February 2015: This Month in JoVE - Tracking Down Foodborne Illness, Imaging Baby Brains, and Paying Scientific Attention to Attention

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Here's a look at what's coming up in the February 2015 issue of JoVE: The Journal of Visualized Experiments. In JoVE Environment we have a method for tracing outbreaks of food poisoning to insects. Everyone knows that insects can deposit diseasecausing organisms on our food. Not surprisingly, insects are important vectors of foodborne illnesses caused by pathogens like Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria. However, it's hard to link an outbreak of food poisoning to a specific type of insect. This is because individual insects are not usually collected aseptically in environmental sampling programs. Therefore, Pava-Ripoli et al. from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration take microbial samples from individual flies under aseptic conditions and use PCR to detect specific pathogens. PCR-positive samples are then confirmed by plating on selective or differential media and through commercial biochemical assays. Using this method, public health officials can better determine how insects contribute to foodborne outbreaks. JoVE's Clinical & Translational Medicine section features cranial ultrasound-an indispensable technique for safely imaging the neonatal brain. Ecury-Goossen et al. demonstrate optimal settings that provide better imaging quality, and color Doppler techniques for visualizing intracerebral vessels. They also demonstrate how alternate acoustic windows can improve detection of brain injuries. These advances in cranial ultrasound have improved its diagnostic value-allowing timely therapeutic intervention. In JoVE Behavior we have two articles that deal with attention. One involves attentional set shifting, or the ability to direct attention to informative cues and away from irrelevant ones. Heisler et al. perform this test in mice that have been trained to dig in pots for a food reward. The test cues are different digging materials and different scents. The mice learn to pay attention to a single relevant cue to find their food. The neural circuits behind attentional set shifting are highly conserved between rodents and humans; therefore, this model can be used to preclinically evaluate cognitive deficits and potential therapies. In another article in JoVE Behavior, Yung et al. perform two well-known attention tests in an online platform. The multiple object tracking (MOT) task studies the motion-based tracking of multiple objects by the visual system, and the Useful Field of View (UFOV) Task assesses attention and processing speed of visual stimuli from a brief glance. Our authors collected data from over 1,700 participants in a Massive Online Open Course. The results were highly consistent with controlled laboratory-based measures of the same tests, showing the usefulness of behavior studies done entirely online.