Interaction between hippocampal sharp-wave ripples (SWRs) and UP states, possibly by coordinated reactivation of memory traces, is conjectured to play an important role in memory consolidation. Recently, it was reported that SWRs were differentiated into multiple subtypes. However, whether cortical UP states can also be classified into subtypes is not known. Here, we analysed neural ensemble activity from the medial prefrontal cortex from rats trained to run a spatial sequence-memory task. Application of the hidden Markov model (HMM) with three states to epochs of UP–DOWN oscillations identified DOWN states and two subtypes of UP state (UP-1 and UP-2). The two UP subtypes were distinguished by differences in duration, with UP-1 having a longer duration than UP-2, as well as differences in the speed of population vector (PV) decorrelation, with UP-1 decorrelating more slowly than UP-2. Reactivation of recent memory sequences predominantly occurred in UP-2. Short-duration reactivating UP states were dominated by UP-2 whereas long-duration ones exhibit transitions from UP-1 to UP-2. Thus, recent memory reactivation, if it occurred within long-duration UP states, typically was preceded by a period of slow PV evolution not related to recent experience, and which we speculate may be related to previously encoded information. If that is the case, then the transition from UP-1 to UP-2 subtypes may help gradual integration of recent experience with pre-existing cortical memories by interleaving the two in the same UP state. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Memory reactivation: replaying events past, present and future'.

Inhaled medications are critical in the pharmaceutical management of respiratory conditions, however, the majority of patients demonstrate at least one critical error when using an inhaler. Since community pharmacists can be instrumental in addressing this care gap, we aimed to determine the rate and type of critical inhaler errors in community pharmacy settings, elucidate the factors contributing to inhaler technique errors, and identify instances when community pharmacists check proper inhaler use. Fourth year pharmacy students on community practice placement (n = 53) identified 200 patients where at least one error was observed in 78% of participants when demonstrating inhaler technique. Prevalent errors of the users were associated with metered dose inhaler (MDI) (55.6%), Ellipta® (88.3%), and Discus® (86.7%) devices. Overall, the mean number of errors was 1.09. Possession of more than one inhaler, use of rescue inhaler, and poor control of asthma were found to be significant predictors of having at least one critical error. In all participating pharmacies, inhaler technique is mainly checked on patient request (93.0%) and for all new inhalers (79.0%).

No abstract

The originally published version of this paper incorrectly listed an author's name as Sonja Gruen. It should instead be Sonja Grün. This has been corrected on the publisher's website.