Effects of Virtual Reality Intervention on Neural Plasticity in Stroke Rehabilitation: A Systematic Review

Effects of virtual reality intervention on neural plasticity in stroke rehabilitation: a systematic review Background: Virtual reality (VR) has been increasingly adopted in medicine for recent decades, and this emerging technology has shown promising results in stroke rehabilitation. As a computer-generated simulation technology, VR creates an enriched and gamified environment, facilitate task-specific training and provides multimodal feedback to augment the functional recovery by driving the experience-dependent neural plasticity. Currently, a majority of research focuses on effects of VR on functional recovery and clinical outcomes; understanding how the neural underpinnings of those effects are critical for optimizing the use of VR technology for patient care. Purpose: This systematic review summarized the current literature regarding the effects of VR-based rehabilitation on neural changes in stroke patients. Methods: By following the PRISMA reporting guideline, this systematic review was conducted and registered at the PROSPERO (ID: CRD42020196405). Six literature databases were searched, including Medline via Ebsco, Embase, PsycoINFO, IEEE Explore, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health, and Scopus. The results were limited to articles published between 2000-2020 and in English. The search strategy was designed by an experienced academic medical librarian and using keywords such as “virtual reality”, “stroke” and “neural plasticity”. The Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) scale was used to evaluate the methodological quality of all included randomized controlled studies. Two reviewers screened, selected and evaluated the articles independently, and any discrepancy was resolved by the third experienced reviewer. Results: A total of 217 records were identified from the six databases, and another 4 were found from through other sources. After removing duplicates, 137 records remained and were screened. 29 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility, and finally 6 randomized controlled trials were included in this systematic review. In terms of the quality assessment, all of the 6 RCTs had the PEDro score no less than 6, which was considered as high quality. The interactive VR gaming systems were used in both upper and lower extremity exercises. The functional magnetic resonance, electroencephalogram (EEG) and navigated brain stimulation techniques were used to measure the changes of neural activities. The general findings regarding the VR-induced neural plasticity shown across the studies include: (1) improved interhemispheric balance, with the shift of activation from the contralesional to the ipsilesional primary sensorimotor cortex dominance during the paretic limb movement; (2) increased cortical representation mapping of the lesioned side muscles; (3) the correlation between improved neural plasticity measures and enhanced behavior outcomes; (4) increased activation of the frontal region identified by the EEG; (5) the mirror neuron system may be involved in the VR intervention. Conclusions: Virtual reality induced changes in neural plasticity for stroke patients, these changes reflected the neural substrates of restoration and compensation of functional deficits. The positive correlation between the neural plasticity changes and functional recovery elucidates the mechanisms of VR’s therapeutic effects in stroke rehabilitation. Implications: This review prompts the systematic understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms of VR-based stroke rehabilitation, and provides the emerging evidence for ongoing innovation of VR system and its application in stroke rehabilitation. Keywords: virtual reality, simulation, stroke, neural plasticit

CONVERSION ATTRIBUTION BASED ON VIEWABLE IMPRESSIONS

Viewable View Through Conversion (vVTC) are introduced in this publication. vVTC is a way to attribute view-through conversion events back to the impressions that deserve credit for them. vVTC may measure viewability for each impression and attribute conversions to impressions based in part on the measured viewability of each impression. In some implementations, vVTC considers only viewable impressions for attribution

Extinction Coefficient of Gold Nanostars

Gold nanostars (NStars) are highly attractive for biological applications due to their surface chemistry, facile synthesis, and optical properties. Here, we synthesize NStars in HEPES buffer at different HEPES/Au ratios, producing NStars of different sizes and shapes and therefore varying optical properties. We measure the extinction coefficient of the synthesized NStars at their maximum surface plasmon resonances (SPRs), which range from 5.7 × 10⁸ to 26.8 × 10⁸ M⁻¹ cm⁻¹. Measured values correlate with those obtained from theoretical models of the NStars using the discrete dipole approximation (DDA), which we use to simulate the extinction spectra of the nanostars. Finally, because NStars are typically used in biological applications, we conjugate DNA and antibodies to the NStars and calculate the footprint of the bound biomolecules.United States. National Institutes of Health (AI100190

Differential effects of dietary supplements on metabolomic profile of smokers versus non-smokers.

BackgroundCigarette smoking is well-known to associate with accelerated skin aging as well as cardiovascular disease and lung cancer, in large part due to oxidative stress. Because metabolites are downstream of genetic variation, as well as transcriptional changes and post-translational modifications of proteins, they are the most proximal reporters of disease states or reversal of disease states.MethodsIn this study, we explore the potential effects of commonly available oral supplements (containing antioxidants, vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids) on the metabolomes of smokers (n = 11) compared to non-smokers (n = 17). At baseline and after 12 weeks of supplementation, metabolomic analysis was performed on serum by liquid and gas chromatography with mass spectroscopy (LC-MS and GC-MS). Furthermore, clinical parameters of skin aging, including cutometry as assessed by three dermatologist raters blinded to subjects' age and smoking status, were measured.ResultsLong-chain fatty acids, including palmitate and oleate, decreased in smokers by 0.76-fold (P = 0.0045) and 0.72-fold (P = 0.0112), respectively. These changes were not observed in non-smokers. Furthermore, age and smoking status showed increased glow (P = 0.004) and a decrease in fine wrinkling (P = 0.038). Cutometry showed an increase in skin elasticity in smokers (P = 0.049) but not in non-smokers. Complexion analysis software (VISIA) revealed decreases in the number of ultraviolet spots (P = 0.031), and cutometry showed increased elasticity (P = 0.05) in smokers but not non-smokers.ConclusionsAdditional future work may shed light on the specific mechanisms by which long-chain fatty acids can lead to increased glow, improved elasticity measures and decreased fine wrinkling in smokers' skin. Our study provides a novel, medicine-focused application of available metabolomic technology to identify changes in sera of human subjects with oxidative stress, and suggests that oral supplementation (in particular, commonly available antioxidants, vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids) affects these individuals in a way that is unique (compared to non-smokers) on a broad level

Rapid Diagnostics for Infectious Disease using Noble Metal Nanoparticles

Rapid point-of-care (POC) diagnostic devices are needed for field-forward screening of severe acute systemic febrile illnesses such as dengue, Ebola, chikungunya, and others. Multiplexed rapid lateral flow diagnostics have the potential to distinguish among multiple pathogens, thereby facilitating diagnosis and improving patient care. We present a platform for multiplexed pathogen detection which uses gold or silver nanoparticles conjugated to antibodies to sense the presence of biomarkers for different infectious diseases. We exploit the size-dependent optical properties of Ag NPs to construct a multiplexed paperfluidic lateral flow POC sensor. AgNPs of different sizes were conjugated to antibodies that bind to specific biomarkers. Red AgNPs were conjugated to antibodies that could recognize the glycoprotein for Ebola virus, green AgNPs to those that could recognize nonstructural protein 1 for dengue virus, and orange AgNPs for non structural protein 1 for yellow fever virus. Presence of each of the biomarkers resulted in a different colored band on the test line in the lateral flow test. Thus, we were able to use NP color to distinguish among three pathogens that cause a febrile illness. Because positive test lines can be imaged by eye or a mobile phone camera, the approach is adaptable to low-resource, widely deployable settings. This design requires no external excitation source and permits multiplexed analysis in a single channel, facilitating integration and manufacturing. We will also discuss engineering the nanoparticle physical properties and surface chemistry for improving detection and also optimizing device properties, and expansion of the device to detect other diseases

Diversity from genes to ecosystems : a unifying framework to study variation across biological metrics and scales

This work was assisted through participation in “Next Generation Genetic Monitoring” Investigative Workshop at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, sponsored by the National Science Foundation through NSF Award #DBI-1300426, with additional support from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Hawaiian fish community data were provided by the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center's Coral Reef Ecosystem Division (CRED) with funding from NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program. O.E.G. was supported by the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS). A. C. and C. H. C. were supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan. P.P.-N. was supported by a Canada Research Chair in Spatial Modelling and Biodiversity. K.A.S. was supported by National Science Foundation (BioOCE Award Number 1260169) and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. All data used in this manuscript are available in DRYAD (https://doi.org/dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qm288) and BCO-DMO (http://www.bco-dmo.org/project/552879).Biological diversity is a key concept in the life sciences and plays a fundamental role in many ecological and evolutionary processes. Although biodiversity is inherently a hierarchical concept covering different levels of organisation (genes, population, species, ecological communities and ecosystems), a diversity index that behaves consistently across these different levels has so far been lacking, hindering the development of truly integrative biodiversity studies. To fill this important knowledge gap we present a unifying framework for the measurement of biodiversity across hierarchical levels of organisation. Our weighted, information-based decomposition framework is based on a Hill number of order q = 1, which weights all elements in proportion to their frequency and leads to diversity measures based on Shannon’s entropy. We investigated the numerical behaviour of our approach with simulations and showed that it can accurately describe complex spatial hierarchical structures. To demonstrate the intuitive and straightforward interpretation of our diversity measures in terms of effective number of components (alleles, species, etc.) we applied the framework to a real dataset on coral reef biodiversity. We expect our framework will have multiple applications covering the fields of conservation biology, community genetics, and eco-evolutionary dynamics.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Genome sequence of the organohalide-respiring Dehalogenimonas alkenigignens type strain (IP3-3(T))

Dehalogenimonas alkenigignens IP3-3(T) is a strictly anaerobic, mesophilic, Gram negative staining bacterium that grows by organohalide respiration, coupling the oxidation of H-2 to the reductive dehalogenation of polychlorinated alkanes. Growth has not been observed with any non-polyhalogenated alkane electron acceptors. Here we describe the features of strain IP3-3(T) together with genome sequence information and its annotation. The 1,849,792 bp high-quality-draft genome contains 1936 predicted protein coding genes, 47 tRNA genes, a single large subunit rRNA (23S-5S) locus, and a single, orphan, small unit rRNA (16S) locus. The genome contains 29 predicted reductive dehalogenase genes, a large majority of which lack cognate genes encoding membrane anchoring proteins.

Degradation of high affinity HuD targets releases Kv1.1 mRNA from miR-129 repression by mTORC1

Little is known about how a neuron undergoes site-specific changes in intrinsic excitability during neuronal activity. We provide evidence for a novel mechanism for mTORC1 kinase–dependent translational regulation of the voltage-gated potassium channel Kv1.1 messenger RNA (mRNA). We identified a microRNA, miR-129, that repressed Kv1.1 mRNA translation when mTORC1 was active. When mTORC1 was inactive, we found that the RNA-binding protein, HuD, bound to Kv1.1 mRNA and promoted its translation. Unexpectedly, inhibition of mTORC1 activity did not alter levels of miR-129 and HuD to favor binding to Kv1.1 mRNA. However, reduced mTORC1 signaling caused the degradation of high affinity HuD target mRNAs, freeing HuD to bind Kv1.1 mRNA. Hence, mTORC1 activity regulation of mRNA stability and high affinity HuD-target mRNA degradation mediates the bidirectional expression of dendritic Kv1.1 ion channels