Brief intervention with music therapy stimulation in a case of dementia: neuroimaging effects

La demencia es un síndrome de prevalencia creciente a nivel mundial, que se caracteriza por deterioro cognitivo y la aparición de diversos síntomas. Del abanico de posibilidades en cuanto al abordaje para esta población se encuentran las intervenciones que provee la musicoterapia, una disciplina en pleno crecimiento dentro del área de salud. El objetivo del presente artículo es presentar el análisis de un estudio de caso clínico con diagnóstico de demencia vascular, a quien se le realizó una evaluación por neuroimagen con cámara gamma, antes y después del proceso de estimulación con musicoterapia. Los resultados evidenciaron una mejoría en el área de corteza frontoparietal izquierda, luego de la estimulación musicoterapeutica. Si bien el presente artículo es la presentación de un caso único, los datos permiten entrever las potencialidades que presentan las propuestas dentro del campo de la musicoterapia en el abordaje de pacientes con demencia.Dementia is a syndrome of increasing prevalence around the world, characterized by cognitive deterioration and the appearance of several symptoms. From the range of possibilities in terms of treating this population are the interventions provided by music therapy, a discipline that is growing within the health area. The aim of this article is to present the analysis of a clinical case study with a diagnosis of vascular dementia, to whom an evaluation of neuroimaging with a gamma camera was made, before and after the music therapy stimulation process. The results showed an improvement in the area of the left frontoparietal cortex after the music-therapy stimulation. Although, the current article is the presentation of a case report, the data allow to glimpse the great potentialities that the field of music therapy had in the approach of patients with dementia

Numerical simulation of strongly nonlinear and dispersive waves using a Green-Naghdi model

We investigate here the ability of a Green-Naghdi model to reproduce strongly nonlinear and dispersive wave propagation. We test in particular the behavior of the new hybrid finite-volume and finite-difference splitting approach recently developed by the authors and collaborators on the challenging benchmark of waves propagating over a submerged bar. Such a configuration requires a model with very good dispersive properties, because of the high-order harmonics generated by topography-induced nonlinear interactions. We thus depart from the aforementioned work and choose to use a new Green-Naghdi system with improved frequency dispersion characteristics. The absence of dry areas also allows us to improve the treatment of the hyperbolic part of the equations. This leads to very satisfying results for the demanding benchmarks under consideration

Numerical Modelling Of The V-J Combinations Of The T Cell Receptor TRA/TRD Locus

T-Cell antigen Receptor (TR) repertoire is generated through rearrangements of V and J genes encoding α and β chains. The quantification and frequency for every V-J combination during ontogeny and development of the immune system remain to be precisely established. We have addressed this issue by building a model able to account for Vα-Jα gene rearrangements during thymus development of mice. So we developed a numerical model on the whole TRA/TRD locus, based on experimental data, to estimate how Vα and Jα genes become accessible to rearrangements. The progressive opening of the locus to V-J gene recombinations is modeled through windows of accessibility of different sizes and with different speeds of progression. Furthermore, the possibility of successive secondary V-J rearrangements was included in the modelling. The model points out some unbalanced V-J associations resulting from a preferential access to gene rearrangements and from a non-uniform partition of the accessibility of the J genes, depending on their location in the locus. The model shows that 3 to 4 successive rearrangements are sufficient to explain the use of all the V and J genes of the locus. Finally, the model provides information on both the kinetics of rearrangements and frequencies of each V-J associations. The model accounts for the essential features of the observed rearrangements on the TRA/TRD locus and may provide a reference for the repertoire of the V-J combinatorial diversity

Differential functional connectivity underlying asymmetric reward-related activity in human and nonhuman primates

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a key brain region involved in complex cognitive functions such as reward processing and decision making. Neuroimaging studies have reported unilateral OFC response to reward-related variables; however, those studies rarely discussed this observation. Nevertheless, some lesion studies suggest that the left and right OFC contribute differently to cognitive processes. We hypothesized that the OFC asymmetrical response to reward could reflect underlying hemispherical difference in OFC functional connectivity. Using resting-state and reward-related functional MRI data from humans and from rhesus macaques, we first identified an asymmetrical response of the lateral OFC to reward in both species. Crucially, the subregion showing the highest reward-related asymmetry (RRA) overlapped with the region showing the highest functional connectivity asymmetry (FCA). Furthermore, the two types of asymmetries were found to be significantly correlated across individuals. In both species, the right lateral OFC was more connected to the default mode network compared to the left lateral OFC. Altogether, our results suggest a functional specialization of the left and right lateral OFC in primates.</jats:p

A tritium vessel cleanup experiment in TFTR

A simple tritium cleanup experiment was carried out in TFTR following the initial high power deuterium-tritium discharges in December 1993. A series of 34 ohmic and deuterium neutral beam fueled shots was used to study the removal of tritium implanted into the wall and limiters. A very large plasma was created in each discharge to ``scrub`` an area as large as possible. Beam-fueled shots at 2.5 to 7.5 MW of injected power were used to monitor tritium concentration levels in the plasma by detection of DT-neutrons. The neutron signal decreased by a factor of 4 during the experiment, remaining well above the expected T-burnup level. The amount of tritium recovered at the end of the cleanup was about 8% of the amount previously injected with high power DT discharges. The experience gained suggests that measurements of tritium inventory in the torus are very difficult to execute and require dedicated systems with overall accuracy of 1%

A mathematical model for unsteady mixed flows in closed water pipes

We present the formal derivation of a new unidirectional model for unsteady mixed flows in non uniform closed water pipe. In the case of free surface incompressible flows, the \FS-model is formally obtained, using formal asymptotic analysis, which is an extension to more classical shallow water models. In the same way, when the pipe is full, we propose the \Pres-model, which describes the evolution of a compressible inviscid flow, close to gas dynamics equations in a nozzle. In order to cope the transition between a free surface state and a pressured (i.e. compressible) state, we propose a mixed model, the \PFS-model, taking into account changes of section and slope variation