HIV/AIDS Education for Adolescents

BackgroundAmong adolescents, girls are particularly vulnerable not only because they are more likely to be coerced for unprotected sex but also because they are more susceptible biologically to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV infection. This study was carried out to determine the effectiveness of an educational intervention programme aimed at girls focusing on knowledge of and attitude to HIV/AIDS. MethodAn educational intervention study was carried out among 791 rural girls (16-19 years) randomly selected using stratified cluster sampling from coastal villages in Udupi Taluk, Karnataka, Southern India. They were educated regarding HIV/AIDS and their awareness levels were evaluated immediately and one month following intervention. Results Around 35-50% of the girls had misconceptions regarding the modes of transmission which significantly reduced to about 8 % after intervention (95% CI of difference in proportion = (9.2, 17.9);

Investigating the Blood Oxygenation Level-Dependent Functional MRI Response to a Verbal Fluency Task in Early Stroke before and after Hemodynamic Scaling

Background and objectiveBlood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI) has been extensively used as a marker of brain dysfunction and subsequent recovery following stroke. However, growing evidence suggests that straightforward interpretation of BOLD fMRI changes with aging and disease is challenging. In this study, we investigated the effect of calibrating task fMRI data by applying a hemodynamic calibration method using the resting-state fluctuation amplitude (RSFA). Task fMRI responses were obtained during a covert verbal fluency task in a group of early stage stroke patients and matched healthy normal controls.MethodsFifteen acute left hemisphere stroke patients (less than 7 days from stroke; aged 44–84 years, average ~64 years) and 21 healthy controls (aged 55–77 years, average ~61 years) were prospectively studied. All subjects completed a 3-min covert verbal fluency task, and a 10-min eyes-closed resting-state fMRI scan, from which the calibration factor (RSFA) was computed. A behavioral measure on the verbal fluency task was also collected outside the scanner. Whole brain activation volumes and region-of-interest (ROI)-wise percent signal change and activation volumes before and after calibration were computed.ResultsBetween-group differences in whole brain activation volumes, although statistically significant before calibration failed to be significant after calibration. There were significant within-group differences before and after calibration with RSFA. Statistically significant between-group differences on ROI-wise measures before calibration also significantly reduced after calibration. Exploratory brain-behavior correlations revealed a similar pattern: significant correlations before calibration failed to survive after calibration.Discussion and conclusionBOLD fMRI changes with aging and disease is confounded by changes in neurofunctional coupling leading to challenges in the straightforward interpretation of task fMRI results. Application of the hemodynamic calibration using the RSFA technique in the current study appeared to mitigate any differences between stroke and age-matched healthy controls. Our study indicates that estimating neural activity after applying hemodynamic scaling is important for studies of aging and for studies tracking post-stroke changes. We recommend that further investigation of hemodynamic calibration with RSFA in healthy subjects and in stroke in larger samples is necessary

Differing Patterns of Altered Slow-5 Oscillations in Healthy Aging and Ischemic Stroke

The ‘default-mode’ network (DMN) has been investigated in the presence of various disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Autism spectrum disorders. More recently, this investigation has expanded to include patients with ischemic injury. Here, we characterized the effects of ischemic injury in terms of its spectral distribution of resting-state low-frequency oscillations and further investigated whether those specific disruptions were unique to the DMN, or rather more general, affecting the global cortical system. With 43 young healthy adults, 42 older healthy adults, 14 stroke patients in their early stage (< 7 days after stroke onset), and 16 stroke patients in their later stage (between 1-6 months after stroke onset), this study showed that patterns of cortical system disruption may differ between healthy aging and following the event of an ischemic stroke. The stroke group in the later stage demonstrated a global reduction in the amplitude of the slow-5 oscillations (0.01-0.027 Hz) in the DMN as well as in the primary visual and sensorimotor networks, two ‘task-positive’ networks. In comparison to the young healthy group, the older healthy subjects presented a decrease in the amplitude of the slow-5 oscillations specific to the components of the DMN, while exhibiting an increase in oscillation power in the task-positive networks. These two processes of a decrease DMN and an increase in ‘task-positive’ slow-5 oscillations may potentially be related, with a deficit in DMN inhibition, leading to an elevation of oscillations in non-DMN systems. These findings also suggest that disruptions of the slow-5 oscillations in healthy aging may be more specific to the DMN while the disruptions of those oscillations following a stroke through remote (diaschisis) effects may be more widespread, highlighting a non-specificity of disruption on the DMN in stroke population. The mechanisms underlying those differing modes of network disruption need to be further explored to better inform our understanding of brain function in healthy individuals and following injury

Validating age-related functional imaging changes in verbal working memory with acute stroke

Abstract. Functional imaging studies consistently find that older adults recruit bilateral brain regions in cognitive tasks that are strongly lateralized in younger adults, a characterization known as the Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults model. While functional imaging displays what brain areas are active during tasks, it cannot demonstrate what brain regions are necessary for task performance. We used behavioral data from acute stroke patients to test the hypothesis that older adults need both hemispheres for a verbal working memory task that is predominantly left-lateralized in younger adults. Right-handed younger (age 50, n = 7) and older adults (age &gt; 50, n = 21) with acute unilateral stroke, as well as younger (n = 6) and older (n = 13) transient ischemic attack (TIA) patients, performed a self-paced verbal item-recognition task. Older patients with stroke to either hemisphere had a higher frequency of deficits in the verbal working memory task compared to older TIA patients. Additionally, the deficits in older stroke patients were mainly in retrieval time while the deficits in younger stroke patients were mainly in accuracy. These data suggest that bihemispheric activity is necessary for older adults to successfully perform a verbal working memory task

Role of the Contralesional vs. Ipsilesional Hemisphere in Stroke Recovery

Following a stroke, the resulting lesion creates contralateral motor impairment and an interhemispheric imbalance involving hyperexcitability of the contralesional hemisphere. Neuronal reorganization may occur on both the ipsilesional and contralesional hemispheres during recovery to regain motor functionality and therefore bilateral activation for the hemiparetic side is often observed. Although ipsilesional hemispheric reorganization is traditionally thought to be most important for successful recovery, definitive conclusions into the role and importance of the contralesional motor cortex remain under debate. Through examining recent research in functional neuroimaging investigating motor cortex changes post-stroke, as well as brain-computer interface (BCI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) therapies, this review attempts to clarify the contributions of each hemisphere toward recovery. Several functional magnetic resonance imaging studies suggest that continuation of contralesional hemisphere hyperexcitability correlates with lesser recovery, however a subset of well-recovered patients demonstrate contralesional motor activity and show decreased functional capability when the contralesional hemisphere is inhibited. BCI therapy may beneficially activate either the contralesional or ipsilesional hemisphere, depending on the study design, for chronic stroke patients who are otherwise at a functional plateau. Repetitive TMS used to excite the ipsilesional motor cortex or inhibit the contralesional hemisphere has shown promise in enhancing stroke patients' recovery

Capacity-Speed Relationships in Prefrontal Cortex

Working memory (WM) capacity and WM processing speed are simple cognitive measures that underlie human performance in complex processes such as reasoning and language comprehension. These cognitive measures have shown to be interrelated in behavioral studies, yet the neural mechanism behind this interdependence has not been elucidated. We have carried out two functional MRI studies to separately identify brain regions involved in capacity and speed. Experiment 1, using a block-design WM verbal task, identified increased WM capacity with increased activity in right prefrontal regions, and Experiment 2, using a single-trial WM verbal task, identified increased WM processing speed with increased activity in similar regions. Our results suggest that right prefrontal areas may be a common region interlinking these two cognitive measures. Moreover, an overlap analysis with regions associated with binding or chunking suggest that this strategic memory consolidation process may be the mechanism interlinking WM capacity and WM speed.National Center for Research Resources (U.S.) (grant UL1RR025011)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant NIH RO1 DC05375)Wallace H. Coulter FoundationNational Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) (Challenge Grant RC1MH090912-01

Unified Topological Inference for Brain Networks in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Using the Wasserstein Distance

Persistent homology can extract hidden topological signals present in brain networks. Persistent homology summarizes the changes of topological structures over multiple different scales called filtrations. Doing so detect hidden topological signals that persist over multiple scales. However, a key obstacle of applying persistent homology to brain network studies has always been the lack of coherent statistical inference framework. To address this problem, we present a unified topological inference framework based on the Wasserstein distance. Our approach has no explicit models and distributional assumptions. The inference is performed in a completely data driven fashion. The method is applied to the resting-state functional magnetic resonance images (rs-fMRI) of the temporal lobe epilepsy patients collected at two different sites: University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin. However, the topological method is robust to variations due to sex and acquisition, and thus there is no need to account for sex and site as categorical nuisance covariates. We are able to localize brain regions that contribute the most to topological differences. We made MATLAB package available at https://github.com/laplcebeltrami/dynamicTDA that was used to perform all the analysis in this study

Differences in Diffusion Tensor Imaging White Matter Integrity Related to Verbal Fluency Between Young and Old Adults

Throughout adulthood, the brain undergoes an array of structural and functional changes during the typical aging process. These changes involve decreased brain volume, reduced synaptic density, and alterations in white matter (WM). Although there have been some previous neuroimaging studies that have measured the ability of adult language production and its correlations to brain function, structural gray matter volume, and functional differences between young and old adults, the structural role of WM in adult language production in individuals across the life span remains to be thoroughly elucidated. This study selected 38 young adults and 35 old adults for diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and performed the Controlled Oral Word Association Test to assess verbal fluency (VF). Tract-Based Spatial Statistics were employed to evaluate the voxel-based group differences of diffusion metrics for the values of fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), axial diffusivity (AD), radial diffusivity (RD), and local diffusion homogeneity (LDH) in 12 WM regions of interest associated with language production. To investigate group differences on each DTI metric, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) controlling for sex and education level was performed, and the statistical threshold was considered at p &lt; 0.00083 (0.05/60 labels) after Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons. Significant differences in DTI metrics identified in the ANCOVA were used to perform correlation analyses with VF scores. Compared to the old adults, the young adults had significantly (1) increased FA values on the bilateral anterior corona radiata (ACR); (2) decreased MD values on the right ACR, but increased MD on the left uncinate fasciculus (UF); and (3) decreased RD on the bilateral ACR. There were no significant differences between the groups for AD or LDH. Moreover, the old adults had only a significant correlation between the VF score and the MD on the left UF. There were no significant correlations between VF score and DTI metrics in the young adults. This study adds to the growing body of research that WM areas involved in language production are sensitive to aging

Certifications of citizenship: the history, politics and materiality of identity documents in South Asian states and diasporas

Experiences in the post-partition Indian subcontinent refute the conventional expectation that the 'possession of citizenship enables the acquisition of documents certifying it' (Jayal, 2013, 71). Instead, identity papers of various types play a vital part in certifying and authenticating claims to citizenship. This is particularly important in a context where the history of state formation, continuous migration flows and the rise of right-wing majoritarian politics has created an uncertain situation for individuals deemed to be on the ‘margins’ of the state. The papers that constitute this special issue bring together a range of disciplinary perspectives in order to investigate the history, politics and materiality of identity documents, and to dismantle citizenship as an absolute and fixed notion, seeking instead to theorise the very mutable ‘hierarchies’ and ‘degrees’ of citizenship. Collectively they offer a valuable lens onto how migrants, refugees and socio-economically marginal individuals negotiate their relationship with the state, both within South Asia and in South Asian diaspora communities. This introduction examines the wider context of the complex intersections between state-issued identity documents and the nature of citizenship and draws out cross-cutting themes across the papers in this collection

Evaluation of Changes in the Motor Network Following BCI Therapy Based on Graph Theory Analysis

Despite the established effectiveness of the brain-computer interface (BCI) therapy during stroke rehabilitation (Song et al., 2014a, 2015; Young et al., 2014a,b,c, 2015; Remsik et al., 2016), little is understood about the connections between motor network reorganization and functional motor improvements. The aim of this study was to investigate changes in the network reorganization of the motor cortex during BCI therapy. Graph theoretical approaches are used on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquired from stroke patients to evaluate these changes. Correlations between changes in graph measurements and behavioral measurements were also examined. Right hemisphere chronic stroke patients (average time from stroke onset = 38.23 months, standard deviation (SD) = 46.27 months, n = 13, 6 males, 10 right-handed) with upper-extremity motor deficits received interventional rehabilitation therapy using a closed-loop neurofeedback BCI device. Eyes-closed resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) scans, along with T-1 weighted anatomical scans on 3.0T MRI scanners were collected from these patients at four test points. Immediate therapeutic effects were investigated by comparing pre and post-therapy results. Results displayed that th average clustering coefficient of the motor network increased significantly from pre to post-therapy. Furthermore, increased regional centrality of ipsilesional primary motor area (p = 0.02) and decreases in regional centrality of contralesional thalamus (p = 0.05), basal ganglia (p = 0.05 in betweenness centrality analysis and p = 0.03 for degree centrality), and dentate nucleus (p = 0.03) were observed (uncorrected). These findings suggest an overall trend toward significance in terms of involvement of these regions. Increased centrality of primary motor area may indicate increased efficiency within its interactive network as an effect of BCI therapy. Notably, changes in centrality of the bilateral cerebellum regions have strong correlations with both clinical variables [the Action Research Arm Test (ARAT), and the Nine-Hole Peg Test (9-HPT)