THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCAN:3-A AND HEARING-IN-NOISE TEST PERFORMANCES

According to the Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) guidelines by the American Academy of Audiology (AAA; 2010), “specific treatment options (e.g. personal FM systems) may be more appropriately recommended for individuals who present deficits on monaural low-redundancy (MLR) (e.g. speech recognition in noise, filtered or compressed speech) and/or dichotic speech tests.� The assumption appears to be that MLR speech tests may be used to adequately evaluate the necessity for an FM system. In other words, the MLR speech tests may be used to determine the presence of a speech recognition in noise deficit. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the assumption that “low-redundancy� speech tests may be used to identify the need for an FM system by comparing these test results to that of the Hearing-in-Noise Test (HINT; Nilsson et al., 1994; Vermiglio, 2008). Twenty-nine young, native English-speaking with normal pure tone thresholds participated in the study. The subjects were evaluated using the MLR subtests of the SCAN-3:A and the HINT. The SCAN-3:A subtests included: Auditory Figure-Ground (0 dB), Filtered Words, Competing Words-Directed Ear, Competing Sentences, and Time-Compressed Sentences. The standard HINT conditions included; Quiet, Noise Front, Noise Right, and Noise Left. Composite scores were determined for each test battery. Statistically significant relationships were found between most of the SCAN-3:A conditions and HINT conditions. However, while relatively strong relationships between the MLR and HINT test results were found, clinicians should be cautious when inferring the presence of an SRN disorder from the MLR test results

The Implementation of Memantine for Recovering Stroke Patients

Recovering stroke patients go through rehabilitation to fix the paretic limbs and adapt to the nerve damage. Recovery consists of repetitive tasks that are designed to guide the plastic brain to adapt to new movements and gain muscle memory in those movements. Rehabilitation is strongly dependent on the brain’s plasticity, which is enacted through increased levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF has been proven to be increased through aerobic exercise, a common element found in rehabilitation programs. It is vital that the exercises performed in rehabilitation result in higher brain plasticity due to the limited time window of the critical period. Certain requirements such as maximum heart rate and frequency of exercises performed must be met to increase the plasticity in brain. These requirements are not always possible for every patient going through rehabilitation due to their differing activity levels. Understanding the relationship between time, exercise, plasticity, and recovery is essential to finding alternative treatments to exercise that can be used to increase brain plasticity. Memantine, an Alzheimer’s drug tested in rats regarding motor function, is a viable drug to increase plasticity. In several rat models, memantine was proven to increase cognitive function and BDNF levels in the brain, which is vital for the recovery of stroke patients. For patients that are not physically or mentally capable of meeting the requirements needed to increase plasticity, memantine can be administered as an alternative or conjoined treatment, so that patients may go through rehabilitation training and recover with a positive functional outcome.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1224/thumbnail.jp

Special Recital, Keerthana Vishwanath, piano

The presentation of this special recital is presented for the Bachelor of Arts degree in Music. Keerthana Vishwanath studies piano with Ruta Smedina-Starke

Evaluation and Management of Childhood Proptosis: A Clinical study in a Tertiary Care Centre

BACKGROUND: Proptosis or exophthalmos is defined as protrusion of the globe beyond the orbital margins, with the patient looking straight ahead . Proptosis is the hall mark of orbital diseases. Childhood proptosis is quite different from that of the adult. While thyroid orbitopathy is the most common cause in adults, proptosis among children can be caused by: infection, inflammation, vascular and congenital developmental malformation and finally malignancies. AIM OF THE STUDY: To evaluate the various causes, incidence, mode of onset, various clinical presentations and to assess the various treatment modalities and the final outcome of treatment of childhood Proptosis. MATERIALS & METHODS: This descriptive study was conducted at Orbit and Oculoplasty Services, RIOGOH, Chennai for a period of 6 months. All Children upto 14 years of age presenting with proptosis were enrolled in the study, then evaluated and treated. RESULTS: Among 30 cases of childhood proptosis, Unilateral, Axial Proptosis with Lid edema is the most common presentation. Proptosis were more common in children under 4 years group. Inflammatory causes ranks the first (40%) followed by congenital conditions (26.7%) and neoplasia (20%). Orbital cellulitis (30%) is the single most common cause. Among the malignant causes secondaries (13.33%) were more common than the primary (6%). CONCLUSION: CT and MRI scans are the best modality of investigation in all cases of proptosis for early diagnosis and also helps to identify the extent of lesion in planning the further management. Inflammatory causes had better treatment outcome

Ultra-large alignments using Phylogeny-aware Profiles

Many biological questions, including the estimation of deep evolutionary histories and the detection of remote homology between protein sequences, rely upon multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) and phylogenetic trees of large datasets. However, accurate large-scale multiple sequence alignment is very difficult, especially when the dataset contains fragmentary sequences. We present UPP, an MSA method that uses a new machine learning technique - the Ensemble of Hidden Markov Models - that we propose here. UPP produces highly accurate alignments for both nucleotide and amino acid sequences, even on ultra-large datasets or datasets containing fragmentary sequences. UPP is available at https://github.com/smirarab/sepp.Comment: Online supplemental materials and data are available at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/phylo/software/upp

Suppression of Defective Motor Patterns in Parkinsonian C. elegans

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is caused partly by the loss of dopamine producing neurons. Dopamine is a conserved neuromodulator that aids in the transition between different motor patterns such as swimming, walking, or running. This can be observed across many species, including mice, flies, and nematodes. The cat-2 mutant strain of the nematode C. elegans has a deletion in the gene encoding tyrosine hydroxylase, an enzyme required to synthesize dopamine. Our lab recently demonstrated that the cat-2 mutant shares aspects of PD patient dysfunction through its inability to transition normally between the “swimming” and “crawling” patterns of motion. Currently, PD treatments focus on boosting residual dopamine signaling and are not available to maintain motor function once dopamine neurons completely degenerate. To search for ways to overcome motor dysfunction in the absence of dopamine, we performed a forward genetic screen to identify mutations that suppress poor swim-to-crawl motor transition in cat-2 mutant. We found several suppressor mutants that improve motor function. Further characterization can identify molecular pathways that can be altered to improve motor function in the absence of dopamine. This information could provide insight into repair of dopamine-deficient neural circuitry in higher level animals and possible approaches to help late stage PD patients.Neuroscienc