Including supramaximal verification reduced uncertainty in VO2peak response rate

Many reports describe using a supramaximal verification phase-exercising at a power output higher than the highest power output recorded during an incremental cardiopulmonary test-to validate VO2max. The impact of verification phases on estimating the proportion of individuals who increased VO2peak in response to high-intensity interval training (HIIT) remains an underexplored area in the individual response literature. This analysis investigated the influence of same-day and separate-day verification phases during repeated measurements (incremental tests-INCR1 and INCR2; incremental tests + supramaximal verification phases-INCR1+ and INCR2+) of VO2peak on typical error (TE) and the proportion of individuals classified as responders (i.e., the response rate) following 4 weeks of HIIT (n = 25) or a no-exercise control period (n = 9). Incorporation of supramaximal verification consistently reduced the standard deviation of individual response, TE, and confidence interval (CI) widths. However, variances were statistically similar across all groups (p > 0.05). Response rates increased when incorporating either one (INCR1 to INCR1+; 24%-48%, p = 0.07) or two (INCR2 to INCR2+; 28%-48%, p = 0.063) supramaximal verification phases. However, response rates remained unchanged when either zero-based thresholds or smallest worthwhile difference response thresholds were used (50% and 90% CIs, all p > 0.05). Supramaximal verification phases reduced random variability in VO2peak response to HIIT. Compared with separate-day testing (INCR2 and INCR2+), the incorporation of a same-day verification (INCR1+) reduced CI widths the most. Researchers should consider using a same-day verification phase to reduce uncertainty and better estimate VO2peak response rate to HIIT.

Self-Related Stimuli Decoding With Auditory and Visual Modalities Using Stereo-Electroencephalography

Name recognition plays important role in self-related cognitive processes and also contributes to a variety of clinical applications, such as autism spectrum disorder diagnosis and consciousness disorder analysis. However, most previous name-related studies usually adopted noninvasive EEG or fMRI recordings, which were limited by low spatial resolution and temporal resolution, respectively, and thus millisecond-level response latencies in precise brain regions could not be measured using these noninvasive recordings. By invasive stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG) recordings that have high resolution in both the spatial and temporal domain, the current study distinguished the neural response to one's own name or a stranger's name, and explored common active brain regions in both auditory and visual modalities. The neural activities were classified using spatiotemporal features of high-gamma, beta, and alpha band. Results showed that different names could be decoded using multi-region SEEG signals, and the best classification performance was achieved at high gamma (60–145 Hz) band. In this case, auditory and visual modality-based name classification accuracies were 84.5 ± 8.3 and 79.9 ± 4.6%, respectively. Additionally, some single regions such as the supramarginal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and insula could also achieve remarkable accuracies for both modalities, supporting their roles in the processing of self-related information. The average latency of the difference between the two responses in these precise regions was 354 ± 63 and 285 ± 59 ms in the auditory and visual modality, respectively. This study suggested that name recognition was attributed to a distributed brain network, and the subsets with decoding capabilities might be potential implanted regions for awareness detection and cognition evaluation.

Noninvasive Early Identification of Therapeutic Benefit from Immune Checkpoint Inhibition

Although treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) can produce remarkably durable responses, most patients develop early disease progression. Furthermore, initial response assessment by conventional imaging is often unable to identify which patients will achieve durable clinical benefit (DCB). Here, we demonstrate that pre-treatment circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and peripheral CD8 T cell levels are independently associated with DCB. We further show that ctDNA dynamics after a single infusion can aid in identification of patients who will achieve DCB. Integrating these determinants, we developed and validated an entirely noninvasive multiparameter assay (DIREct-On, Durable Immunotherapy Response Estimation by immune profiling and ctDNA-On-treatment) that robustly predicts which patients will achieve DCB with higher accuracy than any individual feature. Taken together, these results demonstrate that integrated ctDNA and circulating immune cell profiling can provide accurate, noninvasive, and early forecasting of ultimate outcomes for NSCLC patients receiving ICIs.

Information processing correlates of a size-contrast illusion

Perception is often influenced by context. A well-known class of perceptual context effects is perceptual contrast illusions, in which proximate stimulus regions interact to alter the perception of various stimulus attributes, such as perceived brightness, color and size. Although the phenomenal reality of contrast effects is well documented, in many cases the connection between these illusions and how information is processed by perceptual systems is not well understood. Here, we use noise as a tool to explore the information processing correlates of one such contrast effect: the Ebbinghaus–Titchener size-contrast illusion. In this illusion, the perceived size of a central dot is significantly altered by the sizes of a set of surrounding dots, such that the presence of larger surrounding dots tends to reduce the perceived size of the central dot (and vise versa). In our experiments, we first replicated previous results that have demonstrated the subjective reality of the Ebbinghaus–Titchener illusion. We then used visual noise in a detection task to probe the manner in which observers processed information when experiencing the illusion. By correlating the noise with observers' classification decisions, we found that the sizes of the surrounding contextual elements had a direct influence on the relative weight observers assigned to regions within and surrounding the central element. Specifically, observers assigned relatively more weight to the surrounding region and less weight to the central region in the presence of smaller surrounding contextual elements. These results offer new insights into the connection between the subjective experience of size-contrast illusions and their associated information processing correlates.