and templates, scripts, or other resources are hyperlinked, whenever possible.

Azadeh Nematzadeh, Mehry Haddad Narafshan

The indispensable role of identity in language learning has recently attracted considerable attention among SLA scholars. Consequently, the current mixed-methods classroom-based study investigated whether the implementation of intercultural movie clips could contribute to improving the personal identity, and have a positive impact on L2 identity of participants in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context of Iran. To this end, two intact classes were assigned to the control and experimental group, each containing thirty students. This quasi-experimental study was implemented on the pre-test post-test equivalent-group design. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative analysis, using two questionnaires and a semi-structured interview, the results indicate that positive changes took place in the personal and second language identity of the participants. More specifically, they moved from a closed community of practice in which self was seen from one horizon to an intercultural community of practice in which others were seen besides self. The changing community provided by movie clips had an impact on the participants’ views and trends. Thus access to new social, cultural, and linguistic resources resulted in the adoption of new identities. Indeed, teachers and educators should know that language can be considered as a site for the construction of self-identification or group affiliation since language is a key element in identity formation and identity is a sense of self or sense of belonging.