Hasil untuk "Neurophysiology and neuropsychology"

Tananun Songdechakraiwut, Michael Lutz

We explore a lightweight framework that adapts frozen large language models to analyze longitudinal clinical data. The approach integrates patient history and context within the language model space to generate accurate forecasts without model fine-tuning. Applied to neuropsychological assessments, it achieves accurate and reliable performance even with minimal training data, showing promise for early-stage Alzheimer's monitoring.

Kirill Vishniakov, Boulbaba Ben Amor, Engin Tekin et al.

We introduce Gene42, a novel family of Genomic Foundation Models (GFMs) designed to manage context lengths of up to 192,000 base pairs (bp) at a single-nucleotide resolution. Gene42 models utilize a decoder-only (LLaMA-style) architecture with a dense self-attention mechanism. Initially trained on fixed-length sequences of 4,096 bp, our models underwent continuous pretraining to extend the context length to 192,000 bp. This iterative extension allowed for the comprehensive processing of large-scale genomic data and the capture of intricate patterns and dependencies within the human genome. Gene42 is the first dense attention model capable of handling such extensive long context lengths in genomics, challenging state-space models that often rely on convolutional operators among other mechanisms. Our pretrained models exhibit notably low perplexity values and high reconstruction accuracy, highlighting their strong ability to model genomic data. Extensive experiments on various genomic benchmarks have demonstrated state-of-the-art performance across multiple tasks, including biotype classification, regulatory region identification, chromatin profiling prediction, variant pathogenicity prediction, and species classification. The models are publicly available at huggingface.co/inceptionai.

Xinzhi Zhang, Leslie A Hulvershorn, Todd Constable et al.

We investigate whether and how we can improve the cost efficiency of neuroimaging studies with well-tailored fMRI tasks. The comparative study is conducted using a novel network science-driven Bayesian connectome-based predictive method, which incorporates network theories in model building and substantially improves precision and robustness in imaging biomarker detection. The robustness of the method lays the foundation for identifying predictive power differential across fMRI task conditions if such difference exists. When applied to a clinically heterogeneous transdiagnostic cohort, we found shared and distinct functional fingerprints of neuropsychological outcomes across seven fMRI conditions. For example, emotional N-back memory task was found to be less optimal for negative emotion outcomes, and gradual-onset continuous performance task was found to have stronger links with sensitivity and sociability outcomes than with cognitive control outcomes. Together, our results show that there are unique optimal pairings of task-based fMRI conditions and neuropsychological outcomes that should not be ignored when designing well-powered neuroimaging studies.

Wang Q, Huang G, Wang R et al.

Qian Wang,1,2,&ast; Guimin Huang,3,&ast; Ruikun Wang,4 Zhilong Cao,5 Jieqiong Liang,1 Mengyao Li,1 Qinglong Gu1,2 1Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Capital Institute of Pediatrics, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 2Graduate School of Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 3Child Health Big Data Research Center, Capital Institute of Pediatrics, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 4Capital Institute of Pediatrics-Peking University Teaching Hospital, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 5School of Software, Beihang University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China&ast;These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Qinglong Gu, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Capital Institute of Pediatrics, No. 2 Yabao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100020, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86-13146836613, Email gql71@163.comPurpose: This study investigates the prevalence, risk factors, and clinical characteristics of positional obstructive sleep apnea (POSA) among pediatric patients diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).Patients and Methods: A total of 1,236 children aged 0 to 17 years who underwent nocturnal polysomnography (PSG) and completed the Sleep Questionnaire were included. After excluding those with an AHI < 1, neurological or muscular disorders, or insufficient sleep time in specific positions, 908 patients remained: 158 with POSA and 750 with non-positional OSA (NPOSA). Propensity score matching (PSM) was applied at a 1:2 ratio, resulting in a final sample of 153 POSA and 306 NPOSA patients. Data analyses were performed using R software (version 4.2.3).Results: The prevalence of POSA was 12.8%. After PSM, patients with POSA had a lower overall AHI (8.66 vs 10.30), REM-AHI (14.30 vs 17.40), and NREM-AHI (7.43 vs 8.77) compared to those with NPOSA. POSA patients also had a shorter total sleep time (411 vs 427 minutes), spent less time in the supine position (168 vs 225 minutes), and more time in non-supine positions (241 vs 202 minutes) than NPOSA patients. Additionally, while the supine AHI was higher in POSA patients (15.60 vs 10.30), the non-supine AHI was lower (5.00 vs 11.00) compared to NPOSA patients. The minimum oxygen saturation was slightly higher in POSA patients (0.88 vs 0.87). All differences were statistically significant (P < 0.05). Risk factors for POSA included mild OSA, allergic rhinitis, non-allergic rhinitis, and obesity.Conclusion: The prevalence of POSA in children is lower than in adults, and its severity is less than that of NPOSA. Compared to NPOSA patients, POSA patients had significantly higher AHI during supine sleep and lower AHI during non-supine sleep. POSA patients also spent more time in non-supine positions, suggesting that avoiding supine sleep may help reduce apnea events. These findings highlight the importance of monitoring and managing sleep posture in POSA patients.Keywords: obstructive sleep apnea, pediatric patients, risk factors, polysomnography, sleep position, sleep-disordered breathing

BaHammam AS, Jahrami H

Ahmed S BaHammam,1,2 Haitham Jahrami3,4 1The University Sleep Disorders Center, Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; 2King Saud University Medical City, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; 3Department of Psychiatry, Government Hospitals, Manama, Bahrain; 4Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine and Medical Sciences, Arabian Gulf University, Manama, BahrainCorrespondence: Ahmed S BaHammam, Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, University Sleep Disorders Center, King Saud University, Box 225503, Riyadh, 11324, Saudi Arabia, Tel +966-11-467-9495, Fax +966-11-467-9179, Email ashammam2@gmail.comAbstract: Mendelian randomization (MR) has become an influential method for elucidating causal links between sleep traits and disorders, and health outcomes. This article provides sleep medicine specialists with an overview of MR, emphasizing its applications and limitations in health research, particularly in the context of sleep research. The article addresses key challenges in conducting and interpreting MR studies on sleep, focusing on the core assumptions of relevance, exchangeability, and exclusion restriction. The importance of proper genetic instrument selection, bias mitigation, and cautious result interpretation is emphasized. Strategies are recommended to enhance the quality of MR studies in sleep medicine, including collaborations between MR experts and sleep specialists. The paper also explores sleep medicine-specific issues like analyzing binary traits and addressing heterogeneity in pooled analyses. Guidance is provided on transparent reporting of MR findings, stressing the need for comprehensive effect estimates, confidence intervals, and p-values. We conclude by advocating for rigorous MR implementation in sleep research to deepen our understanding of sleep-health relationships. By following best practices in study design, analysis, and reporting, researchers can reinforce the credibility and impact of MR findings in sleep medicine, ultimately improving patient care and public health strategies.Keywords: causal inference, genetic epidemiology, pleiotropy, GWAS, sleep disorders

Rei Enokiya, Hidetoshi Sano, Miroslav D. Filipovic et al.

The youngest known Galactic supernova remnant (SNR) G1.9+0.3 has high-velocity supernova shock beyond 10000 km s-1, and it is considered to be one of the major candidates of a PeVatron. Despite these outstanding properties, the surrounding interstellar matter of this object is poorly understood. We investigated the interstellar gas toward G1.9+0.3 using the 12CO(J=3-2) data with the angular resolution of 15" obtained by the CHIMPS2 survey by the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, and discovered three individual clouds at -1, 7, and 45 km s-1. From its morphological and velocity structures, the -1 km s-1 cloud, having the largest velocity width >20 km s-1 and located at the distance of the Galactic Center, is possibly associated with the SNR. The associated cloud shows a cavity structure both in space and velocity and coincides well with the SNR. We found that the associated cloud has higher column densities toward three bright, radio synchrotron-emitted rims where the radial expansion velocity of the supernova shock is decelerated, and the cloud is faint in the other parts of the SNR. This is the first direct evidence indicating that the highly anisotropic expansion of G1.9+0.3 observed by previous studies results from the deceleration by the interaction between the supernova shock and surrounding dense interstellar medium.

Christina Starmans, Ori Friedman

Gin S. Malhi, Maedeh Jadidi, Erica Bell

Pooja Saini, Jennifer Chopra, Claire Hanlon et al.

To investigate the outcomes of men using a community-based suicide prevention service before and during COVID-19 and to understand experiences of therapists for the rapid adaptation and delivery of the service throughout the pandemic. A mixed-methods approach using quantitative and qualitative data to assess the delivery of the intervention before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The CORE-34 and CORE-10 Clinical Outcome Measures (CORE-OM) were used pre and post intervention to measure clinical change in psychological distress for the men engaged with the service. Six therapist interviews were used to supplement this data for the purposes of understanding the delivery of the service remotely during the pandemic. Data was collected between 1 August 2018 and 1 November 2021 (n = 1115). Interview data were conducted between March and May 2021. Across the cohort, for men who received therapy before (n = 450) or during the pandemic (n = 665), there was a statistically significant reduction in mean psychological distress scores between assessment and end of treatment (p < 0.001). Therapists adapted to delivering the hybrid model and discussed the barriers and facilitators to working this way. This study highlighted the effectiveness of the James’ Place suicide prevention model in saving lives and managing to adapt during a global pandemic.

J. M. de Carvalho Ferreira, J. F. Gomes, G. V. Lobo and. A. H. Zimerman

The construction of Miura and Bäcklund transformations for $A_n$ mKdV and KdV hierarchies are presented in terms of gauge transformations acting upon the zero curvature representation. As in the well known $sl(2)$ case, we derive and relate the equations of motion for the two hierarchies. Moreover, the Miura-gauge transformation is not unique, instead, it is shown to be connected to a set of generators labeled by the exponents of $A_n$ The construction of generalized gauge-Bäcklund transformation for the $A_n$-KdV hierarchy is obtained as a composition of Miura and Bäcklund-gauge transformations for $A_n$-mKdV hierarchy. The zero curvature representation provide a framework which is universal within all flows and generate systematically Bäcklund transformations for the entirely hierarchy.

Sihyeong Park, Haroon Majoka, Ajaz Sheikh et al.

Previously seizures have been reported as presenting neurological manifestation with COVID-19 infection. There is a growing literature on the delayed neurologic effects of COVID-19 infection. Here, we report a case with insidious onset of focal impaired awareness seizures associated with left temporal epileptiform interictal and ictal discharges consistent with focal epilepsy; occurring within a short time frame of the diagnosis of COVID-19 infection. This may be possibly a post COVID-19 inflammatory syndrome manifesting as new onset focal epilepsy with focal non-motor seizures with impaired awareness. As implicated by presentation with seizure as in our case, longterm follow-up studies are warranted to further investigate if the patients who acquire COVID-19 infection are at increased risk of developing epilepsy as a delayed manifestation.

Saturnino Luz, Fasih Haider, Sofia de la Fuente et al.

The ADReSS Challenge at INTERSPEECH 2020 defines a shared task through which different approaches to the automated recognition of Alzheimer's dementia based on spontaneous speech can be compared. ADReSS provides researchers with a benchmark speech dataset which has been acoustically pre-processed and balanced in terms of age and gender, defining two cognitive assessment tasks, namely: the Alzheimer's speech classification task and the neuropsychological score regression task. In the Alzheimer's speech classification task, ADReSS challenge participants create models for classifying speech as dementia or healthy control speech. In the the neuropsychological score regression task, participants create models to predict mini-mental state examination scores. This paper describes the ADReSS Challenge in detail and presents a baseline for both tasks, including feature extraction procedures and results for classification and regression models. ADReSS aims to provide the speech and language Alzheimer's research community with a platform for comprehensive methodological comparisons. This will hopefully contribute to addressing the lack of standardisation that currently affects the field and shed light on avenues for future research and clinical applicability.

Yue Zhou, Yu Cong, Huan Liu

Abstract Background Depression is characterized by significant and low mood. Classical antidepressants are still not adequate in treating depression because of undesirable side effects. Folic acid, a member of the vitamin B complex, in considered to be strongly associated with the function and development of the central nervous system. Thus, in this study, we established a model of depression through chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) in rats and assessed the antidepressant effects and mechanisms of folic acid. Methods Sprague–Dawley rats were randomly divided into four groups: control, chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS), CUMS treated with folic acid, and CUMS treated with citalopram. Rats were assessed in terms of weight change, open-field test and sucrose preference. Homocysteine, monoamine neurotransmitters, interleukin-6, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), β-endorphin levels in the serum and brains of rats were analysed. Results Folic acid exhibited antidepressant-like effects in open-field and sucrose preference tests. Folic acid treatment effectively increased the levels of monoamine neurotransmitters, BDNF and β-endorphin, interleukin-6 and homocysteine levels were also significantly suppressed by folic acid administration. Conclusions These findings serve as preclinical evidence that folic acid plays an antidepressant-like role in several pathways involving monoamine neurotransmitters. Thus, folic acid may be used as a potential antidepressant.

Ioan Stroescu, Brandon Baughman

Jiahang Shao, Mitchell Schneider, Gongxiaohui Chen et al.

Planar nitrogen-incorporated ultrananocrystalline diamond, (N)UNCD, has emerged as a unique field emission source attractive for accelerator applications because of its capability to generate high charge beam and handle moderate vacuum conditions. Most importantly, (N)UNCD sources are simple to produce: conventional high aspect ratio isolated emitters are not required to be formed on the surface, and the actual emitter surface roughness is on the order of only 100~nm. Careful reliability assessment of (N)UNCD is required before it may find routine application in accelerator systems. In the present study using an L-band normal conducting single-cell rf gun, a (N)UNCD cathode has been conditioned to $\sim$42~MV/m in a well-controlled manner. It reached a maximum output charge of 15~nC corresponding to an average current of 6~mA during an emission period of 2.5~$μ$s. Imaging of emission current revealed a large number of isolated emitters (density over 100/cm$^{2}$) distributed on the cathode, which is consistent with previous tests in dc environments. The performance metrics, the emission imaging, and the systematic study of emission properties during rf conditioning in a wide gradient range assert (N)UNCD as an enabling electron source for rf injector designs serving industrial and scientific applications. These studies also improve the fundamental knowledge of the practical conditioning procedure via better understanding of emission mechanisms.

Carissa J. Cascio, David Moore, Francis McGlone

Social touch is a powerful force in human development, shaping social reward, attachment, cognitive, communication, and emotional regulation from infancy and throughout life. In this review, we consider the question of how social touch is defined from both bottom-up and top-down perspectives. In the former category, there is a clear role for the C-touch (CT) system, which constitutes a unique submodality that mediates affective touch and contrasts with discriminative touch. Top-down factors such as culture, personal relationships, setting, gender, and other contextual influences are also important in defining and interpreting social touch. The critical role of social touch throughout the lifespan is considered, with special attention to infancy and young childhood, a time during which social touch and its neural, behavioral, and physiological contingencies contribute to reinforcement-based learning and impact a variety of developmental trajectories. Finally, the role of social touch in an example of disordered development –autism spectrum disorder—is reviewed. Keywords: Touch, Tactile, Social, Development, Affective, Discriminative, Autism, CT afferents

Lizbett Flores-García, Michael B. Lensing, Trond N. Bjerke et al.

There is limited research on the perceptions of substance use (SU) and treatment goals among patients with substance use disorders (SUD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We investigate whether SU perceptions and treatment goals were different among SUD patients with (SUD+ADHD) and without (SUD-ADHD) ADHD. Twelve SUD+ADHD patients (39.5 ± 8.5 years, 10 men), and 10 age- and substance severity matched SUD-ADHD patients (34.0 ± 10.0 years, six men), consecutively recruited between February 2010 and July 2012 were interviewed during the course of their SUD treatment. Interview data were analyzed using content analysis. The perceived positive aspects of SU were self-regulation of physical health, behavior, feelings, reasoning/thoughts, and the rewarding effects. The perceived negative aspects of SU included consequences on physical health, behavior, feelings, and reasoning/thoughts. SUD+ADHD patients less frequently linked SU to physical health and more frequently perceived SU as helpful to self-regulate their behavior. Four treatment goals categories emerged: total abstinence, conditional abstinence, substance reduction, and unspecified. SUD+ADHD patents less frequently chose total abstinence, and when using more than one substance, they commonly chose variable goals. In contrast, SUD-ADHD patients chose more similar goals. SUD+ADHD patients showed a more complex relation to their SUD than SUD-ADHD patients.

Elke Kirschbaum, Manuel Haußmann, Steffen Wolf et al.

Neuronal assemblies, loosely defined as subsets of neurons with reoccurring spatio-temporally coordinated activation patterns, or "motifs", are thought to be building blocks of neural representations and information processing. We here propose LeMoNADe, a new exploratory data analysis method that facilitates hunting for motifs in calcium imaging videos, the dominant microscopic functional imaging modality in neurophysiology. Our nonparametric method extracts motifs directly from videos, bypassing the difficult intermediate step of spike extraction. Our technique augments variational autoencoders with a discrete stochastic node, and we show in detail how a differentiable reparametrization and relaxation can be used. An evaluation on simulated data, with available ground truth, reveals excellent quantitative performance. In real video data acquired from brain slices, with no ground truth available, LeMoNADe uncovers nontrivial candidate motifs that can help generate hypotheses for more focused biological investigations.

Mansor Bayrami, Toraj Hashemi Nosratabad, Mariam Atabati

Aim and Background: Working Memory (WM) has attracted the attention of experimental psychologists and neurologists. Those who pay attention to how people argue, solve problems, pursue their goals, make decisions and achieve cognitive control. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the subtle memory by means of words. In this regard, this research is an attempt to gather evidence of the speed of response in facilitating tasks and inhibition tasks. Methods and Materials: The present study is a descriptive-correlational study. The statistical population of the study was all young and middle-aged people with a minimum age of 20 years without any history of mental and neurological disorders. In this research, 30 people were selected through targeted sampling. The facilitator's homework included the first pair of pseudo-word targets. The term inhibition was also indicated by two words in terms of meaning unrelated to the distance of 150 milliseconds. In fact, the response rate was evaluated in a semantic test based on the characteristics of these two assignments. The mean value in two assignments was compared using t- paired t-test. Findings: The results indicated that the mean response rate to goals in the facilitated task was 4592.7± 480.9 millisecond more than the inhibition task (p<0.0001). Conclusions: It seems that target memory representations by the first neutralization of the target memory representations are unrelated to the first one.

Mushfiquddin Khan, Tajinder S. Dhammu, Inderjit Singh et al.

Abstract Background Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the leading causes of disability and chronic pain. In SCI-induced pathology, homeostasis of the nitric oxide (NO) metabolome is lost. Major NO metabolites such as S-nitrosoglutathione (GSNO) and peroxynitrite are reported to play pivotal roles in regulating the activities of key cysteine proteases, calpains. While peroxynitrite (a metabolite of NO and superoxide) up regulates the activities of calpains leading to neurodegeneration, GSNO (a metabolite of NO and glutathione) down regulates the activities of calpains leading to neuroprotection. In this study, effect of GSNO on locomotor function and pain threshold and their relationship with the levels of peroxynitrite and the activity of calpain in the injured spinal cord were investigated using a 2-week rat model of contusion SCI. Results SCI animals were initially treated with GSNO at 2 h after the injury followed by a once daily dose of GSNO for 14 days. Locomotor function was evaluated by “Basso Beattie and Bresnahan (BBB) locomotor rating scale” and pain by mechanical allodynia. Peroxynitrite level, as expression of 3-nitrotyrosine (3-NT), calpain activity, as the degradation products of calpain substrate alpha II spectrin, and nNOS activity, as the expression phospho nNOS, were measured by western blot analysis. Treatment with GSNO improved locomotor function and mitigated pain. The treatment also reduced the levels of peroxynitrite (3-NT) and decreased activity of calpains. Reduced levels of peroxynitrite resulted from the GSNO-mediated inhibition of aberrant activity of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS). Conclusions The data indicates that higher levels of 3-NT and aberrant activities of nNOS and calpains correlated with SCI pathology and functional deficits. Treatment with GSNO improved locomotor function and mitigated mechanical allodynia acutely post-injury. Because GSNO shows potential to ameliorate experimental SCI, we discuss implications for GSNO therapy in clinical SCI research.