The impact of music on learning and consolidation of novel words

Music can be a powerful mnemonic device, as shown by a body of literature demonstrating that listening to text sung to a familiar melody results in better memory for the words compared to conditions where they are spoken. Furthermore, patients with a range of memory impairments appear to be able to form new declarative memories when they are encoded in the form of lyrics in a song, while unable to remember similar materials after hearing them in the spoken modality. Whether music facilitates the acquisition of completely new information, such as new vocabulary, remains unknown. Here we report three experiments in which adult participants learned novel words in the spoken or sung modality. While we found no benefit of musical presentation on free recall or recognition memory of novel words, novel words learned in the sung modality were more strongly integrated in the mental lexicon compared to words learned in the spoken modality. This advantage for the sung words was only present when the training melody was familiar. The impact of musical presentation on learning therefore appears to extend beyond episodic memory and can be reflected in the emergence and properties of new lexical representations

Cells from discarded dressings differentiate chronic from acute wounds in patients with Epidermolysis Bullosa

Impaired wound healing complicates a wide range of diseases and represents a major cost to healthcare systems. Here we describe the use of discarded wound dressings as a novel, cost effective, accessible, and non-invasive method of isolating viable human cells present at the site of skin wounds. By analyzing 133 discarded wound dressings from 51 patients with the inherited skin-blistering disease epidermolysis bullosa (EB), we show that large numbers of cells, often in excess of 100 million per day, continually infiltrate wound dressings. We show, that the method is able to differentiate chronic from acute wounds, identifying significant increases in granulocytes in chronic wounds, and we show that patients with the junctional form of EB have significantly more cells infiltrating their wounds compared with patients with recessive dystrophic EB. Finally, we identify subsets of granulocytes and T lymphocytes present in all wounds paving the way for single cell profiling of innate and adaptive immune cells with relevance to wound pathologies. In summary, our study delineates findings in EB that have potential relevance for all chronic wounds, and presents a method of cellular isolation that has wide reaching clinical application

Music Enhances Verbal Episodic Memory in Alzheimer\u27s Disease

INTRODUCTION: Although previous studies suggest that music may facilitate verbal learning in a healthy population, such a mnemonic effect has seldom been investigated in Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD). Moreover, memorization of texts was generally compared when either sung or spoken. In the present study, it was examined whether the benefit observed on verbal learning was specific to music or whether an associative context binding items together led to similar benefits, regardless of the nature of the association. METHOD: Twelve patients with mild AD and 15 healthy controls learned texts presented with either a musical (sung) or a nonmusical association (spoken associated to a silent movie sequence) or without association (spoken alone). Immediate and delayed (after a 5-min delay) recall was measured. RESULTS: Main results showed that (a) sung texts were better remembered than spoken texts, both immediately and after a retention delay, for both groups; (b) the musical benefit was robust, being observed in most AD patients; (c) the nonmusical association may also facilitate verbal learning but to a lesser extent. CONCLUSIONS: A musical association during the encoding stage facilitates learning and retention in AD. Furthermore, this advantage seemed quite specific to music. The results are discussed with respect to the clinical applications in AD; theoretical implications are highlighted to explain the power of music as a mnemonic technique

Music as a Mnemonic Strategy to Mitigate Verbal Episodic Memory in Alzheimer\u27s Disease: Does Musical Valence Matter?

Introduction: Music is increasingly used to improve cognition in clinical settings. However, it remains unclear whether its use as a mnemonic strategy is effective in Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD). The present study aimed at determining whether a musical mnemonic might mitigate patients\u27 learning of new verbal information and at exploring the effect of factors such as retention delay and emotional valence of the musical excerpt used. Method: 13 patients with AD and 26 healthy comparisons (HC) with a low musical expertise were included. They learned texts about everyday life themes that were either set to familiar instrumental music, which was positively- or negatively-valenced, or spoken only. Immediate and delayed recalls (after 10 min and 24 hours) were measured. Results: Main results showed that (i) HC demonstrated better verbal episodic memory performance than participants with AD; (ii) participants with AD encoded texts paired with positively-valenced music better than texts paired with negatively-valenced music; (iii) participants with AD recalled sung texts better than spoken texts (after 10 min and 24 hours), regardless of musical valence while HC displayed better recall for texts paired with positively-valenced music. Conclusions: Musical mnemonics may help people with AD learn verbal information that relates to their daily life, regardless the musical expertise of the patients. This result gives promising clinical insights showing that music processing is robust to brain damage in AD. Possible hypotheses explaining the effectiveness of musical mnemonics in AD regardless the musical valence are discussed (e.g., different processing between musical and spoken conditions; disappearance of the positivity bias and implications with respect to the underlying socio-emotional selectivity theory)

Bone metabolism in children with epidermolysis bullosa

We evaluated bone mineral density, vitamin D status, and biochemical markers of bone turnover in seven children with epidermolysis bullosa (EB). Four had osteopenia (Z score, -1.5) and four 25(OH) vitamin D <34 nmol/L (14 ng/mL), two of which had hyperparathyroidism. Children with severe EB should have evaluation of bone metabolism

Clinical aspects and usefulness of indirect absorbed immunofluorescence for diagnosis of yaws in Central Africa.

The incidence of yaws in 533 pygmies from the Central African Republic was surveyed. It appeared that there is still an impressive incidence of yaws in pygmy children who have poor hygiene. Laboratory investigations showed that the Treponema pallidum hemagglutination assay is often negative during the first stage of the disease, while the fluorescent treponemal antibody absorption test is positive and, thus, more sensitive