Commentary : Donepezil enhances understanding of degraded speech in Alzheimer's disease

Non peer reviewe

3D Monte Carlo radiation transfer modelling of photodynamic therapy

We acknowledge the support of the UK Engineering and Physics Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for funding through a studentship for C L Campbell as well as the Alfred Stewart Trust.The effects of ageing and skin type on Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) for different treatment methods have been theoretically investigated. A multilayered Monte Carlo Radiation Transfer model is presented where both daylight activated PDT and conventional PDT are compared. It was found that light penetrates deeper through older skin with a lighter complexion, which translates into a deeper effective treatment depth. The effect of ageing was found to be larger for darker skin types. The investigation further strengthens the usage of daylight as a potential light source for PDT where effective treatment depths of about 2 mm can be achieved.Publisher PD

Binaural interaction in human auditory brainstem and middle-latency responses affected by sound frequency band, lateralization predictability, and attended modality

The binaural interaction component (BIC) of the auditory evoked potential is the difference between the waveforms of the binaural response and the sum of left and right monaural responses. This investigation examined BICs of the auditory brainstem (ABR) and middle-latency (MLR) responses concerning three objectives: 1) the level of the auditory system at which low-frequency dominance in BIC amplitudes begins when the binaural temporal fine structure is more influential with lower- than higher-frequency content; 2) how BICs vary as a function of frequency and lateralization predictability, as could relate to the improved lateralization of high-frequency sounds; 3) how attention affects BICs. Sixteen right-handed participants were presented with either low-passed ( 2000 Hz) clicks at 30 dB SL with a 38 dB (A) masking noise, at a stimulus onset asynchrony of 180 ms. Further, this repeated-measures design manipulated stimulus presentation (binaural, left monaural, right monaural), lateralization predictability (unpredictable, predictable), and attended modality (either auditory or visual). For the objectives, respectively, the results were: 1) whereas low-frequency dominance in BIC amplitudes began during, and continued after, the Na-BIC, binaural (center) as well as summed monaural (left and right) amplitudes revealed low-frequency dominance only after the Na wave; 2) with a predictable position that was fixed, no BIC exhibited equivalent amplitudes between low- and high-passed clicks; 3) whether clicks were low- or high-passed, selective attention affected the ABR-BIC yet not MLR-BICs. These findings indicate that low-frequency dominance in lateralization begins at the Na latency, being independent of the efferent cortico-collicular pathway's influence.Peer reviewe

Reinterpreting the human ABR binaural interaction component : isolating attention from stimulus effects

Subtracting the sum of left and right monaural auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) from the corresponding binaural ABR isolates the binaural interaction component (ABR-BIC). In a previous investigation (Ikeda, 2015), during auditory yet not visual tasks, tone-pips elicited a significant difference in amplitude between summed monaural and binaural ABRs. With click stimulation, this amplitude difference was task-independent. This self-critical reanalysis's purpose was to establish that a difference waveform (i.e., ABR-BIC DN1) reflected an auditory selective attention effect that was isolable from stimulus factors. Regardless of whether stimuli were tone-pips or clicks, effect sizes of the DN1 peak amplitudes relative to zero improved during auditory tasks over visual tasks. Auditory selective attention effects on the monaural and binaural ABR wave-V amplitudes were tone-pip specific. Those wave-V effects thus could not explain the stimulus-universal effect of auditory selective attention on DN1 detectability, which was thus entirely binaural. In a manner isolated from auditory selective attention, multiple mediation analyses indicated that the higher right monaural wave-V amplitudes mediated individual differences in how clicks, relative to tone-pips, augmented DN1 amplitudes. There are implications of these findings for advancing ABR-BIC measurement.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Corrigendum: Failing to get the gist of what's being said: background noise impairs higher-order cognitive processing.

[This corrects the article on p. 548 in vol. 6, PMID: 26052289.]

The effect of underwater massage during hot water immersion on acute cardiovascular and mood responses

Purpose: There is emerging evidence that demonstrates the health benefits of hot water immersion including improvements to cardiovascular health and reductions in stress and anxiety. Many commercially available hot tubs offer underwater massage systems which purport to enhance many benefits of hot water immersion, however, these claims have yet to be studied. Methods: Twenty participants (4 females) completed three, 30-minute sessions of hot-water immersion (beginning at 39°C) in a crossover randomized design: with air massage (Air Jet), water massage (Hydro Jet) or no massage (Control). Cardiovascular responses comprising; heart rate, blood pressure and superficial femoral artery blood flow and shear rate were measured. State trait anxiety, basic affect, and salivary cortisol were recorded before and after each trial. Data were analysed using a mixed effects model.Results: Post immersion, heart rate increased (Δ31bpm, P &lt; 0.001, d = 1.38), mean arterial blood pressure decreased (Δ16 mmHg, P&lt;0.001, d = −0.66), with no difference between conditions. Blood flow and mean shear rate increased following immersion (P &lt; 0.001, Δ362 ml/min, d = 1.20 and Δ108 s−1, d = 1.00), but these increases were blunted in the Air Jet condition (P &lt; 0.001,Δ171 ml/min, d = 0.43 and Δ52 s−1, d = 0.52). Anxiety and salivary cortisol were reduced (P = 0.003, d = −0.20, P = 0.014, d = −0.11), but did not vary between conditions. Enjoyment did not vary between conditions.Conclusion: These data demonstrate positive acute responses to hot water immersion on markers of cardiovascular function, anxiety, and stress. There was no additional benefit of water-based massage, while air-basedmassage blunted some positive vascular responses due to lower heat conservation of the water. <br/

Gluon fusion contribution to W+W- + jet production

We describe the computation of the $gg \to W^+W^-g$ process that contributes to the production of two $W$-bosons and a jet at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). While formally of next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD, this process can be evaluated separately from the bulk of NNLO QCD corrections because it is finite and gauge-invariant. It is also enhanced by the large gluon flux and by selection cuts employed in the Higgs boson searches in the decay channel $H \to W^+W^-$, as was first pointed out by Binoth {\it et al.} in the context of $gg \to W^+W^-$ production. For cuts employed by the ATLAS collaboration, we find that the gluon fusion contribution to $pp \to W^+W^-j$ enhances the background by about ten percent and can lead to moderate distortions of kinematic distributions which are instrumental for the ongoing Higgs boson searches at the LHC. We also release a public code to compute the NLO QCD corrections to this process, in the form of an add-on to the package {\tt MCFM}.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, 3 table