Do You Hear that Beat? Expectation Versus Uncertainty as Influenced by Background Noise

AbstractThe human ability to perceive and synchronize to musical beat has communicative importance beyond the purely musical context. Entrainment to the beat hints at more general deductive and predictive mechanisms. Evidence for beat entrainment and its related mechanisms was found in behavioural as well as neuroimaging studies. However, the mechanisms behind this phenomenon are not yet fully understood, and in particular, it is not known whether beat entrainment relies on lasting, sensory- specific cortical activity. To answer this question, we asked participants to listen to sequences of isochronous and non- isochronous beats. The sequences faded above and below an individual participant's hearing level, into either silence or background noise. Participants were asked to press a button for as long as they heard the sequence, and let go once they no longer hear it. Results show a consistently lengthened button press for isochronous sequences, beyond the actual fade-out period (leptokurtic, slim fit). The release delay to the non-isochronous sequences was instead characterized by uncertainty (platicurtic, broad fit). Background noise appeared to improve the isochronous sequence ending detection, possibly by raising the level of attention to sounds. These results support the view of entrainment mechanism as an internal, self-sustaining circuit. The activity of such a mechanism, driven by temporal regularity, together with the gradual disappearance of the beat, might create an illusory perception of beat continuation

Transcatheter CoreValve implantation for aortic regurgitation in a Jehovah's witness with prior aortic dissection

Indications for transcatheter valve implantation have been extended to treat native valve aortic regurgitation in case of disproportionate risk for open surgery. Transcatheter aortic valves are also an attractive alternative in patients who refuse blood transfusions. We report the successful off-label implantation of a self-expandable transcatheter valve in a Jehovah's Witness with prior replacement of the ascending aorta for Type A dissection, residual severe aortic regurgitation and refractory heart failure

Host-Based Treatments for Severe COVID-19

COVID-19 has been a global health problem since 2020. There are different spectrums of manifestation of this disease, ranging from asymptomatic to extremely severe forms requiring admission to intensive care units and life-support therapies, mainly due to severe pneumonia. The progressive understanding of this disease has allowed researchers and clinicians to implement different therapeutic alternatives, depending on both the severity of clinical involvement and the causative molecular mechanism that has been progressively explored. In this review, we analysed the main therapeutic options available to date based on modulating the host inflammatory response to SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with severe and critical illness. Although current guidelines are moving toward a personalised treatment approach titrated on the timing of presentation, disease severity, and laboratory parameters, future research is needed to identify additional biomarkers that can anticipate the disease course and guide targeted interventions on an individual basis

Microvascular Alteration in COVID-19 Documented by Nailfold Capillaroscopy

COVID-19 is a multisystemic disease that mainly affects and causes dysregulation of the endothelium, causing systemic manifestations. A nailfold video capillaroscopy is a safe, easy, and noninvasive method to evaluate microcirculation alteration. In this review, we analyzed the literature available to date regarding the object of nailfold video capillaroscopy (NVC) use in patients with a SARS-CoV-2 infection, both in the acute phase and after discharge. The scientific evidence pointed out the main alterations in capillary circulation shown by NVC, so reviewing the findings of each article allowed us to define and analyze the future prospects and needs for possibly including NVC within the management of patients with COVID-19, both during and after the acute phase

Auditory dialog analysis and understanding by generative modelling of interactional dynamics

In the last few years, the interest in the analysis of human behavioral schemes has dramatically grown, in particular for the interpretation of the communication modalities called social signals. They represent well defined interaction patterns, possibly unconscious, characterizing different conversational situations and behaviors in general. In this paper, we illustrate an automatic system based on a generative structure able to analyze conversational scenarios. The generative model is composed by integrating a Gaussian mixture model and the (observed) influence model, and it is fed with a novel kind of simple low-level auditory social signals, which are termed steady conversational periods (SCPs). These are built on duration of continuous slots of silence or speech, taking also into account conversational turn-taking. The interactional dynamics built upon the transitions among SCPs provide a behavioral blueprint of conversational settings without relying on segmental or continuous phonetic features. Our contribution here is to show the effectiveness of our model when applied on dialogs classification and clustering tasks, considering dialogs between adults and between children and adults, in both flat and arguing discussions, and showing excellent performances also in comparison with state-of-the-art frameworks

Isolation and pathogenicity of Xylella fastidiosa associated to the olive quick decline syndrome in southern Italy

In autumn 2013, the presence of Xylella fastidiosa, a xylem-limited Gram-negative bacterium, was detected in olive stands of an area of the Ionian coast of the Salento peninsula (Apulia, southern Italy), that were severely affected by a disease denoted olive quick decline syndrome (OQDS). Studies were carried out for determining the involvement of this bacterium in the genesis of OQDS and of the leaf scorching shown by a number of naturally infected plants other than olive. Isolation in axenic culture was attempted and assays were carried out for determining its pathogenicity to olive, oleander and myrtle-leaf milkwort. The bacterium was readily detected by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) in all diseased olive trees sampled in different and geographically separated infection foci, and culturing of 51 isolates, each from a distinct OQDS focus, was accomplished. Needle-inoculation experiments under different environmental conditions proved that the Salentinian isolate De Donno belonging to the subspecies pauca is able to multiply and systemically invade artificially inoculated hosts, reproducing symptoms observed in the field. Bacterial colonization occurred in prick-inoculated olives of all tested cultivars. However, the severity of and timing of symptoms appearance differed with the cultivar, confirming their differential reaction