Examining the role of thromboelastography in patients with COVID-19.

BackgroundCOVID-19 causes a severe respiratory distress syndrome. Systemic inflammation and hypercoagulability are common. These findings are often evaluated with non-specific markers, including CRP, D-dimer, and fibrinogen.

The Competitive Edge: Improving American Board of Surgery In-Training Examination Scores Through a Team-Based Competition.

BackgroundThe American Board of Surgery (ABS) In-Training Examination (ABSITE) scores are predictive of passing the ABS qualifying exam and have become a marker of residency education success. A competitive team-based approach to encourage self-studying and didactic participation is a novel method of ABSITE preparation. We aimed to determine if this method significantly improves residents' percentile performances on the ABSITE.

fMRI and EEG predictors of dynamic decision parameters during human reinforcement learning.

What are the neural dynamics of choice processes during reinforcement learning? Two largely separate literatures have examined dynamics of reinforcement learning (RL) as a function of experience but assuming a static choice process, or conversely, the dynamics of choice processes in decision making but based on static decision values. Here we show that human choice processes during RL are well described by a drift diffusion model (DDM) of decision making in which the learned trial-by-trial reward values are sequentially sampled, with a choice made when the value signal crosses a decision threshold. Moreover, simultaneous fMRI and EEG recordings revealed that this decision threshold is not fixed across trials but varies as a function of activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and is further modulated by trial-by-trial measures of decision conflict and activity in the dorsomedial frontal cortex (pre-SMA BOLD and mediofrontal theta in EEG).

Conflict acts as an implicit cost in reinforcement learning.

Conflict has been proposed to act as a cost in action selection, implying a general function of medio-frontal cortex in the adaptation to aversive events. Here we investigate if response conflict acts as a cost during reinforcement learning by modulating experienced reward values in cortical and striatal systems. Electroencephalography recordings show that conflict diminishes the relationship between reward-related frontal theta power and cue preference yet it enhances the relationship between punishment and cue avoidance.