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Experiencing feelings of helplessness has repeatedly been reported to contribute to depressive symptoms and negative affect. In turn, depression and negative affective states are associated, among others, with impairments in performance monitoring. Thus, the question arises whether performance monitoring is also affected by feelings of helplessness. To this end, after the induction of feelings of helplessness via an unsolvable reasoning task, 37 participants (20 females) performed a modified version of a Flanker task. Based on a previously validated questionnaire, 17 participants were classified as helpless and 20 as not-helpless. Behavioral measures revealed no differences between helpless and not-helpless individuals. However, we observed enhanced Error-Related Negativity (ERN) amplitude differences between erroneous and correct responses in the helpless compared to the not-helpless group. Furthermore, correlational analysis revealed that higher scores of helplessness were associated with increased ERN difference scores. No influence of feelings of helplessness on later stages of performance monitoring was observed as indicated by Error-Positivity (Pe) amplitude. The present study is the first to demonstrate that feelings of helplessness modulate the neuronal correlates of performance monitoring. Thus, even a short-lasting subjective state manipulation can lead to ERN amplitude variation, probably via modulation of mesencephalic dopamine activity.

There is an on-going debate in the literature as to whether national parliaments can and do play an active role in EU policy-making. The main reason for persistent disagreement is the lack of comparative empirical data on parliamentary behaviour in EU affairs. The article aims to contribute to this debate by presenting the first comparative quantitative data on European affairs activities of national parliaments and by explaining the empirical variation. The development of a unique dataset including all 27 national parliaments allows a series of explanatory variables to be tested for the level of parliamentary activity at both the committee and the plenary levels. The analysis shows that institutional strength in EU affairs plays an important role. Overall, however, EU activities can be better explained with a mix of institutional capacities and motivational incentives. The specific combinations vary for different types of activities.

Preoperative clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocols for gliomas, brain tumors with dismal outcomes due to their infiltrative properties, still rely on conventional structural MRI, which does not deliver information on tumor genotype and is limited in the delineation of diffuse gliomas. The GliMR COST action wants to raise awareness about the state of the art of advanced MRI techniques in gliomas and their possible clinical translation or lack thereof. This review describes current methods, limits, and applications of advanced MRI for the preoperative assessment of glioma, summarizing the level of clinical validation of different techniques. In this first part, we discuss dynamic susceptibility contrast and dynamic contrast‐enhanced MRI, arterial spin labeling, diffusion‐weighted MRI, vessel imaging, and magnetic resonance fingerprinting. The second part of this review addresses magnetic resonance spectroscopy, chemical exchange saturation transfer, susceptibility‐weighted imaging, MRI‐PET, MR elastography, and MR‐based radiomics applications.Evidence Level: 3Technical Efficacy: Stage 2

Dark littoral submarine caves can act as enclaves of the deep aphotic zone in shallow coastal areas, and their survey has revealed the existence of a very particular fauna of specialized and poorly known organisms among which crustaceans are particularly well represented. In these particular habitats, the use of conventional sampling techniques, such as hand nets, is often not recommended since they disturb bottom sediments causing hazardous situations to scientific divers. The use of baited traps, while technically possible, is not. always practical is such remote habitats. The present work describes a simple and inexpensive manual device that can be operated by divers ill submarine caves and other cryptic habitats to recurrently catch small motile organisms such as mysid crustaceans, caridean shrimps, or even gobiid fishes. This small suction bottle derived and improved from the original "Sket bottle" design considerably reduces the risks of disturbing the cave's bottom sediment and can be easily operated using a single hand. The described sampling device can also be easily used outside caves, in a variety of particular habitats, e.g., rubble filled bottoms, branching coral reefs, cracks, and small holes on rocky surfaces, in which small motile organisms usually escape from traditional sampling gears, e.g., fishnets and traps, or simply go unnoticed by researchers during sampling. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Contains fulltext : 144426.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Contains fulltext : 144426pre.pdf (Author’s version preprint ) (Open Access) The highly complex structure of the human brain is strongly shaped by genetic influences. Subcortical brain regions form circuits with cortical areas to coordinate movement, learning, memory and motivation, and altered circuits can lead to abnormal behaviour and disease. To investigate how common genetic variants affect the structure of these brain regions, here we conduct genome-wide association studies of the volumes of seven subcortical regions and the intracranial volume derived from magnetic resonance images of 30,717 individuals from 50 cohorts. We identify five novel genetic variants influencing the volumes of the putamen and caudate nucleus. We also find stronger evidence for three loci with previously established influences on hippocampal volume and intracranial volume. These variants show specific volumetric effects on brain structures rather than global effects across structures. The strongest effects were found for the putamen, where a novel intergenic locus with replicable influence on volume (rs945270; P = 1.08 x 10(-33); 0.52% variance explained) showed evidence of altering the expression of the KTN1 gene in both brain and blood tissue. Variants influencing putamen volume clustered near developmental genes that regulate apoptosis, axon guidance and vesicle transport. Identification of these genetic variants provides insight into the causes of variability in human brain development, and may help to determine mechanisms of neuropsychiatric dysfunction. 6 p.

Structural connectivity models based on Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) are strongly affected by the technique’s inability to resolve crossing fibres, either intra- or inter-hemispherical connections. Several models have been proposed to address this issue, including an algorithm aiming to resolve crossing fibres which is based on Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging (DKI). This technique is clinically feasible, even when multi-band acquisitions are not available, and compatible with multi-shell acquisition schemes. DKI is an extension of DTI enabling the estimation of diffusion tensor and diffusion kurtosis metrics. In this study we compare the performance of DKI and DTI in performing structural brain connectivity. Six healthy subjects were recruited, aged between 25 and 35 (three females). The MRI experiments were performed using a 3T Siemens Trio with a 32-channel head coil. The scans included a T1-weighted sequence (1mm3), and a DWI with b-values 0, 1000 and 2000 s:mm􀀀2. For each b-value, 64 equally spaced gradient directions were sampled. For DTI fitting only images with b-value of 0 and 1000 s:mm􀀀2 were considered, whereas for the DKI fitting, the whole cohort of images were considered. To fit both DTI and DKI tensors, extract the metrics and perform tract reconstructions, the toolbox DKIu was used, and the structural connectivity analysis was accomplished using the MIBCA toolbox. Tractography results revealed, as expected, that DKI-based tractography models can resolve crossing fibres within the same voxel, which posed a limitation to the DTI-based tractography models. Structural connectivity analysis showed DKI-based networks’ ability to establish both more inter-hemisphere and intra-hemisphere connections, when compared to DTI-based networks. This may be a direct consequence of the inability to resolve crossing fibres when using the DTI model. The DKI model ability to resolve crossing fibres may provide increased sensitivity to both inter- and intra-hemispherical connections. DTI-based modularity connectograms show a distinct intra-hemispherical configuration, whereas DKI-based connectograms show an increased number of inter-hemispherical connections, with several clusters extending over both hemispheres. Global and local connectivity metrics were also studied, but yielded no conclusive results. This may be due to a lack of reproducibility of the metrics or of the small cohort of subjects considered. DKI seems to provide additional insights into structural brain connectivity by resolving crossing fibres, otherwise undetected by DTI.