Many barriers to accessing treatment for substance use disorder and HIV among those on community supervision are well-documented, including a lack of transportation, lack of reentry care, and lack of awareness of services. To address these barriers, a NIDA-funded R01, ACTION, aimed to promote engagement in care for infectious diseases (like HIV/AIDS) and opioid use disorder for individuals on probation in Texas. When conducting these large studies, it is imperative to understand participant and staff perceptions of an intervention’s feasibility and acceptability. Therefore, the current study aims to analyze the similarities and differences in opinions and attitudes of the success of the intervention identified by project staff and client. To examine this, a deductive qualitative analysis of 6 project staff and 20 clients was completed using Atlas.ti. Staff identified communication, state resources and facilities, and issues with pharmacies as key barriers to the intervention, whereas clients cited scheduling and transportation as key barriers. Staff identified the ability to communicate with other staff for resources, meeting clients in person, and meeting in the mobile health unit as key strengths of the intervention, whereas clients cite receiving healthcare services and interaction with the patient navigator and research assistant as key strengths. Understanding these barriers to and facilitators of the ACTION interventions allows researchers to see what works and what can create issues in the study.

Young adults’ mental health has emerged as a critical public health concern, with rising rates of sleep deprivation reported over the past decade. Online video gaming has become a popular bedtime activity, especially among undergraduates, and may contribute to their sleep disruptions and daytime mental health malfunctions. However, not all undergraduates experience bedtime online gaming in the same way, and understanding who is most vulnerable, under what conditions, and whether bedtime online gaming may have neutral or even protective effects for some individuals remains a critical gap. Besides the importance of exploring individual differences in such effects, many studies rely solely on self-reported sleep quality, which can be biased or inaccurate.

To address these issues, this project will utilize a longitudinal data collection method. A total of 10 TCU undergraduates will be recruited through the campus gaming club. Over 14 days, participants will complete a morning survey assessing their prior night’s online gaming experiences and subjective sleep quality, and a brief tasks to measure cognitive functioning. Evening surveys will assess momentary mental health states and include an open-ended question about anything they want to share about their past day. Participants will continuously wear Garmin devices to collect objective sleep metrics passively. Findings will uncover the moment-to-moment impacts of bedtime gaming on sleep quality and overall functioning, and provide preliminary insights into individual differences in why and how some students are negatively affected by bedtime video gaming, while others may not be.

I expect that task performance will vary among participants based on individual gaming habits. Specifically, I anticipate a negative correlation between total bedtime gaming time and next-day performance on cognitive tasks, particularly when participants stay up late to game, leading to disrupted sleep. In such cases, deviations from typical healthy sleep patterns may negatively influence participants’ cognitive functioning. I also expect that the type of game played may influence outcomes, as games that involve higher levels of sensory stimulation and rapid decision-making (e.g., action shooters) may negatively affect sleep and further impair cognitive performance compared to slower-paced genres such as role-playing games.

Frustrative nonreward refers to the behavioral reactions that occur when an expected reward is reduced or omitted. Reward downshift procedures provide a useful framework to examine whether behavior is guided by current reward expectancies (action) or by learned stimulus - response associations (habits). Under conditions in which behavior depends on reward expectancies, animals typically adjust their responses when reward value changes. By contrast, if behavior has become habitual, original responses may persist even when the outcome is reduced. The present study examined whether extended training in a Pavlovian autoshaping task promotes habit-like responses following a reward downshift. In Experiment 1, rats were trained to respond to two levers associated with different reward magnitudes. Animals received either standard training (10 days) or extended training (30 days). After training, preference for the higher-value reward was assessed, and then one lever was downshifted to deliver the same smaller reward that the other lever provided. Changes in lever preference following the downshift were used to evaluate behavioral adjustments. Both groups initially adjusted their responses after the reduction in reward magnitude, through a change in preference from the downshifted to the unshifted lever. However, animals that received extended training gradually returned to their original preference for the downshifted one, even though both options delivered the same outcome. This persistence suggests the development of stimulus–response associations consistent with habit-like control. In contrast, animals that received standard training maintained a frustration induced change in preference after the downshift, indicating a weaker habit formation response. Experiment 2 tested whether overtraining by increasing the number of trials within each session would produce similar effects. Although animals received more trials per session, both groups showed similar behavioral adjustments following reward downshift and did not differ in preference patterns. Together, these results suggest that the development of habit-like responding depends not only on the amount of training but also on how experience is distributed over time. Training extended across multiple days, rather than concentrated within sessions, appears to promote persistent responding that is less sensitive to changes in reward magnitude.

Women remain disproportionately affected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with disparities in acquisition risk research concentrated among Black women in the Southern United States. Although there are effective prevention tools such as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), uptake of these tools remain low. This review analyzes the critical gap in prevention and protection against HIV in Black women. Systemic search of PubMed (2010-2025) was conducted looking for keywords such as “Women and PrEP”, “Barber Shop Model”, “Beauty Shop Model”, “Mobile Health Unit Health Care”, “PrEP Education”, and “Birth Control”. Reducing HIV disparities among Black women requires changing structural and social factors that influence the high HIV risk-factors. Awareness and self-perceived risk must be considered at the individual level in order to effectively prevent HIV acquisition. Existing research shows that the way prevention services are delivered and designed affect the efficacy of HIV prevention efforts. In addition to advancing biomedical strategies, interventions should be culturally responsive to increase awareness and reduce stigma surrounding PrEP and HIV. Overall, HIV disparities among Black women are multifactorial, and shifting prevention efforts into trusted community spaces while addressing the structural roots of medical mistrust shows a promising strategy for narrowing the gap in HIV prevention.

Growing evidence suggests that diet plays an important role in the development and progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. Dietary patterns can influence metabolic health, inflammation, and gut physiology, which in turn may affect brain function. Alterations in lipid metabolism, adipose tissue structure, and intestinal integrity have been linked to systemic physiological changes associated with neurodegenerative disease risk.
The present study examined how different dietary patterns influence peripheral tissues involved in metabolic and gastrointestinal regulation. C57BL/6J mouse were exposed to three diets representing distinct nutritional profiles: a Mediterranean diet, a Typical American diet, and a Standard laboratory diet used as a control condition. To evaluate potential systemic effects of these diets, the study focused on a set of peripheral tissue markers associated with metabolic and intestinal function. Following dietary exposure, morphological changes were evaluated in selected tissues using histological analysis.
Diet exposure produced notable differences across the tissues examined depending on the diet. In the liver, animals exposed to the high-fat Typical American diet showed increased hepatic lipid droplet accumulation, indicating greater fat deposition within hepatocytes. Such changes may reflect alterations in lipid metabolism and metabolic regulation. In white adipose tissue, adipocytes displayed increased cell size, suggesting adipocyte hypertrophy commonly associated with metabolic stress.
Alterations were also observed in the gastrointestinal system. In the small intestine, mice showed reduced villi length and a lower number of goblet cells. These structures are essential for nutrient absorption and mucosal protection, and their reduction may indicate changes in intestinal barrier function. Because intestinal health is closely linked to brain function through the gut–brain axis, these alterations may have broader implications for neurological health.
Together, these findings suggest that dietary patterns can induce structural changes in peripheral tissues involved in metabolism and intestinal physiology. Although these markers represent only a subset of the many factors associated with neurodegenerative disease, they provide measurable indicators of systemic changes that may contribute to processes related to Alzheimer’s disease risk.