Detail-oriented cognitive style and social communicative deficits, within and beyond the autism spectrum: independent traits that grow into developmental interdependence

At the heart of debates over underlying causes of autism is the "Kanner hypothesis" that autistic deficits in social reciprocity, and a cognitive/perceptual 'style' favouring detail-oriented cognition, co-vary in autistic individuals. A separate line of work indicates these two domains are normally distributed throughout the population, with autism representing an extremity. This realisation brings the Kanner debate into the realm of normative co-variation, providing more ways to test the hypothesis, and insights into typical development; for instance, in the context of normative functioning, the Kanner hypothesis implies social costs to spatial/numerical prowess

A Theory for the High-T_c Cuprates: Anomalous Normal-State and Spectroscopic Properties, Phase Diagram, and Pairing

A theory of highly correlated layered superconducting materials isapplied for the cuprates. Differently from an independent-electron approximation, their low-energy excitations are approached in terms of auxiliary particles representing combinations of atomic-like electron configurations, where the introduction of a Lagrange Bose field enables treating them as bosons or fermions. The energy spectrum of this field accounts for the tendency of hole-doped cuprates to form stripe-like inhomogeneities. Consequently, it induces a different analytical behavior for auxiliary particles corresponding to "antinodal" and "nodal" electrons, enabling the existence of different pairing temperatures at T^* and T_c. This theory correctly describes the observed phase diagram of the cuprates, including the non-Fermi-liquid to FL crossover in the normal state, the existence of Fermi arcs below T^* and of a "marginal-FL" critical behavior above it. The qualitative anomalous behavior of numerous physical quantities is accounted for, including kink- and waterfall-like spectral features, the drop in the scattering rates below T^* and more radically below T_c, and an effective increase in the density of carriers with T and \omega, reflected in transport, optical and other properties. Also is explained the correspondence between T_c, the resonance-mode energy, and the "nodal gap".Comment: 28 pages, 7 figure

Association of the PHACTR1/EDN1 genetic locus with spontaneous coronary artery dissection

Background: Spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) is an increasingly recognized cause of acute coronary syndromes (ACS) afflicting predominantly younger to middle-aged women. Observational studies have reported a high prevalence of extracoronary vascular anomalies, especially fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD) and a low prevalence of coincidental cases of atherosclerosis. PHACTR1/EDN1 is a genetic risk locus for several vascular diseases, including FMD and coronary artery disease, with the putative causal noncoding variant at the rs9349379 locus acting as a potential enhancer for the endothelin-1 (EDN1) gene. Objectives: This study sought to test the association between the rs9349379 genotype and SCAD. Methods: Results from case control studies from France, United Kingdom, United States, and Australia were analyzed to test the association with SCAD risk, including age at first event, pregnancy-associated SCAD (P-SCAD), and recurrent SCAD. Results: The previously reported risk allele for FMD (rs9349379-A) was associated with a higher risk of SCAD in all studies. In a meta-analysis of 1,055 SCAD patients and 7,190 controls, the odds ratio (OR) was 1.67 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.50 to 1.86) per copy of rs9349379-A. In a subset of 491 SCAD patients, the OR estimate was found to be higher for the association with SCAD in patients without FMD (OR: 1.89; 95% CI: 1.53 to 2.33) than in SCAD cases with FMD (OR: 1.60; 95% CI: 1.28 to 1.99). There was no effect of genotype on age at first event, P-SCAD, or recurrence. Conclusions: The first genetic risk factor for SCAD was identified in the largest study conducted to date for this condition. This genetic link may contribute to the clinical overlap between SCAD and FMD

Music and Emotion—A Case for North Indian Classical Music

The ragas of North Indian Classical Music (NICM) have been historically known to elicit emotions. Recently, Mathur et al. (2015) provided empirical support for these historical assumptions, that distinct ragas elicit distinct emotional responses. In this review, we discuss the findings of Mathur et al. (2015) in the context of the structure of NICM. Using, Mathur et al. (2015) as a demonstrative case-in-point, we argue that ragas of NICM can be viewed as uniquely designed stimulus tools for investigating the tonal and rhythmic influences on musical emotion