Hasil untuk "Neurophysiology and neuropsychology"

Peng M, Zhang Y, Zhao R et al.

MaoHuan Peng,1,* YuanYuan Zhang,2,* Rui Zhao,3 Jing Li,1 XueLi Zhang,1 LiHua Deng,4 Long Zhao,1 Bing Zhou,1 XinRu Wang,1 XiaoSong Dong,1 Fang Han1 1Department of Sleep Medicine, Peking University People’s Hospital, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of General Practice, Peking University People’s Hospital, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Peking University People’s Hospital, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Geriatrics, Peking University People’s Hospital, Beijing, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: XiaoSong Dong, Department of Sleep Medicine, Peking University People’s Hospital, Beijing, 100044, People’s Republic of China, 100044, Email dongxiaosong@pkuph.edu.cnObjective: To validate the performance of a single-belt type 3 portable monitor Alice NightOne for diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea and its reliability in remote data transmission.Methods: Our study included two parts: in-laboratory Alice NightOne (ANO) monitoring (ANOlab) and home sleep apnea testing (HSAT) using ANO (ANOhome). For ANOlab, the participants underwent polysomnography (PSG) with ANOlab simultaneously. For ANOhome, the participants completed unattended overnight ANOhome out of sleep center and PSG was performed in another night. The ANO recordings were transmitted to cloud database wirelessly in addition to traditional wire transmission. Message digest-5 (MD5) algorithm was utilized to verify the integrity of the cloud data.Results: Ninety-one ANOlab and 170 ANOhome recordings were analyzed. Both the respiratory event index (REI) on ANOlab and that on ANOhome were lower than the corresponding apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) on PSG (24.9 ± 20.5 events/h vs 31.6 ± 25.0 events/h, and 26.7 ± 17.0 events/h vs 35.3 ± 21.2 events/h respectively, P < 0.001). Bland-Altman analysis of REI on ANOlab versus AHI on PSG showed a mean difference (95% confidence interval) of − 6.7 (− 8.4, − 4.9) events/h. For REI on ANOhome versus AHI on PSG, the difference is − 8.0 (− 9.9, − 6.0) events/h. With threshold of REI ≥ 5 events/h for OSA diagnosis, ANOhome had 98.8% sensitivity, 90.0% specificity, 99.4% positive predictive value. The MD5 algorithm verified the identity between uploaded cloud data and original data.Conclusion: With single thoracoabdominal belt, Alice NightOne can help diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea with good sensitivity and specificity, though it may underestimate AHI. Furthermore, it provides reliable support based on solid data teletransmission and scoring synchronization, which may increase the ability of diagnosis and management of OSA through telemedicine.Keywords: home sleep apnea testing, portable monitor, obstructive sleep apnea, telemedicine

Wang YP, Wei HX, Hu YY et al.

Yu-Pei Wang,1,* Hui-Xia Wei,2,* Yuan-Yuan Hu,3 Chao Zhang,4 Yu-Ming Niu3– 5 1Department of Stomatology, Taihe Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, Hubei, 442000, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Anesthesiology, Taihe Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, 442000, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Stomatology, Gongli Hospital of Shanghai Pudong New Area, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 4Center for Evidence-Based Medicine and Clinical Research, Taihe Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, Hubei, 442000, People’s Republic of China; 5Hubei Key Laboratory of Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Hubei Provincial Clinical Research Center for Umbilical Cord Blood Hematopoietic Stem Cells, Taihe Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, Hubei, 442000, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Yu-Ming Niu, Department of Stomatology, Gongli Hospital of Shanghai Pudong New Area, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86 13581370999, Email niuyuming@yeah.net Chao Zhang, Center for Evidence-Based Medicine and Clinical Research, Taihe Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, Hubei, 442000, People’s Republic of China, Email zhangchao0803@126.comObjective: Patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) frequently suffer from migraine, however the causal relationship between OSA and migraine is unknown. Investigating the causation will assist in understanding the etiology of OSA and migraine.Methods: Bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) and multivariable MR (MVMR) approaches were carried out to investigate the causal link between OSA and migraine. The public genome-wide association study (GWAS) data for OSA, migraine, and subtypes were obtained from the IUE open GWAS project and the FinnGen consortium. To investigate the causal links between OSA and migraine, inverse variance weighted (IVW) analysis was used in conjunction with four additional statistical approaches. Furthermore, sensitivity studies were performed using heterogeneity and pleiotropy tests to assess the estimation’s robustness.Results: In general, our findings suggested that the OSA is causally associated with migraine with aura (MA, IVW: OR = 1.147; 95% CI = 1.016– 1.295; P = 0.026), which was confirmed with the MVMR analysis further (OR =  1.184, 95% CI = 1.028– 1.364, P =  0.020). In addition, increased risk of migraine and migraine without aura on OSA occurrence were identified in the reverse analysis, but these results were subsequently negated with MVMR analysis.Conclusion: According to the current findings, there was a preliminary causal effect of OSA on MA among European descendants.Clinical Relevance: These findings suggest a potential causal effect of OSA on migraine and provide new insights to prevent and manage the two disorders.Keywords: obstructive sleep apnea, migraine, Mendelian randomization, causal effect

Yuya Iijima, Taisuke Katsuragawa, Hironori Shimada

Specific cognitions and functions are among the primary factors that influence the maintenance of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI). However, the interaction between NSSI-specific cognitions and functions remains unclear. This study aimed to reveal the moderating effect of NSSI functions on the relationship between NSSI-specific cognitions and the maintenance of NSSI. Cross-sectional data available for analyses were obtained from 912 emerging adults. Participants completed self-reported measures of NSSI history, NSSI-specific cognitions, and its functions. We assessed models’ ability to predict 1) the presence of past and recent NSSI, 2) the maintenance of NSSI. 1) A multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that several factors of NSSI-specific cognition were associated with greater odds of the presence of past and recent NSSI. 2) A binary logistic regression analysis revealed that the interactions between NSSI-specific cognitions and functions were significant. When high intrapersonal function was endorsed, higher obsession with self-injury and lower perceived usefulness of self-injury were associated with greater odds of NSSI maintenance. NSSI-specific cognitions significantly influenced the past and recent NSSI; meanwhile, its influence on the maintenance of NSSI was moderated by function. If individuals endorse its high intrapersonal function, support to enhance understanding of the usefulness of one’s self-injury and reduce obsession with self-injury may be effective toward ceasing NSSI.

N. Zalmay, G. Nune, C.N. Heck et al.

Super-refractory status epilepticus (SRSE) is a life-threatening condition characterized by persistent seizures lasting beyond seven days despite anesthetic therapy. Managing SRSE is challenging, particularly in cases resistant to conventional treatments. This case report presents a 41-year-old female with prolonged SRSE secondary to focal epilepsy, successfully treated with surgical resection, vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), and botulinum toxin (BoNT) therapy. The patient initially presented with left focal motor status epilepticus and a right frontal intracerebral hematoma. Despite an emergency craniotomy, her seizures persisted, leading to prolonged SRSE. After multiple failed sedation weaning attempts, a stepwise intervention approach was implemented consisting of an Electrocorticography (ECoG)-guided surgical resection of the residual epileptic focus, VNS implantation for long-term seizure modulation, BoNT therapy for residual epilepsia partialis continua (EPC). The combined approach of surgical resection and VNS implantation successfully terminated the status epilepticus. Residual Epilepsia Partialis Continua (EPC) was effectively managed with botulinum toxin therapy (BoNT). This case underscores the potential efficacy of combining surgical resection and VNS implantation in treating SRSE and highlights the beneficial effects of BoNT in managing residual EPC, offering a potential treatment pathway for similar refractory cases.

Ross Mandeville, Hooman Sedghamiz, Perry Mansfield et al.

Abstract Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is widespread, under-recognized, and under-treated, impacting the health and quality of life for millions. The current gold standard for sleep apnea testing is based on the in-lab sleep study, which is costly, cumbersome, not readily available and represents a well-known roadblock to managing this huge societal burden. Assessment of neuromuscular function involved in the upper airway using electromyography (EMG) has shown potential to characterize and diagnose sleep apnea, while the development of transmembranous electromyography (tmEMG), a painless surface probe, has made this opportunity practical and highly feasible. However, experience and ability to interpret electrical signals from the upper airway are scarce, and much of the pertinent information within the signal is likely difficult to detect visually. To overcome this issue, we explored the use of transformers, a deep learning (DL) model architecture with attention mechanisms, to model tmEMG data and distinguish between electromyographic signals from a cohort of control, neurogenic, and sleep apnea patients. Our approach involved three strategies to train a generalizable model on a relatively small dataset including, (1) transfer learning using an audio spectral transformer (AST), (2) the use of 6,000 simulated EMG recordings, converted to spectrograms and using standard backpropagation for fine-tuning, and (3) application of regularization to prevent overfitting and enhance generalizability. This DL approach was tested using 177 transoral EMG recordings from a prior study’s database that included six healthy controls, five moderate to severe OSA patients, and five amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients with evidence of bulbar involvement (neurogenic injury). Sensitivity and specificity for classifying neurogenic cases from controls were 98% and 73%, respectively, while classifying OSA from controls were 88% and 64%, respectively. Notably, by averaging the predicted probabilities of each segment for individual patients, the model correctly classified up to 82% of control and OSA patients. These results not only suggest a potential to diagnose OSA patients accurately, but also to identify OSA endotypes that involve neuromuscular pathology, which has major implications for clinical management, patient outcomes, and research.

Anna B. Marcinkowska, Sergiusz Jóźwiak, Agnieszka Sabisz et al.

Introduction: Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a neurocutaneous disease with a high incidence of epilepsy and damaging effects on cognitive development. To understand the mechanisms leading to abnormal cognitive development, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) techniques have begun to be used in recent years. The present study is the first to investigate differences in the microstructure and integrity of white matter tracts in adult patients with TSC and with and without epilepsy. Method: A total of 37 patients with TSC (18 with epilepsy, median age 36 years; 19 without epilepsy, median age 35 years) without intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder were included in the study. The control group (median age 34 years) comprised 37 individuals without psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders and neurological and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, or addictions. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) DTI sequence was applied. Results: There were differences in the average values of DTI parameters between patients with TSC and epilepsy and patients with TSC but without epilepsy in five white matter bands. When comparing the average values of DTI parameters between patients with TSC and epilepsy and healthy controls, we found differences in 15 of 20 analysed white matter fibres. White matter tracts in patients with TSC and epilepsy had more abnormalities than in patients with TSC but without epilepsy. The former group presented abnormalities in longer white matter fibres, especially in the left hemisphere. However, the latter group presented abnormalities in more medial and shorter white matter fibres. Conclusion: This DTI study documents the changes in the brain white matter of patients with TSC associated with the presence of epilepsy.

Yajuan Si, Gretchen Bandoli, Katherine M. Cole et al.

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, a multi-site prospective longitudinal cohort study, will examine human brain, cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional development beginning prenatally and planned through early childhood. The HBCD Study aims to reflect the sociodemographic diversity of pregnant individuals in the U.S. The study will also oversample individuals who use substances during pregnancy and enroll similar individuals who do not use to allow for generalizable inferences of the impact of prenatal substance use on trajectories of child development. Without probability sampling or a randomization-based design, the study requires innovation during enrollment, close monitoring of group differences, and rigorous evaluation of external and internal validity across the enrollment period. In this article, we discuss the HBCD Study recruitment and enrollment data collection processes and potential analytic strategies to account for sources of heterogeneity and potential bias. First, we introduce the adaptive design and enrollment monitoring indices to assess and enhance external and internal validity. Second, we describe the visit schedule for in-person and remote data collection where dyads are randomly assigned to visit windows based on a jittered design to optimize longitudinal trajectory estimation. Lastly, we provide an overview of analytic procedures planned for estimating trajectories.

Zhenlong Li, Chau-Shoun Lee, Si Chen et al.

Light is an underappreciated mood manipulator. People are often exposed to electronic equipment, which results in nocturnal blue light exposure in modern society. Light pollution drastically shortens the night phase of the circadian rhythm. Preclinical and clinical studies have reported that nocturnal light exposure can influence mood, such as depressive-like phenotypes. However, the effects of blue light at night (BLAN) on other moods and how it alters mood remain unclear. Here, we explored the impact of BLAN on stress-provoked aggression in male Sprague‒Dawley rats, focusing on its influence on basolateral amygdala (BLA) activity. Resident-intruder tests, extracellular electrophysiological recordings, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays were performed. The results indicated that BLAN produces stress-induced heightened aggressive and anxiety-like phenotypes. Moreover, BLAN not only potentiates long-term potentiation and long-term depression in the BLA but also results in stress-induced elevation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), mature BDNF, and phosphorylation of tyrosine receptor kinase B expression in the BLA. Intra-BLA microinfusion of BDNF RNAi, BDNF neutralizing antibody, K252a, and rapamycin blocked stress-induced heightened aggressive behavior in BLAN rats. In addition, intra-BLA application of BDNF and 7,8-DHF caused stress-induced heightened aggressive behavior in naïve rats. Collectively, these results suggest that BLAN results in stress-evoked heightened aggressive phenotypes, which may work by enhancing BLA BDNF signaling and synaptic plasticity. This study reveals that nocturnal blue light exposure may have an impact on stress-provoked aggression. Moreover, this study provides novel insights into the BLA BDNF-dependent mechanism underlying the impact of the BLAN on mood.

Julien Modolo, Mengsen Zhang, Joan Duprez et al.

The use of small amplitude electric currents delivered through the scalp, termed transcranial current stimulation (tCS, tDCS / tACS when using DC / AC currents) holds considerable promise for developing safe and effective treatments for central nervous system disorders. Initially welcomed with skepticism due to significant gaps of knowledge in terms of neurophysiology and biophysical mechanisms, tCS is maturing as a technology while its mechanisms of action are gradually being elucidated. However, there remain open questions about the mechanisms of action that warrant clarification to bring tCS to its full potential. In this review focused on tACS, we make an attempt at providing an overview of the converging experimental evidence, from results obtained in various species, regarding the mechanisms of action. We also highlight the remaining points of uncertainty regarding potential confounds, and propose possible experimentally testable solutions to address those issues. Finally, we outline how a continued focus on deepening our understanding of tACS mechanisms might provide significant insights into fundamental, long-standing questions in neuroscience.

Chinoy ED, Cuellar JA, Jameson JT et al.

Evan D Chinoy,1,2 Joseph A Cuellar,1,2 Jason T Jameson,1,2 Rachel R Markwald1 1Sleep, Tactical Efficiency, and Endurance Laboratory, Warfighter Performance Department, Naval Health Research Center, San Diego, CA, USA; 2Leidos, Inc., San Diego, CA, USACorrespondence: Rachel R Markwald, Sleep, Tactical Efficiency, and Endurance Laboratory, Warfighter Performance Department, Naval Health Research Center, 140 Sylvester Road, San Diego, CA, 92106, USA, Tel +1 619 767 4494, Email rachel.r.markwald.civ@mail.milPurpose: Commercial wearable sleep-tracking devices are growing in popularity and in recent studies have performed well against gold standard sleep measurement techniques. However, most studies were conducted in controlled laboratory conditions. We therefore aimed to test the performance of devices under naturalistic unrestricted home sleep conditions.Participants and Methods: Healthy young adults (n = 21; 12 women, 9 men; 29.0 ± 5.0 years, mean ± SD) slept at home under unrestricted conditions for 1 week using a set of commercial wearable sleep-tracking devices and completed daily sleep diaries. Devices included the Fatigue Science Readiband, Fitbit Inspire HR, Oura ring, and Polar Vantage V Titan. Participants also wore a research-grade actigraphy watch (Philips Respironics Actiwatch 2) for comparison. To assess performance, all devices were compared with a high performing mobile sleep electroencephalography headband device (Dreem 2). Analyses included epoch-by-epoch and sleep summary agreement comparisons.Results: Devices accurately tracked sleep-wake summary metrics (ie, time in bed, total sleep time, sleep efficiency, sleep latency, wake after sleep onset) on most nights but performed best on nights with higher sleep efficiency. Epoch-by-epoch sensitivity (for sleep) and specificity (for wake), respectively, were as follows: Actiwatch (0.95, 0.35), Fatigue Science (0.94, 0.40), Fitbit (0.93, 0.45), Oura (0.94, 0.41), and Polar (0.96, 0.35). Sleep stage-tracking performance was mixed, with high variability.Conclusion: As in previous studies, all devices were better at detecting sleep than wake, and most devices compared favorably to actigraphy in wake detection. Devices performed best on nights with more consolidated sleep patterns. Unrestricted sleep TIB differences were accurately tracked on most nights. High variability in sleep stage-tracking performance suggests that these devices, in their current form, are still best utilized for tracking sleep-wake outcomes and not sleep stages. Most commercial wearables exhibited promising performance for tracking sleep-wake in real-world conditions, further supporting their consideration as an alternative to actigraphy.Keywords: validation, actigraphy, mobile EEG, consumer sleep technologies, habitual sleep

Chenxin Xu, Weibo Mao, Wenjun Zhang et al.

To realize trajectory prediction, most previous methods adopt the parameter-based approach, which encodes all the seen past-future instance pairs into model parameters. However, in this way, the model parameters come from all seen instances, which means a huge amount of irrelevant seen instances might also involve in predicting the current situation, disturbing the performance. To provide a more explicit link between the current situation and the seen instances, we imitate the mechanism of retrospective memory in neuropsychology and propose MemoNet, an instance-based approach that predicts the movement intentions of agents by looking for similar scenarios in the training data. In MemoNet, we design a pair of memory banks to explicitly store representative instances in the training set, acting as prefrontal cortex in the neural system, and a trainable memory addresser to adaptively search a current situation with similar instances in the memory bank, acting like basal ganglia. During prediction, MemoNet recalls previous memory by using the memory addresser to index related instances in the memory bank. We further propose a two-step trajectory prediction system, where the first step is to leverage MemoNet to predict the destination and the second step is to fulfill the whole trajectory according to the predicted destinations. Experiments show that the proposed MemoNet improves the FDE by 20.3%/10.2%/28.3% from the previous best method on SDD/ETH-UCY/NBA datasets. Experiments also show that our MemoNet has the ability to trace back to specific instances during prediction, promoting more interpretability.

Girik Malik, Drew Linsley, Thomas Serre et al.

Nearly all models for object tracking with artificial neural networks depend on appearance features extracted from a "backbone" architecture, designed for object recognition. Indeed, significant progress on object tracking has been spurred by introducing backbones that are better able to discriminate objects by their appearance. However, extensive neurophysiology and psychophysics evidence suggests that biological visual systems track objects using both appearance and motion features. Here, we introduce $\textit{PathTracker}$, a visual challenge inspired by cognitive psychology, which tests the ability of observers to learn to track objects solely by their motion. We find that standard 3D-convolutional deep network models struggle to solve this task when clutter is introduced into the generated scenes, or when objects travel long distances. This challenge reveals that tracing the path of object motion is a blind spot of feedforward neural networks. We expect that strategies for appearance-free object tracking from biological vision can inspire solutions these failures of deep neural networks.

Panagiotis Kourtesis, Simona Collina, Leonidas A. A. Doumas et al.

Recent research has focused on assessing either event- or time-based prospective memory (PM) using laboratory tasks. Yet, the findings pertaining to PM performance on laboratory tasks are often inconsistent with the findings on corresponding naturalistic experiments. Ecologically valid neuropsychological tasks resemble the complexity and cognitive demands of everyday tasks, offer an adequate level of experimental control, and allow a generalisation of the findings to everyday performance. The Virtual Reality Everyday Assessment Lab (VR-EAL), an immersive virtual reality neuropsychological battery with enhanced ecological validity, was implemented to comprehensively assess everyday PM (i.e., focal and non-focal event-based, and time-based). The effects of the length of delay between encoding and initiating the PM intention and the type of PM task on everyday PM performance were examined. The results revealed that everyday PM performance was affected by the length of delay rather than the type of PM task. The effect of the length of delay differentially affected performance on the focal, non-focal, and time-based tasks and was proportional to the PM cue focality (i.e., semantic relationship with the intended action). This study also highlighted methodological considerations such as the differentiation between functioning and ability, distinction of cue attributes, and the necessity of ecological validity.

Boyao Zhang, Colin Griesbach, Cora Kim et al.

Boosting methods are widely used in statistical learning to deal with high-dimensional data due to their variable selection feature. However, those methods lack straightforward ways to construct estimators for the precision of the parameters such as variance or confidence interval, which can be achieved by conventional statistical methods like Bayesian inference. In this paper, we propose a new inference method "BayesBoost" that combines boosting and Bayesian for linear mixed models to make the uncertainty estimation for the random effects possible on the one hand. On the other hand, the new method overcomes the shortcomings of Bayesian inference in giving precise and unambiguous guidelines for the selection of covariates by benefiting from boosting techniques. The implementation of Bayesian inference leads to the randomness of model selection criteria like the conditional AIC (cAIC), so we also propose a cAIC-based model selection criteria that focus on the stabilized regions instead of the global minimum. The effectiveness of the new approach can be observed via simulation and in a data example from the field of neurophysiology focussing on the mechanisms in the brain while listening to unpleasant sounds.

Kenney Roy Roodakker, Bisrat Ezra, Helena Gauffin et al.

Ecstatic seizures constitute a rare form of epilepsy, and the semiology is diverse. Previously, brain areas including the temporal lobe and the insula have been identified to be involved in clinical expression. The aim of this report is to review changes in ecstatic seizures in a patient before and after operation of a hypothalamic hamartoma, and to scrutinize the relation to gelastic seizures. In this case, the ecstatic seizures disappeared after surgery of the hamartoma but reappeared eleven years later.Clinical information was retrospectively obtained from medical records, interviews, and a questionnaire covering seizure semiology that pertained to ecstatic and gelastic seizures. Our findings imply a possible connection between gelastic and ecstatic seizures, originating from a hypothalamic hamartoma. To our knowledge, this location has not previously been described in ecstatic seizures. Gelastic seizures may in this case were associated with ecstatic seizures.We speclate patients with ecstatic seizures may have an ictal activation of neuronal networks that involves the insula.Our case may add information to the growing knowledge concerning ecstatic seizures.

Brian Stamm, Atif Sheikh, Stephan Schuele et al.

Lacosamide enhances slow inactivation of voltage-gated sodium channels and can lead to dose-dependent PR interval prolongation. Previously, lacosamide has been associated with second-degree atrioventricular (AV) heart block in the context of multiple medical comorbidities and/or in the elderly with multimorbidity on other dromotropic agents. We report a case of second-degree AV block occurring in a healthy, athletic young adult. The patient had baseline bradycardia with no known cardiac comorbidities. He was exquisitely sensitive to lacosamide with EKG and telemetry changes developing on the order of hours after receiving intravenous lacosamide. Lacosamide was subsequently stopped, the second-degree AV block was no longer present and EKG returned to baseline. We hypothesize that his sensitivity to lacosamide-induced AV block was possibly secondary to his baseline bradycardia with early repolarization changes. The case underscores the importance of surveillance cardiac monitoring. While medical comorbidities and an older age may portend a greater risk of PR prolongation, routine EKGs should be considered in all patients receiving lacosamide.

Georgette Pleisch, Iliana I. Karipidis, Alexandra Brem et al.

The level of reading skills in children and adults is reflected in the strength of preferential neural activation to print. Such preferential activation appears in the N1 event-related potential (ERP) over the occipitotemporal scalp after around 150–250 ms and the corresponding blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal in the ventral occipitotemporal (vOT) cortex. Here, orthography-sensitive (print vs. false font) processing was examined using simultaneous EEG-fMRI in 38 first grade children with poor and typical reading skills, and at varying familial risk for developmental dyslexia. Coarse orthographic sensitivity was observed as an increased activation to print in the N1 ERP and in the BOLD signal of individually varying vOT regions in 57% of beginning readers. Finer differentiation in processing orthographic strings (words vs. nonwords) further occurred in specific vOT clusters. Neither method alone showed robust differences in orthography-sensitive processing between typical and poor reading children. Importantly, using single-trial N1 ERP-informed fMRI analysis, we found differential modulation of the orthography-sensitive BOLD response in the left vOT for typical readers only. This result, thus, confirms subtle functional alterations in a brain structure known to be critical for fluent reading at the very beginning of reading instruction. Keywords: Children, Reading, Simultaneous EEG-fMRI, Visual word form system, Visual N1, EEG-informed fMRI analyses

Scott Marek, Brenden Tervo-Clemmens, Ashley N. Nielsen et al.

The 21-site Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study provides an unparalleled opportunity to characterize functional brain development via resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and to quantify relationships between RSFC and behavior. This multi-site data set includes potentially confounding sources of variance, such as differences between data collection sites and/or scanner manufacturers, in addition to those inherent to RSFC (e.g., head motion). The ABCD project provides a framework for characterizing and reproducing RSFC and RSFC-behavior associations, while quantifying the extent to which sources of variability bias RSFC estimates. We quantified RSFC and functional network architecture in 2,188 9-10-year old children from the ABCD study, segregated into demographically-matched discovery (N = 1,166) and replication datasets (N = 1,022). We found RSFC and network architecture to be highly reproducible across children. We did not observe strong effects of site; however, scanner manufacturer effects were large, reproducible, and followed a “short-to-long” association with distance between regions. Accounting for potential confounding variables, we replicated that RSFC between several higher-order networks was related to general cognition. In sum, we provide a framework for how to characterize RSFC-behavior relationships in a rigorous and reproducible manner using the ABCD dataset and other large multi-site projects. Keywords: ABCD, Resting state fMRI, Functional connectivity, Development, Cognitive ability, Reproducibility

Stacey Teruya

Examining the homeless in U. S. cities as “urban immigrants” reveals several commonalities between this population and “aspirational immigrants”—the foreign-born who seek economic opportunity, and/or freedom from oppression and violence in their home country. These groups are similar in that both have migrated away from their homes and neighborhoods in search of shelter, resources, and presumably some sort of permanent solution to their situation. Both might therefore logically benefit from the Immigrant Health Paradox, which says that the newly-arrived enjoy better health than their native-born or settled counterparts. However, it is difficult to assess and track their health, especially that of the chronically homeless and the undocumented. Reported health advantages also appear to be unevenly distributed by race/ethnicity, gender, age, socioeconomic status, and other factors. In fact, the fundamental reason for any statistical “Paradox” benefit seems to be the initial health and well-being of traditional, foreign-born aspirational immigrants. They are usually young, healthy, and resilient. They have often endured and survived great hardship and challenges in traveling to, and settling in, a foreign country and culture. Analyzing and comparing the homeless and traditional immigrants within the framework of the Immigrant Health Paradox can help us better understand the needs of both, and prioritize the services and assistance we can and should provide to them.

Sarah K. Lageman