The direct and mediating effects of cognitive impairment on the occurrence of falls: a cohort study based on community-dwelling old adults

BackgroundCognitive impairment has been reported to be associated with falls in older adults. However, the complex relationship among falls, cognitive impairment and its associated factors, which could be targeted with specific interventions, remains to be elucidated. This study aimed to examine the direct effects of cognitive impairment on falls, to identify the factors associated with cognitive impairment and to explore the mediation role of cognitive impairment in the association of fall with cognition related factors.MethodsThis 1-year follow-up cohort study enrolled old adults aged 60  years or over. Information about demographic and anthropometric characteristics, fall outcomes, function and nutritional status were collected through face-to-face interview. Cognitive function was evaluated by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Multivariable regression analyses were used to test the association between cognitive impairment and falls and to identify the factors related to cognitive impairment. Additionally, we conduct causal mediation analyses to estimate the mediation effects of cognitive impairment in the pathways of fall occurrence.ResultsOf the 569 participants included in this study, 366 (64.32%) had cognitive impairment, 96 (16.87%) had fall history in the past 1  year, 81 (14.24%) experienced fall and 47 (8.26%) received treatment because of falling during the 1-year follow-up. The association between cognitive impairment and 1-year fall risk was confirmed after adjusting for multiple covariates [odds ratio (OR):2.03, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.13–3.80]. IADL disability, depression and low grip strength were associated with a higher prevalence of cognitive impairment. While overweight, higher education and higher income level were found to be related to a lower risk of cognitive impairment. Among these associated factors, cognitive impairment mediated the positive association of falling with IADL ability and depression, and a negative relationship with education and income level.ConclusionOur study not only confirmed the direct influence of cognitive impairment on fall risk in older adults, but also suggested a mediating role that cognitive impairment played in the pathways of fall occurrence. Our finding could help develop more specific interventions for fall prevention

The mechanism of speech processing in congenital amusia: Evidence from Mandarin speakers

Congenital amusia is a neuro-developmental disorder of pitch perception that causes severe problems with music processing but only subtle difficulties in speech processing. This study investigated speech processing in a group of Mandarin speakers with congenital amusia. Thirteen Mandarin amusics and thirteen matched controls participated in a set of tone and intonation perception tasks and two pitch threshold tasks. Compared with controls, amusics showed impaired performance on word discrimination in natural speech and their gliding tone analogs. They also performed worse than controls on discriminating gliding tone sequences derived from statements and questions, and showed elevated thresholds for pitch change detection and pitch direction discrimination. However, they performed as well as controls on word identification, and on statement-question identification and discrimination in natural speech. Overall, tasks that involved multiple acoustic cues to communicative meaning were not impacted by amusia. Only when the tasks relied mainly on pitch sensitivity did amusics show impaired performance compared to controls. These findings help explain why amusia only affects speech processing in subtle ways. Further studies on a larger sample of Mandarin amusics and on amusics of other language backgrounds are needed to consolidate these results

Perception of hierarchical boundaries in music and its modulation by expertise

Hierarchical structure with units of different timescales is a key feature of music. For the perception of such structures, the detection of each boundary is crucial. Here, using electroencephalography (EEG), we explore the perception of hierarchical boundaries in music, and test whether musical expertise modifies such processing. Musicians and non-musicians were presented with musical excerpts containing boundaries at three hierarchical levels, including section, phrase and period boundaries. Non-boundary was chosen as a baseline condition. Recordings from musicians showed CPS (closure positive shift) was evoked at all the three boundaries, and their amplitude increased as the hierarchical level became higher, which suggest that musicians could represent music events at different timescales in a hierarchical way. For non-musicians, the CPS was only elicited at the period boundary and undistinguishable negativities were induced at all the three boundaries. The results indicate that a different and less clear way was used by non-musicians in boundary perception. Our findings reveal, for the first time, an ERP correlate of perceiving hierarchical boundaries in music, and show that the phrasing ability could be enhanced by musical expertise. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.</p

Conveying the concept of movement in music: An event-related brain potential study

This study on event-related brain potential investigated whether music can convey the concept of movement. Using a semantic priming paradigm, natural musical excerpts were presented to non-musicians, followed by semantically congruent or incongruent pictures that depicted objects either in motion or at rest. The priming effects were tested in object decision and implicit recognition tasks to distinguish the effects of automatic conceptual activation from response competition. Results showed that in both tasks, pictures that were incongruent to preceding musical excerpts elicited larger N400 than congruent pictures, suggesting that music can prime the representations of movement concepts. Results of the multiple regression analysis showed that movement expression could be well predicted by specific acoustic and musical features, indicating the associations between music per se and the processing of iconic musical meaning. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Spatial conceptual associations between music and pictures as revealed by N400 effect

The processing of extramusical meaning can be reflected in N400 effects of the ERP. However, how conceptual representations can be activated in music still needs to be specified. We investigated the activation of iconic meaningful representations in music by using a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm with an implicit task. Pictures of spatial scenes were semantically congruent or incongruent to preceding music in three stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) conditions. The results revealed that the semantically incongruent target pictures elicited larger N400 amplitude than the congruent target pictures. Moreover, the semantic priming effect was modulated by the SOAs. The N400 effect was observed in the 200-ms and 800-ms SOA conditions, but not in the 1,200-ms SOA condition. These results suggest that extramusical meaning purely due to iconic sign quality can be activated, and that the conceptual activation in music can be rapid and automatic

FINE-GRAINED PITCH DISCRIMINATION IN CONGENITAL AMUSICS WITH MANDARIN CHINESE

A GROUP OF 11 AMUSIC INDIVIDUALS WITH MANDARIN as their first language were tested on a two-tone discrimination task. In addition, a four-tone sequence task with an additional initial reference note and a final return to the reference note (i.e., AABA) was employed to assess if repeating the reference note resulted in an improvement of pitch discrimination for amusic individuals. The findings showed that the amusic participants had difficulty discriminating two-tone pairs and four-tone sequences relative to 11 control participants. The performance of the amusic group on the four-tone sequence was not better than that predicted based upon their performance during the two-tone task, indicating that repetition of the reference note did not aid performance. The findings suggest that tonal language experience may not facilitate fine-grained pitch discrimination for amusics who speak Mandarin Chinese as their first language

Development of a Highly Efficient Shoot Organogenesis System for an Ornamental Aeschynanthus pulcher (Blume) G. Don Using Leaves as Explants

Aeschynanthus pulcher (Blume) G. Don, the &ldquo;lipstick plant&rdquo; is a prized ornamental plant with distinctive flowers. Here, we introduce a novel in vitro regeneration method for A. pulcher using leaf explants and an optimized combination of phytohormone plant growth regulators (PGRs). The optimal conditions for shoot regeneration included 1 mg L&minus;1 polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) plus 3 mg L&minus;1 thidiazuron (TDZ), inducing a response rate of 82.4% and a shoot/explant ratio of 38.6. When the Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium contained indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) alone, leaves first differentiated into adventitious roots and then adventitious shoots. Leaves cultured on MS medium containing 1 g L&minus;1 PVP, 3 mg L&minus;1 TDZ, 5 mg L&minus;1 casein, and 0.1 mg L&minus;1 &alpha;-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) for 30 d exhibited the highest embryogenic callus (EC) induction rate (95.6%). The optimal shoot proliferation coefficient (21.5) was obtained when shoots derived from EC were cultured on the same medium as that used for EC induction for 5 weeks. The most effective medium for rooting of elongated shoots was MS medium containing 1 g L&minus;1 PVP, 5 mg L&minus;1 casein, 3 mg L&minus;1 6-benzyladenine (BA), and 0.1 mg L&minus;1 NAA, and the number of roots reached 18.8. The regenerated plants grown in a greenhouse had 100% survival following one week of hardening. Overall, our effective and efficient propagation method should result in shortened culture periods and reduced production costs, allowing for the future selective breeding and genetic improvement of A. pulcher

Impaired categorical perception of lexical tones in Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics

The degree to which cognitive resources are shared in the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones remains uncertain. Testing Mandarin amusics on their categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones may provide insight into this issue. In the present study, a group of 15 amusic Mandarin speakers identified and discriminated Mandarin tones presented as continua in separate blocks. The tonal continua employed were from a high-level tone to a mid-rising tone and from a high-level tone to a high-falling tone. The two tonal continua were made in the contexts of natural speech and of nonlinguistic analogues. In contrast to the controls, the participants with amusia showed no improvement for discrimination pairs that crossed the classification boundary for either speech or nonlinguistic analogues, indicating a lack of categorical perception. The lack of categorical perception of Mandarin tones in the amusic group shows that the pitch deficits in amusics may be domain-general, and this suggests that the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones may share certain cognitive resources and/or processes (Patel 2003, 2008, 2012)