A TMS-EEG Pre-processing Parameters Tuning Study

The integration of transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) has been sought to explore connectivity and cortical excitability in healthy and pathological subjects. Although the number of studies in this field is continuously increasing, there is still no consensus on the pre-processing pipeline. The goal of this work is to study the effect of two pre-processing parameters, (i) the interpolation window size and (ii) the regularization parameter of the source-estimate-utilizing noise-discarding (SOUND) algorithm, on the resulting TMS-evoked potentials (TEPs) and five peaks of interest. The comparison of four combinations of parameters showed the effect of the parameters on the TMS residual artifacts, which resulted in major differences between TEPs in the early windows after the TMS pulses. The work showed how the interpolation window size and the regularization parameter influence the TEPs results and proposed a combination of parameters that retrieve information of interest, decreasing the amount of noise in data. © 2024, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Bioaccumulation of selenium-by fruit origin lactic acid bacteria in tropical fermented fruit juices

Adequate fruit consumption helps to prevent several chronic age-related diseases. Selenium (Se) is an elemental micronutrient with antioxidant capacity. In general, fruits and Se ingest by humans are below the recommended daily intake value. Fresh fruits are highly susceptible to deterioration during storage. Fermentation can improve the storage period, sensory profile, and bioactive compound content of foods; moreover, some lactic acid bacteria can accumulate organic Se intracellularly. In this work, microbial growth and Se accumulation by Levilactobacillus brevis CRL2051 and Fructobacillus tropaeoli CRL2034 in tropical fruit juices were evaluated. The strains could grow 1–2 log cfu/mL, alone or combined, in mango, passion fruit, and mango/passion fruit juices, although they could not completely eliminate native microorganisms in unpasteurised juices. In pasteurised trials, both strains consumed fruit carbohydrates producing lactic acid, in addition to acetic acid, and mannitol by F. tropaeoli. Both strains accumulated Se intracellularly in the fruit juices, especially (123.0 μg/L) in the passion fruit juice fermented by the mixed culture. Finally, the Fructobacillus strain increased 3.42 times the phenolic compound concentration in the mango/passion fruit juice with added Se after 24 h. The assayed LAB strains could be used for preparing functional fermented fruit beverages bio-enriched in Se

Selenium bio-enrichment of Mediterranean fruit juices through lactic acid fermentation

This work was carried out to elaborate selenium (Se) bio-enriched fermented Mediterranean fruit juices. To this purpose, pomegranate and table red grape juices were added with sodium selenite (Na2SeO3) and fermented by Levilactobacillus brevis CRL 2051 and Fructobacillus tropaeoli CRL 2034 individually or combined. To better evaluate the effect of selenite addition and starter strain inoculums on the total bacterial community of the fruit juices, fermentation trials were performed with raw and pasteurized fruit juices. No statistical significant differences were observed for total mesophilic microorganisms (TMM) and rod-shaped lactic acid bacteria (LAB) levels among raw and pasteurized juices inoculated with the starter strains, while significant differences between those juices with and without selenite were registered. LAB cocci, Pseudomonadaceae and yeasts were detected only for the raw juice preparations. The dominance of L. brevis CRL 2051 and F. tropaeoli CRL 2034 was confirmed by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-PCR analysis. After fermentation, pH dropped for all inoculated trials and control raw juices. The soluble solid content (SSC) levels of the raw juices were higher than the corresponding pasteurized trials. The thermal treatment affected consistently yellowness of grape juice trials and redness of pomegranate juices. No microbial Se accumulation was registered for pomegranate juices, while F. tropaeoli CRL 2034 accumulated the highest amount of Se (65.5 μg/L) in the grape juice. For this reason, only trials carried out with raw grape juices were investigated by metagenomics analysis by Illumina MiSeq technology. Non-inoculated grape juices were massively fermented by acetic acid bacteria while Fructobacillus and Lactobacillus (previous genus name of Levilactobacillus) represented the highest operational taxonomy units (OTUs) relative abundance % of the trials inoculated with the starter strains as confirmed by this technique

Brain-heart interaction: an ECG-fMRI integrated study in physiology and major depressive disorder

Introduction. The connection between brain activity and cardiac variability, through the modulation of the autonomic nervous system, is a well-established phenomenon. However, the studies that have addressed the reciprocal influences between central and autonomic nervous system during resting state are still limited, especially in the context of pathophysiology. Aim. In the present work, the main objective was to explore the relationship between the central nervous system and cardiac variability at rest in an integrated multimodal analysis thanks to simultaneously acquired ECG and fMRI data. Moreover, we evaluated possible differences in adult-onset major depressive disorder (MDD), in which both brain function and cardiac variability alterations are evident, but in which there is still no idea of their reciprocal effects. Methods. Thirty-three participants were included in the study (67.33 ± 9.63 years, 58% females), 16 diagnosed with adult-onset MDD and 17 healthy controls (HC) with comparable age and sex. fMRI analysis was integrated with the analysis of the heart rate variability through an HRV-driven fMRI analysis to study the BOLD responses to sympathetic and vagal autonomic changes. Results. Our findings allowed to identify activations and deactivations in brain regions that are some of the key nodes of the central autonomic network (CAN), a network of brain structures that are involved in the regulation of autonomic processes at high central level. The comparison between patients affected by MDD and HC subjects revealed that differences in brain correlates of cardiac variability are present in brain regions of the CAN. Conclusions. Combined HRV-fMRI analyses provided new findings on physiological brain-heart interactions and allowed to characterize the autonomic and central neurobiological bases of depression from a wider and more comprehensive prospective

Asymptomatic bacteriuria in candidates for active treatment of renal stones: results from an international multicentric study on more than 2600 patients

: The occurrence of asymptomatic bacteriuria concomitant to urolithiasis is an issue for patients undergoing renal stone treatment. Disposing of a preoperative urine culture is essential to reduce the risk of septic events. The endpoint of the study is to report which characteristics of candidates for renal stone treatment are frequently associated with positive urine culture. 2605 patients were retrospectively enrolled from 14 centers; inclusion criteria were age > 18 and presence of a single renal stone 1-2 cm in size. The variables collected included age, gender, previous renal surgery, comorbidities, skin-to-stone distance, stone size, location, density, presence of hydronephrosis. After a descriptive analysis, the association between continuous and categorical variables and the presence of positive urine culture was assessed using a logistic regression model. Overall, 240/2605 patients (9%) had preoperative bacteriuria. Positive urine culture was more frequent in females, patients with previous renal interventions, chronic kidney disease, congenital anomalies, larger stones, increased density. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that previous renal interventions (OR 2.6; 95% CI 1.9-3.4; p < 0.001), renal-related comorbidities (OR 1.31; 95% CI 1.19-1.4; p < 0.001), higher stone size (OR 1.06; 95% CI 1.02-1.1; p = 0.01) and density (OR 1.00; 95% CI 1.0-1.00; p = 0.02) were associated with bacteriuria; male gender and lower caliceal location were inversely related to it. Beyond expected risk factors, such as female gender, other parameters are seemingly favoring the presence of positive urine culture. The awareness of variables associated with bacteriuria allows to assess which individuals are at increased risk of presenting bacteriuria and reduce the rate of septic complications