Musicianship facilitates the processing of Western music chords-An ERP and behavioral study

Peer reviewe

Poor neural and perceptual phoneme discrimination during acoustic variation in dyslexia

Whereas natural acoustic variation in speech does not compromise phoneme discrimination in healthy adults, it was hypothesized to be a challenge for developmental dyslexics. We investigated dyslexics’ neural and perceptual discrimination of native language phonemes during acoustic variation. Dyslexics and non-dyslexics heard /æ/ and /i/ phonemes in a context with fo variation and then in a context without it. Mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a responses to phoneme changes were recorded with electroencephalogram to compare groups during ignore and attentive listening. perceptual phoneme discrimination in the variable context was evaluated with hit-ratios and reaction times. MMN/N2bs were diminished in dyslexics in the variable context. Hit-ratios were smaller in dyslexics than controls. MMNs did not differ between groups in the context without variation. These results suggest that even distinctive vowels are challenging to discriminate for dyslexics when the context resembles natural variability of speech. This most likely reflects poor categorical perception of phonemes in dyslexics. Difficulties to detect linguistically relevant invariant information during acoustic variation in speech may contribute to dyslexics’ deficits in forming native language phoneme representations during infancy. Future studies should acknowledge that simple experimental paradigms with repetitive stimuli can be insensitive to dyslexics’ speech processing deficits.Peer reviewe

Ultraäänen hyödyntäminen biomassan esikäsittelyssä

Tiivistelmä. Biomassaa saadaan runsaasti maatalousjätteenä sekä metsä- ja elintarviketeollisuuden sivuvirtoina. Ilmastokriisin laajetessa biomassa tarjoaa uusiutuvan luonteensa ansiosta ympäristöystävällisemmän vaihtoehdon fossiilisille raaka-aineille. Lignoselluloosapohjaisesta biomassasta voidaankin biojalostusprosessin avulla valmistaa muun muassa bioetanolia sekä useita korkean lisäarvon tuotteita. Biojalostusprosessin kriittisin ja kallein vaihe on esikäsittely. Lignoselluloosapohjaisen biomassan rakenne on konversion kannalta haastava. Sen kolme pääkomponenttia, selluloosa, hemiselluloosa ja ligniini muodostavat polysakkaridien ja ligniinin välisen kompleksin, jonka rakennetta halutaan esikäsittelyn avulla hajottaa, mikä mahdollistaa komponenttien erottamisen. Esikäsittelyssä hyödynnetään erilaisia biologisia, fysikaalisia, kemiallisia tai fysikaalis-kemiallisia menetelmiä. Ultraääni on fysikaalinen esikäsittelymenetelmä ja sitä voidaan hyödyntää useisiin eri kemiallisiin esikäsittelymenetelmiin yhdistettynä. Ultraäänen hyödyntäminen esikäsittelyssä on myös potentiaalinen vihreän kemian menetelmä. Tässä tutkielmassa tarkasteltiin ultraäänen hyödyntämistä emäsesikäsittelyssä, laimeassa happoesikäsittelyssä sekä yhdistettynä orgaanisten ja syväeutektisten liuottimien avulla tehtävään esikäsittelyyn. Esikäsittelyssä ultraäänen hyödyntäminen perustuu suurilta osin akustiseen kavitaatioon. Ultraäänen parametrien optimointi auttaa saavuttamaan menetelmän täyden potentiaalin. Tarkasteltujen tutkimusten perusteella merkittäviksi parametreiksi määritettiin muun muassa biomassan määrä ja partikkelikoko, ultraäänen taajuus ja teho, ultraäänikäsittelyn kesto sekä lämpötila. Tutkimusten perusteella ultraäänen avulla saatiin onnistuneesti hajotettua polysakkaridien ja ligniinin sisäisiä ja molekyylien välisiä sidoksia sekä pystyttiin vaikuttamaan biomassan pinnan rakenteeseen. Ultraäänen avulla saatiin parannettua muun muassa komponenttien erottumista sekä yksinkertaisten sokereiden saantoa esikäsittelyä seuranneen entsymaattisen hydrolyysin jälkeen

Infancy and early childhood maturation of neural auditory change detection and its associations to familial dyslexia risk

Objective: We investigated early maturation of the infant mismatch response MMR, including mismatch negativity (MMN), positive MMR (P-MMR), and late discriminative negativity (LDN), indexing auditory discrimination abilities, and the influence of familial developmental dyslexia risk. Methods: We recorded MMRs to vowel, duration, and frequency deviants in pseudo-words at 0, 6, and 28 months and compared MMRs in subgroups with vs. without dyslexia risk, in a sample overrepresented by risk infants. Results: Neonatal MMN to the duration deviant became larger and earlier by 28 months; MMN was elicited by more deviants only at 28 months. The P-MMR was predominant in infancy; its amplitude increased by 6 and decreased by 28 months; latency decreased with increasing age. An LDN emerged by 6 months and became larger and later by 28 months. Dyslexia risk affected MMRs and their maturation. Conclusions: MMRs demonstrate an expected maturational pattern with 2-3 peaks by 28 months. The effects of dyslexia risk are prominent but not always as expected. Significance: This large-scale longitudinal study shows MMR maturation with three age groups and three deviants. Results illuminate MMR's relation to the adult responses, and hence their cognitive underpinnings, and help in identifying typical/atypical auditory development in early childhood. (c) 2022 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

Linking disease epidemiology and livestock productivity: the case of bovine respiratory disease in France

Concerns are growing over the impact of livestock farming on environment and public health. The livestock industry is faced with the double constraint of limiting its use of natural resources and antimicrobials while ensuring its economic sustainability. In this context, reliable methods are needed to evaluate the effect of the prevention of endemic animal diseases on the productivity of livestock production systems. In this study, an epidemiological and productivity model was used to link changes in Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD) incidence with the productivity of the beef and dairy cattle sectors in France. Cattle production parameters significantly affected by BRD were selected through literature review. Previous field study results and national cattle performance estimates were used to infer growth performances, mortality rates and carcass quality in the cattle affected and not affected by BRD. A steady-state deterministic herd production model was used to predict the productivity of the dairy and beef sector and their defined compartments (breeding-fattening, feedlot young bulls, and feedlot veal) in case of BRD incidence reduction by 20%, 50% or 100%. Results suggested that BRD should be controlled at a priority in beef breeding farms as eradication of BRD in beef calves would increase the whole beef sector’s productivity by 4.7–5.5% while eradication in other production stages would result in lower productivity gain in their respective sectors. However, the analysis performed at compartment level showed that, in both the beef and dairy sector, young bull and veal feedlot enterprises derive more economic benefits from BRD eradication for their own compartment (increase in productivity of 8.7–12.8% for beef young bulls) than the breeding farms (increase in productivity of 5.1–6% for beef calves), which may limit the investments in BRD control

Neuromagnetic speech discrimination responses are associated with reading-related skills in dyslexic and typical readers

Poor neural speech discrimination has been connected to dyslexia, and may represent phonological processing deficits that are hypothesized to be the main cause for reading impairments. Thus far, neural speech discrimination impairments have rarely been investigated in adult dyslexics, and even less by examining sources of neuromagnetic responses. We compared neuromagnetic speech discrimination in dyslexic and typical readers with mismatch fields (MMF) and determined the associations between MMFs and reading-related skills. We expected weak and atypically lateralized MMFs in dyslexic readers, and positive associations between readingrelated skills and MMF strength. MMFs were recorded to a repeating pseudoword /ta-ta/ with occasional changes in vowel identity, duration, or syllable frequency from 43 adults, 21 with confirmed dyslexia. Phonetic (vowel and duration) changes elicited left-lateralized MMFs in the auditory cortices. Contrary to our hypothesis, MMF source strengths or lateralization did not differ between groups. However, better verbal working memory was associated with stronger left-hemispheric MMFs to duration changes across groups, and better reading was associated with stronger right-hemispheric late MMFs across speech-sound changes in dyslexic readers. This suggests a link between neural speech processing and reading-related skills, in line with previous work. Furthermore, our findings suggest a right-hemispheric compensatory mechanism for language processing in dyslexia. The results obtained promote the use of MMFs in investigating reading-related brain processes.Peer reviewe