Passive Functional Mapping of Brain Language Area and Measuring Depth of Anesthesia Using Electrocoricography

Every year, thousands of patients undergo craniotomy as an indispensable operation for their treatment procedure. These individuals are consisted, and not limited to those who suffer from brain lesions, tumors or intractable pharmaco-resistant epilepsy. Given the complicated anatomical structure of human brain and considering the fact that every single spot on the cortex is responsible to support vital sensory and cognitive functions, minimizing collateral damage to brain tissue located in the vicinity of the surgical region and consequently reducing post-surgical complications, is considered as an ultimate goal by neurosurgeons.Although many techniques have been developed and utilized to create pre-surgical passive brain mapping which provides patient-specific functional information, direct Electro-Cortical Stimulation (ECS) is considered the most standard technique. Although ECS is proved to be a useful practical method for functional mapping, yet applying it, not only requires a great deal of experience, but also is usually followed by some complications. Specially in the case of epileptic patients who need to be awakened during the surgery in order to perform a cognitive task, applying ECS could be very problematic, since it significantly increases the chance of seizure. In this study, we develop a novel method based on Electrocardiography (ECoG) in order to do passive functional mapping under anesthesia. This approach which has been successfully utilized on about 20 patients, includes recording ECoG signals while performing a simple auditory task. The fact that this paradigm does not require attentive participation of patients, makes it possible to be performed under anesthesia. Moreover, this procedure results in calculating a quantitative index for measuring depth of anesthesia which could potentially be used alongside with BiSpectral Index (BIS)

Acupuncture and Dentistry

ObjectivesAcupuncture is one of the best known complementary therapies in Traditional Chinese medicine and has a history of more than 2500 years. Acupuncture stimulates the nervous system and shifts the perception of pain signals and also releases natural painkillers, such as endorphins and serotonin. Main aim of this article is to review related articles that have focused on acupuncture and its applications in dentistry. The other objective is to maintain a quick sketch of acupuncture use in dentistry for dental clinicians and to encourage them to use acupuncture with the knowledge of its advantages and disadvantages Dental clinicians have to be familiar with the applications of acupuncture for dental disorders because its successful use for dental conditions has been proven.MethodsA detailed search was performed to identify systematic reviews and research/original and review articles, using PUBMED, EBSCO, GOOGLE SCHOLAR and CDSR from 1990 to 2017 in both languages English and Persian to clarify the application of acupuncture in dentistry.ResultsVarious studies have shown that acupuncture can be used to manage wide range of disorders in dentistry such as dental pain, altering pain threshold, myofascial pain, temporomandibular disorders, gag reflex, dental anxiety, chronic muscle pain or spasm, TMD, Atypical facial pain, Headache (tension headache, migraine), (dry mouth),Nerve pain (neuralgia, especially trigeminal neuralgia, neuropathic pain, nerve injury), Paresthesia or anesthesia of the oral and perioral structures. However acupuncture's ability as dental analgesia or controlling post-operative pain after dental surgery as a single therapy is questionable.Conclusion On the systemic review of acupuncture-associated articles in Cochrane library, previously effective acupuncture therapy lacks adequate evidences, which may be related to the low quality of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in this context.Acupuncture and Dentistr

An integrated model for cost-oriented assembly line balancing and parts feeding with supermarkets

This paper aims to deal with assembly line design from both line balancing and parts feeding (PF) aspects as two-interrelated decision problems while supermarkets are used. These problems arise in the real-world assembly lines (ALs) where decision makers are planning to simultaneously determine the optimal number of stations and the optimal number of supermarkets so that the total installation costs of ALs including line balancing and PF costs are minimized. To this purpose an integrated mathematical model is proposed and its performance is tested through solving a number of benchmark problems and a real case taken from industry.CC BY-NC-ND 4.0</p

Effect of citric acid and microbial phytase on serum enzyme activities and plasma minerals retention in broiler chicks

An experiment was conducted to study the effect of microbial phytase supplementation and citric acid in broiler chicks fed corn-soybean meal base diets on enzyme activities and some blood parameters of serum and plasma minerals concentration in Ross 308 strain broilers. The data was analysed using a randomized complete block design with factorial arrangement of 3×3, three levels of citric acids (0, 3 and 6%) and three levels of phytase (0, 500 and 1000 enzyme unit per kg). There were three replicates for each treatment that total to 270 chicks for the whole experiment. The results indicated that addition of citric acid to diets caused significant decrease in alkaline phosphatase (P&lt;0.05), lactate dehydrogenase (P&lt;0.01) activities, cholesterol (P&lt;0.05) and plasma phosphorus (P) (P&lt;0.01) and Fe (P&lt;0.05) concentrations. Microbial phytase caused significant decrease (P&lt;0.01) in serum enzyme activities and plasma Fe concentration and significantly increased (P&lt;0.01) aspartate aminotransferase activity, triglyceride and plasma P concentration. Microbial phytase and citric acid could modify some serum enzyme activities and increase the availability and use of minerals for growth and performance improvement of broilers. It is therefore necessary to re-evaluate mineral requirements of broiler chickens when a diet is supplemented with phytase and citric acid.Key words: Citric acid, microbial phytase, plasma minerals, serum enzyme activity, broilers