The influence of semantic top-down processing in auditory verbal hallucinations

AbstractBackgroundAuditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are one of the most prominent symptoms of schizophrenia but have also been reported in the general population. Several cognitive models have tried to elucidate the mechanism behind auditory verbal hallucinations, among which a top-down model. According to this model, perception is biased towards top-down information (e.g., expectations), reducing the influence of bottom-up information coming from the sense organs. This bias predisposes to false perceptions, i.e., hallucinations.MethodsThe current study investigated this hypothesis in non-psychotic individuals with frequent AVH, psychotic patients with AVH and healthy control subjects by applying a semantic top-down task. In this task, top-down processes are manipulated through the semantic context of a sentence. In addition, the association between hallucination proneness and semantic top-down errors was investigated.ResultsNon-psychotic individuals with AVH made significantly more top-down errors compared to healthy controls, while overall accuracy was similar. The number of top-down errors, corrected for overall accuracy, in the patient group was in between those of the other two groups and did not differ significantly from either the non-psychotic individuals with AVH or the healthy controls. The severity of hallucination proneness correlated with the number of top-down errors.DiscussionThese findings confirm that non-psychotic individuals with AVH are stronger influenced by top-down processing (i.e., perceptual expectations) than healthy controls. In contrast, our data suggest that in psychotic patients semantic expectations do not play a role in the etiology of AVH. This finding may point towards different cognitive mechanisms for pathological and nonpathological hallucinations

Stereotactic large-core needle breast biopsy: analysis of pain and discomfort related to the biopsy procedure

The purpose of this study was to determine the significance of variables such as duration of the procedure, type of breast tissue, number of passes, depth of the biopsies, underlying pathology, the operator performing the procedure, and their effect on women’s perception of pain and discomfort during stereotactic large-core needle breast biopsy. One hundred and fifty consecutive patients with a non-palpable suspicious mammographic lesions were included. Between three and nine 14-gauge breast passes were taken using a prone stereotactic table. Following the biopsy procedure, patients were asked to complete a questionnaire. There was no discomfort in lying on the prone table. There is no relation between type of breast lesion and pain, underlying pathology and pain and performing operator and pain. The type of breast tissue is correlated with pain experienced from biopsy (P = 0.0001). We found out that patients with dense breast tissue complain of more pain from biopsy than patients with more involution of breast tissue. The depth of the biopsy correlates with pain from biopsy (P = 0.0028). Deep lesions are more painful than superficial ones. There is a correlation between the number of passes and pain in the neck (P = 0.0188) and shoulder (P = 0.0366). The duration of the procedure is correlated with pain experienced in the neck (P = 0.0116) but not with pain experienced from biopsy

Enhanced Radiation Hardness and Faster Front Ends for the Beetle Readout Chip

This paper summarizes the recent progress in the development of the 128 channel pipelined readout chip Beetle, which is intended for the silicon vertex detector, the inner tracker, the pile-up veto trigger and the RICH detectors of LHCb. Deficiencies found in the front end of the Beetle Version 1.0 and 1.1 chips resulted in the submissions of BeetleFE 1.1 and BeetleFE 1.2, while BeetleSR 1.0 implements test circuits to provide future Beetle chips with logic circuits hardened against single event upset (SEU). Section I. motivates the development of new front ends for the Beetle chip, and section II. summarizes their concepts and construction. Section III. reports preliminary results from the BeetleFE 1.1 and BeetleFE 1.2 chips, while section IV. describes the BeetleSR 1.0 chip. An outlook on future test and development of the Beetle chip is given in section V

SEU Robustness, Total Dose Radiation Hardness and Analogue Performance of the Beetle Chip

The Beetle is a 128 channel readout chip for silicon strip detectors in LHCb. In addition to the pipelined readout path known from the RD20 architecture which can be used either in analogue or binary mode, the Beetle features an additional prompt binary readout path, used for the LHCb pile-up veto counters and a triple-redundant layout of the control logic. It is manufactured in commercial 0.25 µm CMOS technology using radiation hard design techniques. In addition to a total dose irradiation with X-rays, an SEU irradiation test with 65 MeV protons was performed with Beetle1.3. The results of this test are presented together with new results from the Beetle versions 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5, which were submitted in the Beetle ER engineering run in May 2004

Performance of the Beetle readout chip for LHCb

Beetle is a 128-channel readout chip, which will be used in the silicon vertex detector, the pile-up veto counters and the silicon tracker of the LHCb experiment at CERN. A further application of the Beetle chip is the readout of the LHCb RICH, in case it is equipped with multi-anode PMTs. The scope of this paper is the design changes leading to the latest version 1.3 of the Beetle readout chip. In addition, measurements on earlier versions and simulation results driving these changes are shown

Remarkable change in age-specific breast cancer incidence in the Swiss canton of Geneva and its possible relation with the use of hormone replacement therapy

BACKGROUND: This article aims to explain the reasons for the remarkable change in age of breast cancer occurrence in the Swiss canton of Geneva. METHODS: We used population-based data from the Geneva cancer registry, which collects information on method of detection, stage and tumour characteristics since 1975. For patients diagnosed between 1997–2003, we obtained additional information on use of hormone replacement therapy from a large prospective study on breast cancer. Using generalized log linear regression analysis, we compared age-specific incidence rates with respect to period, stage, oestrogen receptor status, method of detection and use of hormone replacement therapy. RESULTS: In the periods 1975–1979 and 1985–1989, breast cancer risk increased with age, showing the highest incidence rates among women aged ≥ 85 years. From 1997, the age-specific incidence curve changed completely (p < 0.0001), showing an incidence peak at 60–64 years and a reduced incidence among elderly women. This incidence peak concerned mainly early stage and oestrogen positive cancers and was exclusively observed among women who ever used hormone replacement therapy, regardless whether the tumour was screen-detected or not. CONCLUSION: The increasing prevalence of hormone replacement therapy use during the 1990s could explain the important change in age-specific breast cancer incidence, not only by increasing breast cancer risk, but also by revealing breast cancer at an earlier age

Health-related quality of life of early-stage breast cancer patients after different radiotherapy regimens

PURPOSE: To evaluate and compare health-related quality of life (HRQL) of women with early-stage breast cancer (BC) treated with different radiotherapy (RT) regimens. METHODS: Data were collected from five prospective cohorts of BC patients treated with breast-conserving surgery and different RT regimens: intraoperative RT (IORT, 1 × 23.3 Gy; n = 267), external beam accelerated partial breast irradiation (EB-APBI, 10 × 3.85 Gy; n = 206), hypofractionated whole breast irradiation(hypo-WBI, 16 × 2.67 Gy; n = 375), hypo-WBI + boost(hypo-WBI-B, 21–26 × 2.67 Gy; n = 189), and simultaneous WBI + boost(WBI-B, 28 × 2.3 Gy; n = 475). Women ≥ 60 years with invasive/in situ carcinoma ≤ 30 mm, cN0 and pN0-1a were included. Validated EORTC QLQ-C30/BR23 questionnaires were used to asses HRQL. Multivariable linear regression models adjusted for confounding (age, comorbidity, pT, locoregional treatment, systemic therapy) were used to compare the impact of the RT regimens on HRQL at 12 and 24 months. Differences in HRQL over time (3–24 months) were evaluated using linear mixed models. RESULTS: There were no significant differences in HRQL at 12 months between groups except for breast symptoms which were better after IORT and EB-APBI compared to hypo-WBI at 12 months (p < 0.001). Over time, breast symptoms, fatigue, global health status and role functioning were significantly better after IORT and EB-APBI than hypo-WBI. At 24 months, HRQL was comparable in all groups. CONCLUSION: In women with early-stage breast cancer, the radiotherapy regimen did not substantially influence long-term HRQL with the exception of breast symptoms. Breast symptoms are more common after WBI than after IORT or EB-APBI and improve slowly until no significant difference remains at 2 years posttreatment. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10549-021-06314-4

Redefining radiotherapy for early-stage breast cancer with single dose ablative treatment: a study protocol

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