Executive functions (EF) in children can be trained, but it remains unknown whether training-related benefits elicit far transfer to real-life situations. Here, we investigate whether a set of computerized games might yield near and far transfer on an experimental and an active control group of low-SES otherwise typically developing 6-y-olds in a 3-mo pretest-training-posttest design that was ecologically deployed (at school). The intervention elicits transfer to some (but not all) facets of executive function. These changes cascade to real-world measures of school performance. The intervention equalizes academic outcomes across children who regularly attend school and those who do not because of social and familiar circumstances.cognitive training intervention | school grades | Attention Network Test | school attendance | working memory T he efficacy of cognitive training is controversial and constitutes a current challenge for educational neuroscience research (1-4). Although it has been well documented that directed interventions in children can change specific cognitive functions (5-8), it is unknown whether those translate to broader contexts and real-world situations of educational pertinence. Cognitive training has largely focused on executive functions (EF) (6-8), a class of processes critical for purposeful, goal-directed behavior, including working memory (WM), planning, and cognitive control (6). Research has shown that EF capabilities can be improved with practice and gaming interventions (5-7, 9). These results are particularly promising because EF are critical for educational success (10-12) and for mental and physical health (5, 13); furthermore, early self-regulation is indicative of an individual's health and social behavior as an adult (14,15).Because the degree of self-regulation elicited by a child can predict real-life outcomes, it is presumed that an intervention that improves EF should affect a child educational success. However, this hypothesis has never been explicitly examined based on school grades as real-world measurements of educational achievement (16). Instead, current evidence (7, 9, 17, 18) derives from laboratory measures related to school performance (for instance, the time it takes for a child to read a word). Because school performance results from an intertwined process integrating EF with temperament, socioeconomic status (SES), and cognitive skills (19-22) among other environmental factors, examining the direct outcome of an intervention on school grades is necessary to assure its practical pertinence.Our main hypothesis is that a gaming intervention in schoolage children tuned to improve aspects of EF should transfer to real-world manifestations of school performance indexed by children's grades.In the educational system of the City of Buenos Aires, first graders devote an important amount of their school time to language and math. Grading for these subjects is largely based on objective tasks and they are examined extensively. Instead, other subjects (such as foreign la...

Skeletal muscle has the remarkable ability to regenerate. However, with age and disease muscle strength and function decline. Myofiber size, which is affected by injury and disease, is a critical measurement to assess muscle health. Here, we test and apply Cellpose, a recently developed deep learning algorithm, to automatically segment myofibers within murine skeletal muscle. We first show that tissue fixation is necessary to preserve cellular structures such as primary cilia, small cellular antennae, and adipocyte lipid droplets. However, fixation generates heterogeneous myofiber labeling, which impedes intensity-based segmentation. We demonstrate that Cellpose efficiently delineates thousands of individual myofibers outlined by a variety of markers, even within fixed tissue with highly uneven myofiber staining. We created a novel ImageJ plugin (LabelsToRois) that allows processing of multiple Cellpose segmentation images in batch. The plugin also contains a semi-automatic erosion function to correct for the area bias introduced by the different stainings, thereby identifying myofibers as accurately as human experts. We successfully applied our segmentation pipeline to uncover myofiber regeneration differences between two different muscle injury models, cardiotoxin and glycerol. Thus, Cellpose combined with LabelsToRois allows for fast, unbiased, and reproducible myofiber quantification for a variety of staining and fixation conditions.

Mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) can be maintained as homogeneous populations in the ground state of pluripotency. Release from this state in minimal conditions allows to obtain cells that resemble those of the early post-implantation epiblast, providing an important developmental model to study cell identity transitions. However, the cell cycle dynamics of mESCs in the ground state and during its dissolution have not been extensively studied. By performing live imaging experiments of mESCs bearing cell cycle reporters, we show here that cells in the pluripotent ground state display a cell cycle structure comparable to the reported for mESCs in serum-based media. Upon release from self-renewal, the cell cycle is rapidly accelerated by a reduction in the length of the G1 phase and of the S/G2/M phases, causing an increased proliferation rate. Analysis of cell lineages indicates that cell cycle variables of sister cells are highly correlated, suggesting the existence of inherited cell cycle regulators from the parental cell. Together with a major morphological reconfiguration upon differentiation, our findings support a correlation between this in vitro model and early embryonic events.

Acoustic signals have the potential for transmitting information fast across distances. Rats emit ultrasonic vocalizations of two distinct classes: “22-kHz” or “alarm” calls and “50-kHz” calls. The latter comprises brief sounds in the 30–80-kHz range, whose ethological role is not fully understood. We recorded ultrasonic vocalizations from pairs of rats freely behaving in neighboring but separated arenas. 50-kHz vocalizations in this condition were tightly linked to the locomotion of the emitter at the subsecond time scale, their rate sharply increasing and decreasing prior to the onset and offset of movement respectively. This locomotion-linked vocalization behavior showed a clear “audience effect,” as rats recorded alone displayed lower vocal production than rats in social settings for equivalent speeds of locomotion. Furthermore, calls from different categories across the 50 and 22-kHz families displayed markedly different correlations with locomotor activity. Our results show that rat vocalizations in the high ultrasonic range are social signals carrying spatial information about the emitter and highlight the possibility that they may play a role in the social coordination of spatial behaviors.

Skeletal muscle has the remarkable ability to regenerate. However, with age and disease muscle strength and function decline. Myofiber size, which is affected by injury and disease, is a critical measurement to assess muscle health. Here, we test and apply Cellpose, a recently developed deep learning algorithm, to automatically segment myofibers within murine skeletal muscle. We first show that tissue fixation is necessary to preserve cellular structures such as primary cilia, small cellular antennae, and adipocyte lipid droplets. However, fixation generates heterogeneous myofiber labeling, which impedes intensity-based segmentation. We demonstrate that Cellpose efficiently delineates thousands of individual myofibers outlined by a variety of markers, even within fixed tissue with highly uneven myofiber staining. We created a novel ImageJ plugin (LabelsToRois) that allows processing multiple Cellpose segmentation images in batch. The plugin also contains a semi-automatic erosion function to correct for the area bias introduced by the different stainings, identifying myofibers as accurately as human experts. We successfully applied our segmentation pipeline to uncover myofiber size differences between two different muscle injury models, cardiotoxin and glycerol. Thus, Cellpose combined with LabelsToRois allows for fast, unbiased, and reproducible myofiber quantification for a variety of staining and fixation conditions.