Inter-channel Granger Causality for Estimating EEG Phase Connectivity Patterns in Dyslexia

Methods like Electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalogram (MEG) record brain oscillations and provide an invaluable insight into healthy and pathological brain function. These signals are helpful to study and achieve an objective and early diagnosis of neural disorders as Developmental Dyslexia (DD). An atypical oscillatory sampling could cause the characteristic phonological difficulties of dyslexia at one or more temporal rates; in this sense, measuring the EEG signal can help to make an early diagnosis of DD. The LEEDUCA study conducted a series of EEG experiments on children listening to amplitude modulated (AM) noise with slow-rhythmic prosodic (0.5–1 Hz) to detect differences in perception of oscillatory ampling that could be associated with dyslexia. The evolution of each EEG channel has been studied in the frequency domain, obtaining the analytical phase using the Hilbert transform. Subsequently, the cause-effect relationships between channels in ach subject have been reflected thanks to Granger causality, obtaining matrices that reflect the interaction between the different parts of the brain. Hence, each subject was classified as belonging or not to the control group or the experimental group. For this purpose, two ensemble classification algorithms were compared, showing that both can reach acceptable classifying erformance in delta band with an accuracy up to 0.77, recall of 0.91 and AUC of 0.97 using Gradient Boosting classifier.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Evolution of the use of corticosteroids for the treatment of hospitalised COVID-19 patients in Spain between March and November 2020: SEMI-COVID national registry

Objectives: Since the results of the RECOVERY trial, WHO recommendations about the use of corticosteroids (CTs) in COVID-19 have changed. The aim of the study is to analyse the evolutive use of CTs in Spain during the pandemic to assess the potential influence of new recommendations. Material and methods: A retrospective, descriptive, and observational study was conducted on adults hospitalised due to COVID-19 in Spain who were included in the SEMI-COVID- 19 Registry from March to November 2020. Results: CTs were used in 6053 (36.21%) of the included patients. The patients were older (mean (SD)) (69.6 (14.6) vs. 66.0 (16.8) years; p < 0.001), with hypertension (57.0% vs. 47.7%; p < 0.001), obesity (26.4% vs. 19.3%; p < 0.0001), and multimorbidity prevalence (20.6% vs. 16.1%; p < 0.001). These patients had higher values (mean (95% CI)) of C-reactive protein (CRP) (86 (32.7-160) vs. 49.3 (16-109) mg/dL; p < 0.001), ferritin (791 (393-1534) vs. 470 (236- 996) µg/dL; p < 0.001), D dimer (750 (430-1400) vs. 617 (345-1180) µg/dL; p < 0.001), and lower Sp02/Fi02 (266 (91.1) vs. 301 (101); p < 0.001). Since June 2020, there was an increment in the use of CTs (March vs. September; p < 0.001). Overall, 20% did not receive steroids, and 40% received less than 200 mg accumulated prednisone equivalent dose (APED). Severe patients are treated with higher doses. The mortality benefit was observed in patients with oxygen saturation </=90%. Conclusions: Patients with greater comorbidity, severity, and inflammatory markers were those treated with CTs. In severe patients, there is a trend towards the use of higher doses. The mortality benefit was observed in patients with oxygen saturation </=90%

7th Drug hypersensitivity meeting: part two

No abstract availabl

GJ 367b: a dense, ultrashort-period sub-Earth planet transiting a nearby red dwarf star

Stars and planetary system

Holocene palaeotsunami catalogue of SW Iberia

Many on-shore studies focused on high energy marine events occurred in the Gulf of Cadiz have been published since the 1990s. Most of the findings came from sedimentary, palaeontological and geomorphological records on estuaries, marshes, beach-barriers (spit-bars), and some coastal lowlands. Recent off-shore investigations in SW Iberia considered turbidite deposits as a proxy to recognise palaeoearthquakes in this zone. The comparison of datasets from both on-shore and off-shore records indicate that at least five tsunami events generated by strong earthquakes affected this area during the last 7000 years, previous to the more recent and well-documented 1755 AD Lisbon earthquake tsunami event. The catalogue of Holocene palaeotsunami presented here is supported by geological and geomorphological evidences, but also for archaeoseismic and palaeoseismic evidence and written reports for the more recent events occurred during historical times. The recurrence interval for these catastrophic events can be bracketed between 1200 and 1500 years