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Parallel test versions require a comparable degree of difficulty and must capture the same characteristics using different items. This can become challenging when dealing with multivariate items, which are for example very common in language or image data. Here, we propose a heuristic to identify and select similar multivariate items for the generation of equivalent parallel test versions. This heuristic includes: 1. inspection of correlations between variables; 2. identification of outlying items; 3. application of a dimension-reduction method, such as for example principal component analysis (PCA); 4. generation of a biplot, in case of PCA of the first two principal components (PC), and grouping the displayed items; 5. assigning of the items to parallel test versions; and 6. checking the resulting test versions for multivariate equivalence, parallelism, reliability, and internal consistency. To illustrate the proposed heuristic, we applied it exemplarily on the items of a picture naming task. From a pool of 116 items, four parallel test versions were derived, each containing 20 items. We found that our heuristic can help to generate parallel test versions that meet requirements of the classical test theory, while simultaneously taking several variables into account.

BackgroundHemispatial neglect affects approximately 33% of patients after acute stroke and is linked to poor recovery. Auditory motion stimulation, particularly using spatial cues, can enhance spatial awareness and has shown promise in experimental settings. ObjectiveThis study aimed to develop and evaluate Neglect Radio, a smartphone app that delivers auditory motion stimulation, focusing on sound realism and usability in healthy volunteers. MethodsTwo auditory motion rendering methods, dynamic stereo volume control and standardized head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), were implemented in a mobile app streaming public radio content. In an online study, 37 healthy volunteers rated spatial realism (0-100 scale) of 5 audio sources in 3 conditions: static stereo, volume control motion, and HRTF-based motion. Independent samples 1-tailed t tests compared realism scores. Ten participants tested the app for 15 minutes and completed the System Usability Scale (SUS). ResultsHRTF-based audio was rated as being significantly more realistic than volume control (t72=3.722; P<.001), and both motion conditions scored significantly higher than static stereo. The mean SUS score was 86.5 (SD 6.9), exceeding the 68-point threshold for above-average usability and a rating of “excellent.” ConclusionsNeglect Radio successfully produced realistic spatial auditory motion and achieved excellent usability ratings in healthy participants. This smartphone-based platform is scalable, accessible, and engaging, with potential to complement hemispatial neglect rehabilitation. However, clinical efficacy in stroke patients with hemispatial neglect has not yet been evaluated and requires confirmation in controlled trials.

Smart homes for the aging population have recently started attracting the attention of the research community. The “health state” of smart homes is comprised of many different levels; starting with the physical health of citizens, it also includes longer-term health norms and outcomes, as well as the arena of positive behavior changes. One of the problems of interest is to monitor the activities of daily living (ADL) of the elderly, aiming at their protection and well-being. For this purpose, we installed passive infrared (PIR) sensors to detect motion in a specific area inside a smart apartment and used them to collect a set of ADL. In a novel approach, we describe a technology that allows the ground truth collected in one smart home to train activity recognition systems for other smart homes. We asked the users to label all instances of all ADL only once and subsequently applied data mining techniques to cluster in-home sensor firings. Each cluster would therefore represent the instances of the same activity. Once the clusters were associated to their corresponding activities, our system was able to recognize future activities. To improve the activity recognition accuracy, our system preprocessed raw sensor data by identifying overlapping activities. To evaluate the recognition performance from a 200-day dataset, we implemented three different active learning classification algorithms and compared their performance: naive Bayesian (NB), support vector machine (SVM) and random forest (RF). Based on our results, the RF classifier recognized activities with an average specificity of 96.53%, a sensitivity of 68.49%, a precision of 74.41% and an F-measure of 71.33%, outperforming both the NB and SVM classifiers. Further clustering markedly improved the results of the RF classifier. An activity recognition system based on PIR sensors in conjunction with a clustering classification approach was able to detect ADL from datasets collected from different homes. Thus, our PIR-based smart home technology could improve care and provide valuable information to better understand the functioning of our societies, as well as to inform both individual and collective action in a smart city scenario.

When humans visually explore an image, they typically tend to start exploring its left side. This phenomenon, so-called pseudoneglect, is well known, but its time-course has only sparsely been studied. Furthermore, it is unclear whether age influences pseudoneglect, and the relationship between visuo-spatial attentional asymmetries in a free visual exploration task and a classical line bisection task has not been established. To address these questions, 60 healthy participants, aged between 22 and 86, were assessed by means of a free visual exploration task with a series of naturalistic, colour photographs of everyday scenes, while their gaze was recorded by means of a contact-free eye-tracking system. Furthermore, a classical line bisection task was administered, and information concerning handedness and subjective alertness during the experiment was obtained. The results revealed a time-sensitive window during visual exploration, between 260 and 960 ms, in which age was a significant predictor of the leftward bias in gaze position, i.e., of pseudoneglect. Moreover, pseudoneglect as assessed by the line bisection task correlated with the average gaze position throughout a time-window of 300–1490 ms during the visual exploration task. These results suggest that age influences visual exploration and pseudoneglect in a time-sensitive fashion, and that the degree of pseudoneglect in the line bisection task correlates with the average gaze position during visual exploration in a time-sensitive manner.

To offer engaging neurorehabilitation training to neurologic patients, motor tasks are often visualized in virtual reality (VR). Recently introduced head-mounted displays (HMDs) allow to realistically mimic the user’s body from a first-person perspective (i.e., avatar) in a highly immersive VR environment. In this immersive environment, users may embody avatars with different body characteristics. Importantly, body characteristics impact how people perform actions. Therefore, alternating body perceptions using immersive VR may be a powerful tool to promote motor activity in neurologic patients. However, the ability of the brain to adapt motor commands based on a perceived modified reality has not yet been fully explored. To fill this gap, we “tricked the brain” using immersive VR and investigated if multisensory feedback modulating the physical properties of an embodied avatar influences motor brain networks and control. Ten healthy participants were immersed in a virtual environment using an HMD, where they saw an avatar from first-person perspective. We slowly transformed the surface of the avatar (i.e., the “skin material”) from human to stone. We enforced this visual change by repetitively touching the participant’s real arm and the avatar’s arm with a (virtual) hammer, while progressively replacing the sound of the hammer against skin with stone hitting sound via loudspeaker. We applied single-pulse TMS to evaluate changes in motor cortical excitability associated with the illusion. Further, to investigate if the “stone illusion” affected motor control, participants performed a reaching task with the human and stone avatar. Questionnaires assessed the subjectively reported strength of embodiment and illusion. Our results show that participants experienced the “stone arm illusion”: They rated their arm as heavier, colder, stiffer, and more insensitive when immersed with the stone than human avatar, without the illusion affecting their experienced feeling of body ownership. Further, the reported illusion strength was associated with enhanced motor cortical excitability and faster movement initiations, indicating that participants may have physically mirrored and compensated for the embodied body characteristics of the stone avatar. Together, immersive VR has the potential to influence motor brain networks by subtly modifying the perception of reality, opening new perspectives for the motor recovery of patients.

: Unilateral spatial neglectis an attention disorder frequently occurring after a right-hemispheric stroke. Neglect results in a reduction in qualityof life and performance in activities of daily living. With current technical improvements in virtual reality (VR) technology, trainingwith stereoscopic head-mounted displays (HMD) has become a promising new approach for the assessment and the rehabilitation of neglect. The focus of this pilot study was to develop and evaluate a simple visual search task in VR for HMD. The VR system was tested regarding feasibility, acceptance, and potential adverse effects in healthy controls and right-hemispheric stroke patients with and without neglect. : The VR system consisted of two main components, a head-mounted display to present the virtual environment, and a hand-held controller for the interaction with the latter. The task followed the rationale of diagnostic paper-pencil cancellation tasks; i.e., the participants were asked to search targets among distractors. However, instead of a two-dimensional setup, the targets and distractors were arranged in three dimensions, in a sphere around the subject inside its field of view. Usability and acceptance of the task, as well as the performance in the latter, were tested in 15 right-hemispheric subacute stroke patients (10 of whom with and five of whom without unilateral spatial neglect; mean age: 67.1 ± 10.5 years) and 35 age-matched healthy controls. : System usability and acceptance were rated as high both in stroke patients and healthy controls, close to the maximum score of the questionnaire scale. No relevant adverse effects occurred. There was a high correlation ( = 0.854, = 0.002) between the Center of Cancellation [an objective neglect measure) calculated from a paper-pencil cancellation task (Sensitive Neglect Test (SNT)] and the newly developed VR cancellation task. : Overall, the developed visual search task in the tested VR system is feasible, well-accepted, enjoyable, and does not evoke any significant negative effects, both for healthy controls and for stroke patients. Findings for task performance show that the ability of the VR cancellation to detect neglect in stroke patients is similar to paper-pencil cancellation tasks.

Clinical, neuroimaging, and non-invasive brain stimulation studies have associated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) with the multilingual language control system. Here, we investigated if this role is increased during the processing of the non-dominant language due to the higher cognitive/attentional demands. We used an inhibitory repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) protocol over the left DLPFC and investigated the behavioral and electrophysiological effects on (i) picture naming in the mother tongue and second language, (ii) forward and backward translation and (iii) non-verbal inhibition. To this end, we compared the effects of inhibitory rTMS (cTBS) vs sham-rTMS using a single-blind within-subject design including 22 late bilinguals. Behaviorally, response times were longer after cTBS compared to sham-rTMS in the picture naming task independent of language, while response times were not affected for the word translation task. These results were mirrored on the electrophysiological level showing an effect of stimulation in the picture naming task starting at 547 ms post-stimulus onset, but not in the translation task. This late time range is likely associated with processes of conflict resolution and initiation of the articulation of the word rather than processes related to lexical selection or language switching. For the non-verbal inhibition task, behavioral outcome was not affected despite electrophysiological stimulation-induced changes. Overall, the results suggest that the DLPFC plays a role in top-down cognitive control in language production, but that this role is not increased with higher cognitive demand such as naming in a second language or in language switching during word translation.

Intergenerational sustainability is probably humankind’s most pressing challenge, exacerbated by the fact that the present generation has to incur costs in order to benefit future generations. However, people often fail to restrict their consumption, despite reporting strong pro-environmental attitudes. Recent theorising sees self-control processes as key component of sustainable decision-making and correlational studies support this view, yet causal evidence is lacking. Using TMS, we here disrupted an area known to be involved in self-control processes, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), to provide causal evidence as to whether diminished self-control leads to less intergenerational sustainability. Participants then engaged in a behavioural economic paradigm to measure sustainable decision-making towards the next generation. This adequately powered study could not find an effect of inhibiting the right dlPFC on intergenerational sustainability. This result holds when controlling for a number of relevant covariates like gender, trait self-control, pro-environmental attitudes, or cortical thickness at the stimulation site. We seek to explain this result methodologically and theoretically, and speculate about other brain areas that could be more strongly related to intergenerational sustainability, e.g. the mentalising network.

This preliminary investigation aimed to assess beta (β) oscillation, a marker of the brain GABAergic signaling, as a potential objective pain marker, hence contributing at the same time to the mechanistic approach of pain management. This case–control observational study measured β electroencephalographic (EEG) oscillation in 12 right-handed adult male with chronic neuropathic pain and 10 matched controls (∼55 years). Participants were submitted to clinical evaluation (pain visual analog scale, Hospital Anxiety, and Depression scale) and a 24-min high-density EEG recording (BIOSEMI). Data were analyzed using the EEGlab toolbox (MATLAB), SPSS, and R. The global power spectrum computed within the low (Lβ, 13–20 Hz) and the high (Hβ, 20–30 Hz) β frequency sub-bands was significantly lower in patients than in controls, and accordingly, Lβ was negatively correlated to the pain visual analog scale ( R = −0.931, p = 0.007), whereas Hβ correlation was at the edge of significance ( R = −0.805; p = 0.053). Patients’ anxiety was correlated to pain intensity ( R = 0.755; p = 0.003). Normalization of the low and high β global power spectrum (GPS) to the GPS of the full frequency range, while confirming the significant Lβ power decrease in chronic neuropathic pain patients, vanished the significance of the Hβ decrease, as well as the correlation between Lβ power and pain intensity. Our results suggest that the GABAergic Lβ EEG oscillation is affected by chronic neuropathic pain. Confirming the Lβ GPS decrease and the correlation with pain intensity in larger studies would open new opportunities for the clinical application of gamma-aminobutyric acid-modifying therapies.

Mean gaze position during free visual exploration (FVE) is a sensitive tool to detect neglect in patients after right-hemispheric stroke. Here we investigated the test-retest-reliability of mean gaze position during FVE in 23 patients with left-sided neglect after a first-ever sub-acute right hemispheric stroke. We analysed the reliability between different test sets administered within eleven days (test sets A and B, each including different images and their mirrored versions), and between repeated measures using the same test set administered three times within two days (test set C, including the same images and their mirrored versions). The Intra-Class Correlation coefficient (ICC) showed good reliability between the two different test sets (test sets A and B; ICC =.819), and excellent reliability for the repeated measures with the same test set C (ICC=.964). FVE can therefore be recommended for the longitudinal assessments of patients' neglect severity during neurorehabilitation as well as in treatment trials.