withdrawn 2017 hrs ehra ecas aphrs solaece expert consensus statement on catheter and surgical ablation of atrial fibrillation

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European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA)/Heart Rhythm Society (HRS)/Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society (APHRS)/Latin American Heart Rhythm Society (LAHRS) expert consensus on risk assessment in cardiac arrhythmias: use the right tool for the right outcome, in the right population.

In clinical practice and for scientific purposes, cardiologists and primary care physicians perform risk assessment in patients with cardiac diseases or conditions with high risk of developing such. The European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), Heart Rhythm Society (HRS), Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society (APHRS), and the Latin American Heart Rhythm Society (LAHRS) set down this expert consensus statement task force to summarize the consensus regarding risk assessment in cardiac arrhythmias. Objectives were to raise awareness of using the right risk assessment tool for a given outcome in a given population, and to provide physicians with practical proposals that may lead to rational and evidence-based risk assessment and improvement of patient care in this regard. A large variety of methods are used for risk assessment and choosing the best methods and tools hereof in a given situation is not simple. Even though parameters and test results found associated with increased risk of one outcome (e.g. death) may also be associated with higher risk of other adverse outcomes, specific risk assessment strategies should be used only for the purposes for which they are validated. The work of this task force is summarized in a row of consensus statement tables

Novel insights into RNP granules by employing the trypanosome's microtubule skeleton as a molecular sieve

RNP granules are ribonucleoprotein assemblies that regulate the post-transcriptional fate of mRNAs in all eukaryotes. Their exact function remains poorly understood, one reason for this is that RNP granule purification has not yet been achieved. We have exploited a unique feature of trypanosomes to prepare a cellular fraction highly enriched in starvation stress granules. First, granules remain trapped within the cage-like, subpellicular microtubule array of the trypanosome cytoskeleton while soluble proteins are washed away. Second, the microtubules are depolymerized and the granules are released. RNA sequencing combined with single molecule mRNA FISH identified the short and highly abundant mRNAs encoding ribosomal mRNAs as being excluded from granules. By mass spectrometry we have identified 463 stress granule candidate proteins. For 17/49 proteins tested by eYFP tagging we have confirmed the localization to granules, including one phosphatase, one methyltransferase and two proteins with a function in trypanosome life-cycle regulation. The novel method presented here enables the unbiased identification of novel RNP granule components, paving the way towards an understanding of RNP granule function

Neuronal correlates of affective theory of mind in schizophrenia out-patients : evidence for a baseline deficit

Background:Schizophrenia out-patients have deficits in affective theory of mind (ToM) but also on more basal levels of social cognition, such as the processing of neutral and emotional expressions. These deficits are associated with changes in brain activation in the amygdala and the superior temporal sulcus (STS). However, until now there have been no studies that examined these different levels of social cognition and their neurobiological underpinnings in patients within one design.Method:Sixteen medicated schizophrenia out-patients and 16 matched healthy controls were studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a social cognition task that allows the investigation of affective ToM (aToM), emotion recognition and the processing of neutral facial expressions.Results:Patients showed a deficit in emotion recognition and a more prominent deficit in aToM. The performance in aToM and in emotion recognition was correlated in the control group but not in the schizophrenia group. Region-of-interest analysis of functional brain imaging data revealed no difference between groups during aToM, but a hyperactivation in the schizophrenia group in the left amygdala and right STS during emotion recognition and the processing of neutral facial expressions.Conclusions:The results indicate that schizophrenia out-patients have deficits at several levels of social cognition and provide the first evidence that deficits on higher-order social cognitive processes in schizophrenia may be traced back to an aberrant processing of faces per se.publishe

Evidence for altered amygdala activation in schizophrenia in an adaptive emotion recognition task

Deficits in social cognition seem to present an intermediate phenotype for schizophrenia, and are known to be associated with an altered amygdala response to faces. However, current results are heterogeneous with respect to whether this altered amygdala response in schizophrenia is hypoactive or hyperactive in nature. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate emotion-specific amygdala activation in schizophrenia using a novel adaptive emotion recognition paradigm. Participants comprised 11 schizophrenia outpatients and 16 healthy controls who viewed face stimuli expressing emotions of anger, fear, happiness, and disgust, as well as neutral expressions. The adaptive emotion recognition approach allows the assessment of group differences in both emotion recognition performance and associated neuronal activity while also ensuring a comparable number of correctly recognized emotions between groups. Schizophrenia participants were slower and had a negative bias in emotion recognition. In addition, they showed reduced differential activation during recognition of emotional compared with neutral expressions. Correlation analyses revealed an association of a negative bias with amygdala activation for neutral facial expressions that was specific to the patient group. We replicated previous findings of affected emotion recognition in schizophrenia. Furthermore, we demonstrated that altered amygdala activation in the patient group was associated with the occurrence of a negative bias. These results provide further evidence for impaired social cognition in schizophrenia and point to a central role of the amygdala in negative misperceptions of facial stimuli in schizophrenia.publishe

Neuronal correlates of social cognition in borderline personality disorder

Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have severe problems in social interactions that might be caused by deficits in social cognition. Since the findings about social-cognitive abilities in BPD are inhomogeneous, ranging from deficits to superior abilities, we aimed to investigate the neuronal basis of social cognition in BPD. We applied a paradigm with three social cognition tasks, differing in their complexity: basal processing of faces with a neutral expression, recognition of emotions, and attribution of emotional intentions (affective ToM). A total of 13 patients with BPD and 13 healthy matched controls (HCs) were included in a functional magnet resonance imaging study. BPD patients showed no deficits in social cognition on the behavioral level. However, while HCs showed increasing activation in areas of the mirror neuron system with increasing complexity in the social-cognitive task, BPD patients had hypoactivation in these areas and hyperactivation in the amygdala which were not modulated by task complexity. This activation pattern seems to reflect an enhanced emotional approach in the processing of social stimuli in BPD that allows good performance in standardized social-cognitive tasks, but might be the basis of social-cognitive deficits in real-life social interactions.publishe

Datenreport: Ergebnisse einer Befragung zu Problemen in Online-Beteiligungsverfahren und den Potenzialen von Künstlicher Intelligenz zur Lösung dieser Probleme

Als Reaktion auf wachsende Akzeptanz- und Legitimationsprobleme laden Politik und Verwaltung seit geraumer Zeit Bürger:innen dazu ein, in den Dialog zu treten. Unter dem Stichwort Bürgerbeteiligung existieren zahlreiche Formate – etwa Bürgerräte oder -foren – mit dem Ziel, politische Entscheidungen legitimer, akzeptierter und sachgerechter zu machen. Online-Plattformen sind mittlerweile ein gängiges Instrument zur Durchführung von Bürgerbeteiligungsprozessen. Bei ihrem Einsatz können jedoch eine Reihe von Problemen auftauchen, von denen viele aus der Forschung zu politischer Online-Kommunikation bekannt sind, etwa Inzivilität oder die Dominanz des Diskurses durch wenige Beteiligte. Als Option zur Lösung solcher Probleme wird die Unterstützung der Verfahren durch Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) diskutiert. Dieser Datenreport enthält Ergebnisse einer Befragung zu Online-Beteiligungsverfahren unter 475 Personen (N), die solche Verfahren entweder kennen oder bereits an mindestens einem Verfahren teilgenommen haben. Ziele der Befragung waren 1) die Identifikation von wahrgenommenen oder antizipierten Problemen in Online-Beteiligungsverfahren, 2) die Evaluation der Potenziale von KI-Verfahren zur Lösung dieser Probleme und 3) die Ermittlung der Gründe, aus denen Bürger:innen an Online-Beteiligungsverfahren teilnehmen oder nicht teilnehmen

Associations of pineal volume, chronotype and symptom severity in adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and healthy controls

The pineal gland, as part of the human epithalamus, is the main production site of peripheral melatonin, which promotes the modulation of sleep patterns, circadian rhythms and circadian preferences (morningness vs. eveningness). The present study analyses the pineal gland volume (PGV) and its association with circadian preferences and symptom severity in adult ADHD patients compared to healthy controls. PGV was determined manually using high-resolution 3T MRI (T1-magnetization prepared rapid gradient echo) in medication free adult ADHD patients (N=74) compared to healthy controls (N=86). Moreover, the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ), the ADHD Diagnostic Checklist and the Wender-Utah Rating Scale were conducted. PGV differed between both groups (patients: 59.9±33.8mm(3); healthy controls: 71.4±27.2mm(3), P=0.04). In ADHD patients, more eveningness types were revealed (patients: 29%; healthy controls: 17%; P=0.05) and sum scores of the MEQ were lower (patients: 45.8±11.5; healthy controls 67.2±10.1; P<0.001). Multiple regression analyses indicated a positive correlation of PGV and MEQ scores in ADHD (β=0.856, P=0.003) but not in healthy controls (β=0.054, P=0.688). Patients' MEQ scores (β=-0.473, P=0.003) were negatively correlated to ADHD symptoms. The present results suggest a linkage between the PGV and circadian preference in adults with ADHD and an association of the circadian preference to symptom severity. This may facilitate the development of new chronobiological treatment approaches for the add-on treatment in ADHD.publishe