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Penile prosthesis implantation plays a crucial role in gender-affirming surgery (GAS) for transgender men, helping align physical traits with their gender identity. Phalloplasty, which involves creating a neophallus, often includes penile prosthesis implantation to restore erectile function and enable sexual intercourse.This non-systematic review analyzed studies from PubMed and MEDLINE databases (2000-February 2025), focusing on original studies, excluding animal models and non-English studies. The review explores the types of penile prosthesis, surgical techniques, patient outcomes, and complications.The three main types of penile prosthesis are the two-piece inflatable, semi-rigid (malleable), and three-piece inflatable. The three-piece inflatable prosthesis is most commonly used in transgender men due to its natural erectile and flaccid states. While inflatable devices offer superior functionality, they are more prone to complications such as mechanical failure, infection, and device migration. Malleable prosthesis, though easier to implant and less prone to failure, can cause discomfort and esthetic issues due to their semi-rigid state. Functional success rates for penile prosthesis implantation in transgender men range from 70% to 85%, with high patient satisfaction despite complications. Psychologically, implantation often reduces gender dysphoria, improving self-esteem and sexual function. However, unique challenges remain, such as scarring and the absence of erectile tissue in the neophallus.Advancements in prosthetic design, surgical techniques, and tissue engineering aim to reduce complications and enhance both the physical and psychological well-being of transgender men.

The Boston Scientific American Medical Systems 700™ (AMS 700™, Boston Scientific Corporation, United States of America) inflatable penile prostheses feature an inner Dacron layer that facilitates controlled expansion. Over time, outer silicone rupture exposes the Dacron, allowing for tissue ingrowth and complicating explantation. We herein describe our experience managing this situation in a retrospective, single-surgeon case series. Operative reports of all AMS 700™ inflatable penile prostheses explants from 2011 to 2025 (CPT 54406, 54410, 54411, 54416, 54417) of a single surgeon at one institution were screened for "Dacron" and "ingrowth". Eleven (5.5%) of 200 AMS 700™ penile prostheses explants had Dacron ingrowth. Median implant age was 15.4 years (IQR 12.8-24.4). Ten (91%) implants were removed for mechanical failure. Median operative time was 154 min (IQR 116.5-180). Five (45%) patients had bilateral ingrowth; six (55%) had unilateral involvement. Ten (91%) cases required extended corporotomies. Three (27%) required distal penile incisions for cylinder removal. Four (67%) of six patients with unilateral ingrowth underwent immediate replacement with an inflatable penile prosthesis, one (17%) who later required Mulcahy salvage for infection. All patients with bilateral ingrowth received malleable prostheses for staged reimplantation; one (20%) patient required revision for cylinder crossover of the malleable. Overall, Dacron ingrowth is a rare but technically complex finding during long-standing AMS 700™ penile prostheses explants. Surgeons should anticipate increased operative time, potential for additional incisions, and elevated infection risk. When dissection is extensive, staged reconstruction offers a practical and safe strategy.

This study tests the moderating role of essentialist beliefs about aging (i.e., perceptions of aging as a fixed versus malleable process) in the relationship between physical functioning and subjective well-being distinguishing between a) overall quality of life and b) health satisfaction among older adults in clinical care. We propose that essentialist beliefs serve as adaptive, palliative cognitions that help maintain high subjective well-being despite health challenges. In a sample of hospitalized older adults (N = 102; 67-96 years), multiple regression analyses revealed a significant interaction between essentialist beliefs and physical functioning for both quality of life and health satisfaction. For quality of life, stronger essentialist beliefs were linked to more positive evaluations under poor physical functioning, whereas more flexible beliefs were associated with lower quality of life. In contrast, for health satisfaction, more flexible beliefs were associated with a stronger link between physical functioning and subjective health, while essentialist beliefs weakened this association. These effects were particularly evident at lower levels of physical functioning. These findings highlight the domain-specific role of aging beliefs and suggest that essentialist beliefs may serve as a psychological buffer under conditions of physical decline, while more malleable beliefs promote condition-congruent evaluations of health.

Bayesian models of cognition have gained considerable traction in computational neuroscience and psychiatry. Their scope is now expected to expand rapidly to artificial intelligence, providing general inference frameworks to support embodied, adaptable, and energy-efficient autonomous agents. A central theory in this domain is predictive coding, which posits that learning and behaviour are driven by hierarchical probabilistic inferences about the causes of sensory inputs. Biological realism constrains these networks to rely on simple local computations in the form of precision-weighted predictions and prediction errors. This can make this framework highly efficient, but its implementation comes with unique challenges on the software development side. Embedding such models in standard neural network libraries often becomes limiting, as these libraries' compilation and differentiation backends can force a conceptual separation between optimisation algorithms and the systems being optimised. This critically departs from other biological principles such as self-monitoring, self-organisation, cellular growth, and functional plasticity. In this paper, we introduce pyhgf: a Python package backed by JAX and Rust for creating, manipulating, and sampling dynamic networks for predictive coding. We improve over other frameworks by enclosing the network components as transparent, modular, and malleable variables in the message-passing steps. The resulting graphs can implement arbitrary algorithms as belief propagation. Moreover, the transparency of core variables can also translate into inference processes that leverage self-organisation principles and express structure learning, meta-learning, or causal discovery as the consequence of network structural adaptation to surprising inputs. The main functions of the library are differentiable and seamlessly integrate into sampling or optimisation workflows. Additionally, we offer generalised Bayesian filtering and the hierarchical Gaussian filter as key examples of dynamic networks implemented in our library. The source code, tutorials, and documentation are hosted under the main repository at https://github.com/ComputationalPsychiatry/pyhgf.

Sex and gender are often used interchangeably, though they refer to distinct concepts -the former relating to biological differences grounded in chromosomal and hormonal features and the latter to socially constructed norms, roles, and identity. In preclinical research with non-human animals, the prevailing view is that only sex differences are measurable because it is commonly accepted that rodents do not express a gender identity. However, we argue that rodents express context-specific, sex-specific behaviors which fulfill the defining requirement of gender-like norms. To explore whether sex-specific behavioral patterns in non-human animals provide evidence of gender-like norms, we focus on rodents, the most common non-human animal model. We cite examples of how their sex-specific behavior is shaped by their environment. Importantly we acknowledge that gender norms are malleable depending on the physical and social contexts - a dynamic mix of spatial environment, material composition, and social structure that jointly shapes how behavior unfolds and its meaning. Thus, our analysis examines these gender-like norms across three levels. First, we compare natural and vivarium environments to reveal the malleability of gender-like norms. We then explore how the material composition in the physical context of the vivarium cage (e.g., cage type, enrichment) can shift these norms. Finally, we show the social context within the cage (e.g., sex composition, rank, familiarity) modifies individual interactions which in turn, affects the expression of gender-like norms. Throughout we provide experimental design recommendations that advocate for the explicit consideration of both sex and gendered behavior in rodent models. Incorporating these gender considerations will yield more effective and translatable animal models, significantly improving our ability to discover and test treatments for human toxicology, physiology, psychopathology, and neurological diseases.

Background/Objectives: Adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) experience persistent physical symptoms and psychosocial challenges that can impair functioning and quality of life. Health mindset, beliefs about whether health is fixed versus malleable and responsive to effort, is linked to positive health outcomes but has not been examined in AYAs with IBD. This study evaluated the internal reliability of a health mindset measure in AYAs with IBD and examined associations between health mindset and depressive symptoms, peer relationships, global health, pain interference, fatigue, and disease activity. Methods: Participants were 101 AYAs with IBD (M = 18.4 years; 54.4% ulcerative colitis; 63.4% female) recruited from an outpatient pediatric IBD clinic and a national IBD network. Participants completed a one-time online survey consisting of the Health Mindset Scale, Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) measures for physical, psychosocial, and global health outcomes, and IBD disease activity indices. Results: The Health Mindset Scale demonstrated good internal reliability in this sample. Additionally, a growth health mindset was significantly associated with lower pain interference, lower Crohn's disease activity, and better global health. No significant associations were observed between health mindset and depressive symptoms, peer relationship quality, fatigue, or ulcerative colitis disease activity. Conclusions: This novel study provides initial evidence that health mindset is associated with clinically meaningful outcomes in AYAs with IBD. These findings highlight that health mindset may be an important psychological construct in chronic illness adjustment and management, extending mindset theory and research to a young clinical population with IBD.

Human cognition operates within distinct temporal windows spanning from very short to extremely long. Each cognitive function has its own processing speed range, beyond which performance deteriorates or even becomes impossible. Speech comprehension, as one of the most important cognitive functions in civilized societies, exemplifies this constraint: Performance declines markedly when speech rates exceed about 10 syllables per second. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this speed limit remain unclear. Here, by combining psychophysics, scalp-electroencephalography, transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), repetitive sensory stimulation, and stereo-electroencephalography (sEEG), we showed that the intrinsic alpha band activity determined the maximum rate of speech comprehension. In healthy participants, individual alpha frequency (IAF) precisely predicted the speech recognition rate threshold. Crucially, causally accelerating endogenous alpha rhythms via high-definition tACS and rhythmic auditory stimulation shifted this threshold, enhancing comprehension of ultrafast speech. Furthermore, sEEG recordings from the human auditory cortex revealed that this speed-limiting mechanism was locally determined: Faster alpha band activity in the left auditory cortex facilitated stronger neural entrainment to the speech envelope. These findings identify alpha band activity as a fundamental, malleable temporal bottleneck for linguistic processing, suggesting that the brain's intrinsic sampling rate sets the physiological limit on human communication.

This study aimed to identify if pain catastrophizing is a mediator between pain intensity and functioning (functional disability and sleep), as well as mental health (anxiety and depression) in patients with pain-predominant disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBI). Pediatric pain is a significant problem that can lead to impairment in functioning and mental health. It is well documented in the pediatric literature that greater pain severity, pain catastrophizing, anxiety, depression, and reduced functioning are correlated. In youth with pain-predominant DGBI, the exact nature of how pain catastrophizing impacts functioning and mental health is less studied. A retrospective review of de-identified data collected as part of clinical care for pediatric patients attending a neurogastroenterology subspecialty clinic was completed. Mediation analyses demonstrated that pain catastrophizing was a significant mediator in the relationships between pain intensity and functional disability, depression, and anxiety. Pain catastrophizing was not a mediator in the relationship between pain intensity and sleep disturbances. Pain catastrophizing represents a malleable cognitive factor of the pain experience. Clinical intervention on pain catastrophizing appraisals has the potential to improve functioning and mental health, even if pain intensity remains unchanged.

Trust in others plays an important role in psychological development. However, longitudinal and developmentally informed research on trust remains limited and fragmented across disciplines. This study aimed to investigate the developmental course of generalized trust from adolescence into young adulthood, and to test sociodemographic, family-level, and peer victimization-related antecedents of trust in an urban cohort. Generalized trust was self-reported at age 13, 15, 17, 20, and 24 in the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso; n = 1,481). Mean-level and rank-order stability of trust were described. Growth trajectories were modeled using longitudinal linear mixed models (LMMs). Sociodemographic and childhood family-level factors, and longitudinal peer victimization were tested as predictors of trust. Mean-levels of trust followed a curvilinear trajectory characterized by an early decline from age 13 to 17 (Cohen's d = -.48) and a slight increase from age 17 to 24 (d = .11). Rank-order stability of trust increased throughout adolescence (Spearman's r = .40 to 0.58). Notably, socioeconomic disadvantage and migration background were each associated with widening trust disparities over time. Individuals from more disadvantaged backgrounds showed lower and more slowly recovering trust trajectories compared to their more advantaged peers. Maternal trust and parental involvement were associated with higher trust, whereas aversive parenting and parental divorce or separation were linked with lower trust. Peer victimization was associated with lower trust, while increases in peer victimization showed the strongest associations with trust at ages 17 and 20. Generalized trust is a malleable yet increasingly stable construct from adolescence into adulthood. Childhood and adolescent risk and protective factors are important contributors to trust development and should be considered when designing developmentally informed policies and interventions.

Altered glutamatergic and dopaminergic transmission in regions including cortex and hippocampus is thought to contribute to schizophrenia symptoms. The prominent role of glutamate (particularly via NMDA receptors) and dopamine (particularly via D2 receptors) in synaptic plasticity, and the impairment of plasticity-associated cognitive function in the condition, has suggested that schizophrenia may be viewed as a disorder of synaptic plasticity. This is encouraging, as regards developing improved treatments, as plasticity by its nature is dynamic and malleable. However, there are many distinguishable forms of synaptic plasticity, and it is not immediately obvious whether all forms are affected, and throughout the brain, or whether specific forms of plasticity are compromised, and only in certain brain regions. Here, I describe the molecules mediating various forms of plasticity, and collate the electrophysiological, imaging, pathological, genetic and biochemical evidence to address their possible dysfunction in schizophrenia. The overall picture is consistent with suboptimal function of all forms of plasticity, in circuitry centred on prefrontal cortex and thalamus. Many of the neurobiological changes characteristic of schizophrenia (reduced metabolic activity, GABAergic interneuron gene expression and dendritic spine density, in circuitry centred on prefrontal cortex) can be viewed as consequences of compromised plasticity rather than fundamental aetiological factors. Of hundreds of genes potentially contributing to genetic risk, more than 60 are directly implicated in plasticity processes, comprising receptors, voltage-sensitive Ca2+ channels, scaffold proteins, GTPases and kinase cascades. The conclusion is that multitudinous mechanisms of plasticity are all likely to be implicated in schizophrenia aetiology, but only in discrete neural circuits.

Epidermoid and dermoid cysts are common congenital lesions of the pediatric periorbital region arising from ectodermal inclusion during embryologic development. Although these lesions originate in the soft tissue, chronic pressure from long-standing masses may induce cortical depression or remodeling of adjacent craniofacial bones, particularly in young children with malleable skeletal structures. We report a case of a 26-month-old girl presenting with a small periorbital epidermoid cyst associated with pressure-induced depression of the zygomatic surface. Radiologic evaluation revealed a well-circumscribed cystic lesion abutting the frontal process of the zygoma with smooth cortical indentation and no features suggestive of aggressive osseous pathology. Complete excision was performed through a lateral brow approach with preservation of the periosteum. Histopathologic examination confirmed an epidermoid cyst. Postoperative follow-up demonstrated progressive spontaneous restoration of the zygomatic contour without the need for bone grafting or alloplastic materials, reflecting the osteogenic potential of the pediatric periosteum. This case emphasizes the importance of distinguishing secondary pressure-related bone remodeling from true intraosseous lesions in the pediatric craniofacial region and highlights the capacity for natural osseous recovery following removal of the compressive source. A brief review of relevant embryologic and radiologic considerations is also provided.

Our inferences about others' emotions often unfold over time as the information accessible to perceivers changes. Yet little is known about these dynamic aspects of emotion inference, including how flexible inferences are with different types of new information. In an integrated analysis of five studies (Ntotal = 925), we examined how people update their inferences of emotions with sequentially unfolding face and situation cues. Using a set of diverse social situations and their portrayals by professional actors, we found robust evidence for an asymmetry in how inferences were updated. People were more likely to update their inference of what emotions someone is feeling and how intensely they are experiencing those emotions when first viewing faces compared to descriptions of situations. This suggests that emotion inferences drawn from faces are more malleable compared to those drawn from social situations, and future work is warranted to understand whether this inflexibility tracks with people's beliefs and behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Our perception of input from one sensory modality is malleable by inputs from other sensory modalities, also when they are non-coincident in time. This function has been critical for survival throughout evolution. How it arises may reveal fundamental principles of brain operation and inform the design of more intuitive human-machine interfaces and Virtual Reality (VR). Here we outline how the brain can acquire what we refer to as cross-modal invariants, brain representations that are applicable across any context to integrate information from multiple modalities. We begin by reviewing evidence that early unimodal brain circuitry processing of tactile inputs in the CNS, before the cortex, is organized around kinematic invariants. Published data is compatible with kinematic invariants in retinal processing, too. We show how such invariants can form natural components of biologically adapted versions of the previously introduced plenhaptic and plenoptic functions, plus a proposed matching plenauditory function. Behavioral observations, we argue, indicate that cross-modal invariants in addition rely on the capability of recording forward information in working memory and therefore this function should be dominated by the cortex. Whereas the unimodal invariants appear to reside in pre-cortical structures and have a ground truth in physics, we explain why cross-modal invariants have not. Therefore cross-modal invariants will need to be individually learned. This likely renders them intelligible only from the point of view of the intrinsic functional organization of the circuitry operations that emerge from that learning. Hence, cross-modal invariants can be expected to be more individually variable and furthermore ubiquitous in the representation space of the cortical circuitry, which can explain why cross-modal integration in the brain has proven so elusive to map out and understand.

Cognitive neural circuits must balance the plasticity needed for continual learning with the stability needed to preserve an underlying reasoning framework, called a schema. How circuit learning rules form and protect such schemata from being continually overwritten during learning remains unknown. On a visual boundary detection task, we show that a hierarchical learning algorithm creates an invariant schema circuit whose weights remain fixed following sparse initial training, with additional data serving to refine the upstream representation. In contrast, the end-to-end backpropagation algorithm used to train nearly all current artificial neural networks comprehensively changes its weights throughout training. We show that the hierarchical schema makes an independent mechanistic hypothesis about circuit computation that is consistent with experimental ordering observed in single-neuron measurements in humans. These results suggest that hierarchical learning is sufficient to encode biologically consistent persistent cognitive models within otherwise malleable neural networks.

Brain regions exhibit dynamic yet highly coordinated activity patterns that form large-scale functional networks measurable through resting-state correlations. While their association with fluctuating activity may intuitively suggest functional networks to be temporally transient and dependent on state, a growing body of literature suggests that they are person-specific and stable across days. If truly person-specific, then functional networks should preserve unique characteristics over extended periods. To test this hypothesis, we collected longitudinal precision fMRI data (≥60 minutes per participant per time point) from 10 healthy young adults across 1-3 year intervals, as well as three adults over 8-13 years. We further replicated findings in the MyConnectome dataset and its 10-year follow-up. Functional network organization-when sufficient per-participant data were collected- remained largely stable within individuals over prolonged periods of up to 13 years, suggesting that individualized brain organization constitutes persistent features of personal identity that may be supported by homeostatic mechanisms. While many aspects of brain function are portrayed as dynamic and malleable, our study provides evidence for the long-term preservation of functional organization of the healthy young adult brain. Whole-brain functional organization exhibited unique individual characteristics that were preserved for years, even over a decade. The stability of such individualized neural architecture suggests that the brain encodes features of personhood that may be invariant across contexts and temporal fluctuations. This observation reframes our understanding of brain resilience and plasticity by offering new insights into the extent that homeostatic mechanisms of brain organization can withstand stressors and environmental changes through time to maintain a constant functional organization. These insights pave the way for a more comprehensive understanding of the neural mechanisms behind this stability, with the possibility of pinpointing critical markers of healthy brain function and its disruptions.