Detection superiority of 7 T MRI protocol in patients with epilepsy and suspected focal cortical dysplasia

In 11 adult patients with suspicion of Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) on 1.5 T (n = 1) or 3 T (n = 10) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 7 T MRI was performed. Visibility, extent, morphological features and delineation were independently rated and subsequently discussed by three observers. Additionally, head-to-head comparisons with corresponding 3 T images were made in the eight patients with a previous 3 T MRI and sustained suspicion of FCD. Comparison with histopathology was done in the five patients that underwent surgery. All lesions, seen at 1.5 and 3 T, were also recognized on 7 T. At 7 T FLAIR highlighted the FCD-like lesions best, whereas T2 and T2* were deemed better suited to review structure and extent of the lesion. Image quality with the used 7 T MRI setup was higher than the quality with the used 3 T MRI setup. In 2 out of 11 patients diagnosis changed, in one after re-evaluation of the images, and in the other based on histopathology. With the used 7 T MRI setup, FCD-like lesions can be detected with more confidence and detail as compared to lower field strength. However, concordance between radiologic diagnosis and final diagnosis seems to be lower than expected

Supporting Direct Breastfeeding in a Tracheostomy-Dependent Neonate: A Case Report

Objectives: There are numerous well-described benefits to breastfeeding to both infant and mother. Even in healthy children with an uncomplicated perinatal course, there may be significant struggles maintaining a breastfeeding relationship. Infants with a complicated clinical course have been shown to benefit even more from the provision of breastmilk, however they are seldom encouraged to feed directly at the breast. There are no reports of successful direct breastfeeding in an infant with a tracheostomy. Methods and Results: We present the case of a breastfeeding dyad including a trach-dependent infant with congenital idiopathic bilateral vocal fold immobility who successfully initiated and maintained an inclusive breastfeeding relationship. Conclusion: This case illustrates that successful direct breastfeeding can be achieved in an infant with a tracheostomy. If a patient is felt to be capable of oral feeding via bottle, there is no reason that there should not be a trial of direct feeding at the breast, for the benefit of both members of the breastfeeding dyad

The association between threat and politics simultaneously depends on the type of threat, the political domain, and the country

Theories link threat with right-wing political beliefs. We use the World Values Survey (60,378 participants) to explore how six types of threat (e.g., economic, violence, and surveillance) are associated with multiple political beliefs (e.g., cultural, economic, and ideological identification) in 56 countries/territories. Multilevel models with individuals nested in countries revealed that the threat-political belief association depends on the type of threat, the type of political beliefs, and the country. Economic-related threats tended to be associated with more left-wing economic political beliefs and violence-related threats tended to be associated with more cultural right-wing beliefs, but there were exceptions to this pattern. Additional analyses revealed that the associations between threat and political beliefs were different across countries. However, our analyses identified few country characteristics that could account for these cross-country differences. Our findings revealed that political beliefs and perceptions of threat are linked, but that the relationship is not simple. Keywords: Ideology, Belief Systems, Threat, Cultur

Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual grammars: Evidence from gender assigment in unilingual Dutch and mixed speech

This study reports on grammatical gender assignment in elicited production data from heritage speakers of Turkish, Papiamento, and Spanish in the Netherlands. We selectively target the nominal domain, consisting of a determiner, a noun, and an adjective. Previous studies have demonstrated gender to be vulnerable in bilingual acquisition (e.g., Gathercole & Thomas 2005; Mitrofanova et al. 2018). The presence of grammatical gender in one language may affect gender assignment in the other language, suggesting cross-linguistic influence (Egger, Hulk & Tsimpli 2018; Eichler, Jansen & Müller 2013; Kaltsa, Tsimpli & Argyri 2019). In this chapter, we investigate the role of cross-linguistic influence from the heritage language onto the societal language by comparing three HLs that differ in terms of the properties of the nominal domain, including gender. Determiner phrase (DP) constructions consisting of a determiner, noun, and adjective were elicited by means of a director-matcher task (Gullberg, Indefrey &Muysken 2009), which was performed both in a unilingual Dutch mode, and in a code-switching mode. The results show that all groups tend to overgeneralize the common gender in the Dutch unilingual mode. Strikingly, heritage speakers of Spanish performed more target-like than the Papiamento and Turkish speakers, which is probably related to the fact that Turkish and Papiamento do not have a grammatical gender system, whereas Spanish distinguishes masculine and feminine gender in the DP. As for code-switching from Dutch to the HL, we observe a similar preference for the common gender, such that most speakers tend to assign common gender to nouns that are inserted from their respective HLs into Dutch DPs. Some speakers also apply a gender assignment strategy based on the translation equivalent of the noun in Dutch, or produce a postnominal adjective construction with an uninflected adjective. An analysis of extra-linguistic variables demonstrated that in both the unilingual and the code-switching mode, gender assignment strategies seem to be determined to some extent by the degree of dominance of the societal language

Sorting living mesenchymal stem cells using a TWIST1 RNA-based probe depends on incubation time and uptake capacity

Bone marrow derived mesenchymal stromal cells (BMSCs) are multipotent progenitors of particular interest for cell-based tissue engineering therapies. However, one disadvantage that limit their clinical use is their heterogeneity. In the last decades a great effort was made to select BMSC subpopulations based on cell surface markers, however there is still no general consensus on which markers to use to obtain the best BMSCs for tissue regeneration. Looking for alternatives we decided to focus on a probe-based method to detect intracellular mRNA in living cells, the SmartFlare technology. This technology does not require fixation of the cells and allows us to sort living cells based on gene expression into functionally different populations. However, since the technology is available it is debated whether the probes specifically recognize their target mRNAs. We validated the TWIST1 probe and demonstrated that it specifically recognizes TWIST1 in BMSCs. However, differences in probe concentration, incubation time and cellular uptake can strongly influence signal specificity. In addition we found that TWIST1high expressing cells have an increased expansion rate compared to TWIST1low expressing cells derivedfrom the same initial population of BMSCs. The SmartFlare probes recognize their target gene, however for each probe and cell type validation of the protocol is necessary

Simultaneous acquisition of perfusion image and dynamic MR angiography using time-encoded pseudo-continuous ASL

Neuro Imaging Researc