Mouth Region Research Articles

Face masks inhibit facial cues for approachability and trustworthiness: an eyetracking study

Wearing face masks during the Covid-19 pandemic has undeniable benefits from our health perspective. However, the interpersonal costs on social interactions may have been underappreciated. Because masks obscure critical facial regions signaling approach/avoidance intent and social trust, this implies that facial inference of approachability and trustworthiness may be severely discounted. Here, in our eyetracking experiment, we show that people judged masked faces as less approachable and trustworthy. Further analyses showed that the attention directed towards the eye region relative to the mouth region mediated the effect on approachability, but not on trustworthiness. This is because for masked faces, with the mouth region obscured, visual attention is then automatically diverted away from the mouth and towards the eye region, which is an undiagnostic cue for judging a target’s approachability. Together, these findings support that mask-wearing inhibits the critical facial cues needed for social judgements.

Monitoring of ichthyoplanktonic community at the Doce River mouth and adjacent marine region in Southeast Brazil after Fundão dam collapse

In November 2015, the Fundão dam located in southeast Brazil collapsed, releasing approximately 50 million cubic meters of slurry contaminated with metals into the Doce River, reaching the marine coastal area. The main objective of this study was to analyze the effect of contaminated mud plume after the collapse on the abundance, composition, and diversity of marine ichthyoplankton during the monitoring period of one year. We also aimed to verify the impact of the Doce River discharge, meteoceanographic events, and environmental factors on the abundance of fish eggs and larvae.Samplings were conducted at 32 stations in November 2018, January, April, and July 2019. Water temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, nutrients and metals were assessed from samples obtained at the water's surface. Ichthyoplankton were collected at the surface and along the water column using a Neuston and a Bongo nets, respectively. Most of the eggs collected at the surface were non-viable in most sampling periods and areas. A total of 65 families were recorded along the study area, and Engraulidae, Clupeidae, Gobiidae, Carangidae, Labridae, Haemulidae, and Sciaenidae dominated. Average diversity and equitability were higher in samples collected along the water column. The influence of tailings was evidenced by the negative correlation of fish eggs and larvae abundances with some metals, and by the association of non-viable fish eggs with cobalt. In addition, periods of greater flow from the Doce River were related to lower mean ichthyoplankton abundances. Further studies are needed to monitor the continuity of the effects of the toxic mud and the possible changes it causes in the ichthyoplanktonic assemblages.

Diverse Pose Lip-Reading Framework

Lip-reading is a technique to understand speech by observing a speaker’s lips movement. It has numerous applications; for example, it is helpful for hearing impaired persons and understanding the speech in noisy environments. Most of the previous works of lips-reading focused on frontal and near frontal face lip-reading and some of them targeted multiple poses in high quality videos. However, their results are not satisfactory on low quality videos containing multiple poses. In this research work, a lip-reading framework is proposed for improving the recognition rate in low quality videos. In this work, a Multiple Pose (MP) dataset of low quality videos containing multiple extreme poses is built. The proposed framework decomposes the input video into frames and enhances them by applying the Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) method. Next, faces are detected from enhanced frames and frontalized the multiple poses using the face frontalization Generative Adversarial Network (FF-GAN). After face frontalization, the mouth region is extracted. The extracted mouth region in the whole video and its respective sentences are then provided to the ResNet during the training process. The proposed framework achieved a sentence prediction accuracy of 90% on a testing dataset containing 100 silent low-quality videos with multiple poses that are better as compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Medical Device-Related Pressure injuries in adult intensive care units.

This study was conducted to examine the development, characteristics, and risk factors of medical device-related pressure injury (MDRPI) in intensive care units (ICU). The number of individuals admitted to ICU increased in the last years all over the world. In parallel with this need, the frequency of the use of life-support and therapeutic medical devices in the ICU also increases. This situation may lead to the development of MDRPI in the ICU and an increase in its prevalence. The study, which was conducted observationally, prospectively and descriptively, included 302 patients who were hospitalised in an ICU within a year. The study was reported according to the STROBE Declaration. It was observed that MDRPI developed in 27.2% of the patients. It was found that MDRPI developed the most in the nose (26.8%) and mouth (15.9%) regions of the patients. It was determined that MDRPI was diagnosed in 28% of the patients within 3-5 days. It was determined that mostly orthopaedic devices (plaster, cervical collar, splint) (62.5%), fasteners (57.1%), non-invasive ventilation/oxygen masks (51.2%) caused the development of MDRPI. It was found that the number of medical devices used was higher, and the number of hospitalisation days in the ICU was also higher, and these factors explained 28.3% of the total variance in the development of MDRPI. It was determined that MDRPI developed in approximately one of four patients in the ICU and that the numbers of medical devices and hospitalisation days were important determinant risk factors. The high rate of development of MDRPI is worrying in terms of nursing care quality. It is recommended that nurses recognise risk factors in order to prevent the development of MDRPI, evaluate the suitability, necessity, and safety of the devices to be used is located.

Visualising trends in dentition to lip mouth morphology using geometric morphometrics.

Linear measurements taken from bony landmarks are often utilised in facial approximation (FA) to estimate and plan the placement of overlying soft tissue features. This process similarly guides craniofacial superimposition (CFS) practices. Knowledge of how hard and soft tissue features spatially relate around the mouth region is, however, limited. Geometric morphometric techniques have thus been used to investigate size and shape variation in dentition-to-lip mouth morphology in a South African population. Twenty landmarks (twelve dentition, eight lips) were digitised, using cone-beam CT images of the anterior craniofacial complex in a Frankfurt/Frankfort position, for 147 individuals aged between 20 and 75 years. Principal Component Analysis and Canonical Variate Analysis established that much shape variation exists. A two-way ANOVA identified significant (p < 0.0001) population and sex variation with mouth shape. Black individuals presented with thicker lips, with the oral fissure aligning closely to the dental occlusion. Oral fissure position for white individuals corresponded to the inferior one-quarter (females) or one-sixth (males) of the maxillary central incisor crowns. Males presented larger dimensions than females, but females had a greater lip-to-teeth height ratio than their male counterparts. A pooled within-group regression analysis assessed the effect of age on the dentition and lips and found that it had a significant (p < 0.0001) impact on mouth shape. Ageing was associated with a reduced lip and teeth height, increased mouth width, and a lowered oral fissure and cheilion placement. The generated mean shape data, with metric guides, offer a visual and numerical guide that builds on existing FA and CFS standards, enhancing our understanding of hard and soft tissue relationships.

Ratlarda Propofol ve Ketamin Anestezisinin Kızılötesi Termografik Görüntüleme ile Farklı Bölgelerde Belirlenen Lokal Sıcaklık Değişimlerine ve Reflekslere Etkileri

Amaç: Bu çalışmada iki farklı genel anestezik uygulanan ratlarda indüksiyon ve uyanma dönemlerinde hareket ve reflekslerin, ayrıca farklı vücut bölgelerinde Kızılötesi termografik görüntüleme (KTG) ile lokal sıcaklık ölçümlerinin anestezikler ve lokalizasyonlar açısından incelenmesi amaçlandı.Materyal ve Metot: Çalışmada 20 adet Wistar rat kullanıldı. Ksilazin hidroklorür ile sedasyon uygulamasından sonra ratlar iki gruba (n=10) ayrılarak Grup 1 ketamin hidroklorür, Grup 2 ise propofol ile genel anesteziye alındı. Anestezi süresince hareket ve reflekslerin kayboluşu, uyanma döneminde ise bunların dönüş süreleri kaydedildi. KTG incelemesinde ağız, burun, göz, kulak ve rektum bölgelerinde anestezi öncesi, sırası ve sonrasında belirli sürelerde lokal sıcaklıklar kaydedildi.Bulgular: Uyanma döneminde Grup 2’de duyu, hareket ve reflekslerde dönüş süreleri Grup 1’e göre anlamlı derecede fazla bulundu (p&amp;lt;0,05). KTG ölçümlerinde anestezi sırasında lokal sıcaklıklarda gruplar arasında anlamlı istatistiksel farklılıklar bulundu (p&amp;lt;0,05). Grup içi lokal sıcaklık karşılaştırmasında her iki grupta tüm bölgeler arasında önemli istatistiksel farklar bulundu (p&amp;lt;0,05).Sonuç: Ratlarda KTG ile anestezi ve uyanma sürecinde değişen lokal sıcaklık dereceleri ve farklılıklar belirlendi. Her iki grup verilerine dayanarak en uygun lokal KTG alanının oküler bölge olduğu değerlendirildi. Gelecek çalışmalarda farklı patolojik lezyonların tanı ve iyileşme süreçlerinde KTG ile incelenmesinin faydalı olacağı düşünüldü.

Maymun Çiçeği Virüsüne Karşı Antiviral Yaklaşım ve Bağışıklık

İnsan maymun çiçeği, çift sarmallı DNA (dsDNA) virüslerinin Poxviridae ailesindeki Orthopoxvirus cinsinin bir üyesi olan maymun çiçeği virüsünün neden olduğu zoonotik bir enfeksiyondur. İlk olarak 1970 yılında Demokratik Kongo Cumhuriyeti'nde dokuz aylık bir bebekte tanımlandı. O zamandan beri, Orta ve Batı Afrika'da ve bazen Avrupa ve Kuzey Amerika'da beş salgınla sonuçlandı. Endemik bölgelerdeki insan enfeksiyonları, enfekte hayvanlarla avlanma ve deri yüzme yoluyla yakın temas veya evde kemirgen istilası ile ilişkili olarak tanımlanmıştır. İnsandan insana bulaşma, özellikle çiçek hastalığına karşı aşılanmamış olanlar arasında, indeks vakaların ev temaslılarında da tanımlanmıştır. Bulaşma yolları, tükürük, solunum salgıları, cilt lezyonları, vücut sıvıları veya kontamine cisimlerle temasdır. Çiçek hastalığının eradikasyonundan ve rutin çiçek aşısından sonra Maymun çiçeği hastalığına karşı duyarlı konaklarda artış izlenmiştir. Çiçek aşısının maymun hastalığına karşı %85 koruma sağladığı tahmin edilmektedir. Maymun çiçeği virüsü hastalığı (MÇVH) hastaların çoğunda medikal tedavi ile birlikte iyileşmektedir. Semptomları hafifletmek, komplikasyonları azaltmak için klinik bakım ve destekleyici tedavi verilmelidir. Kusma, ishal gibi sıvı kayıplarının olduğu gastrointestinal semptomları olan hastalara oral ya da intravenöz sıvı tedavisi gerekmektedir. Sekonder bakteriyel enfeksiyon izlendiği durumlarda etkene özgü ve uygun antibiyotik tedavisi verilmelidir. Atipik bölgelerdeki (örneğin ağız, gözler, genital bölge) maymun çiçeği enfeksiyonu için tedavi de düşünülebilir. Bir takım ilaçlar denenmiştir ama etkinliği net değildir. Etkinliği olabileceği düşünülen antiviraller; Tecovirimat (TCV), brincidofovir (BCV) ve cidofovir (CDV)’ dir. Bazı uzmanlar şiddetli hastalığı olan hastalarda TCV ve CDV ile ikili tedavi önerebilse de, şu anda TCV tercih edilen tedavidir. MÇVH riskini azaltabilecek iki mevcut aşı vardır. Yüksek risk maruziyeti olan bireylere temas sonrası 14 gün içinde aşılama önerilir. Maruziyet sonrası aşılama, düşük risk maruziyeti olanlar için endike değildir.

A more featural based processing for the self-face: An eye-tracking study

Studies have suggested that the holistic advantage in face perception is not always reported for the own face. With two eye-tracking experiments, we explored the role of holistic and featural processing in the processing and the recognition of self, personally familiar, and unfamiliar faces. Observers were asked to freely explore (Exp.1) and recognize (Exp.2) their own, a friend’s, and an unfamiliar face. In Exp.1, self-face was fixated more and longer and there was a preference for the mouth region when seeing the own face and for the nose region when seeing a friend and unfamiliar faces. In Exp.2, the viewing strategies did not differ across all faces, with eye fixations mostly directed to the nose region. These results suggest that task demands might modulate the way that the own face is perceived and highlights the importance of considering the role of the distinct visual experience people have for the own face in the processing and recognition of the self-face.

Adult Age Differences in Using Information From the Eyes and Mouth to Make Decisions About Others' Emotions.

Older adults are often less accurate than younger counterparts at identifying emotions such as anger, sadness, and fear from faces. They also look less at the eyes and more at the mouth during emotion perception. The current studies advance understanding of the nature of these age effects on emotional processing. Younger and older participants identified emotions from pictures of eyes or mouths (Experiment 1) and incongruent mouth-eyes emotion combinations (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, participants categorized emotions from pictures in which face masks covered the mouth region. Older adults were worse than young at identifying anger and sadness from eyes, but better at identifying the same emotions from the mouth region (Experiment 1) and they were more likely than young to use information from the mouth to classify anger, fear, and disgust (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, face masks impaired perception of anger, sadness, and fear more for older compared to younger adults. These studies indicate that older people are more able than young to interpret emotional information from the mouth, they are more biased to use information from the mouth, and suffer more difficulty in emotion perception when the mouth is covered with a face mask. This has implications for social communication in different age groups.

Perception of orbital epitheses evaluated with eye tracker.

Orbital epitheses replace a missing eyeball and surrounding soft tissue. Perception of epithesis in public gaze and the attention areas on the face are of interest. This study aimed to examine the differences in perception of orbital epitheses by prosthodontists, dentistry students, and laypeople with an objective evaluation tool that utilized eye-tracking technology. Twenty-four frontal facial images of 12 patients who had orbital epitheses were viewed by 81 observers (prosthodontists, dentistry students, laypeople) in random order for 5 seconds each. Gaze data were analyzed. Kruskal-Wallis H test with Bonferroni correction was used to compare parameters in groups and areas of interest. First fixation duration at the mouth for symmetrical images were 0.30, 0.28, and 0.25 seconds for prosthodontists, students, and laypeople, respectively. Fixation duration at the mouth for the laypeople (0.27 second) was shorter than students (0.29 second) and prosthodontists (0.31 second) at symmetrical images. Time to the first fixation to epithesis, nose, and eye was significantly lower than the forehead and mouth for all groups. Fixation count at epithesis was 6.36 for prosthodontists, 5.64 for students, and 5.34 for laypeople. Eyes were of most significant interest for all observer groups in symmetrical images. Individuals dealing with dentistry, especially prosthodontists, paid more attention to the mouth region along with the eyes in symmetrical images, considering fixation duration and fixation count. Attention directed to epithesis by all groups was verified with objective and measurable criteria. Prosthodontists' attention to epithesis and mouth was evident considering the four parameters measured.

Deepfake as the basis for digitally collaging “impossible faces”

Subject of study. In this study, we present a novel method for the synthesis of video images using deepfake face swap, a technology that enables the creation of authentic video clips with false or swapped faces without evident traces of manipulation. The creation process of video images of “impossible faces,” such as a chimeric face, whose left and right sides belong to different people, or Thatcherized faces, wherein the eyes and mouth regions are rotated by 180°, is described stepwise using the DeepFaceLab software as an example. Aim of study. This study aimed to present and validate deepfake technology as a method of digitally collaging “impossible face” images. Method. Examples of method implementation were demonstrated using experimental results related to the perception patterns of moving “impossible faces” and their differences. Main results. The phenomena of perception previously recorded under static conditions were reproduced for dynamic models; accordingly, new interpretations can be inferred. Original faces were evaluated positively under static and dynamic conditions, independent of image inversion. Images of “impossible faces” under all conditions were perceived as unattractive, disharmonious, bizarre, and artificial. Expositions with audio speech increased the adequacy of evaluations under conditions of straight orientation. Practical significance. Digital collaging methods can significantly expand the capabilities of researchers in the field of interpersonal perception. Moreover, information technologies can expedite the creation of stimuli models for “impossible face” images, which are necessary for the further investigation of the human psyche in the course of communication.

Evaluation of Face Shields, Goggles, and Safety Glasses as a Virus Transmission Control Measure to Protect the Wearer Against Cough Droplets.

Face shields (also referred to as visors), goggles and safety glasses have been worn during the COVID-19 pandemic as one measure to control transmission of the virus. However, their effectiveness in controlling facial exposure to cough droplets is not well established and standard tests for evaluating eye protection for this application are limited. A method was developed to evaluate face shields, goggles, and safety glasses as a control measure to protect the wearer against cough droplets. The method uses a semi-quantitative assessment of facial droplet deposition. A cough simulator was developed to generate droplets comparable to those from a human cough. The droplets consisted of a UV fluorescent marker (fluorescein) in water. Fourteen face shields, four pairs of goggles and one pair of safety glasses were evaluated by mounting them on two different sizes of breathing manikin head and challenging them with the simulated cough. The manikin head was positioned in seven orientations relative to the cough simulator to represent various potential occupational exposure scenarios, for example, a nurse standing over a patient. Droplet deposition in the eyes, nose and mouth regions were visualised following three ‘coughs’. Face shields, goggles, and safety glasses reduced, but did not eliminate exposure to the wearer from droplets such as those produced by a human cough. The level of protection differed based on the design of the personal protective equipment and the relative orientation of the wearer to the cough. For example, face shields, and goggles offered the greatest protection when a cough challenge was face on or from above and the least protection when a cough challenge was from below. Face shields were also evaluated as source control to protect others from the wearer. Results suggested that if a coughing person wears a face shield, it can provide some protection from cough droplets to those standing directly in front of the wearer.

Face masks affect perception of happy faces in deaf people

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has led significant social repercussions and forced people to wear face masks. Recent research has demonstrated that the human ability to infer emotions from facial configurations is significantly reduced when face masks are worn. Since the mouth region is specifically crucial for deaf people who speak sign language, the current study assessed the impact of face masks on inferring emotional facial expressions in a population of adult deaf signers. A group of 34 congenitally deaf individuals and 34 normal-hearing individuals were asked to identify happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and neutral expression on static human pictures with and without facial masks presented through smartphones. For each emotion, the percentage of correct responses with and without face masks was calculated and compared between groups. Results indicated that face masks, such as those worn due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, limit the ability of people to infer emotions from facial expressions. The negative impact of face masks is significantly pronounced when deaf people have to recognize low-intensity expressions of happiness. These findings are of essential importance because difficulties in recognizing emotions from facial expressions due to mask wearing may contribute to the communication challenges experienced by the deaf community during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, generating feelings of frustration and exclusion.

Automatic Detection of Oral Lesion Measurement Ruler Toward Computer-Aided Image-Based Oral Cancer Screening.

Intelligent computer-aided algorithms analyzing photographs of various mouth regions can help in reducing the high subjectivity in human assessment of oral lesions. Very often, in the images, a ruler is placed near a suspected lesion to indicate its location and as a physical size reference. In this paper, we compared two deep-learning networks: ResNeSt and ViT, to automatically identify ruler images. Even though the ImageN et 1K dataset contains a "ruler" class label, the pre-trained models showed low sensitivity. After fine-tuning with our data, the two networks achieved high performance on our test set as well as a hold-out test set from a different provider. Heatmaps generated using three saliency methods: GradCam and XRAI for ResNeSt model, and Attention Rollout for ViT model, demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique. Clinical Relevance- This is a pre-processing step in automated visual evaluation for oral cancer screening.

Eye-movement patterns during emotion recognition in focal epilepsy: An exploratory investigation

BackgroundEye-movement patterns during facial emotion recognition are under-researched in patients with focal epilepsy (PWFE). Previous studies including other neurological patients indicate that bilateral mesiotemporal damage could be associated with impaired emotion recognition and abnormal eye-movement patterns. AimsThe current study addresses the question whether PWFE, in whom fronto-(mesio-)temporal networks are often disturbed, also show abnormal eye-movement patterns during facial emotion recognition. Method24 PWFE and a group of 29 healthy controls (HC) performed a facial emotion recognition task and a gender recognition task while eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracker. For this purpose, Areas of Interest (AOI) were defined in the presented faces: the eye region and the mouth region. In addition to the proportion of correctly recognized emotions, the following eye-tracking parameters were recorded: Relative fixation duration (FD)/fixation count (FC) in the mouth region/eye region (relative to the FD/FC on the entire screen). ResultsPFWE showed an emotion recognition deficit compared to HC, whereas gender recognition performance did not differ between groups. In addition, PWFE showed significantly fewer and shorter fixations in the mouth region than HC, in both the emotion recognition task and the gender recognition task. ConclusionsWhen looking at faces, PFWE show eye-movement patterns different from those of healthy controls. Behaviorally, PWFE are only impaired in emotion recognition. Hence, PWFE possibly scan facial regions that are relevant to successful emotion recognition more diffusely and less efficiently than healthy control subjects. Future studies should investigate the etiology of such abnormal eye-movement patterns in PWFE.

Dermoid Cyst in the Floor of the Mouth Extending to the Submental Region

Dermoid cysts in the floor of the mouth or submental region are developmental cysts that occur due to the entrapment of the ectoderm between the second and third branchial arch during embryogenesis around 3rd–5th week of intrauterine life. This report aimed to report the case of a 21-year-old Nigerian woman who presented with a chief complaint of swelling in the floor of the mouth extending to the submental region. There was associated recent history of pain and difficulty in chewing, speaking, and breathing. Clinical, ultrasonography, and histological evaluations were done to establish a diagnosis of an infected dermoid cyst. The infection was treated with antibiotics, after which surgical excision was done under general anesthesia through nasotracheal intubation. The patient was followed up after the surgery and no complication was recorded.

Analysis of smile pattern at a tertiary care centre

Background: The treatment of the aesthetic region of mouth is complicated. Knowledge of the smile pattern which includes smile line, smile curvature, smile arc, labiodental relation, and tooth exposed determines the success of treatment. This is helpful in the diagnosis and treatment planning phases of aesthetic dentistry. Objectives: To determine the smile pattern in aesthetic region and to compare the different smile patterns. Methods: This analytical cross-sectional study was done in the department of Prosthodontics and Maxillofacial Prosthesis, Universal College of Medical Sciences, Nepal from 15th October 2021 to 15th March 2022. A total number of 355 samples were taken by convenience sampling technique. After receiving participant’s consent, study was carried out using a digital camera. The camera was set to primarily capture the area between nose and chin, with lens parallel to the apparent occlusal plane of the participants. For study purpose, individuals were told to sit and hold head normally with their head in level with Frankfort horizontal plane. Results: The total number of participants were 355 out of which 153 (43.09%) were male and 202 (56.91%) were female. In the smile line pattern, the “Average” smile line was prevalent in a maximum number of participants (223, 62.8%) followed by the high and low smile lines. There was a significant relationship between the smile arc, labiodental relationship, and the tooth displayed. Conclusion: The findings of this study determines the smile pattern of this region, thus this will be helpful in the diagnosis and treatment planning during the treatment.

SyncTalkFace: Talking Face Generation with Precise Lip-Syncing via Audio-Lip Memory

The challenge of talking face generation from speech lies in aligning two different modal information, audio and video, such that the mouth region corresponds to input audio. Previous methods either exploit audio-visual representation learning or leverage intermediate structural information such as landmarks and 3D models. However, they struggle to synthesize fine details of the lips varying at the phoneme level as they do not sufficiently provide visual information of the lips at the video synthesis step. To overcome this limitation, our work proposes Audio-Lip Memory that brings in visual information of the mouth region corresponding to input audio and enforces fine-grained audio-visual coherence. It stores lip motion features from sequential ground truth images in the value memory and aligns them with corresponding audio features so that they can be retrieved using audio input at inference time. Therefore, using the retrieved lip motion features as visual hints, it can easily correlate audio with visual dynamics in the synthesis step. By analyzing the memory, we demonstrate that unique lip features are stored in each memory slot at the phoneme level, capturing subtle lip motion based on memory addressing. In addition, we introduce visual-visual synchronization loss which can enhance lip-syncing performance when used along with audio-visual synchronization loss in our model. Extensive experiments are performed to verify that our method generates high-quality video with mouth shapes that best align with the input audio, outperforming previous state-of-the-art methods.

Hydrodynamic and TS Structure Dataset of the São Francisco and Parnaiba Brazilian Rivers

Running a numerical simulation with the ROMS model in the regions of the mouths and plumes of the São Francisco and Parnaiba rivers, this dataset was obtained. It is the result of two scenarios, one of them taking into account the tides and the other not. It consists of 50 files (in NetCDF format) divided into 25 for each of the mentioned scenarios. Among the 25 files, 1 corresponds to the spatial discretization parameters of the input; 12 corresponds to the numer-ical simulation in the Parnaiba River and the remaining 12 to the São Francisco River. These files contain the daily average of all input and output parameters of the simulations. The ROM-STOOLS scripting package was used to prepare the input data. The ROMS model input was the surface forcings from the COADS dataset; the WOA09 and SODA datasets were used as initial and lateral boundary conditions, respectively. The bathymetry was taken from ETOPO2 and the tide was acquired from the TPXO7 satellite product. The hydrodynamics and TS structure data contained in this dataset are useful for physical oceanographers to study the thermodynamics of the waters and other physical processes occurring in the mouth and plume region of the São Francisco and Parnaiba Rivers. It is also useful for chemical and biological oceanographers to study the behavior of nutrients, chlorophyll and primary productivity.

Intranasal oxytocin alters attention to emotional facial expressions, particularly for males and those with depressive symptoms

Intranasal oxytocin (OT) can enhance emotion recognition, perhaps by promoting increased attention to social cues. Some studies indicate that individuals with difficulties processing social information, including those with psychopathology, show more pronounced effects in response to OT. As such, there is interest in the potential therapeutic use of OT in populations with deficits in social cognition. The present study examined the effects of intranasal OT on the processing of facial features and selective attention to emotional facial expressions, as well as whether individual differences in depressive symptom severity predict sensitivity to intranasal OT. In a double-blind placebo-controlled within-subject design, eye tracking was used to measure attention to facial features in an emotional expression appraisal task, and attention to emotional expressions in a free-viewing task with a quadrant of multiple faces. OT facilitated the processing of positive cues, enhancing the maintenance of attention to the mouth region of happy faces and to happy faces within a quadrant, with similar effect sizes, despite the latter effect not being statistically significant. Further, persons with depressive symptoms, and particularly males, were sensitive to OT’s effects. For males only, OT, relative to placebo, increased attentional focus to the mouth region of all faces. Individuals with depressive symptoms showed less attentional focus on angry (males only) and sad facial expressions, and more attention to happy faces (particularly for males). Results indicate increased sensitivity to OT in males and persons at risk for depression, with OT administration promoting a positive bias in selective attention to social stimuli.