Notes

Developing Lewis/Brønsted chemical p components associated with MOF nodes by way of hydrothermal along with solvothermal combination: basic strategy with excellent catalytic significance.
Gait analysis involving cognitive-motor dual task (DT) is a diagnostic tool in geriatrics. Cognitive-motor interference effects during DT, such as decreased walking speed and increased step-to-step variability, have a high predictive value for fall risk and cognitive decline. Previously we showed the feasibility of DT during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using an MRI-compatible stepping device. Here, we improved the DT-fMRI protocol with respect to task difficulty and signal robustness, making it more suitable for individualized analysis to better understand the neuronal substrates of cognitive-motor interference effects. Thirty healthy elderly subjects performed cognitive and motor single tasks (ST; stepping or finger tapping), as well as combined cognitive-motor DT during fMRI. After whole brain group level analysis, a region-of-interest (ROI) analysis and the computation of dual task costs (DTC = activation difference ratio ST/DT) at individual level were performed. Activations in the primary (M1) and secondary motor as well as in parietal and prefrontal cortex were measured at the group level during DT. Motor areas showed decreased activation whereas parietal and prefrontal areas showed increased activation in DT vs. ST. Stepping yielded more distinctive activations in DT vs. ST than finger tapping. At the individual level, the most robust activations (based on occurrence probability and signal strength) were measured in the stepping condition, in M1, supplementary motor area (SMA) and superior parietal lobule/intraparietal sulcus (SPL/IPS). The distribution of individual DTC in SPL/IPS during stepping suggested a separation of subjects in groups with high vs. low DTC. This study proposes an improved cognitive-motor DT-fMRI protocol and a standardized analysis routine of functional neuronal markers for cognitive-motor interference at the individual level.Increases in depressive and suicide-related symptoms among United States adolescents have been recently linked to increased use of smartphones. Understanding of the brain mechanisms that underlie the potential smartphone dependence may help develop interventions to address this important problem. In this exploratory study, we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying potential smartphone dependence in a sample of 19 adolescent volunteers who completed self-assessments of their smartphone dependence, depressive symptoms, and sleep problems. All 19 adolescents underwent diffusion MRI that allowed for assessment of white matter structural connectivity within the framework of connectomics. Based on previous literature on the neurobiology of addiction, we hypothesized a disruption of network centrality of three nodes in the mesolimbic network Nucleus Accumbens, anterior cingulate cortex, and amygdala. Selleckchem compound 3k Our results showed positive correlations between the node centrality of the right amygdala and self-reported smartphone dependence, between smartphone dependence and sleep problems, and between sleep problems and depressive symptoms. A higher phone dependence was observed in females compared to males. link2 Supported by these results, we propose a model of how smartphone dependence can be linked to aberrations in brain networks, sex, sleep disturbances, and depression in adolescents.We have previously shown invasive vagus nerve stimulation to improve attention and working memory and alter emotion-attention interaction in patients with refractory epilepsy, suggesting that VNS might be useful in the treatment of cognitive impairment. The current research focuses on whether non-invasive, transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) has similar effects to VNS. Furthermore, we aimed to assess whether tVNS has an impact on cognitive control in general or on underlying brain physiology in a task that mimics everyday life demands where multiple executive functions are engaged while encountering intervening emotional stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERP) evoked in such a task, specifically centro-parietal P3 and frontal N2 were used as biomarkers for attention allocation and cognitive control required to carry out the task. A single-blinded, sham-controlled, within-subject study on healthy subjects (n = 25) was conducted using Executive Reaction Time Test (RT-test), a Go/NoGo task engaging multial along with unaltered task performance during tVNS suggests fewer cognitive control resources were required to successfully withhold a prepotent response. Though caution is warranted, we suggest that tVNS may lead to more efficient neural processing with fewer resources needed for successful cognitive control, providing promise for its potential use in cognitive enhancement.It has long been hypothesized that pretend play is beneficial to social and cognitive development. However, there is little evidence regarding the neural regions that are active while children engage in pretend play. We examined the activation of prefrontal and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) regions using near-infrared spectroscopy while 42 4- to 8-year-old children freely played with dolls or tablet games with a social partner or by themselves. Social play activated right prefrontal regions more than solo play. Children engaged the pSTS during solo doll play but not during solo tablet play, suggesting they were rehearsing social cognitive skills more with dolls. These findings suggest social play utilizes multiple neural regions and highlight how doll play can achieve similar patterns of activation, even when children play by themselves. Doll play may provide a unique opportunity for children to practice social interactions important for developing social-emotional skills, such as empathy.This paper addresses how impairments in prediction in young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) relate to their behavior during collaboration. To assess it, we developed a task where participants play in collaboration with a synthetic agent to maximize their score. The agent's behavior changes during the different phases of the game, requiring participants to model the agent's sensorimotor contingencies to play collaboratively. Our results (n = 30, 15 per group) show differences between autistic and neurotypical individuals in their behavioral adaptation to the other partner. Contrarily, there are no differences in the self-reports of that collaboration.The attended speech stream can be detected robustly, even in adverse auditory scenarios with auditory attentional modulation, and can be decoded using electroencephalographic (EEG) data. Speech segmentation based on the relative root-mean-square (RMS) intensity can be used to estimate segmental contributions to perception in noisy conditions. link3 High-RMS-level segments contain crucial information for speech perception. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the effect of high-RMS-level speech segments on auditory attention decoding performance under various signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions. Scalp EEG signals were recorded when subjects listened to the attended speech stream in the mixed speech narrated concurrently by two Mandarin speakers. The temporal response function was used to identify the attended speech from EEG responses of tracking to the temporal envelopes of intact speech and high-RMS-level speech segments alone, respectively. Auditory decoding performance was then analyzed under various SNR conditions by comparing EEG correlations to the attended and ignored speech streams. The accuracy of auditory attention decoding based on the temporal envelope with high-RMS-level speech segments was not inferior to that based on the temporal envelope of intact speech. Cortical activity correlated more strongly with attended than with ignored speech under different SNR conditions. These results suggest that EEG recordings corresponding to high-RMS-level speech segments carry crucial information for the identification and tracking of attended speech in the presence of background noise. This study also showed that with the modulation of auditory attention, attended speech can be decoded more robustly from neural activity than from behavioral measures under a wide range of SNR.Fast, online control of movement is an essential component of human motor skills, as it allows automatic correction of inaccurate planning. The present study explores the role of two types of concurrent signals in error correction predicted visual reafferences coming from an internal representation of the hand, and actual visual feedback from the hand. While the role of sensory feedback in these corrections is well-established, much less is known about sensory prediction. The relative contributions of these two types of signals remain a subject of debate, as they are naturally interconnected. We address the issue in a study that compares online correction of an artificially induced, undetected planning error. Two conditions are tested, which only differ with respect to the accuracy of predicted visual reafferences. In the first, "Prism" experiment, a planning error is introduced by prisms that laterally displace the seen hand prior to hand movement onset. The prism-induced conflict between visual and proprioce same visual feedback was less efficient, and required voluntary, and late, control. Our study clearly demonstrates that in natural environments, reliable prediction is critical in the preprocessing of visual feedback, for fast and accurate movement.Early detection and evaluation of cognitive alteration in chronic liver disease is important for predicting the subsequent development of hepatic encephalopathy. While visuomotor tasks have been rigorously employed for cognitive evaluation in chronic liver disease, there is a paucity of auditory processing task. Here we focused on auditory perception and examined behavioral and haemodynamic responses to a melodic contour identification task (CIT) to compare cognitive abilities in patients with chronic liver disease (CLD, N = 30) and healthy controls (N = 25). Further, we used support vector machines to examine the optimal combination of channels of functional near-infrared spectroscopy that can classify cognitive alterations in CLD. Behavioral findings showed that CIT performance was significantly worse in the patient group and CIT significantly correlated with neurocognitive evaluation (i.e., number connection test, digit span test). The findings indicated that CIT can measure auditory cognitive capacity and its difference existing between patient group and healthy controls. Additionally, optimal subsets classified the 16-dimensional haemodynamic data with 78.35% classification accuracy, yielding markers of cognitive alterations in the prefrontal regions (CH6, CH7, CH10, CH13, CH14, and CH16). The results confirmed the potential use of behavioral as well as haemodynamic responses to music perception as an alternative or supplementary method for evaluating cognitive alterations in chronic liver disease.Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are impaired not only in social competencies but also in sensory perception, particularly olfaction. The olfactory ability of individuals with ASD has been examined in several psychophysical studies, but the results have been highly variable, which might be primarily due to methodological difficulties in the control of odor stimuli (e.g., the problem of lingering scents). In addition, the neural correlates of olfactory specificities in individuals with ASD remain largely unknown. To date, only one study has investigated this issue using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The present study utilized a sophisticated method-a pulse ejection system-to present well-controlled odor stimuli to participants with ASD using an ASD-friendly application. With this advantageous system, we examined their odor detection, identification, and evaluation abilities and measured their brain activity evoked by odors using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). As the odor detection threshold (DT) of participants with ASD was highly variable, these participants were divided into two groups according to their DT an ASD-Low DT group and an ASD-High DT group.
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