Previous studies have found deficits in imaginative elaboration and social inference to be associated with agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC; Renteria-Vasquez et al., 2022; Turk et al., 2009). In the current study, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) responses from a neurotypical control group and a group of individuals with ACC were used to further study the capacity for imaginative elaboration and story coherence.

Topic modeling was employed utilizing Latent Diritchlet Allocation to characterize the narrative responses to the pictures used in the TAT. A measure of the difference between models (perplexity) was used to compare the topics of the responses of individual participants to the common core model derived from the responses of the control group. Story coherence was tested using sentence-to-sentence Latent Semantic Analysis.

Group differences in perplexity were statistically significant overall, and for each card individually (p < .001). There were no differences between the groups in story coherence.

TAT narratives from persons with ACC were normally coherent, but more conventional (i.e., more similar to the core text) compared to those of neurotypical controls. Individuals with ACC can make conventional social inferences about socially ambiguous stimuli, but are restricted in their imaginative elaborations, resulting in less topical variability (lower perplexity values) compared to neurotypical controls.

The 2022 SHEA/IDSA/APIC guidance for surgical site infection (SSI) prevention recommends reserving vancomycin prophylaxis to patients who are methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) colonized. Unfortunately, vancomycin prophylaxis remains common due to the overestimation of MRSA risk and the desire to cover MRSA in patients with certain healthcare-associated characteristics. To optimize vancomycin prophylaxis, we sought to identify risk factors for MRSA SSI.

This was a single-center, case-control study of patients with a postoperative SSI after undergoing a National Healthcare Safety Network operative procedure over eight years. MRSA SSI cases were compared to non-MRSA SSI controls. Forty-two demographic, medical, and surgical characteristics were evaluated.

Of the 441 patients included, 23 developed MRSA SSIs (rate = 5.2 per 100 SSIs). In the multivariable model, we identified two independent risk factors for MRSA SSI: a history of MRSA colonization or infection (OR, 9.0 [95% CI, 1.9–29.6]) and hip or knee replacement surgery (OR, 3.8 [95% CI, 1.3–9.9]). Hemodialysis, previous hospitalization, and prolonged hospitalization prior to the procedure had no measurable association with odds of MRSA SSI.

Patients with prior MRSA colonization or infection had 9–10 times greater odds of MRSA SSI and patients undergoing hip and knee replacement had 3–4 times greater odds of MRSA SSI. Healthcare-associated characteristics, such as previous hospitalization or hemodialysis, were not associated with MRSA SSI. Our findings support national recommendations to reserve vancomycin prophylaxis for patients who are MRSA colonized, as well as those undergoing hip and knee replacement, in the absence of routine MRSA colonization surveillance.

Cancer health research relies on large-scale cohorts to derive generalizable results for different populations. While traditional epidemiological cohorts often use costly random sampling or self-motivated, preselected groups, a shift toward health system-based cohorts has emerged. However, such cohorts depend on participants remaining within a single system. Recent consumer engagement models using smartphone-based communication, driving projects, and social media have begun to upend these paradigms.

We initiated the Healthy Oregon Project (HOP) to support basic and clinical cancer research. HOP study employs a novel, cost-effective remote recruitment approach to effectively establish a large-scale cohort for population-based studies. The recruitment leverages the unique email account, the HOP website, and social media platforms to direct smartphone users to the study app, which facilitates saliva sample collection and survey administration. Monthly newsletters further facilitate engagement and outreach to broader communities.

By the end of 2022, the HOP has enrolled approximately 35,000 participants aged 18–100 years (median = 44.2 years), comprising more than 1% of the Oregon adult population. Among those who have app access, ∼87% provided consent to genetic screening. The HOP monthly email newsletters have an average open rate of 38%. Efforts continue to be made to improve survey response rates.

This study underscores the efficacy of remote recruitment approaches in establishing large-scale cohorts for population-based cancer studies. The implementation of the study facilitates the collection of extensive survey and biological data into a repository that can be broadly shared and supports collaborative clinical and translational research.

To identify urinary catheter (UC)–associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) incidence and risk factors.

A prospective cohort study.

The study was conducted across 623 ICUs of 224 hospitals in 114 cities in 37 African, Asian, Eastern European, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries.

The study included 169,036 patients, hospitalized for 1,166,593 patient days.

Data collection took place from January 1, 2014, to February 12, 2022. We identified CAUTI rates per 1,000 UC days and UC device utilization (DU) ratios stratified by country, by ICU type, by facility ownership type, by World Bank country classification by income level, and by UC type. To estimate CAUTI risk factors, we analyzed 11 variables using multiple logistic regression.

Participant patients acquired 2,010 CAUTIs. The pooled CAUTI rate was 2.83 per 1,000 UC days. The highest CAUTI rate was associated with the use of suprapubic catheters (3.93 CAUTIs per 1,000 UC days); with patients hospitalized in Eastern Europe (14.03) and in Asia (6.28); with patients hospitalized in trauma (7.97), neurologic (6.28), and neurosurgical ICUs (4.95); with patients hospitalized in lower–middle-income countries (3.05); and with patients in public hospitals (5.89).

The following variables were independently associated with CAUTI: Age (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.01; P < .0001), female sex (aOR, 1.39; P < .0001), length of stay (LOS) before CAUTI-acquisition (aOR, 1.05; P < .0001), UC DU ratio (aOR, 1.09; P < .0001), public facilities (aOR, 2.24; P < .0001), and neurologic ICUs (aOR, 11.49; P < .0001).

CAUTI rates are higher in patients with suprapubic catheters, in middle-income countries, in public hospitals, in trauma and neurologic ICUs, and in Eastern European and Asian facilities.

Based on findings regarding risk factors for CAUTI, focus on reducing LOS and UC utilization is warranted, as well as implementing evidence-based CAUTI-prevention recommendations.

Previous research suggests that individuals with isolated Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum (AgCC) have cognitive and psychosocial deficiencies that include impaired recognition of the emotions of others (Symington et al., 2010) and a diminished ability to infer and describe the emotions of others (Paul et al., 2021; Turk et al., 2010). In addition, galvanic skin responses effectively discriminated between emotional images despite atypical emotion ratings (Paul et al, 2006), supporting a dissociation between cognitive and affective empathy in AgCC. Likewise, atypical patterns of visual attention to faces corresponded with impaired emotion recognition in AgCC (Bridgman et al, 2014), suggesting that atypical visual attention in AgCC negatively impacts the ability to identify others’ emotions. This study used the Multifaceted Empathy Test [MET] (Foell et al., 2018) to examine the impact of visual aesthetics (photo composition) on empathetic feelings (affective empathy) and situational emotion recognition (cognitive empathy) in persons with AgCC. Both cognitive and affective empathy scores are typically higher on MET stimuli composed according to the “Golden Spiral” (Callaway, 2022).

Results from 50 control participants recruited from Cloud Research were compared to responses from 19 participants with AgCC and normal-range FSIQ (>80). Data was gathered through an online version of the MET, which uses a series of photographs of individuals displaying an emotion, half of which adhere to the compositional technique known as “The Golden Spiral.” To measure cognitive empathy, the participants are asked to pick the correct emotion being displayed with three distractors for each item. To measure affective empathy, they are then asked on a sliding scale, “how much do you empathize with the person shown” (1 = Not at all, 7 = Very much).

Repeated measures mixed ANOVAs revealed no difference between AgCC and control groups on affective empathy, and as expected on the MET, both groups had significantly higher ratings for photos composed according to the Golden Spiral (AgCC, np2 = .071; control, np2 = .136). In contrast, the AgCC group scored significantly lower than controls overall on cognitive empathy, np2 =.065. Exploratory post-hoc found a significant group difference in cognitive empathy only on photos composed according to the Golden Spiral, np2 = .090, with the scores in the AgCC group unimpacted by composition type while the control group exhibiting significantly higher scores Golden Spiral images, np2 = .254.

Empathic deficits in AgCC were restricted to the cognitive component, while affective empathy was not impaired. Visual aesthetics of photo composition influenced affective empathy ratings in both AgCC and control groups. However, adults with AgCC had diminished ability to give cognitive labels to the emotional states of others, which was not enhanced by the formal aesthetics of stimuli. Thus the corpus callosum seems to facilitate the ability to cognitively label emotions by facilitating visual attention. It also suggests that the corpus callosum does not facilitate affective empathy, in part because it does not appear to determine whether formal aesthetics influences the processing of visual stimuli in AgCC or neurotypical controls.

Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum (AgCC) is the congenital absence of all or part of the corpus callosum. Previous research has demonstrated that isolated AgCC results in a pattern of cognitive and psychosocial deficiencies, even when FSIQ is in the normal range (FSIQ > 80; Brown & Paul, 2019). Importantly, individuals with AgCC have been shown to provide narratives containing fewer emotional words, social interactions, and mental inferences on the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Turk et al., 2009). Similarly, research has suggested deficits in the elaborative imagination of persons with AgCC when they are providing narrative descriptions of simple animations (Renteria-Vasquez et al., 2021). Such findings raise questions about aesthetic perception in AgCC. While previous research has demonstrated differences in aesthetic perception among other neuropsychological populations (e.g. Parkinson's Disease; Lauring et al., 2019), there is no research reported regarding aesthetic appreciations in AgCC. The present study employed the Assessment of Art Attributes (AAA; Chatterjee et al., 2010) to compare the conceptual and perceptual aspects of aesthetic perception of persons with AgCC to neurotypical control participants. Prior investigation by Bromberger and colleagues (2011) utilized the AAA to examine the aesthetic perception of persons with right hemisphere lesions, finding deviations in judgements of abstractness, symbolism, realism, and animacy– all classified as “conceptual attributes.” Based on these findings, it was predicted that individuals with AgCC would rate paintings differently than neurotypical controls on conceptual attributes, but not on perceptual attributes.

Thirteen persons with AgCC and 49 neurotypical individuals completed the AAA. After completing measures of artistic experience and colorblindness, participants rated 24 paintings on 14 attributes. Balance, color saturation, color temperature, depth, simplicity, and stroke made up the “perceptual scales,” while abstractness, animacy, emotion, objective accuracy, realism, interest, and preference made up the “conceptual scales.”

Following Bromberger and colleagues (2011), average ratings from all control participants were used to rank the 24 paintings for each scale. Spearman's rank-order correlations were then conducted between the rankings of each participant and the average of the controls for each scale. Spearman's rho coefficients were then compared between AgCC and control groups using t-tests, controlling for multiple comparisons. As hypothesized, the AgCC group had significant deviations from the average of the controls (lower rho values) on several conceptual attributes: Abstractness (p = .004, d = .11), emotion (p < .001, d = .12), and interest (p < .001, d = .18), whereas individuals with AgCC deviated on only one perceptual attribute: Simplicity (p = .003, d = .12).

While generally unremarkable in the sensory aspects, persons with AgCC demonstrated greatest differences in three important conceptual aspects of aesthetic perception. This outcome suggests that such higher-order aesthetic appreciations require interhemispheric interactivity. These results further support the hypothesis that decreased elaborative imagination is a fundamental component of AgCC.

Larger social networks are linked to better cognitive function. However, little is known about the association of cognitive function with the composition of these networks in terms of the varying levels of closeness and supportive relationships. The present study explored whether social network size at different levels was differentially associated with cognitive function in a group of community-dwelling older adults.

119 older adults (Mage= 70.71) from the Maine Aging Behavior Learning Enrichment Study completed a neuropsychological test battery measuring language, verbal memory, visuospatial memory, working memory, executive function, and processing speed abilities. The number and closeness of participants' relationships was measured using a Hierarchical Mapping Technique based on the Social Convoy model, in which participants included the names of people in their relational network within inner (closest), middle (close), and outer concentric circles.

Correlational analyses found that social network size at the total and middle-to-outer levels were statistically associated with education and better performance on measures of language, verbal memory, visuospatial memory, and executive function. However, no relationship emerged between the size of the innermost network level and cognitive function. Furthermore, statistically significant findings did not survive adjustments for the effect of education.

Broader levels of support, rather than greater intimacy, were statistically associated with better cognitive performance. Consistent with previous research, greater education was associated with larger social networks. Future research is needed to understand whether higher levels of education or other factors mediate the observed relationship.

Hemispherectomy (HE) is a surgical intervention to treat intractable epilepsy. It involves disconnecting or removing the right or left cerebral hemisphere, depending on the location of the pathological substrate or epileptogenic activity. HE impacts neural functions related to social cognition (Fournier et al., 2008). This study investigates the effects of childhood HE on social deception and sarcasm using the Thames Awareness of Social Inferences Task (TASIT; McDonald, Flanagan, & Rollins, 2010) to explore emotion identification and social inference appraisal as adults.

Fifteen adults with hemispherectomy and 16 neurotypical controls completed the TASIT. All HE patients underwent hemispherectomy (right-HE = 10) during childhood (age of surgery = 3 months to 16 years) and had FSIQ > 70 at the time of study. HE and control groups were matched for age (HE M = 25.7, SD = 5.4; control M = 27.1, SD = 10.7) and education (HE M = 14.0, SD = 1.88; control M = 13.3, SD = 1.8). FSIQ was significantly lower in the HE group than control group (HE M= 90.8, SD = 9.4; control (M = 100.4, SD = 7.1). TASIT uses videotaped vignettes to assess aspects of social perception: emotion recognition (Part 1), social inference regarding sincerity, simple sarcasm, and paradoxical sarcasm (Part 2) and social inference regarding sincerity of speech (lie vs sarcasm) in the presence of additional text or visual cues (Part 3).

For Part 1, MANCOVA (covarying FSIQ) found no group difference in emotion identification. Analysis of data from Part 2 was conducted using repeated measures ANCOVA accounting for 2 groups x 3 conditions (sincere, simple sarcasm, and paradoxical sarcasm) and revealed only a significant overall group effect, F (1, 28) = 5.72, p = .024, np2 = .170. Likewise, analysis of Part 3 using repeated measures ANCOVA accounting for 2 groups x 2 cue types (visual, text) and 2 actor intentions (lie, sarcasm) revealed only a significant overall group effect, F (1,28) = 11.35, p = .002, np2 = .288, with no interaction of group by condition.

HE patients exhibited no difficulty identifying basic emotional expressions. Performance was significantly impaired when additional social information was added to the context (i.e., detecting sarcasm or deception). HE patients begin to struggle with the complexity of new social information or how it changes the meaning of a conversation. Even simple sarcastic exchanges are difficult to interpret. When a visual or textual cue was introduced to reveal the true state of affairs, HE patients could not could integrate the information into their interpretations of the scenario. There are unique contributions of the left and right hemispheres to cognitive processes for complex social behavior, and absence of an entire hemisphere results in deficits in social language comprehension. Future research should investigate performance differences in left vs. right HE patients.