When more control means better choices: Cognitive control networks drive expected-value maximization under uncertainty.

Intrinsic capacity evolution during aging in mouse and fish: Longitudinal perspectives from a narrative review.

Oligodendrocytes are highly specialized neural cells that produce myelin, essential for rapid electrical conduction of neural signals in the central nervous system (CNS). The emergence of oligodendrocytes and myelin was a critical step in the evolution of vertebrates, fundamental for the development of the mammalian connectome, and indispensable for miniaturization and enhanced computing power of the brain. The advance in cognitive capacity is paralleled by increasing eminence of white matter, composed of interconnected bundles of myelinated axons; white matter volume increases from 6% of the brain in shrews, considered related to the most primitive mammals, up to 50% in Homo sapiens. Myelinating oligodendrocytes together with smaller populations of oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) and satellite or perineuronal oligodendrocytes account for more than half of the glial cells in the human brain. Together, these three cell types make up the oligodendroglial cell lineage that express common lineage-specific proteins and transcription factors and display a degree of molecular and functional diversity. OPCs are the most numerous oligodendroglial cells during developmental axonal myelination, which extends postnatally for many years in humans. The generation of myelinating oligodendrocytes from OPCs throughout life continues to be important for adaptive plasticity of neural circuits and myelination of new axons required for learning. Myelination decreases in the aging brain and correlates with natural or physiological age-related cognitive decline. Like all neural cells, oligodendroglia express a wide assortment of ion channels, transporters, and neurotransmitter receptors that are essential for maintaining neuronal signaling, principally myelination, axonal metabolic support, and homeostatic regulation of the periaxonal microenvironment. Notably, OPCs are unique among neuroglia in that, like neurons, they are electrically excitable and form synapses with neurons. Oligodendroglial cells also contribute to neuroplasticity through multiple mechanisms including axon guidance, synapse formation, and adaptive myelination. In short, oligodendroglia are essential for normal CNS integrity, cognitive function, and behavior.

Co-occurring trajectories of auditory, cognitive, and physical decline in older adults: A longitudinal latent class analysis.

Predictors of withdrawal behavior in adolescents: Parental emotional warmth, helicopter parenting, and emotion regulation.

Laterality is defined as asymmetries in function or structure in seemingly bilateral structures. In parrots, it can be expressed for various behaviors, for example, the preference for using the monocular visual field of a specific eye or a specific foot for feeding, also known as footedness. The aim of this study was to check for laterality in three Psittacine species and examine its relationship with aspects of their temperament and sociability. We analyzed birds of the following species: Psittacara leucophtalmus (n=15) , Primolius maraca (n=12) , Pionius maximiliani (n=23) . To evaluate laterality, we used the following indicators: footedness, unipedal support while resting, and eye preferences through the monocular visual field during the tests of pebble and seed, novel object, and reaction to person. The pebble and seed test evaluate cognitive capacities and foraging skills of birds by encouraging them to discriminate seeds and pebbles of similar size and color. The temperament was evaluated according to the birds’ individual responses to novel objects and reaction to person tests. Laterality indexes (LI) were calculated based on the frequency of use of each foot and eye, using the equation LI= (L-R)/(L+R), where L represent the left side use and R represents the right. Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated to assess the relationships between laterality and the behavioral aspects investigated (temperament and social behavior). The results indicated the presence of laterality in the three bird species, highlighting the right eye preference and no predominant direction was found for footedness and unipedal support. Significant correlations between eye preference and the four temperament dimensions (activity, boldness, anxiety and proximity to humans) were found. Higher activity was related to greater ocular LI and LI in the pebble and seed test towards the right. Bolder and more anxious birds had lower LI in the human reaction test, thus right eye preferences. Avoidance to humans was related to lower LI in the novel object test, therefore, right eye preferences. No significant correlations were found between laterality and positive or negative social interactions. Our study contributes to the scientific literature by identifying laterality in neotropical species, a topic for which data remain limited. Additionally, it is the first study to demonstrate a relationship between temperament and laterality in psittacids, which could be explained by underlying connections between emotionality and cognition, as observed in other animal species. These hypotheses warrant further investigation in future research. • Laterality and its connections with temperament were investigated in Neotropical • Psittacids. • Laterality was assessed by analyzing foot and eye preferences and unipedal support. • Temperament dimensions were activity, boldness, anxiety, neophilia, and human proximity. • Right eye preference was related to boldness, anxiety, and avoidance to humans. • Laterality can guide more individualized welfare strategies for captive animals.

The purpose of ethical education is to develop critical thinking skills and cognitive capacities that a This study was carried out among students at Politehnica University of Timișoara, România, exploring their perceptions of women's rights and freedoms as well as gender relations both in Romania and Afghanistan, a country they primarily know through media representations. The main research objective was to gather insights into Romanian students’ perceptions of gender issues within the distinct political and cultural contexts of the two countries. To facilitate this analysis, a questionnaire comprising 34 variables was administered, enabling a comparative examination of gender perceptions in Romania and Afghanistan. The findings revealed significant differences in how women's rights and freedoms are perceived in the two nations. In Romania, factor analysis identified four key dimensions: women's rights, violations of gender behavioral norms, sanctions for behavioural deviations, and punishment of women for adultery. In contrast, the analysis of Afghanistan revealed three main factors: women's rights, sanctions against men for behavioral deviations, and punishment of women. These results underscore the contrasting frameworks through which gender issues are understood in Romania and Afghanistan, reflecting deeper societal values and norms. Ultimately, this research highlights the critical role of context in shaping perceptions of gender rights, suggesting that students' views are influenced not only by their personal experiences but also by external narratives about different cultures.

Autism research has primarily emphasized difficulties with negative affect, while positive emotions remain underexplored despite its central role in well-being and social functioning. This scoping review synthesizes existing evidence on positive emotions and affect in autism, focusing on the recognition, experience, and regulation of positive emotions as well as relevant interventions. Using the Arksey & O'Malley (2005) framework and PRISMA-ScR (Peters et al., 2020; Tricco et al., 2018), we included 29 studies from 1,119 database records and added 43 manually identified papers (72 in all). Results for positive emotions in autism are variable relative to their neurotypical peers. However, they do not point to overall group differences; instead, results suggest that potential difficulties depend on the specific emotion, the stage of emotional processing, perceptual approaches, cognitive and social capacities, and contextual factors. These findings call for future studies to sample a wider range of positive emotions and processes as well as using tasks and measures that account for the individual in a more ecological context. Deepening our understanding of positive emotional processes in autism may reveal potential psychological strengths as well as inform tailored interventions.

Multi-Domain Benefits of Exergaming for Sarcopenia Management in Institutionalized Older Adults: Physical, Psychological, and Social Outcomes.

Children's narrow learning bottleneck accelerates the emergence of statistical properties of language.

ABSTRACT Intersex adolescents occupy a critical yet neglected position in international human rights law. While global advocacy has increasingly condemned non-essential surgeries on intersex infants, the unique rights of adolescents, whose evolving autonomy requires direct participation in healthcare decisions, remain under-theorised. This article argues that the Convention on the Rights of the Child, read through Articles 5, 12 and 24 together with General Comment No. 20 (2016), requires a presumption of deferral for all non-urgent, irreversible procedures until informed adolescent consent is possible – whether that consent ultimately affirms or declines intervention. It further advances a recognition-theoretical framework, drawing on Honneth, to demonstrate that respectful adolescent participation is not solely a matter of cognitive capacity but of social and institutional affirmation. Surgical interventions performed without adolescent consent constitute institutionalised misrecognition and violate the rights to bodily integrity, identity and an open future. By integrating doctrinal analysis with recognition theory, the article proposes a transformative legal model for adolescent decision-making that centres dignity and relational autonomy as foundational. It concludes with practical recommendations for States to prohibit non-consensual surgeries, embed participatory rights in intersex healthcare and ensure that intersex adolescents are recognised as full rights-holders capable of shaping their own embodied futures.

The United States Supreme Court's proportionality decisions in Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons rest on a single constitutional principle: individuals who lack the behavioral and cognitive capacities necessary for full culpability cannot be sentenced to death. Contemporary neuroscience now provides the ability to measure these capacities directly. Research demonstrates that the neural systems supporting judgment, behavioral inhibition, emotional regulation, and future-oriented reasoning mature heterogeneously, vary substantially across individuals, and can be impaired by developmental deviation, psychiatric illness, traumatic injury, or neurodegenerative disease. Quantitative neuroimaging enables these impairments to be identified through norm-referenced structural and functional metrics, revealing when an individual's neural functioning falls below statistically defined thresholds. Behavioral and cognitive equivalence (BACE) operationalizes the Court's constitutional requirement by determining whether an individual's measurable functioning is equivalent to that of categorically exempt groups. Using validated neuroimaging techniques, normative modeling, and network-level analysis, BACE represents a transparent, reproducible method for assessing diminished capacity consistent with Hall v. Florida and Moore v. Texas. Integrating contemporary neuroscience with constitutional proportionality therefore supports extending categorical protection to individuals whose measurable impairments render them functionally incapable of the culpability required for capital punishment.

Octopus bimaculoides can learn to utilize a mirror to localize a reward outside the line of sight.

ABSTRACT This theoretical paper applies Kahneman’s (2011) Systems framework to teaching and teacher education. This framework conceptualises thinking in two forms: System 1 and System 2. System 1, thinking fast, relies on feelings, emotions, biases, and intuitions, acting as the autopilot in most routine decision-making, whereas System 2, thinking slow, is deliberate, measured, and reflective. We use the Systems framework to elucidate teachers’ habits of mind and habits of action in the dynamic and unpredictable classroom context. We have organised the ensuing discussion around four areas in which System 1 and System 2 thinking have been distinguished. Specifically, we contrast these systems based on the mental engagement ascribed to each; key mechanisms upon which they operate; the capacity and level of cognition they require; and primary procedures they entail. We regard this framework as a catalyst for pedagogical reappraisal. We explore systematic patterns in the decisions educators make and consider conditions that may trigger more expedient thinking. We then offer guiding principles that can lead to new habits of mind and action. Finally, we discuss how the Systems framework can be enriched and expanded by considering sociocultural, socioemotional, situated, and contextual factors.

Data-driven clustering of prefrontal activation identifies functional phenotypes under prioritized dual-task walking conditions in Parkinson's disease.

Bioprediction uses biomedical data, biomarkers, and algorithmic tools to forecast future physiological states or impairments. As predictive technologies increasingly enable individuals to anticipate loss of cognitive capacity before it occurs, they raise a fundamental ethical question: how should moral responsibility be assessed when impairment becomes foreseeable in advance of its onset? We argue that biopredictive technologies can alter both the epistemic and control conditions that ground moral responsibility. In some cases, this generates obligations to respond to predictive warnings of cognitive decline; in more limited circumstances, it may also ground obligations to acquire and use biopredictive technologies where these represent a proportionate and least restrictive means of risk reduction. We further argue that emerging individual responsibilities generate corresponding obligations for states. Where access to biopredictive technologies is necessary to meet morally significant expectations of risk management, fairness, and legitimacy require attention to affordability, accessibility, and institutional support.

Flexible and effective emotion regulation (ER) is crucial for mental health and well-being. Research on individual differences in ER, however, has often relied on global self-reports or controlled laboratory settings, which may not fully capture the dynamic and context-dependent nature of regulation in daily life. To address this, we examined how ER variability and flexibility in real-world contexts relate to executive functions (EF), affective well-being, and age in a general population sample (N = 161, aged 14–78). EF performance was assessed using six online cognitive tasks, while ER variability and flexibility were assessed using a 14-day ambulatory assessment of daily emotional experiences. As expected, EF performance declined with increasing age across shifting, inhibition, and updating domains. Beyond these age-related differences in cognitive performance, older age was robustly associated with lower within- and between-strategy ER variability. In contrast, ER flexibility remained relatively stable across adulthood. Individual differences in EF were not associated with everyday ER variability, suggesting that cognitive control capacity does not account for regulatory dispersion in daily life. For affective well-being, ER flexibility showed specific, nonlinear associations: within-strategy flexibility based on situational valence and social context demonstrated U-shaped relations with unpleasant mood, suggesting that both low and high context sensitivity may be linked to elevated negative affect. In contrast, flexibility indices were unrelated to between-strategy variability or depressive symptoms. Overall, these findings indicate that adaptive ER cannot be reduced to greater executive control capacity, greater variability, or greater flexibility per se. Instead, they underscore the importance of distinguishing variability from flexibility and highlight that the adaptiveness of ER may depend more on the appropriateness of strategy–context matches than on general patterns of strategy use.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-026-57813-7.

Background: The legal dimensions of nursing practice have become increasingly complex, yet the concept of legal literacy in clinical nurses remains insufficiently defined. Existing studies use terms such as legal knowledge, legal awareness, legal cognition, and law-based practice capacity inconsistently, which hinders conceptual clarity, valid measurement, and targeted educational intervention. This study aimed to clarify the conceptual boundaries, defining attributes, antecedents, consequences, empirical referents, and operational definition of legal literacy in clinical nurses. Methods: A concept analysis was conducted using Walker and Avant's eight-step method. A systematic literature search was performed across six databases and supplemented by searches in JSTOR and HeinOnline for non-clinical uses of the concept. The search covered database inception to December 2024. Screening and reporting followed PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Fifty-six papers were included. Data extraction and analysis were conducted using content analysis with independent dual-reviewer coding. Results: Legal literacy in clinical nurses was distinguished from four related concepts: legal knowledge, legal awareness, legal cognition, and medical ethics. Three defining attributes were identified: normative understanding, value internalization oriented toward rights and responsibilities, and law-based situational practice. Antecedents were identified at macro, meso, and micro levels, while consequences were observed for individual nurses, healthcare organizations, and patient rights. Analysis of empirical referents revealed a persistent gap between conceptualization and measurement, particularly in assessing law-based situational practice. An operational definition was developed accordingly. Conclusions: Legal literacy in clinical nurses is a multidimensional professional competency integrating legal understanding, rights- and responsibility-oriented value internalization, and the ability to translate these into lawful clinical action. The findings provide a conceptual basis for future instrument development and targeted educational and management interventions.

Multimodal assessment of minimally conscious state and cognitive motor dissociation in neurocritical care: A critical review.

A multidimensional biomarker model of vitality and its associations with intrinsic capacity and frailty.