There is a critical need for the public to have trusted sources of vaccine information. A longitudinal online study assessed trust in COVID-19 vaccine information from 10 sources. A factor analysis for data reduction revealed two factors. The first factor contained politically conservative sources (PCS) of information. The second factor included eight news sources representing mainstream sources (MS). Multivariable logistic regression models were used. Trust in Dr. Fauci was also examined. High trust in MS was associated with intention to encourage family members to get COVID-19 vaccines, altruistic beliefs that more vulnerable people should have vaccine priority, and belief that racial minorities with higher rates of COVID-19 deaths should have priority. High trust in PCS was associated with intention to discourage friends from getting vaccinated. Higher trust in PCS was also associated with participants more likely to disagree that minorities with higher rates of COVID-19 deaths should have priority for a vaccine. High trust in Dr. Fauci as a source of COVID-19 vaccine information was associated with factors similar to high trust in MS. Fair, equitable, and transparent access and distribution are essential to ensure trust in public health systems’ abilities to serve the population.

Objectives: To investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of sleep waveforms in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and examine their association with cognition. Methods: In this retrospective, cross-sectional study, we examined overnight EEG data from adult patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and non-epilepsy comparisons (NEC) admitted to the epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) at Mass General Brigham hospitals. Automated algorithms were used to characterize sleep macro-architecture (sleep stages), and micro-architecture (spindles, slow oscillations) on scalp EEG, and to detect hippocampal interictal epileptiform discharges (hIEDs) from foramen ovale (FO) electrodes simultaneously recorded in a subset of TLE patients. We examined the association of sleep features and hIEDs with memory and executive function from clinical neuropsychological evaluations. Results: A total of 81 TLE and 28 NEC adult patients were included with similar mean ages. There were no significant differences in sleep macro-architecture between groups, including relative time spent in each sleep stage, sleep efficiency, and sleep fragmentation. In contrast, the spatiotemporal characteristics of sleep micro-architecture were altered in TLE compared to NEC and were associated with cognitive impairments. Specifically, we observed a ∼30% reduction in spindle density in TLE compared to NEC patients, which was significantly associated with worse memory performance. Spindle-slow oscillation (SO) coupling strength was also reduced in TLE and, in contrast to spindles, was associated with diminished executive function. We found no significant association between sleep macro- and micro-architectural parameters and hIEDs. Conclusion: There is a fundamental alteration of sleep micro-architecture in TLE, characterized by a reduction in spindle density and spindle-SO coupling, and these changes may contribute to neurocognitive comorbidity in this disorder.

Decisions are made based on the subjective value that the brain assigns to options. However, subjective value is a mathematical construct that cannot be measured directly, but rather inferred from choices. Recent results have demonstrated that reaction time and velocity of movements are modulated by reward, raising the possibility that there is a link between how the brain evaluates an option, and how it controls movements toward that option. Here, we asked people to choose among risky options represented by abstract stimuli, some associated with gain, others with loss. From their choices in decision trials we estimated the subjective value that they assigned to each stimulus. In probe trials, they were presented with a single stimulus at center and made a saccade to a peripheral location. We found that the reaction time and peak velocity of that saccade varied roughly linearly from loss to gain with the subjective value of the stimulus. Naturally, participants differed in how much they valued a given stimulus. Remarkably, those who valued a stimulus more, as evidenced by their choices in decision trials, tended to move with greater vigor in response to that stimulus in probe trials. Thus, saccade vigor partly reflected the subjective value that the brain assigned the stimulus. However, the influence of subjective value on vigor was only a modest predictor of preference: vigor in probe trials allowed us to predict choice in decision trials with roughly 60% accuracy. New and Noteworthy: We found that saccade vigor tends to vary monotonically with subjective value: smallest for stimuli that predict a loss, and highest for stimuli that predict a gain. Notably, between-subject differences in valuation could be gleaned from the between-subject differences in their patterns of vigor. However, the influence of subjective value on vigor was modest, allowing partial ability to infer subjective value for the purpose of predicting choice in decision trials.