Correction: Visual orientation discrimination skills are tightly linked with specific aspects of human intelligence.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289590.].

Reshaping the peripersonal space in virtual reality.

Peripersonal space (PPS) is defined as the space that lies within reach. Previous research revealed that PPS can be dynamically reshaped with the use of tools extending the arm's reach. Here we investigated whether PPS reshaping depends on the kind of selected tool and/or the motor routine associated with its use. Participants carried out a visuo-tactile detection task in an immersive VR environment that allowed to measure the PPS size before and after a short period of tools use. In Experiment 1, participants had to pull or push objects towards or away from themselves using a shovel. In Experiment 2, they were required to either hammer or shoot an avatar placed in the Extrapersonal space. We found, for the first time in a VR environment, that a period of pull training was effective in enlarging the PPS, a result that replicates and expands previous findings carried out in real life conditions. However, no significant change in PPS size was achieved for training with other tools and motor routines. Our results suggest that the reshaping of PPS is a complex phenomenon in which the kind of interaction between the agent, the targets and the exploited motor routines all play a critical role.

Visual orientation discrimination skills are tightly linked with specific aspects of human intelligence.

We investigate the notion that basic visual information is acting as a building block for more complex cognitive processes in humans. Specifically, we measured individual visual orientation discrimination thresholds to report significant correlations against the total standardised intelligence quotient (IQ), verbal-IQ and non-verbal IQ scores evaluated using the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence Second Edition (WASI-II) test battery comprising Verbal Reasoning, Block Design, Similarities and Matrix Reasoning subtests (N = 92). A multiple linear regression analysis showed that participants' performance in our visual discrimination task, could be explained only by individual scores in Verbal Reasoning which quantifies the ability to comprehend and describe words and Matrix Reasoning, which evaluates general visual processing skills including abstract and spatial perception. Our results demonstrate that low-level visual abilities and high-level cognitive processes are more tightly interwoven together than previously thought and this result could pave the way for further research on how cognition can be defined by basic sensory processes.

Music and speech time perception of musically trained individuals: The effects of audio type, duration of musical training, and rhythm perception.

The perception of time is a subjective experience influenced by various factors such as individual psychology, external stimuli, and personal experiences, and it is often assessed with the use of the reproduction task that involves individuals estimating and reproducing the duration of specific time intervals. In the current study, we examined the ability of 97 musically trained participants to reproduce the durations of temporal intervals that were filled with music or speech stimuli. The results revealed a consistent pattern of durations being underestimated, and an association was observed between the duration of musical training and the level of accuracy in reproducing both music and speech tracks. In addition, speech tracks were overall reproduced more accurately, and as longer, than music tracks. Structural models suggested the presence of two, highly correlated, dimensions of time perception for speech and music stimuli that were related to the duration of musical training, but not with self-reported rhythm perception. The possible effects of arousal and pleasantness of stimuli on time perception are discussed within the framework of an internal clock model.

The effect of visually filled reproductions on the reproduced durations of auditory intervals.

The present study examined how the perception of time is affected by the presence of a visual stimulus during the reproduction phase of an online time reproduction task. Participants were instructed to reproduce the durations of speed-altered speech snippets with either a picture or a blank screen presented during the reproduction phase. Results showed that fast speeches were reproduced as longer than slow ones, while the reproduced durations of short speeches were closer to the actual durations than were the long speeches. In addition, longer reproduced durations were observed in trials with a picture than in trials with a blank screen. These results provide clear evidence that postencoding information can influence the reproduction of previously encoded temporal intervals and are discussed in the context of attention allocation and its possible influence on an internal clock mechanism. Also, the study provides evidence that online testing is reliable for assessing biases in time perception, at least with time reproduction tasks.

Biases in object location estimation: The role of rotations and translation.

Spatial memory studies often employ static images depicting a scene, an array of objects, or environmental features from one perspective and then following a perspective-shift-prompt memory either of the scene or objects within the scene. The current study investigated a previously reported systematic bias in spatial memory where, following a perspective shift from encoding to recall, participants indicated the location of an object farther to the direction of the shift. In Experiment 1, we aimed to replicate this bias by asking participants to encode the location of an object in a virtual room and then indicate it from memory following a perspective shift induced by camera translation and rotation. In Experiment 2, we decoupled the influence of camera translations and rotations and examined whether adding additional objects to the virtual room would reduce the bias. Overall, our results indicate that camera translations result in greater systematic bias than camera rotations. We propose that the accurate representation of camera translations requires more demanding mental computations than camera rotations, leading to greater uncertainty regarding the location of an object in memory. This uncertainty causes people to rely on an egocentric anchor, thereby giving rise to the systematic bias in the direction of camera translation.

Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Vs Guided Imagery on mood changes in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy treatment: A crossover trial.

PURPOSE: To test whether Virtual Reality (VR) can benefit cancer patients from their interaction with an immersive environment, on their mood and their biophysical parameters, compared to those who will experience a Guided Imagery (GI) intervention. METHODS: This was a randomized crossover trial with 50 cancer patients on active chemotherapy treatment, who were randomized to one of two treatment sequences VR-GI or GI-VR. Patients were assessed for Mood Changes, using POMS questionnaire, for three symptoms (Nausea, Pain and Feeling Sick), using three questions from FACT-G questionnaire, and Bio-physical parameters (Blood Pressure, Heart Rate, Oxygen Saturation). Linear Mixed Effect Models were used for the statistical analysis. RESULTS: Patients experienced a better effect of mood state, for all the sub-scales of mood, after the VR intervention compared to GI, regardless of the sequence (p < 0⋅05). No effectiveness was found for Nausea, Pain and Feeling Sick symptoms. Statistically significant improvements were found on the Bio-physical parameters for the VR intervention (p < 0⋅05). CONCLUSION: VR intervention based on mood induction strategies is a feasible and effective procedure for promoting positive mood in cancer patients during chemotherapy. Ways to integrate such innovative technologies in clinical practice need to be explored by health care professionals. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT02392728.

Utilizing Co-Creative Principles to Develop an E-Learning Platform for Interprofessional Training on Tinnitus: The Erasmus+ Project Tin-TRAC.

Tinnitus treatment, diagnosis and management across Europe varies significantly. The lack of national clinical guidelines for tinnitus management in most European countries and the absence of a common language across all disciplines involved is reflected in the diversification of healthcare practices. Interprofessional Training for Tinnitus Researchers and Clinicians (Tin-TRAC) is an Erasmus+ project that aims to develop common educational ground in the form of an e-Learning platform, co-created by patients, researchers and clinicians, which is able to unify tinnitus diagnosis and treatment strategies across Europe. A pan-European thematic educational platform integrating the best practices and latest research achievements with regard to tinnitus diagnosis and management has the potential to act as a facilitator of the reduction of interdisciplinary and interregional practice diversification. A detailed analysis of the educational needs of clinicians and researchers across disciplines will be followed by the co-creative development of the curriculum. Reusable learning objects will incorporate the training contents and will be integrated in an open e-Learning platform. Tin-TRAC envisions that its output will answer the need to create a common language across the clinicians and researchers of different disciplines that are involved in tinnitus management, and reduce patients' prolonged suffering, non-adherence and endless referral trajectories.

The role of memory and perspective shifts in systematic biases during object location estimation.

In the current study, we investigated whether the introduction of perspective shifts in a spatial memory task results in systematic biases in object location estimations. To do so, we asked participants to first encode the position of an object in a virtual room and then to report its position from memory or perception following a perspective shift. Overall, our results showed that participants made systematic errors in estimating object positions in the same direction as the perspective shift. Notably, this bias was present in both memory and perception conditions. We propose that the observed systematic bias was driven by difficulties in understanding the perspective shifts that led participants to use an egocentric representation of object positions as an anchor when estimating the object location following a perspective shift.

Age-related changes in visual encoding strategy preferences during a spatial memory task.

Ageing is associated with declines in spatial memory, however, the source of these deficits remains unclear. Here we used eye-tracking to investigate age-related differences in spatial encoding strategies and the cognitive processes underlying the age-related deficits in spatial memory tasks. To do so we asked young and older participants to encode the locations of objects in a virtual room shown as a picture on a computer screen. The availability and utility of room-based landmarks were manipulated by removing landmarks, presenting identical landmarks rendering them uninformative, or by presenting unique landmarks that could be used to encode object locations. In the test phase, participants viewed a second picture of the same room taken from the same (0°) or a different perspective (30°) and judged whether the objects occupied the same or different locations in the room. We found that the introduction of a perspective shift and swapping of objects between encoding and testing impaired performance in both age groups. Furthermore, our results revealed that although older adults performed the task as well as younger participants, they relied on different visual encoding strategies to solve the task. Specifically, gaze analysis revealed that older adults showed a greater preference towards a more categorical encoding strategy in which they formed relationships between objects and landmarks.

Novel Ultrasonographic Thickness and Strength Assessments of the Flexor Digitorum: A Reliability Analysis.

OBJECTIVES: Clinical conditions such as focal dystonia often require the assessment of atrophy and weakness of the finger muscles. However, due to a lack of well-established protocols, the current investigation focused on assessing the reliability of thickness and strength assessments of the flexor digitorum (FD) muscle, including both the superficialis and profundus components. As a secondary assessment, the reliability of the strength measurement of the extensor digitorum muscle was examined as well. METHODS: Different thickness measurements of the FD were taken via ultrasonography and averaged to estimate the mean thickness of the FD. Likewise, individual finger strength measurements taken by a custom-made finger pressure device were averaged to compute the mean strength of the flexor and extensor digitorum muscles. Test-retest reliability of the above measurements performed at two different time points (about 6 months apart) were examined on the right and left hands of 10 participants. RESULTS: Findings indicated excellent test-retest reliability (ICC > 0.92) for the mean thickness assessment of the FD and mean strength of the flexor and extensor digitorum for both dominant and non-dominant hands. The standard error of measurement was ≤4.3% for all three mean assessments, indicating high sensitivity. Likewise, the smallest detectable change was also sufficiently small for the mean thickness and mean strength of the flexor digitorum (≤5.1%) and moderately small (≤12%) for the strength of the extensor digitorum. CONCLUSIONS: Results indicated an excellent relative and absolute reliability, for both hands, for the mean thickness and strength assessments of the flexor digitorum muscle and for the mean strength of the extensor digitorum (measured for both hands). These measurements can be used for future investigations and can contribute to the establishment of more precise methods for assessing the muscles in the forearms which serve the hand.

Comparable performance on a spatial memory task in data collected in the lab and online.

Online data collection offers a wide range of benefits including access to larger and more diverse populations, together with a reduction in the experiment cycle. Here we compare performance in a spatial memory task, in which participants had to estimate object locations following viewpoint shifts, using data from a controlled lab-based setting and from an unsupervised online sample. We found that the data collected in a conventional laboratory setting and those collected online produced very similar results, although the online data was more variable with standard errors being about 10% larger than those of the data collected in the lab. Overall, our findings suggest that spatial memory studies using static images can be successfully carried out online with unsupervised samples. However, given the higher variability of the online data, it is recommended that the online sample size is increased to achieve similar standard errors to those obtained in the lab. For the current study and data processing procedures, this would require an online sample 25% larger than the lab sample.

Perspective taking and systematic biases in object location memory.

The aim of the current study was to develop a novel task that allows for the quick assessment of spatial memory precision with minimal technical and training requirements. In this task, participants memorized the position of an object in a virtual room and then judged from a different perspective, whether the object has moved to the left or to the right. Results revealed that participants exhibited a systematic bias in their responses that we termed the reversed congruency effect. Specifically, they performed worse when the camera and the object moved in the same direction than when they moved in opposite directions. Notably, participants responded correctly in almost 100% of the incongruent trials, regardless of the distance by which the object was displaced. In Experiment 2, we showed that this effect cannot be explained by the movement of the object on the screen, but that it relates to the perspective shift and the movement of the object in the virtual world. We also showed that the presence of additional objects in the environment reduces the reversed congruency effect such that it no longer predicts performance. In Experiment 3, we showed that the reversed congruency effect is greater in older adults, suggesting that the quality of spatial memory and perspective-taking abilities are critical. Overall, our results suggest that this effect is driven by difficulties in the precise encoding of object locations in the environment and in understanding how perspective shifts affect the projected positions of the objects in the two-dimensional image.

Are Spatial Memories for Familiar Environments Orientation Dependent?

In one experiment we examined the organizational structure of spatial memories for familiar environments, comparing it directly with that for unfamiliar environments. Participants in the familiar condition pointed from imagined perspectives towards objects in their own rooms and their performance was compared to that of matched controls in an unfamiliar condition who carried out the same task after studying the same rooms in immersive Virtual Reality. In both conditions, participants were faster and more accurate in pointing from imagined perspectives that were aligned with the geometry of the room (vs. not aligned), suggesting the presence of orientation-dependent representations. Whereas in the unfamiliar condition pointing performance was best along a single axis, performance in the familiar condition was about equal across all 4 orientations that were aligned with the geometric structure of the room. Moreover, performance in the familiar condition was influenced by the orientation from which participants started to preview the room prior to testing; in contrast, in the unfamiliar condition performance was not influenced by the orientation from which encoding started. This finding suggests that post-encoding situational factors (e.g., the starting orientation from which an environment is previewed) can prime the accessibility of information in well-established long-term spatial memories.

Alignment Effects in Spatial Perspective Taking from an External Vantage Point.

In three experiments, we examined, using a perceptual task, the difficulties of spatial perspective taking. Participants imagined adopting perspectives around a table and pointed from them towards the positions of a target. Depending on the condition, the scene was presented on a virtual screen in Virtual Reality or projected on an actual screen in the real world (Experiment 1), or viewed as immediate in Virtual Reality (Experiment 2). Furthermore, participants pointed with their arm (Experiments 1 and 2) vs. a joystick (Experiment 3). Results showed a greater alignment effect (i.e., a larger difference in performance between trials with imagined perspectives that were aligned vs. misaligned with the orientation of the participant) when executing the task in a virtual rather than in the real environment, suggesting that visual access to body information and room geometry, which is typically lacking in Virtual Reality, influences perspective taking performance. The alignment effect was equal across the Virtual Reality conditions of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, suggesting that being an internal (compared to an external) observer to the scene induces no additional difficulties for perspective taking. Equal alignment effects were also found when pointing with the arm vs. a joystick, indicating that a body-dependent response mode such as pointing with the arm creates no further difficulties for reasoning from imagined perspectives.

Age-related differences in visual encoding and response strategies contribute to spatial memory deficits.

Successful navigation requires memorising and recognising the locations of objects across different perspectives. Although these abilities rely on hippocampal functioning, which is susceptible to degeneration in older adults, little is known about the effects of ageing on encoding and response strategies that are used to recognise spatial configurations. To investigate this, we asked young and older participants to encode the locations of objects in a virtual room shown as a picture on a computer screen. Participants were then shown a second picture of the same room taken from the same (0°) or a different perspective (45° or 135°) and had to judge whether the objects occupied the same or different locations. Overall, older adults had greater difficulty with the task than younger adults although the introduction of a perspective shift between encoding and testing impaired performance in both age groups. Diffusion modelling revealed that older adults adopted a more conservative response strategy, while the analysis of gaze patterns showed an age-related shift in visual-encoding strategies with older adults attending to more information when memorising the positions of objects in space. Overall, results suggest that ageing is associated with declines in spatial processing abilities, with older individuals shifting towards a more conservative decision style and relying more on encoding target object positions using room-based cues compared to younger adults, who focus more on encoding the spatial relationships among object clusters.

Development of a bioeconomy monitoring framework for the European Union: An integrative and collaborative approach.

The EU Bioeconomy Strategy, updated in 2018, in its Action Plan pledges an EU-wide, internationally coherent monitoring system to track economic, environmental and social progress towards a sustainable bioeconomy. This paper presents the approach taken by the European Commission's (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC) to develop such a system. To accomplish this, we capitalise on (1) the experiences of existing indicator frameworks; (2) stakeholder knowledge and expectations; and (3) national experiences and expertise. This approach is taken to ensure coherence with other bioeconomy-related European monitoring frameworks, the usefulness for decision-making and consistency with national and international initiatives to monitor the bioeconomy. We develop a conceptual framework, based on the definition of a sustainable bioeconomy as stated in the Strategy, for a holistic analysis of the trends in the bioeconomy sectors, following the three pillars of sustainability (economy, society and environment). From this conceptual framework, we derive an implementation framework that aims to highlight the synergies and trade-offs across the five objectives of the Bioeconomy Strategy in a coherent way. The EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System will be publicly available on the web platform of the EC Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy.

Virtual Reality and Symptoms Management of Anxiety, Depression, Fatigue, and Pain: A Systematic Review.

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has become an interesting alternative to traditional exposure-based therapies for many symptoms. VR involves immersion in a computer-generated virtual environment that minimizes avoidance and facilitates emotional processing. The objective of this systematic review is to evaluate evidence on the intervention effect of VR on anxiety, depression, fatigue, and pain. The research strategy of this systematic review included three electronic databases (MEDLINE/PubMed, Cochrane Library, and ScienceDirect) based on predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Published quantitative studies from 2000 to 2020 were identified, which examined the effect of VR intervention on four different symptoms related to symptoms experienced by cancer patients. Quality assessments, data extractions, and analysis were completed on all included studies. A total of 882 titles and abstracts were screened, and 23 studies were included in the review. The studies were grouped according to the symptoms: anxiety and depression, fatigue, and pain. The review showed that VR intervention is more effective compared with the control (i.e., standard care) for anxiety, depression, fatigue, and pain. VR can reduce effectively these symptoms in different contexts and diseases, including cancer. The evidence suggests that there is value in exploring this intervention as a potential crossover treatment for these symptoms in patients. This study contributes to evidence that distraction is an effective symptom management mechanism. The findings are congruent with the theoretical framework, supporting the premise that VR, as an emotion-focused distraction intervention, decreases the severity of these symptoms.

Orientation-dependent spatial memories for scenes viewed on mobile devices.

We examined whether spatial representations for scenes experienced on the screens of mobile devices are orientation dependent and whether the type of movement (physical vs. simulated) during learning affects the encoding and the retrieval of spatial information. Participants studied a spatial layout depicted on a tablet and then carried out perspective-taking trials in which they localized objects from imagined perspectives. Depending on condition, participants either rotated the tablet along with their body or remained stationary and swiped with their finger on the screen to change their viewpoint within the scene. Results showed that participants were faster and more accurate to point to objects from an imagined perspective that was aligned than misaligned to their initial physical orientation during learning, suggesting that they had formed an orientation-dependent representation. Although no differences were found between movement conditions during pointing, participants were faster to encode spatial information with physical than simulated movement.

Integrating visuospatial information across distinct experiences.

In two experiments, we examined whether the presence of stable visual information and the confluence of the viewpoints would cause participants to integrate in a single memory representation spatial locations they encoded at different points in time. Participants studied from the same or from different viewpoints two layouts of objects within a common visually cluttered room. Then, they carried out a series of pointing trials that involved objects from either the same or different layouts. Results showed that participants were faster for within- than between-layout judgments when they had studied the two layouts from different viewpoints but were equally fast across the two types of judgment after studying the layouts from the same viewpoint (Experiment 1). This finding suggests that they integrated locations into a single representation only when encoding the layouts from the same viewpoint. However, when participants' memory for the layout studied first was refreshed prior to testing (Experiment 2), no difference in response time was found, suggesting that they had integrated all locations in a single representation before the beginning of testing.