Biology subjects

Salimi, Y.

Publications and source records attributed to Salimi, Y..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Auditory Working Memory in Adolescents with Specific Learning Disorders

Specific Learning Disorders (SLD), including dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia, are associated with deficits in executive functions such as auditory working memory (AWM). This study investigated AWM performance and metacognitive monitoring in adolescents diagnosed with SLD using an auditory delayed-match-to-sample task. Thirty-six participants (18 with SLD and 18 neurotypical controls) were assessed on accuracy, reaction time, and confidence ratings. Adolescents with SLD exhibited reduced sensitivity to auditory intensity differences, slower reaction times, and more conservative decision-making strategies. Drift diffusion modeling revealed lower evidence accumulation rates and wider decision boundaries in the SLD group. Moreover, confidence ratings were less influenced by stimulus differences, particularly among participants with dyslexia. These findings highlight impairments in auditory processing, decision-making, and metacognitive self-monitoring in adolescents with SLD. The results underscore the importance of interventions that address not only linguistic skills but also auditory decision-making and metacognitive strategies to support learning outcomes.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Attention in Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Systematic Review of Affected Domains and Brain-Gut Axis Interactions

BackgroundIrritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a prevalent functional gastrointestinal disorder characterized by abdominal pain and altered bowel habits, significantly impacting patients quality of life. Recent research suggests that attention may be affected in individuals with IBS, potentially influencing symptom perception and emotional distress. ObjectiveThis systematic review aims to investigate the relationship between attention and IBS, focusing on the affected domains of attention and the interactions within the brain-gut axis. MethodsA comprehensive literature search was conducted across multiple databases, including MEDLINE/PubMed, PsychINFO, and Scopus, from January 1990 to December 2024. Studies were included if they assessed attention in adult IBS patients and employed valid measurement tools. A total of 24 studies were selected for analysis, encompassing various methodologies, including neuroimaging and behavioral assessments. ResultsThe findings indicate that IBS patients exhibit significant attentional biases, particularly towards gastrointestinal-related stimuli, reflecting heightened sensitivity and hypervigilance. Specific domains of attention, including selective attention, sustained attention, and pre-attentional processing, were identified as being affected. The review highlights the role of psychological factors, such as anxiety and depression, in modulating attention in IBS. Neuroimaging studies revealed altered brain activation patterns in regions associated with attention and emotional processing, suggesting a complex interplay between cognitive function and the brain-gut axis. ConclusionThis systematic review underscores the multifaceted nature of attention in IBS, revealing specific attentional deficits and biases that may contribute to symptom exacerbation and emotional distress. The findings emphasize the need for further research to explore the underlying mechanisms and potential therapeutic interventions aimed at addressing attention in IBS patients.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Investigating the Effects of Synbiotic Intervention on Working Memory performance in Healthy Young Women

The gut-brain axis plays a key role in the bidirectional communication between the gastrointestinal system and the brain, with gut microbiota significantly influencing cognitive function. While synbiotic and probiotic interventions have shown potential cognitive benefits, results across studies remain mixed. This randomized, controlled, repeated-measures study investigated the effects of a 15-day synbiotic intervention on cognitive performance in 28 healthy women (aged 18-32), assigned to either a synbiotic or no-treatment control group. Cognitive performance was assessed before and after the intervention using the Parametric Auditory Working Memory Task and the Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA-CPT). Compared to the control group, participants in the synbiotic group demonstrated selective improvements in attention, particularly in overall visual attention and visual sustained attention, as indicated by significant group-by-time interactions (ps < .05). No significant changes were observed in auditory working memory or inhibitory control. These results suggest that short-term synbiotic supplementation may selectively enhance visual attention without broadly affecting executive functions.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Semantic harmonization of Alzheimer's disease datasets using AD-Mapper

INTRODUCTIONDespite numerous past endeavors for the semantic harmonization of Alzheimers disease (AD) cohort studies, an automatic tool has yet to be developed. As cohort studies form the basis of data-driven analysis, harmonizing them is crucial for cross-cohort analysis. We aimed to accelerate this task by constructing an automatic harmonization tool. METHODSWe created a common data model (CDM) through cross-mapping data from 20 cohorts, three CDMs, and ontology terms, which was then used to fine-tune a BioBERT model. Finally, we evaluated the model using three previously unseen cohorts and compared its performance to a string-matching baseline model. RESULTSHere, we present our AD-Mapper interface for automatic harmonization of AD cohort studies, which outperformed a string-matching baseline on previously unseen cohort studies. We showcase our CDM comprising 1218 unique variables. DISCUSSIONAD-Mapper leverages semantic similarities in naming conventions across cohorts to improve mapping performance.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2022

Exploring the intricacies and pitfalls of the ATN framework: An assessment across cohorts and thresholding methodologies

The amyloid/tau/neurodegeneration (ATN) framework has redefined Alzheimers disease (AD) toward a primarily biological entity. While it has found wide application in AD research, it was so far typically applied to single cohort studies using distinct data-driven thresholding methods. This poses the question of how concordant thresholds obtained using distinct methods are within the same dataset as well as whether thresholds derived by the same technique are interchangeable across cohorts. Given potential differences in cohort data-derived thresholds, it remains unclear whether individuals of one cohort are actually comparable with regard to their exhibited disease patterns to individuals of another cohort, even when they are assigned to the same ATN profile. If such comparability is not evident, the generalizability of results obtained using the ATN framework is at question. In this work, we evaluated the impact of selecting specific thresholding methods on ATN profiles by applying five commonly-used methodologies across eleven AD cohort studies. Our findings revealed high variability among the obtained thresholds, both across methods and datasets, linking the choice of thresholding method directly to the type I and type II error rate of ATN profiling. Moreover, we assessed the generalizability of primarily Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) derived biological patterns discovered within ATN profiles by simultaneously clustering participants of different cohorts who were assigned to the same ATN profile. In only two out of seven investigated ATN profiles, we observed a significant association between individuals assigned clusters and cohort origin for thresholds defined using Gaussian Mixture Models, while no significant associations were found for K-means-derived thresholds. Consequently, in the majority of profiles, biological signals governed the clustering rather than systematic cohort differences resulting from distinct biomarker thresholds. Our work revealed that: 1) the thresholding method selection is a decision of statistical relevance that will inevitably bias the resulting profiling, 2) obtained thresholds are most likely not directly interchangeably across two independent cohorts, and 3) MRI-based biological patterns derived from distinctly thresholded ATN profiles can generalize across cohort datasets. Conclusively, in order to appropriately apply the ATN framework as an actionable and robust biological profiling scheme, a comprehensive understanding of the impact of used thresholding methods, their statistical implications, and the validation of achieved results is crucial.

bioinformatics↗