A minute can only be spent once: Validating a behavioral paradigm to study societally relevant time allocation conflicts.

Societally beneficial behaviors often have to compete with alternative behaviors for limited resources (e.g., time).

Computer vision uncovers three fundamental dimensions of levodopa-responsive motor improvement in Parkinson's disease.

We developed VisionMD, an AI computer vision platform, analyzing over 1200 clinical videos of Parkinson's patients' hand movements across 13 years. This large-scale, markerless analysis identified three kinematic domains (speed, consistency, timing/scale) reliably improved by levodopa. Our method offers objective, quantitative motor assessment, reducing subjectivity and enhancing reproducibility compared to traditional scales.

Probabilistic mapping of gait changes after STN-DBS for Parkinson's disease.

Introduction: Gait disturbances causing impaired mobility are common in Parkinson's disease after bilateral deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus. We describe subthalamic subregions where neurostimulation had a positive effect on gait or provoked gait disturbances.

Methods: 98 patients were classified according to changes in MDS-UPDRS III gait items: gait improvement (≥1-point improvement in items 3.

Machine learning identifies key individual and nation-level factors predicting climate-relevant beliefs and behaviors.

While numerous studies have examined factors associated with climate-friendly beliefs and behaviors, a systematic, cross-national ranking of their key correlates is lacking. We use interpretable machine learning to quantify the extent to which different climate-relevant outcomes (climate change belief, policy support, willingness to share information on social media, and a pro-environmental behavioral task) are predictable and to rank 19 individual- and nation-level predictors in terms of their importance across 55 countries ( = 4635). We find notable differences in explained variance for the outcomes (e.

Subthalamic nucleus dynamics during executive functioning: Insights from local field potentials in Parkinson's disease.

This study explores the involvement of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in executive functions, particularly cognitive flexibility, in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. Utilizing a computerized Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) and local field potential (LFP) recordings from implanted deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrodes, we investigated task-specific neural dynamics. Behavioural results demonstrated increased error rates and prolonged response times in trials requiring set-shifting and rule induction via cross-temporal information integration.

VisionMD: an open-source tool for video-based analysis of motor function in movement disorders.

VisionMD, an open-source software for automated video-based analysis of MDS-UPDRS Part III motor tasks, offers precise, objective, and scalable assessments of motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. Leveraging deep learning, VisionMD tracks body movements to compute kinematic features that quantify symptoms severity and supports longitudinal monitoring. VisionMD's user-friendly, customizable framework empowers clinicians and researchers to objectively evaluate motor symptoms in persons with movement disorders without specialized hardware.

Metal-insulator transition of spinless fermions coupled to dispersive optical bosons.

Including the previously ignored dispersion of phonons we revisit the metal-insulator transition problem in one-dimensional electron-phonon systems on the basis of a modified spinless fermion Holstein model. Using matrix-product-state techniques we determine the global ground-state phase diagram in the thermodynamic limit for the half-filled band case, and show that in particular the curvature of the bare phonon band has a significant effect, not only on the transport properties characterized by the conductance and the Luttinger liquid parameter, but also on the phase space structure of the model as a whole. While a downward curved (convex) dispersion of the phonons only shifts the Tomonaga-Luttinger-liquid to charge-density-wave quantum phase transition towards stronger EP coupling, an upward curved (concave) phonon band leads to a new phase-separated state which, in the case of strong dispersion, can even completely cover the charge-density wave.

Watching (natural) beauty boosts task performance: testing the nature-as-reward hypothesis.

In two online studies, we tested the "nature-as-reward hypothesis", which suggests that superior cognitive task performance following nature exposure reflects a general performance improvement, driven by the reward value of beautiful things. In both between-subjects experiments, participants viewed either beautiful or less beautiful images for 10 s, comprising beautiful mountain photos (vs. less beautiful mountain drawings) in Study 1 and beautiful fractals (vs.

The effects of virtual nature exposure on pro-environmental behaviour.

Exposure to (virtual) natural environments may encourage people to care about environmental protection and to engage in pro-environmental behaviour. Previous research on this effect produced inconsistent results, suggesting that it may depend on the type of nature and behaviour under study. In the present study (N = 266), we investigated nature exposure effects on effortful pro-environmental behaviour in an online experiment.

Feasibility of local field potential-guided programming for deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease: A comparison with clinical and neuro-imaging guided approaches in a randomized, controlled pilot trial.

Background: Subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) is an effective treatment for advanced Parkinson's disease (PD). Clinical outcomes after DBS can be limited by poor programming, which remains a clinically driven, lengthy and iterative process. Electrophysiological recordings in PD patients undergoing STN-DBS have shown an association between STN spectral power in the beta frequency band (beta power) and the severity of clinical symptoms.

Machine versus physician-based programming of deep brain stimulation in isolated dystonia: A feasibility study.

Background: Deep brain stimulation of the internal globus pallidus effectively alleviates dystonia motor symptoms. However, delayed symptom control and a lack of therapeutic biomarkers and a single pallidal sweetspot region complicates optimal programming. Postoperative management is complex, typically requiring multiple, lengthy follow-ups with an experienced physician - an important barrier to widespread adoption in medication-refractory dystonia patients.

Distinct phenotypes of stimulation-induced dysarthria represent different cortical networks in STN-DBS.

Background: Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus is an effective treatment of Parkinson's disease, yet it is often associated with a general deterioration of speech intelligibility. Clustering the phenotypes of dysarthria has been proposed as a strategy to tackle these stimulation-induced speech problems.

Methods: In this study, we examine a cohort of 24 patients to test the real-life application of the proposed clustering and attempt to attribute the clusters to specific brain networks with two different approaches of connectivity analysis.

Potential Contributions of Behavior Analysis to Research on Pro-environmental Behavior.

Large parts of contemporary research on pro-environmental behavior focus on mechanistic explanations and mental constructs. Exclusive reliance on this approach may hinder the search for novel solutions to conceptual problems, more powerful methods, and innovative behavior change interventions. Theoretical diversity, on the other hand, can render a field adaptive in its responses to crises and impasses.

Behavioral paradigms for studying pro-environmental behavior: A systematic review.

In view of global environmental deterioration and climate change, researchers from multiple fields of the behavioral sciences examine the determinants of pro-environmental behavior. Research on pro-environmental behavior is dominated by the use of self-report measures, which relates to critical validity problems. Some of these problems can be addressed by studying consequential behavior in behavioral paradigms (i.

DIPS (Dystonia Image-based Programming of Stimulation: a prospective, randomized, double-blind crossover trial).

Introduction: Deep brain stimulation of the internal globus pallidus is an effective treatment for dystonia. However, there is a large variability in clinical outcome with up to 25% non-responders even in highly selected primary dystonia patients. In a large cohort of patients we recently demonstrated that the variable clinical outcomes of pallidal DBS for dystonia may result to a large degree by the exact location and stimulation volume within the pallidal region.

Reduced Programming Time and Strong Symptom Control Even in Chronic Course Through Imaging-Based DBS Programming.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) programming is based on clinical response testing. Our clinical pilot trial assessed the feasibility of image-guided programing using software depicting the lead location in a patient-specific anatomical model. Parkinson's disease patients with subthalamic nucleus-DBS were randomly assigned to standard clinical-based programming (CBP) or anatomical-based (imaging-guided) programming (ABP) in an 8-week crossover trial.

Predicting Outcome in a Cohort of Isolated and Combined Dystonia within Probabilistic Brain Mapping.

Background: Probabilistic brain mapping is a promising tool to estimate the expected benefit of pallidal deep brain stimulation (GPi-DBS) in patients with isolated dystonia (IsoD).

Objectives: To investigate the role of probabilistic mapping in combined dystonia (ComD).

Methods: We rendered the pallidal atlas and the volume of tissue activated (VTA) for a cohort of patients with IsoD (n = 20) and ComD (n = 10) that underwent GPi-DBS.

Deep Brain Stimulation for Tremor: Update on Long-Term Outcomes, Target Considerations and Future Directions.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the thalamic ventral intermediate nucleus is one of the main advanced neurosurgical treatments for drug-resistant tremor. However, not every patient may be eligible for this procedure. Nowadays, various other functional neurosurgical procedures are available.