Increasing Signal, Reducing Noise: Contrasting Neural Mechanisms of Attention in Visual Search.

When invariant target-distractor arrays are presented repeatedly during visual search, participants respond faster on repeated versus novel configuration trials. This effect reflects attentional guidance through long-term memory (LTM) templates-a phenomenon termed contextual cueing. Subsequently, relocating the target within the same distractor layout abolishes any contextual cueing effects, and relearning the new target position is much harder than the initial learning-likely due to consistent attentional misguidance toward the initial (learnt) target position.

Withstand control: standing posture differentially affects space-based and feature-based cognitive control through enhanced physiological arousal.

Can simply standing upright sharpen our minds? Whereas initial works proposed that standing posture reduces distractor interference in the Stroop task, subsequent replication attempts yielded mixed results. Importantly, previous studies mostly ignored individual fitness factors like BMI, physical activity level, and cardiac measures, which have recently been suggested to explain mixed findings. Here, we addressed these inconsistencies by controlling for such fitness characteristics in N = 36 healthy adults.

Withstand Context: Standing Posture Improves Contextual Cueing in Challenging Visual Search.

Humans can learn to use repeated spatial arrangements of irrelevant, non-target items to direct the focus of attention towards behaviorally relevant-target-items, a phenomenon known as contextual cueing (CC). However, whether CC is itself dependent on attentional resources is a controversial issue. Here, we used visual search to test how CC is affected when attention varies through two types of manipulations: perceptual load (as induced by target-distractor similarity) and postural load (sitting vs.

Eye on context: Individual differences reveal the mechanisms of statistical learning.

If a searched-for target object is consistently encountered within repeating spatial distractor arrangements, target detection becomes more efficient relative to nonrepeated, that is, random arrangements (contextual cueing [CC] effect). However, target location changes within otherwise unchanged distractor arrays substantially weaken the cueing effect. Previous studies reported substantial variations in individual participants' abilities to learn and relearn invariant contexts.

Top-down and emotional attention in blind and sighted individuals.

There is evidence that congenitally blind individuals possess superior auditory perceptual skills compared to sighted people. However, relatively little is known about the auditory-specific cortical correlates of spatial attention in the blind and how task-irrelevant emotional stimulus features could further modulate such neural processes. This study tested blind and sighted participants in a challenging auditory discrimination task.

When experience with scenes foils attentional orienting: ERP evidence against flexible target-context mapping in visual search.

Visual search is speeded when a target is repeatedly presented in an invariant scene context of nontargets (contextual cueing), demonstrating observers' capability for using statistical long-term memory (LTM) to make predictions about upcoming sensory events, thus improving attentional orienting. In the current study, we investigated whether expectations arising from individual, learned environmental structures can encompass multiple target locations. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants performed a contextual cueing search task with repeated and non-repeated spatial item configurations.

Individual peak alpha frequency does not index individual differences in inhibitory cognitive control.

Previous work has indicated that individual differences in cognitive performance can be predicted by characteristics of resting state oscillations, such as individual peak alpha frequency (IAF). Although IAF has previously been correlated with cognitive functions, such as memory, attention, or mental speed, its link to cognitive conflict processing remains unexplored. The current work investigated the relationship between IAF and inhibitory cognitive control in two well-established conflict tasks, Stroop and Navon task, while also controlling for alpha power, theta power, and the 1/f offset of aperiodic broadband activity.

Dataset on permeability of wings from owls and non-silently flying birds.

The very soft and flow-permeable plumage is among the special adaptations of the owl that the silent flight is attributed to. Using a specially designed apparatus that provides a low-speed volume flow of air through a small sample of porous material, measurements of the air flow permeability were performed in accordance to ISO 9053 on a total of 39 prepared wing specimen from six different bird species, including three species of silently flying owls and three non-silently flying bird species. The resulting data set described in the present paper contains the static airflow resistance measured at different positions on the wing.

Assessing regional hepatic function changes after hypertrophy induction by radioembolisation: comparison of gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI and Tc-mebrofenin hepatobiliary scintigraphy.

Background: To compare Gd-ethoxybenzyl diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-EOB-DTPA)-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and Tc-labelled mebrofenin hepatobiliary scintigraphy (HBS) as imaging-based liver function tests after unilateral radioembolisation (RE) in patients with primary or secondary liver malignancies.

Methods: Twenty-three patients with primary or secondary liver malignancies who underwent Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI within a prospective study (REVoluTion) were evaluated. REVoluTion was a prospective open-label, non-randomised, therapy-optimising study of patients undergoing right-sided or sequential RE for contralateral liver hypertrophy at a single centre in Germany.

Environmental regularities mitigate attentional misguidance in contextual cueing of visual search.

Visual search is faster when a fixed target location is paired with a spatially invariant (vs. randomly changing) distractor configuration, thus indicating that repeated contexts are learned, thereby guiding attention to the target (contextual cueing [CC]). Evidence for memory-guided attention has also been revealed with electrophysiological (electroencephalographic [EEG]) recordings, starting with an enhanced early posterior negativity (N1pc), which signals a preattentive bias toward the target, and, subsequently, attentional and postselective components, such as the posterior contralateral negativity (PCN) and contralateral delay activity (CDA), respectively.

Reliability and practicability of PSMA-RADS 1.0 for structured reporting of PSMA-PET/CT scans in prostate cancer patients.

Objectives: As structured reporting is increasingly used in the evaluation of prostate-specific membrane antigen positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PSMA-PET/CT) for prostate cancer, there is a need to assess the reliability of these frameworks. This study aimed to evaluate the intra- and interreader agreement among readers with varying levels of experience using PSMA-RADS 1.0 for interpreting PSMA-PET/CT scans, even when blinded to clinical data, and therefore to determine the feasibility of implementing this reporting system in clinical practice.

Cost-effectiveness analysis of MRI, CE-CT and 18F-FDG PET/CT for detecting colorectal liver metastases eligible for hepatic resection.

Objectives: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a serious challenge for the health system. In 2022 CRC represented 8% of cancer diagnoses in the United States. 30% of patients already show metastases at the initial tumor staging.

Mission impossible? Spatial context relearning following a target relocation event depends on cue predictiveness.

Visual search for a target is faster when the spatial layout of distractors is repeatedly encountered, illustrating that statistical learning of contextual invariances facilitates attentional guidance (contextual cueing; Chun & Jiang, 1998, Cognitive Psychology, 36, 28-71). While contextual learning is usually relatively efficient, relocating the target to an unexpected location (within an otherwise unchanged search layout) typically abolishes contextual cueing and the benefits deriving from invariant contexts recover only slowly with extensive training (Zellin et al., 2014, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21(4), 1073-1079).

Validation of the SSTR-RADS 1.0 for the structured interpretation of SSTR-PET/CT and treatment planning in neuroendocrine tumor (NET) patients.

Objectives: The recently proposed standardized reporting and data system for somatostatin receptor (SSTR)-targeted PET/CT SSTR-RADS 1.0 showed promising first results in the assessment of diagnosis and treatment planning with peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) in neuroendocrine tumors (NET). This study aimed to determine the intra- and interreader agreement of SSTR-RADS 1.

Artificial Intelligence in Oncological Hybrid Imaging.

Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) applications have become increasingly relevant across a broad spectrum of settings in medical imaging. Due to the large amount of imaging data that is generated in oncological hybrid imaging, AI applications are desirable for lesion detection and characterization in primary staging, therapy monitoring, and recurrence detection. Given the rapid developments in machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) methods, the role of AI will have significant impact on the imaging workflow and will eventually improve clinical decision making and outcomes.

Multisensory Rather than Unisensory Representations Contribute to Statistical Context Learning in Tactile Search.

Using a combination of behavioral and EEG measures in a tactile odd-one-out search task with collocated visual items, we investigated the mechanisms underlying facilitation of search by repeated (vs. nonrepeated) spatial distractor-target configurations ("contextual cueing") when either the tactile (same-modality) or the visual array (different-modality) context was predictive of the location of the tactile singleton target. Importantly, in both conditions, the stimulation was multisensory, consisting of tactile plus visual items, although the target was singled out in the tactile modality and so the visual items were task-irrelevant.

Extrahepatic Disease in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Do We Always Need Whole-Body CT or Is Liver MRI Sufficient? A Subanalysis of the SORAMIC Trial.

Background: To investigate whole-body contrast-enhanced CT and hepatobiliary contrast liver MRI for the detection of extrahepatic disease (EHD) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and to quantify the impact of EHD on therapy decision. Methods: In this post-hoc analysis of the prospective phase II open-label, multicenter, randomized controlled SORAMIC trial, two blinded readers independently analyzed the whole-body contrast-enhanced CT and gadoxetic acid-enhanced liver MRI data sets of 538 HCC patients. EHD (defined as tumor manifestation outside the liver) detection rates of the two imaging modalities were compared using multiparametric statistical tests.

Cross-modal contextual memory guides selective attention in visual-search tasks.

Visual search is speeded when a target item is positioned consistently within an invariant (repeatedly encountered) configuration of distractor items ("contextual cueing"). Contextual cueing is also observed in cross-modal search, when the location of the-visual-target is predicted by distractors from another-tactile-sensory modality. Previous studies examining lateralized waveforms of the event-related potential (ERP) with millisecond precision have shown that learned visual contexts improve a whole cascade of search-processing stages.

Course of Disease and Clinical Management of Patients with Poorly Differentiated Thyroid Carcinoma.

Background: In patients with poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma, the clinical course and prognostic value of response to initial radioiodine therapy is evaluated.

Methods: In 47 patients, clinical and imaging features were analyzed. Patients were stratified in no (NED), biochemical (B-ED) and structural evidence of disease (S-ED) assessed at the first diagnostic control and its impact on survival was evaluated.

Interpretation of Thoracic Radiography Shows Large Discrepancies Depending on the Qualification of the Physician-Quantitative Evaluation of Interobserver Agreement in a Representative Emergency Department Scenario.

(1) Background: Chest radiography (CXR) is still a key diagnostic component in the emergency department (ED). Correct interpretation is essential since some pathologies require urgent treatment. This study quantifies potential discrepancies in CXR analysis between radiologists and non-radiology physicians in training with ED experience.

Diagnostic Value of Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound for Evaluation of Transjugular Intrahepatic Portosystemic Shunt Perfusion.

In patients with liver cirrhosis, transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) displays an effective method for treating portal hypertension. Main indications include refractory ascites and secondary prevention of esophageal bleeding. Color Doppler ultrasound (CDUS) plays a leading role in the follow-up management, whereas contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) is not routinely considered.

Safety assessment and diagnostic evaluation of patients undergoing contrast-enhanced urosonography in the setting of vesicoureteral reflux confirmation.

Background: Vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) represents a common pediatric anomaly in children with an upper urinary tract infection (UTI) and is defined as a retrograde flow of urine from the bladder into the upper urinary tract. There are many diagnostic options available, including voiding cystourethrography (VCUG) and contrasted-enhanced urosonography (ceVUS). ceVUS combines a diagnostic tool with a high sensitivity and specificity which, according to previous study results, was even shown to be superior to VCUG.

Inter-trial effects in priming of pop-out: Comparison of computational updating models.

In visual search tasks, repeating features or the position of the target results in faster response times. Such inter-trial 'priming' effects occur not just for repetitions from the immediately preceding trial but also from trials further back. A paradigm known to produce particularly long-lasting inter-trial effects-of the target-defining feature, target position, and response (feature)-is the 'priming of pop-out' (PoP) paradigm, which typically uses sparse search displays and random swapping across trials of target- and distractor-defining features.