Quality of life and mood in patients with medically intractable epilepsy treated with targeted responsive neurostimulation

AbstractPurposeThe primary efficacy and safety measures from a trial of responsive neurostimulation for focal epilepsy were previously published. In this report, the findings from the same study are presented for quality of life, which was a supportive analysis, and for mood, which was assessed as a secondary safety endpoint.MethodsThe study was a multicenter randomized controlled double-blinded trial of responsive neurostimulation in 191 patients with medically resistant focal epilepsy. During a 4-month postimplant blinded period, patients were randomized to receive responsive stimulation or sham stimulation, after which all patients received responsive neurostimulation in open label to complete 2years. Quality of life (QOL) and mood surveys were administered during the baseline period, at the end of the blinded period, and at year 1 and year 2 of the open label period.ResultsThe treatment and sham groups did not differ at baseline. Compared with baseline, QOL improved in both groups at the end of the blinded period and also at 1year and 2years, when all patients were treated. At 2years, 44% of patients reported meaningful improvements in QOL, and 16% reported declines. There were no overall adverse changes in mood or in suicidality across the study. Findings were not related to changes in seizures and antiepileptic drugs, and patients with mesial temporal seizure onsets and those with neocortical seizure onsets both experienced improvements in QOL.ConclusionsTreatment with targeted responsive neurostimulation does not adversely affect QOL or mood and may be associated with improvements in QOL in patients, including those with seizures of either mesial temporal origin or neocortical origin

An empirical characterization of software bugs in open-source Cyber–Physical Systems

Background: Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are systems in which software and hardware components interact with each other. Understanding the specific nature and root cause of CPS bugs would help to design better verification and validation (V&V) techniques for these systems such as domain-specific mutants. Aim: We look at CPS bugs from an open-source perspective, trying to understand what kinds of bugs occur in a set of open-source CPSs belonging to different domains. Method: We analyze 1151 issues from 14 projects related to drones, automotive, robotics, and Arduino. We apply a hybrid card-sorting procedure to create a taxonomy of CPS bugs, by extending a previously proposed taxonomy specific to the automotive domain. Results: We provide a taxonomy featuring 22 root causes, grouped into eight high-level categories. Our qualitative and quantitative analyses suggest that 33.4% of the analyzed bugs occurring in CPSs are peculiar to those and, consequently, require specific care during verification and validation activities. Conclusion: The taxonomy provides an overview of the root causes related to bugs found in open-source CPSs belonging to different domains. Such root causes are related to different components of a CPS, including hardware, interface, configuration, network, data, and application logic

Early eocene primates from Vastan lignite mine, Gujarat, western India

A new primate fauna of early Eocene (Ypresian, approximately 52 Ma) age is reported from the Vastan Lignite Mine, District Surat, Gujarat, western India. From the Indian subcontinent, this is the oldest known Cenozoic rocord as well as the largest single sample of Eocene primates, consisting of 3 fragmentary jaws and 4 isolated upper cheek teeth. The assemblage comprises at least three, but possibly 4 taxa, of which only two are being named here, an adapiform Marcgodinotius indicus n. gen. & n. sp., and an omomyid Vastanomys gracilis n. gen. & n. sp., distinguished mainly on the basis of their lower dental formula and lower molar characteristics. The fauna indicates considerable diversity of Eocene primates in Indo-Pakistan and is important in understanding early primate evolution in Asia and the mammalian dispersal into, or out of, from India in response to changing paleogeographic settings associated with the initiation of India-Asia collision

Contributions of the Avian VTA to Behavioral Switching

Birdsong is a motivated behavior used for courtship and territorial defense. Juvenile male Bengalese finches learn song from their fathers, and over time produce an increasingly accurate copy of their tutor's song. Since it is thought that the ventral tegmental area (VTA) is important in learning and crucial for the production of motivated behavior, we sought to examine the role of the VTA during singing. To probe the function of the VTA we recorded multi-unit activity in adult male Bengalese finches. We observed that neural activity in VTA consistently increased prior to the initiation and termination of song bouts, suggesting that increased activity in this region might mediate behavioral switching. To further test this idea, we coupled VTA recordings with a behavioral manipulation known to cause abrupt terminations of song. We delivered disruptive auditory stimuli during specific notes of ongoing song, which caused song terminations on a subset of trials (Sakata, 2006). Neural activity in the VTA transiently increased at a short latency (10-20ms) in response to the stimulus both during and outside of song. These data indicate that the VTA in singing birds has rapid access to information about salient perturbations of sensory experience, and extend findings indicating that the VTA responds to salient stimuli (Horvitz, 1997). Moreover, we consistently found that neural responses were significantly greater in magnitude on trials in which feedback elicited song termination versus trials in which the bird continued to sing, and the probability of song termination increased as the level of VTA neural activity increased. Because song termination was associated with neural responses of higher magnitude, we stimulated in VTA during song to test the idea that activity in this region might be causally related to song termination. Song terminations were produced at significantly lower current intensities in VTA than in surrounding regions. One interpretation of these data is that the VTA monitors the environment for salient stimuli and is able to effect a cessation of ongoing motor behavior when environmental conditions favor behavioral switching. This supports the interesting possibility that VTA participates in action selection, and might function in contexts unrelated to reward

BreathProfiles Dataset

<p>Sensors data by processing the breath samples, body vitals data, and demographics data collected from 492 patients of a nationally reputed hospital.</p&gt

Bharati Vidyapeeth's Institute of Computer Applications and Management

ABSTRAC