Impaired verbal comprehension of quantifiers in corticobasal syndrome.

Objective: Patients with Corticobasal Syndrome (CBS) have atrophy in posterior parietal cortex. This region of atrophy has been previously linked with quantifier comprehension difficulty, but previous studies employed visual stimuli, making it difficult to account for potentially confounding visuospatial deficits in CBS patients. The current study evaluated comprehension of generalized quantifiers using strictly verbal materials. Method: Non-aphasic CBS patients, a brain-damaged control group (consisting of patients with Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia), and age-matched healthy controls participated in this study. We assessed familiar temporal, spatial, and monetary domains of verbal knowledge comparatively. Judgment accuracy was only evaluated in statements for which patients demonstrated accurate factual knowledge about the target domain. Results: We found that patients with CBS are significantly impaired in their ability to evaluate quantifiers when compared to healthy seniors and a brain-damaged control group, even in this strictly verbal task. This impairment was seen in the vast majority of individual CBS patients. Conclusions: These findings offer additional evidence of quantifier impairment in CBS patients and emphasize that this impairment cannot be attributed to potential visuo spatial processing impairments in patients with parietal disease. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using Taxometric Analysis to Distinguish a Small Latent Taxon From a Latent Dimension With Positively Skewed Indicators: The Case of Involuntary Defeat Syndrome.

Joining the debate on the structure of depression, S. R. H. Bearh and N. Amir (2003) analyzed college students' responses to 6 Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) items with predominantly somatic content and concluded that they identified a small latent taxon corresponding to involuntary defeat syndrome. An exact replication of these analyses yielded virtually identical taxometric results, but parallel analyses of simulated taxonic and dimensional comparison data matching the intercorrelations and skewed distributions of the BDI items showed the results to be more consistent with dimensional than with taxonic latent structure. Analyses in a clinical sample with nonskewed indicators further supported a dimensional interpretation. The authors discuss methodological strategies for conducting and interpreting taxometric analyses under the adverse conditions commonly encountered in psychopathology research, including skewed indicators and small putative taxa. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of neonatal medial versus lateral temporal cortex injury: Theoretical comment on Malkova et al. (2010).

The article by Malkova, Mishkin, Suomo, and Bachevalier (see record 2010-24688-002) adds an important piece to our understanding of the role of the medial versus lateral temporal regions in socioemotional behavior. In their paper, they evaluate the effect of infant and adult amygdala lesions and infant inferotemporal cortex lesions on the social interactions of monkeys in infancy and adulthood. The results show that medial temporal lesions performed in infants produce greater effects on socioaffective behavior than similar lesions in adulthood and that infant monkeys with inferotemporal lesions exhibit social deficits that are resolved by adulthood. These results are relevant to three significant issues: (1) the role of the medial temporal and lateral temporal cortex in the symptoms of the Kluver-Bucy syndrome; (2) the role of age at injury in behavioral change after cerebral injuries; and (3) the importance of lesion locus and behavioral measure for recovery from infant and adult cerebral injury. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are eating disorders culture-bound syndromes? Implications for conceptualizing their etiology.

The authors explore the extent to which eating disorders, specifically anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN), represent culture-bound syndromes and discuss implications for conceptualizing the role genes play in their etiology. The examination is divided into 3 sections: a quantitative meta-analysis of changes in incidence rates since the formal recognition of AN and BN, a qualitative summary of historical evidence of eating disorders before their formal recognition, and an evaluation of the presence of these disorders in non-Western cultures. Findings suggest that BN is a culture-bound syndrome and AN is not. Thus, heritability estimates for BN may show greater variability cross-culturally than heritability estimates for AN, and the genetic bases of these disorders may be associated with differential pathoplasticity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modeling language acquisition in atypical phenotypes.

An increasing number of connectionist models have been proposed to explain behavioral deficits in developmental disorders. These simulations motivate serious consideration of the theoretical implications of the claim that a developmental disorder fits within the parameter space of a particular computational model of normal development. The authors examine these issues in depth with respect to a series of new simulations investigating past-tense formation in Williams syndrome. This syndrome and the past-tense domain are highly relevant because both have been used to make strong theoretical claims about the processes underlying normal language acquisition. The authors conclude that computational models have great potential to advance psychologists' understanding of developmental deficits because they focus on the developmental process itself as a pivotal causal factor in producing atypical phenotypic outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for social anxiety and impaired social cognition in a mouse model of fragile X syndrome.

This study assessed social behavior in a mouse model of Fragile X syndrome (FXS), the Fmr1 tm1Cgr or Fmr1 knockout (KO) mouse. Both the KO and wild-type (WT) mice preferred to be near a novel conspecific than to be alone. However, during the initial interaction with a novel conspecific, (1) a greater proportion of the KO mice exhibited high levels of grooming; and (2) the average duration of nose contact with the stimulus mouse was significantly shorter for the KO mice, both indicative of increased arousal and/or anxiety. Both groups exhibited a robust novelty preference when the novel animal was a preferred mouse. However, when the novel mouse was a nonpreferred animal, both groups showed a diminished novelty preference but this effect was more pronounced for the WT mice. This blunted negative reaction of the KO mice to a nonpreferred animal may indicate that they were less proficient than controls in distinguishing between positive and negative social interactions. These findings provide support for the use of this animal model to study the autistic features of FXS and autism spectrum disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Voluntary exercise influences behavioral development in rats exposed to alcohol during the neonatal brain growth spurt.

Children exposed to alcohol prenatally may suffer from severe brain damage, expressed as a variety of behavioral problems, including hyperactivity and learning deficits. There is a critical need to identify effective treatments for fetal alcohol effects. Physical exercise enhances cognitive ability and increases neurogenesis in the hippocampus, a brain area important for learning and memory. Thus, the present study examined whether physical exercise might reduce the severity of alcohol-induced behavioral alterations. Sprague-Dawley rats were intubated with 5.25 g/kg/day ethanol during the third trimester equivalent (postnatal days [PDs] 4-9). Intubated sham control and nontreated controls were included. From PD 21 to PD 51, half of the subjects were given access to running wheels. On PD 52, subjects were tested on the Morris water maze, and on PD 60, open field activity levels were measured. Morris maze performance was significantly impaired among ethanol-exposed subjects; exercise significantly improved performance of all groups. Similarly, ethanol-exposed subjects were overactive in the open field, an effect attenuated with exercise. In sum, these data suggest that exercise may increase neuronal plasticity not only in controls, but also in subjects exposed to alcohol during development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diagnostic Data Compression Techniques for Embedded Memories with Built-In Self-Test

A system-on-chip (SOC) usually consists of many memory cores with different sizes and functionality, and they typically represent a significant portion of the SOC and therefore dominate its yield. Diagnostics for yield enhancement of the memory cores thus is a very important issue. In this paper we present two data compression techniques that can be used to speed up the transmission of diagnostic data from the embedded RAM built-in self-test (BIST) circuit that has diagnostic support to the external tester. The proposed syndrome-accumulation approach compresses the faulty-cell address and March syndrome to about 28% of the original size on average under the March-17N diagnostic test algorithm. The key component of the compressor is a novel syndrome-accumulation circuit, which can be realized by a content-addressable memory. Experimental results show that the area overhead is about 0.9% for a 1Mb SRAM with 164 faults. A tree-based compression technique for word-oriented memories is also presented. By using a simplified Huffman coding scheme and partitioning each 256-bit Hamming syndrome into fixed-size symbols, the average compression ratio (size of original data to that of compressed data) is about 10, assuming 16-bit symbols. Also, the additional hardware to implement the tree-based compressor is very small. The proposed compression techniques effectively reduce the memory diagnosis time as well as the tester storage requirement.     

老年男性阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停程度与代谢综合征的相关性研究

目的：研究老年男性阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停综合征（obstructive sleep apnea syndrome ,OSAS）严重程度与代谢综合征的相关性。方法：随机选择我院收治的663例老年患者,根据呼吸暂停及低通气指数,将其分为非OSAS 组和轻、中、重度OSAS 组。比较各组患者颈围、体质指数（BMI）、腰臀比、血压、血脂、空腹血糖等,分析OSAS严重程度与代谢综合征及其组分发病率之间的相关性。结果 OSAS患者的颈围、BMI、腰臀比、收缩压、舒张压、空腹血糖等显著高于非OSAS组患者。OSAS严重程度与颈围、BMI、甘油三酯等存在显著正相关,且随着OSAS严重程度的增加,代谢综合征及其组分的发生率呈逐渐递增趋势。结论：老年男性阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停程度与代谢综合征发病率密切相关,这可能是阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停综合征增加心血管疾病发生率和死亡率的主要原因。