Physiological, behavioral and subjective sadness reactivity in frontotemporal dementia subtypes.

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a neurodegenerative disease broadly characterized by socioemotional impairments, includes three clinical subtypes: behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD), semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and non-fluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA). Emerging evidence has shown emotional reactivity impairments in bvFTD and svPPA, whereas emotional reactivity in nfvPPA is far less studied. In 105 patients with FTD (49 bvFTD, 31 svPPA and 25 nfvPPA) and 27 healthy controls, we examined three aspects of emotional reactivity (physiology, facial behavior and subjective experience) in response to a sad film. In a subset of the sample, we also examined the neural correlates of diminished aspects of reactivity using voxel-based morphometry. Results indicated that all three subtypes of FTD showed diminished physiological responding in respiration rate and diastolic blood pressure; patients with bvFTD and svPPA also showed diminished subjective experience, and no subtypes showed diminished facial behavior. Moreover, there were differences among the clinical subtypes in brain regions where smaller volumes were associated with diminished sadness reactivity. These results show that emotion impairments extend to sadness reactivity in FTD and underscore the importance of considering different aspects of sadness reactivity in multiple clinical subtypes for characterizing emotional deficits and associated neurodegeneration in FTD

Making A Difference: Year Two Report of the Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative

This report examines the implementation of the second year of three for the Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative (PAHSCI). Funded by the Annenberg Foundation, this initiative focuses on literacy and math coaches providing support to teachers from across the major subject areas to create literacy-rich classrooms in which students actively engage in learning tasks that deepen their content knowledge and strengthen their abilities to think critically and communicate well. This report presents findings from the first two years of research. It includes survey research as well as in-depth qualitative research in participating schools and districts and provides recommendations for PAHSCI stakeholders as they refine the program and for other education reformers as they consider the benefits of instructional coaching as a strategy for improving high schools and student achievement

Empathic Accuracy Deficits in Patients with Neurodegenerative Disease: Association with Caregiver Depression.

OBJECTIVES:To investigate whether deficits in empathic accuracy (i.e., ability to recognize emotion in others) in patients with neurodegenerative disease are associated with greater depression in their caregivers. DESIGN:Two cross-sectional studies. SETTING:Academic medical center and research university. PARTICIPANTS:Two independent samples (N = 172, N = 63) of patients with a variety of neurodegenerative diseases and their caregivers; comparison group of healthy couples. MEASUREMENT:Patients' empathic accuracy was assessed in the laboratory using a novel dynamic tracking task (rating another person's changing emotions over time) and more traditional measures (recognizing the emotion expressed in photographs of facial expressions and by characters in films). Caregivers completed self-report inventories of depression. RESULTS:Lower empathic accuracy in patients was associated with greater depression in caregivers in both studies. In study 1, this association was found when empathic accuracy was measured using the dynamic tracking measure but not when measured using the more traditional photograph and film measures. In study 2, we found preliminary support for our theoretical model wherein lower empathic accuracy in patients is associated with increased caregiver stress (loneliness, strain, and burden), which in turn is associated with greater caregiver depression. CONCLUSIONS:Caring for a patient with deficits in empathic accuracy is associated with greater loneliness, strain, and burden for caregivers, and increased depression. Caregivers may benefit from interventions designed to compensate for the stress and interpersonal loss associated with patients' declining empathic accuracy

Contaminants in commercial preparations of ‘purified’ small leucine-rich proteoglycans may distort mechanistic studies

The authors are grateful to Genodisc (EC’s 7th Framework Programme (FP7, 2007-2013) under grant agreement no. HEALTH-F2-2008-201626) and the Orthopaedic Institute Ltd for funding.This paper reports the perplexing results that came about because of seriously impure commercially available reagents. Commercial reagents and chemicals are routinely ordered by scientists and are expected to have been rigorously assessed for their purity. Unfortunately, we found this assumption to be risky. Extensive work was carried out within our laboratory using commercially-sourced preparations of the small leucine-rich proteoglycans, decorin and biglycan, to investigate their influence on nerve cell growth. Unusual results compelled us to analyse the composition and purity of both preparations of these proteoglycans using both mass spectrometry and Western blotting, with and without various enzymatic deglycosylations. Commercial ‘decorin’ and ‘biglycan’ were found to contain a mixture of proteoglycans including not only both decorin and biglycan but also fibromodulin and aggrecan. The unexpected effects of ‘decorin’ and ‘biglycan’ on nerve cell growth could be explained by these impurities. Decorin and biglycan contain either chondroitin or dermatan sulphate glycosaminoglycan chains whilst fibromodulin only contains keratan sulphate and the large (>2,500 kDa), highly glycosylated aggrecan, contains both keratan and chondroitin sulphate. The different structure, molecular weights and composition of these impurities significantly affected our work and any conclusions that could be made. These findings beg the question as to whether scientists need to verify the purity of each commercially obtained reagent used in their experiments. The implications of these findings are vast, since the effects of these impurities may already have led to inaccurate conclusions and reports in the literature with concomitant loss of researchers’ funds and time.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Application of an Equilibrium Vaporization Model to the Ablation of Chondritic and Achondritic Meteoroids

We modeled equilibrium vaporization of chondritic and achondritic materials using the MAGMA code. We calculated both instantaneous and integrated element abundances of Na, Mg, Ca, Al, Fe, Si, Ti, and K in chondritic and achondritic meteors. Our results are qualitatively consistent with observations of meteor spectra.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; in press, Earth, Moon, and Planets, Meteoroids 2004 conference proceeding

Comparing two facets of emotion perception across multiple neurodegenerative diseases.

Deficits in emotion perception (the ability to infer others' emotions accurately) can occur as a result of neurodegeneration. It remains unclear how different neurodegenerative diseases affect different forms of emotion perception. The present study compares performance on a dynamic tracking task of emotion perception (where participants track the changing valence of a film character's emotions) with performance on an emotion category labeling task (where participants label specific emotions portrayed by film characters) across seven diagnostic groups (N = 178) including Alzheimer's disease (AD), behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), non-fluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), corticobasal syndrome and healthy controls. Consistent with hypotheses, compared to controls, the bvFTD group was impaired on both tasks. The svPPA group was impaired on the emotion labeling task, whereas the nfvPPA, PSP and AD groups were impaired on the dynamic tracking task. Smaller volumes in bilateral frontal and left insular regions were associated with worse labeling, whereas smaller volumes in bilateral medial frontal, temporal and right insular regions were associated with worse tracking. Findings suggest labeling and tracking facets of emotion perception are differentially affected across neurodegenerative diseases due to their unique neuroanatomical correlates

Association of alcohol consumption after development of heart failure with survival among older adults in the Cardiovascular Health Study

Importance: More than 1 million older adults develop heart failure annually. The association of alcohol consumption with survival among these individuals after diagnosis is unknown. Objective: To determine whether alcohol use is associated with increased survival among older adults with incident heart failure. Design, Setting, and Participants: This prospective cohort study included 5888 community-dwelling adults aged 65 years or older who were recruited to participate in the Cardiovascular Health Study between June 12, 1989, and June 1993, from 4 US sites. Of the total participants, 393 individuals had a new diagnosis of heart failure within the first 9 years of follow-up through June 2013. The study analysis was performed between January 19, 2016, and September 22, 2016. Exposures: Alcohol consumption was divided into 4 categories: abstainers (never drinkers), former drinkers, 7 or fewer alcoholic drinks per week, and more than 7 drinks per week. Primary Outcomes and Measures: Participant survival after the diagnosis of incident heart failure. Results: Among the 393 adults diagnosed with incident heart failure, 213 (54.2%) were female, 339 (86.3%) were white, and the mean (SD) age was 78.7 (6.0) years. Alcohol consumption after diagnosis was reported in 129 (32.8%) of the participants. Across alcohol consumption categories of long-term abstainers, former drinkers, consumers of 1-7 drinks weekly and consumers of more than 7 drinks weekly, the percentage of men (32.1%, 49.0%, 58.0%, and 82.4%, respectively; P \u3c .001 for trend), white individuals (78.0%, 92.7%, 92.0%, and 94.1%, respectively, P \u3c. 001 for trend), and high-income participants (22.0%, 43.8%, 47.3%, and 64.7%, respectively; P \u3c .001 for trend) increased with increasing alcohol consumption. Across the 4 categories, participants who consumed more alcohol had more years of education (mean, 12 years [interquartile range (IQR), 8.0-10.0 years], 12 years [IQR, 11.0-14.0 years], 13 years [IQR, 12.0-15.0 years], and 13 years [IQR, 12.0-14.0 years]; P \u3c .001 for trend). Diabetes was less common across the alcohol consumption categories (32.1%, 26.0%, 22.3%, and 5.9%, respectively; P = .01 for trend). Across alcohol consumption categories, there were fewer never smokers (58.3%, 44.8%, 35.7%, and 29.4%, respectively; P \u3c .001 for trend) and more former smokers (34.5%, 38.5%, 50.0%, and 52.9%, respectively; P = .006 for trend). After controlling for other factors, consumption of 7 or fewer alcoholic drinks per week was associated with additional mean survival of 383 days (95% CI, 17-748 days; P = .04) compared with abstinence from alcohol. Although the robustness was limited by the small number of individuals who consumed more than 7 drinks per week, a significant inverted U-shaped association between alcohol consumption and survival was observed. Multivariable model estimates of mean time from heart failure diagnosis to death were 2640 days (95% CI, 1967-3313 days) for never drinkers, 3046 days (95% CI, 2372-3719 days) for consumers of 0 to 7 drinks per week, and 2806 (95% CI, 1879-3734 days) for consumers of more than 7 drinks per week (P = .02). Consumption of 10 drinks per week was associated with the longest survival, a mean of 3381 days (95% CI, 2806-3956 days) after heart failure diagnosis. Conclusions and Relevance: These findings suggest that limited alcohol consumption among older adults with incident heart failure is associated with survival benefit compared with long-term abstinence. These findings suggest that older adults who develop heart failure may not need to abstain from moderate levels of alcohol consumption

Long‐term follow‐up of stereotactic radiosurgery for head and neck malignancies

BackgroundStereotactic radiosurgery is widely applied to deliver additional dose to head and neck tumors. However, its safety and efficacy remains equivocal.MethodsOne hundred eighty‐four patients with primary head and neck cancers treated between January 1990 and August 2012 with Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery were retrospectively reviewed.ResultsTwo hundred fifteen sites were treated with Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery among 184 patients. Fifty‐one percent of patients received concurrent external beam radiotherapy (EBRT), 72% had prior surgery, and 46% received chemotherapy. Most (44%) had squamous cell carcinoma and most patients (65%) were treated for recurrent disease. With a median follow‐up of 17.3 months, 12‐month local control was 82%. Late effects occurred in 59 patients with the most common being temporal lobe necrosis (15 patients).ConclusionRadiosurgery can provide tumor control for patients with head and neck cancers involving the skull base. Long‐term follow‐up is important in survivors to identify late effects. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck 37: 1557–1562, 2015Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/115998/1/hed23798.pd