Dopamine D_1 Receptors and Nonlinear Probability Weighting in Risky Choice

Misestimating risk could lead to disadvantaged choices such as initiation of drug use (or gambling) and transition to regular drug use (or gambling). Although the normative theory in decision-making under risks assumes that people typically take the probability-weighted expectation over possible utilities, experimental studies of choices among risks suggest that outcome probabilities are transformed nonlinearly into subjective decision weights by a nonlinear weighting function that overweights low probabilities and underweights high probabilities. Recent studies have revealed the neurocognitive mechanism of decision-making under risk. However, the role of modulatory neurotransmission in this process remains unclear. Using positron emission tomography, we directly investigated whether dopamine D_1 and D_2 receptors in the brain are associated with transformation of probabilities into decision weights in healthy volunteers. The binding of striatal D_1 receptors is negatively correlated with the degree of nonlinearity of weighting function. Individuals with lower striatal D_1 receptor density showed more pronounced overestimation of low probabilities and underestimation of high probabilities. This finding should contribute to a better understanding of the molecular mechanism of risky choice, and extreme or impaired decision-making observed in drug and gambling addiction

Harmonizing multisite data with the ComBat method for enhanced Parkinson’s disease diagnosis via DAT-SPECT

BackgroundDopamine transporter single-photon emission computed tomography (DAT-SPECT) is a crucial tool for evaluating patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, its implication is limited by inter-site variability in large multisite clinical trials. To overcome the limitation, a conventional prospective correction method employs linear regression with phantom scanning, which is effective yet available only in a prospective manner. An alternative, although relatively underexplored, involves retrospective modeling using a statistical method known as “combatting batch effects when combining batches of gene expression microarray data” (ComBat).MethodsWe analyzed DAT-SPECT-specific binding ratios (SBRs) derived from 72 healthy older adults and 81 patients with PD registered in four clinical sites. We applied both the prospective correction and the retrospective ComBat correction to the original SBRs. Next, we compared the performance of the original and two corrected SBRs to differentiate the PD patients from the healthy controls. Diagnostic accuracy was assessed using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC).ResultsThe original SBRs were 6.13 ± 1.54 (mean ± standard deviation) and 2.03 ± 1.41 in the control and PD groups, respectively. After the prospective correction, the mean SBRs were 6.52 ± 1.06 and 2.40 ± 0.99 in the control and PD groups, respectively. After the retrospective ComBat correction, the SBRs were 5.25 ± 0.89 and 2.01 ± 0.73 in the control and PD groups, respectively, resulting in substantial changes in mean values with fewer variances. The original SBRs demonstrated fair performance in differentiating PD from controls (Hedges’s g = 2.76; AUC-ROC = 0.936). Both correction methods improved discrimination performance. The ComBat-corrected SBR demonstrated comparable performance (g = 3.99 and AUC-ROC = 0.987) to the prospectively corrected SBR (g = 4.32 and AUC-ROC = 0.992) for discrimination.ConclusionAlthough we confirmed that SBRs fairly discriminated PD from healthy older adults without any correction, the correction methods improved their discrimination performance in a multisite setting. Our results support the utility of harmonization methods with ComBat for consolidating SBR-based diagnosis or stratification of PD in multisite studies. Nonetheless, given the substantial changes in the mean values of ComBat-corrected SBRs, caution is advised when interpreting them

Study on Trapped Field Characteristics of HTS Bulk Annuli With Iron Rings for Ferromagnetic Shimming of a Compact NMR Magnet

Recently, the performance of high temperature superconducting (HTS) bulks such as critical current density, size, and mechanical strength has been improved rapidly. So, various applications with HTS bulks such as motors, bearings, and flywheels have been investigated by many research groups. A compact nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) magnet is one of the new applications after the technique to enhance maximum trapped field of the HTS bulk more than 11.74 T, a corresponding 1H NMR frequency of 500 MHz, has been developed. This new compact NMR magnet out of HTS bulks is far less expensive than those conventional NMR magnets and expected to be widely used in food and drug industry. In design and manufacture of those compact NMR magnets, spatial field homogeneity of large trapped magnetic field in HTS bulk annuli is essential. This paper presents the magnetic field distribution in single and three assembled HTS bulk annuli, measured by a 3-axis hall sensor, and experimental results of its spatial homogeneity improvement by mounting an iron ring inside or outside of the HTS bulk annuli

Observation of Nonlinearity of Generalized King Plot in the Search for New Boson

新粒子探索のための量子センサー --原子スペクトルの精密分光から基礎物理法則に迫る--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-05-12.We measure isotope shifts for neutral Yb isotopes on an ultranarrow optical clock transition ¹S₀ - ³P₀ with an accuracy of a few hertz. Combined with one of the recently reported isotope-shift measurements of Yb⁺ on two optical transitions, the result allows us to construct the King plots --a set of scaled isotope shifts data on two different optical transitions plotted in two-dimensional plane. When only the leading-order terms of isotope shifts are taken into account, a King plot should exhibit a linear relation as a result of elimination of the leading nuclear-size dependence. Extremely large nonlinearity unexplainable by a quadratic field shift is revealed, which was proposed previously as a source of the observed nonlinearity of the King plot. We further construct the generalized King plot with three optical transitions so that we can eliminate the contribution arising from a higher-order effect within the standard model. Our analysis of the generalized King plot shows a deviation from linearity at the 3σ level, indicating that there exist at least two higher-order contributions in the measured isotope shifts. Under reasonable assumptions, we obtain the upper bound of the product of the couplings for a new boson, mediating a force between electrons and neutrons --|yeyn|/(ℏc)<1×10⁻¹⁰ for the mass less than 1 keV-- with the 95% confidence level, providing an important step toward probing new physics via isotope-shift spectroscopy