⽇本議会政治の再考 -国会機能と議員活動の分析-

早大学位記番号:新9233博士(政治学)早稲田大

Diversity of Azoles Resistant Aspergillus Species Isolated from Experience and Naïve Soils in Nairobi County and Naivasha Sub-County Kenya

New triazole antifungals voriconazole, itraconazole and posaconazole are recommended for prophylaxis and treatment of both invasive and chronic fungal infections such as aspergillosis and aspergilloma. Emergence of azole-resistant among A. fumigatus isolates have been reported in other countries including Tanzania ascribed to either previous antifungal treatment, prophylaxis or triazoles use in agriculture. The use of azole based fungicides in the robust horticulture in Kenya is a significant risk factor for antifungal resistance. The study proposes to analyze environmental isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus niger for the presence of resistance against the triazoles antifungals. Fungicide naïve soils were obtained from uncultivated virgin fields while fungicide experience soils were collected from flower, agricultural and horticultural fields and greenhouses within Naivasha sub-county and Nairobi County. The fungal isolates were subjected to antifungal susceptibility to triazoles using broth micro dilution method. A total of 492 samples were analyzed in Nairobi, 52 isolates were identified and they resistance were as follow: A. fumigatus (32%), A. niger (26.09%), A. flavus (33.33%) and A .terreus (0%) and in Naivasha 44 isolates were isolated out of which 25 were A. fumigatus and its resistance was at 36%. Data were analyses using student T test and showed they no different between resistant and susceptible isolates from the two location. Data generated will serve to inform on the current status of triazoles resistance pattern and to raise concern emerging antifungal resistance in clinical practice

Oxytocin improves behavioural and neural deficits in inferring others' social emotions in autism

Recent studies have suggested oxytocin's therapeutic effects on deficits in social communication and interaction in autism spectrum disorder through improvement of emotion recognition with direct emotional cues, such as facial expression and voice prosody. Although difficulty in understanding of others' social emotions and beliefs under conditions without direct emotional cues also plays an important role in autism spectrum disorder, no study has examined the potential effect of oxytocin on this difficulty. Here, we sequentially conducted both a case-control study and a clinical trial to investigate the potential effects of oxytocin on this difficulty at behavioural and neural levels measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging during a psychological task. This task was modified from the Sally-Anne Task, a well-known first-order false belief task. The task was optimized for investigation of the abilities to infer another person's social emotions and beliefs distinctively so as to test the hypothesis that oxytocin improves deficit in inferring others' social emotions rather than beliefs, under conditions without direct emotional cues. In the case-control study, 17 males with autism spectrum disorder showed significant behavioural deficits in inferring others' social emotions (P = 0.018) but not in inferring others' beliefs (P = 0.064) compared with 17 typically developing demographically-matched male participants. They also showed significantly less activity in the right anterior insula and posterior superior temporal sulcus during inferring others' social emotions, and in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex during inferring others' beliefs compared with the typically developing participants (P 10 voxels). Then, to investigate potential effects of oxytocin on these behavioural and neural deficits, we conducted a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover within-subject trial for single-dose intranasal administration of 24 IU oxytocin in an independent group of 20 males with autism spectrum disorder. Behaviourally, oxytocin significantly increased the correct rate in inferring others' social emotions (P = 0.043, one-tail). At the neural level, the peptide significantly enhanced the originally-diminished brain activity in the right anterior insula during inferring others' social emotions (P = 0.004), but not in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex during inferring others' beliefs (P = 0.858). The present findings suggest that oxytocin enhances the ability to understand others' social emotions that have also required second-order false belief rather than first-order false beliefs under conditions without direct emotional cues in autism spectrum disorder at both the behaviour and neural levels

Network structure underlying resolution of conflicting non-verbal and verbal social information

Social judgments often require resolution of incongruity in communication contents. Although previous studies revealed that such conflict resolution recruits brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pIFG), functional relationships and networks among these regions remain unclear. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated the functional dissociation and networks by measuring human brain activity during resolving incongruity between verbal and non-verbal emotional contents. First, we found that the conflict resolutions biased by the non-verbal contents activated the posterior dorsal mPFC (post-dmPFC), bilateral anterior insula (AI) and right dorsal pIFG, whereas the resolutions biased by the verbal contents activated the bilateral ventral pIFG. In contrast, the anterior dmPFC (ant-dmPFC), bilateral superior temporal sulcus and fusiform gyrus were commonly involved in both of the resolutions. Second, we found that the post-dmPFC and right ventral pIFG were hub regions in networks underlying the non-verbal- and verbal-content-biased resolutions, respectively. Finally, we revealed that these resolution-type-specific networks were bridged by the ant-dmPFC, which was recruited for the conflict resolutions earlier than the two hub regions. These findings suggest that, in social conflict resolutions, the ant-dmPFC selectively recruits one of the resolution-type-specific networks through its interaction with resolution-type-specific hub regions