Pedro S. Moreira, Ioannis Sotiropoulos, Joana Silva, Akihiko Takashima, Nuno Sousa, Hugo Leite-Almeida, Patrício S. Costa
Abstract
Cognitive performance is a complex process influenced by multiple factors. Cognitive assessment in experimental animals is often based on longitudinal datasets analyzed using uni- and multi-variate analyses, that do not account for the temporal dimension of cognitive performance and also do not adequately quantify the relative contribution of individual factors onto the overall behavioral outcome. To circumvent these limitations, we applied an Autoregressive Latent Trajectory (ALT) to analyze the Morris water maze (MWM) test in a complex experimental design involving four factors: stress, age, sex, and genotype. Outcomes were compared with a traditional Mixed-Design Factorial ANOVA (MDF ANOVA).
In both the MDF ANOVA and ALT models, sex, and stress had a significant effect on learning throughout the 9 days. However, on the ALT approach, the effects of sex were restricted to the learning growth. Unlike the MDF ANOVA, the ALT model revealed the influence of single factors at each specific learning stage and quantified the cross interactions among them. In addition, ALT allows us to consider the influence of baseline performance, a critical and unsolved problem that frequently yields inaccurate interpretations in the classical ANOVA model.
Our findings suggest the beneficial use of ALT models in the analysis of complex longitudinal datasets offering a better biological interpretation of the interrelationship of the factors that may influence cognitive performance.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 14 March 2017.
All research outputs
#14,189,183
of 22,852,911 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
#1,852
of 3,178 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#155,244
of 297,860 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
#49
of 78 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,852,911 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 37th percentile – i.e., 37% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,178 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.4. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 297,860 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 47th percentile – i.e., 47% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 78 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 34th percentile – i.e., 34% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
