A novel EEG based linguistic BCI

While a human being can think coherently, physical limitations no matter how severe, should never become disabling. Thinking and cognition are performed and expressed through language, which is the most natural form of human communication. The use of covert speech tasks for BCIs has been successfully achieved for invasive and non-invasive systems. In this work, by incorporating the most recent discoveries on the spatial, temporal, and spectral signatures of word production, a novel system is designed, which is custom-build for linguistic tasks. Other than paying attention and waiting for the onset cue, this BCI requires absolutely no cognitive effort from the user and operates using automatic linguistic functions of the brain in the first 312ms post onset, which is also completely out of the control of the user and immune from inconsistencies. With four classes, this online BCI achieves classification accuracy of 82.5%. Each word produces a signature as unique as its phonetic structure, and the number of covert speech tasks used in this work is limited by computational power. We demonstrated that this BCI can successfully use wireless dry electrode EEG systems, which are becoming as capable as traditional laboratory grade systems. This frees the potential user from the confounds of the lab, facilitating real-world application. Considering that the number of words used in daily life does not exceed 2000, the number of words used by this type of novel BCI may indeed reach this number in the future, with no need to change the current system design or experimental protocol. As a promising step towards noninvasive synthetic telepathy, this system has the potential to not only help those in desperate need, but to completely change the way we communicate with our computers in the future as covert speech is much easier than any form of manual communication and control

The Effects of Imitative Vs. Cognitive Methods on The Speech Development of Children With Autism

How to Cite This Article: Jalili M, Jahangiri N, Yazdi Aa, Ashrafzadeh F. The Effects of Imitative Vs. Cognitive Methods on The Speech Development of Children With Autism. Iran J Child Neurol. 2014 Winter; 8(1):37-46.ObjectiveThe present study was performed to examine the effects of two speech therapy methods on six verbal behaviors of autistic children, including oral speech, listening, organizing, speaking, semantics, and syntax.Materials & MethodsIn this study, thirty 6-8 years old children with autism were assigned to one of two groups: imitative and cognitive groups. Before starting the main procedures of the study, the children of both groups were homogenized concerning their autism level. In the first phase of the study, the speech development level of the two groups was measured in a pre-test, in which both groups showed similar results. Then, both groups of children received 6 months of speech therapy instruction, during which one group was taught using an imitative method, while the other group was being worked with cognitive method.ResultsAfter 6-month treatment period, a post-test was done, and the t-tests based on the data of the two groups revealed a significant difference between the results.ConclusionThe statistics showed that after the teaching period, autistic that worked with cognitive method gained a better development in their speech abilities, comparing to those worked with the imitative method.Reference:Samadi SA, Mahmoodizadeh A, McConkey R. A national study of the prevalence of Autism among five year old children in Iran. Autism 2012;16(1):5-14.Fombonne E, Simmons H, Ford T, Meltzer H, Goodman R. Prevalence of pervasive developmental disorders in the British nationwide survey of child mental health. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2001;40(7):820-7.Fombonne, E. The changing epidemiology of Autism. J Appl Res Intellect Disabil 2005,18(4):281-94.Filipek PA, Accardo PJ, Ashwal S, Baranek GT, Cook EH Jr, Dawson G, et al. Practice parameter: screening and diagnosis of autism: report of the Quality Standards Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology and the Child Neurology Society. Neurology 2000;55(4):468-79.Samadi, SA. Comparative policy brief: status of intellectual disabilities in the Islamic republic of Iran. J Policy Pract Intellect Disabil 2008;5:129-32.Rogers SJ, An examination of the imitation deficit in autism. In: Nadel J, Butterworth G, editors. Imitation in infancy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1999. p.254-83.Ozonoff S, Pennington BF, Rogers SJ. Executive function deficits in high-functioning autistic individuals: Relationship to theory of mind. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 1991;32(7):1081-105.Williams JH, Whiten A, Suddendorf T, Perrett DI. Imitation, mirror neurons and autism. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2001;25(4):287-95.Rogers SJ, Hepburn SL, Stackhouse T, Wehner E. Imitation performance in toddlers with autism and those with other developmental disorders. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 2003;44(5):763-81.Gena A, Krantz PJ, McClannahan LE, Poulson CL. Training and generalization of affective behavior displayed by youth with autism. J Appl Behav Anal 1996;29(3):291-304.Ingenmey R, Van Houten R. Using time delay to promote spontaneous speech in an autistic child. J Appl Behav Anal 1991;24(3):591-6.Ayzenson J. Language and speech disorders in children. Tehran: Roshd publications; 2010.De Giacomo A, Fombonne E. Parental recognition of developmental abnormalities in autism. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 1998;7(3):131-6.Hodgdon LA. Solving behavior problems in autism: improving communication with visual strategies. Quirkroberts publishing; 2001. P.32.Bertrand J, Mars A, Boyle C, Bove F, Yeargin-Allsopp M, Decoufle P. Prevalence of autism in a United States population: the Brick Township, New Jersey, investigation. Pediatrics 2001;108(5):1155-61.Siegel B. Helping children with autism learn: a guide to treatment approaches for parents and professionals. Oxford: Oxford Press Inc; 2002. P.3.Plimley L, Bowen M. Social skills and autism spectrum disorders, London: Paul Chapman publishing; 2007.Mohammadi M, Mesgarpour B, Sahimi Izadian E, Mohammadi M. Psychiatric tests for children and young adults: CARS test. Tehran: Teimourzadeh publications; 2006.Schopler E, Mesibov GB. Diagnosis and Assessment in Autism. New York, NY: Springer publications; 1988. P.3-4.Newcomer P, Hammill D. TOLD: test of language development. (Adaption and standardization to Persian language by Hassanzadeh S and Minaei A.). Tehran: Publications of Ministry of Education; 1977.Dequinzio JA. Generalized Imitation of Facial Models by Children with Autism. J Appl Behav Anal 2007;40(4):755-9.Hatch E. Farhady H. Research design and statistics for applied linguistics. Rahnama publications; 2007. P.28.Brown JS, Rodgers T. Doing second language research. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2004. P.47.Brown J. Understanding research in second language learning. A teacher’s guide to statistics and research design. Cambridge: Cambridge university press; 1995. P.31

NMR spectrum reconstruction as a pattern recognition problem

A new deep neural network based on the WaveNet architecture (WNN) is presented, which is designed to grasp specific patterns in the NMR spectra. When trained at a fixed non-uniform sampling (NUS) schedule, the WNN benefits from pattern recognition of the corresponding point spread function (PSF) pattern produced by each spectral peak resulting in the highest quality and robust reconstruction of the NUS spectra as demonstrated in simulations and exemplified in this work on 2D 1H-15N correlation spectra of three representative globular proteins with different sizes: Ubiquitin (8.6 kDa), Azurin (14 kDa), and Malt1 (44 kDa). The pattern recognition by WNN is also demonstrated for successful virtual homo-decoupling in a 2D methyl 1H-13 HMQC spectrum of MALT1. We demonstrate using WNN that prior knowledge about the NUS schedule, which so far was not fully exploited, can be used for designing new powerful NMR processing techniques that surpass the existing algorithmic methods

Comparison of Post Intubation Complications of Endotracheal Tube and Laryngeal Mask Airway in Pediatrics

Background: Postoperative sore throat, cough, nausea, apnea, and laryngospasm are common complications of intubation byendotracheal tube (ETT) in pediatrics. The laryngeal mask airway (LMA) is a supraglottic device used as an alternative equipmentfor ETT in order to decrease the complications.Objectives: To compare the incidence of postoperative sore throat after LMA with ETT in pediatrics.Methods: Seventy-six patients between the ages of 2 - 12 with ASA class I-II who underwent cochlear implant surgery were enrolledand randomly divided into 2 groups including ETT or LMA for airway management. The incidence of complications including sorethroat, apnea, vomiting, laryngospasm, post operative cough, intra, and post operative arrhythmia and the influence of these equipment’son O2 saturation, end tidal CO2, airway pressure, and hemodynamic changes during operation were compared. Wong-Bakerfacial grimace scale was used to evaluate the severity of pain.Results: The rate of postoperative sore throat and laryngospasm in the ETT group was significantly higher than the LMA group (P =0.002, 0.011; respectively). Apnea and vomiting were not significantly different. Rate of postoperative cough, incidence of intra, andpostoperative arrhythmia were not significantly different between the two groups. Mean arterial pressure, peak airway pressure,end tidal CO2, and oxygen saturation during operation, which was measured continuously, had no significant differences betweenthe two groups.Conclusions: LMA significantly decreases the rate of postoperative sore throat and laryngospasm in pediatrics. However, the ratesof apnea, oxygen saturation, and nausea were similar in both groups. Application of LMA as an alternative to ETT is appropriate inpediatric patients

Resolution enhancement of NMR by decoupling with the low-rank Hankel model

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has become a formidable tool for biochemistry and medicine. Although J-coupling carries essential structural information it may also limit the spectral resolution. Homonuclear decoupling remains a challenging problem. In this work, we introduce a new approach that uses a specific coupling value as prior knowledge, and the Hankel property of the exponential NMR signal to achieve broadband heteronuclear decoupling using the low-rank method. Our results on synthetic and realistic HMQC spectra demonstrate that the proposed method not only effectively enhances resolution by decoupling, but also maintains sensitivity and suppresses spectral artefacts. The approach can be combined with non-uniform sampling, which means that the resolution can be further improved without any extra acquisition time

Clinical Study The Effects of Beta-Glucan Rich Oat Bread on Serum Nitric Oxide and Vascular Endothelial Function in Patients with Hypercholesterolemia

Introduction. Oats are high in soluble fibers and effective in reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). We assessed the effects of beta-glucan from oat bran on serum nitric oxide (NO) endothelial function in patients with hypercholesterolemia. Method. Sixty hypercholesterolemic patients were randomly divided to receive an experimental bread rich in beta-glucan from oat bran (intervention) or bread rich in wheat fiber (control) for four weeks. All subjects had the same diet for two-week baseline period and hypocaloric diet for four weeks of intervention. Serum NO concentration and flow-mediated dilation (FMD) were determined before and after the experiment. Results. Mean age of the participants was 51.1 ± 9.3 years and 65% ( = 39) were female. After intervention, serum NO concentration increased by 50.2 ± 19.8 mol/lit in the intervention group ( = 0.017), but no change was observed in the control group (17.5 ± 27.5 mol/lit; = 0.530). No change of FMD was observed in the intervention (0.48 ± 0.78%; = 0.546) or in the control group (0.59 ± 0.92%; = 0.533). Conclusion. Consumption of oat bread for four weeks increases serum NO concentration but has no effect on FMD. Further studies are warranted in this regard

The Relative Contribution of High-Gamma Linguistic Processing Stages of Word Production, and Motor Imagery of Articulation in Class Separability of Covert Speech Tasks in EEG Data

Word production begins with high-Gamma automatic linguistic processing functions followed by speech motor planning and articulation. Phonetic properties are processed in both linguistic and motor stages of word production. Four phonetically dissimilar phonemic structures “BA”, “FO”, “LE”, and “RY” were chosen as covert speech tasks. Ten neurologically healthy volunteers with the age range of 21–33 participated in this experiment. Participants were asked to covertly speak a phonemic structure when they heard an auditory cue. EEG was recorded with 64 electrodes at 2048 samples/s. Initially, one-second trials were used, which contained linguistic and motor imagery activities. The four-class true positive rate was calculated. In the next stage, 312 ms trials were used to exclude covert articulation from analysis. By eliminating the covert articulation stage, the four-class grand average classification accuracy dropped from 96.4% to 94.5%. The most valuable features emerge after Auditory cue recognition (~100 ms post onset), and within the 70–128 Hz frequency range. The most significant identified brain regions were the Prefrontal Cortex (linked to stimulus driven executive control), Wernicke’s area (linked to Phonological code retrieval), the right IFG, and Broca’s area (linked to syllabification). Alpha and Beta band oscillations associated with motor imagery do not contain enough information to fully reflect the complexity of speech movements. Over 90% of the most class-dependent features were in the 30-128 Hz range, even during the covert articulation stage. As a result, compared to linguistic functions, the contribution of motor imagery of articulation in class separability of covert speech tasks from EEG data is negligible

Identifying Factors Affecting of Cooperation Management between Charities and the Teaching Hospitals of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences

Objectives: One of the most important issues in the provision of health services in every country is providing the necessary resources for presenting these services. Cooperation between charity organizations and public hospitals is especially important as it can increase charity participation, facilitate public participation in the treatment area and develop hospital units. This study aimed was to identify factors affecting cooperation Management and designing a model of cooperation management between charities and the university hospitals of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. Methods: This descriptive-analytical, cross-sectional and applied study was conducted in hospitals of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in 2019. The statistical population consisted of 411 people including managers, chiefs and deputies, contracting hospital experts and social workers, managers and lawyers of the university, trustees and managers and charity experts. The research sample consisted of 330 people who were selected through the stratified random sampling method. Data was collected using a researcher-made questionnaire. The SPSS 18 and AMOS software were used to analyze the data. Results: The most effective contract pattern determinant had a path coefficient of 1.177, while the least effective current consumption expenditure determinant had a path coefficient of 0.530. Conclusion: The following steps are ways in which costs related to an inpatient department are guaranteed to be covered by a charity during the term of the contract: defining the criteria for selecting a charity to operate in a hospital, choosing a cooperative method and a contract template, determining the share of capital and current costs, and selecting the department type in the contract. &nbsp

Effects of Covid-19 disease on electricity consumption of various sectors in Iran

In December 2019, the World Health Organization announced the COVID-19 pandemic. This disease seriously endangers human life around the world and unfortunately, increases the number of infected and passed away people every day. Incidents of this magnitude have a major impact on the economy, energy consumption, and even the environment in a country. Depending on the policy pursued in each country to deal with COVID-19, the impact of this disease on energy consumption varies. In this paper, the electricity consumption situation is investigated in Iran during the pandemic period by using credible online data to articulate the decrease or increase in electricity consumption. It was observed that the electricity consumption in a period of fourteen months of the COVID-19 outbreak in comparison to before the pandemic time for residential, industrial, agricultural, commercial, public utilities and street lighting sectors were variations as 6.8 %, 22.4 %, 7.1 %, 6.1 %, −1%, and −0.3 % respectively. Due to the increase in overall electricity demand in Iran, to confront such problems it is proposed to strengthen the infrastructures of the energy sector by developing a comprehensive energy plan using intelligent systems, provision of appropriate policy and allocating more portion to renewable energy