Neuss-holzheim, Germany

Effect of Lentils and Chickpeas on Gut Microbiome and Metabolic Health

How Seasons Affect Kidney Health in Post-Menopausal Females

Intense heat stress on the body can reduce kidney function. A recent study reported that blood markers of kidney function are lower among people in hotter climates. However, these data did not consider physical activity, food intake, fluid intake, time spent outdoors, or exposure to sunlight. Therefore, the investigators invite participants to help determine whether there are seasonal changes in kidney function biomarkers. This will also help the investigators understand if physical activity, food intake, fluid intake, time spent outdoors, or exposure to sunlight affect kidney function biomarkers between seasons. The investigators are studying female adults post-menopause since they are an understudied group.

Rapid Treatment of PTSD With Accelerated Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation

This study will have three phases: an acute phase (1 week of treatments), an extension phase (second week of treatments), and a long-term observational follow-up phase of 6 months. The acute phase will be a three-arm randomized sham-controlled trial with: Arm 1 = active left dl-PFC accel-TMS; Arm 2 = active dm-PFC accel-TMS; and Arm 3 = sham accel-TMS (half with sham dl-PFC and half with sham dm-PFC coil positioning). In the subsequent extension phase, all participants will receive active left dl-PFC accel-TMS. For the follow-up phase, clinical outcomes will be assessed at 1-month, 3-months, and 6-months. The primary outcome measure will be the CAPS-5. A range of other secondary outcome measures will also be included.

Evaluative Conditioning and Relationship Satisfaction

Large bodies of research indicate that people's health, occupational performance, and job satisfaction depend critically on their marital well-being. Nevertheless, several challenges associated with military service, such as increased stress and physical separation from one's partner, can threaten marital well-being. Prior research by our team highlights the important marital implications of automatic partner attitudes, or the immediate affective reactions experienced when thinking about or interacting with one's partner. Most couples strengthen these partner attitudes through enjoyable experiences together, but servicemembers who are separated from their partners must forego such activities, and job-related stress can minimize the positivity of any joint activities that do occur. Evaluative Conditioning (EC) offers a way to strengthen automatic partner attitudes without direct experience with the partner through simple pairings of photos of the partner with positive words and images. Our pilot study of civilian couples demonstrated that couples randomly assigned to view photos of their partners paired with positive stimuli for 6-7 minutes every three days for six weeks experienced enhanced automatic partner attitudes and thus marital satisfaction over eight weeks relative to control couples. The proposed research would use a RCT to test (a) the feasibility and efficacy of EC procedure among active duty servicemembers and (b) whether there is an additional benefit to having the partner also complete the EC procedure. Regarding the first objective, the investigators predict that people who view their partner paired with positive stimuli will demonstrate enhanced automatic partner attitudes and therefore higher levels of marital satisfaction and more positive relationship behaviors relative to people who view their partner paired with neutral stimuli. Regarding the second objective, the investigators expect that EC will be more effective when the partner also completes it, though the investigators suspect it will be effective even among servicemembers whose partners do not complete the procedure. The aim of the proposed research is to conduct an RCT to determine (a) whether evaluative conditioning can enhance automatic partner attitudes and thereby marital satisfaction and behavior in a sample of active duty servicemembers and (b) whether any benefits of EC depend on whether one or both members of the couple complete the procedure. The investigators will recruit a sample of 500 active-duty servicemembers and their partners from Naval Medical Center at Portsmouth, VA. Half of all servicemembers will be randomly assigned to complete our EC procedure that pairs their partner with positive stimuli whereas the other half will be randomly assigned to complete a control procedure in which their partner is paired with neutral stimuli. Crossed with this manipulation, and also by random assignment, the partners of half the servicemembers will complete our EC procedure whereas the partners of the other half will complete the control procedure. Both members of the couple will complete assessments of automatic partner attitudes and marital satisfaction at baseline and then again every two weeks for eight weeks. Couples will also engage in recorded marital discussions at baseline and the 8-week follow-up to assess behavior.

Effect of Peanut Butter on Gut and Metabolic Health

iTBS/fMRI Study of Apex Control

The Comprehensive Control Task (CCT) was designed to examine hierarchical control in a single, well-controlled factorial task. On each trial, participants view a letter surrounded by a colored shape at a particular screen location. Color cues the relevant feature, letter or location, for a block of trials. The first trial of a block requires a decision of whether the stimulus is the first position of a circular sequence (sequence start). Subsequent trials require a decision of whether the viewed stimulus follows the previous stimulus in a circular sequence (sequence 1-back). The letter sequence (T-A-B-L-E-T) and spatial sequence (Top-Bottom Right-Left-Right-Bottom Left-Top) are difficulty-matched. Shape cues the task to perform. Squares indicate the standard baseline task, and each block begins and ends with baseline trials. Different shapes indicate sub-tasks. In Switching blocks, shape-switches (e.g. from square to circle or circle to square) cue the sequence start task. Shape-repeats cue the sequence 1-back task. In Planning blocks, triangle shapes indicate that the stimulus can be ignored (automatic "no" response). All the while, the last square-shaped stimulus must be retained as a reference for the next square-shaped stimulus. Finally, in Dual blocks, diamond shapes indicate switching (sequence start) and also planning. The reversion back to square shapes requires sequence matching to the distal, previous square. The design is factorial with stimulus-domain x contextual control x temporal control orthogonally manipulated. Full details of the CCT have been previously described in published work. The focus in this study will be comparison of MFG-TMS, IPL-TMS, and S1-TMS in an interleaved fMRI-TMS-fMRI design. The logic is to test the apical status of the MFG/IPL through the extent to which TMS impacts other PFC/PPC areas and behavior. Each experiment will begin with 1 session of the CCT with fMRI to localize TMS targets. Each participant will then perform 3 counter-balanced sessions wherein a different site will be targeted by TMS followed immediately by fMRI on the CCT.

Enhanced Pain Coping in Cancer (EPIC): A Study of Managing Treatment-Related Joint Pain in Breast Cancer Survivors

Listener Training for Improved Intelligibility of People With Parkinson's Disease

People with dysarthria due to Parkinson's disease (PD) frequently present with reduced intelligibility, which can have significant consequences, including reduced participation in situations involving communicating with others and resulting in social isolation.1-5 Few effective treatments exist to ease the intelligibility burden of dysarthria in PD, and most require significant cognitive and physical effort on the part of the speaker to achieve and maintain gains.6,7 Once people with PD have progressed beyond the early stages of the disease, and their cognitive and physical impairments limit their ability to use traditional speech therapy techniques, they are not realistic treatment candidates for current interventions; and no other interventions are available to support their communication. This is a serious and consequential gap in clinical care for people with PD. The current proposal addresses this critical gap by shifting the weight of behavioral change from the speaker to the listener, specifically key communication partners such as family. Indeed, for older adults, most of their time spent with others is spent with family members.8 Further, key partners of patients with PD wish to have a more significant and active role in communication rehabilitation.9,10 A listener-targeted remediation approach for intelligibility impairments in people with dysarthria and PD is firmly grounded in theoretical models of perceptual learning11-13 and rigorously supported by our decade-long research program targeting perceptual learning of dysarthric speech.14-30 To date, this line of investigation has chiefly targeted the theory of listener adaptation to the degraded signal; however, robust intelligibility improvements of up to 20 percent across studies have been observed.15 With a rigorous account of how and what listeners adapt to, we are ideally positioned to move this work from bench to bedside, establishing listener (i.e., perceptual) training as a clinical intervention to improve intelligibility in people with PD. Here, we establish the efficacy of listener training for patients with PD and their primary communication partners using a repeated-measures, randomized controlled trial (SA1). Immediate acquisition and retention of intelligibility improvements will be examined as a function of speaker severity. We then evaluate three theoretically and empirically-motivated communication benefits of listener training that extend beyond intelligibility, including listening effort, comprehension, and communicative participation (SA2). Finally, we engage stakeholder input to inform clinical implementation of listener training using qualitative semi-structured interviews (SA3) with patients with PD and their partners. This will provide insights into the effectiveness and feasibility of the intervention approach, ensuring that their needs and preferences are considered and that they feel empowered and motivated for a listener training approach. Thus, in three independent aims, this proposal will address a current void in our clinical toolbox, establishing a new realm of clinical practice in which communication challenges in PD are managed by training partners to better understand the degraded speech.

Effect of Watermelon on Gut and Cardiometabolic Health

Adaption of the STAIR-NT Trauma Intervention for Polysubstance Populations