Group membership modulates empathic neural responses to pain in deaf individuals.

Empathy deficiencies are prevalent among deaf individuals. It has yet to be determined whether they exhibit an ingroup bias in empathic responses. This study employed explicit and implicit empathy tasks (i.e. attention-to-pain-cue [A-P] task and attention-to-nonpain-cue [A-N] task) to explore the temporal dynamics of neural activities when deaf individuals were processing painful/nonpainful stimuli from both ingroup models (deaf people) and outgroup models (hearing people), which aims to not only assist deaf individuals in gaining a deeper understanding of their intergroup empathy traits but also to aid in the advancement of inclusive education. In the A-P task, we found that (i) ingroup priming accelerated the response speed to painful/nonpainful pictures; (ii) the N2 amplitude of painful pictures was significantly more negative than that of nonpainful pictures in outgroup priming trials, whereas the N2 amplitude difference between painful and nonpainful pictures was not significant in ingroup priming trials. For N1 amplitude of the A-N task, we have similar findings. However, this pattern was reversed for P3/late positive component amplitude of the A-P task. These results suggest that the deaf individuals had difficulty in judging whether hearing individuals were in pain. However, their group identification and affective responses could shape the relatively early stage of pain empathy.

Assessment of 3.0 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging in Madelung's deformity: findings and implications.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to investigate the 3.0 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features of Madelung's deformity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The wrist MRI scans of 19 patients clinically diagnosed with Madelung's deformity and 20 patients without deformity were consecutively selected from Beijing Jishuitan Hospital between April 2019 and December 2022 for observation, in the case group and control group, respectively. Multiple linear regression was used to analyze the factors affecting tilting angle and width of central disc (CD, also termed as triangular fibrocartilage, the main component of triangular fibrocartilage complex), while the chi-square test was used to compare the occurrences of CD (radial) attachment displacement, VL, and RTL. p < 0.05 indicated statistical significance. RESULTS: Madelung's deformity significantly contributed to the tilting and thickening of the CD. In the case group, the tilting angle and thickness of CD were (51.46 ± 1.33)° and (0.23 ± 0.01) cm, respectively, which was statistically significant (p < 0.05); the radial attachment of the CD significantly shifted away from the distal articular surface level (χ2 = 39.00, p < 0.001), with a mean displacement of (0.97 ± 0.38) cm. Furthermore, the cases demonstrated abnormally developed Vickers ligament (χ2 = 35.19, p < 0.001) and radiotriquetral ligament (χ2 = 25.66, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: MRI provides a notable advantage in diagnosing Madelung's deformity. Compared with the control group, patients with Madelung's deformity exhibited tilting and thickening of the CD. Additionally, the radial attachment of the CD was significantly shifted proximally with abnormal development of Vickers and radiotriquetral ligaments.

A case of colonic muco-submucosal elongated polyp (CMSEP) misdiagnosed as a inverted colonic diverticulum (ICD).

CMSEP is a large intestine polyp with a long and broad stalk and a "worm-like" appearance which is covered by normal mucosa. The submucosal layer consists of edematous and fibrotic interstitium, adipose tissue, dilated blood vessels, and lymphatic follicles[1]. Endoscopic magnification of the mucosal surface showed a uniform honeycomb pattern of regular blood vessels, with soft and deformable "folds" and "gyrus" at the top. The exact pathogenesis of CMSEP is still unclear.

Endoscopic observation of a rare duodenal tumor.

A 30-year-old young previously healthy man presented to our hospital with middle and upper abdominal discomfort. Abdominal computerized tomography (CT) showed no significant abnormalities. White light endoscopy showed the local mucosa in the descending part of the duodenum had granuloid uplift, some of which were fused into pieces with red color, and some other areas showed fading tone. Magnifying endoscopy with indigo-carmine staining and narrow-band imaging showed a finger-like, loose villous structure with irregular microvessels on the surface. Pathological examination of biopsy specimens showed that lymphocytes were diffused and dispersed in the mucosa with relatively simple morphology, no lymphoid follicles were observed, and local compression was obvious. Immunohistochemical staining revealed a lymphoid population highly positive for CD20 and CD10. These results were consistent with duodenal-type follicular lymphoma (D-FL).

Clinical Efficacy and Mechanism of Transcutaneous Neuromodulation on Functional Dyspepsia.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Prokinetics and proton pump inhibitors are first-line drugs for functional dyspepsia (FD) patients. However, no available treatment is effective for most FD patients, and the pathogenesis is still unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the therapeutic effect of transcutaneous neuromodulation (TN) on FD and its potential mechanisms. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifty-seven FD patients were enrolled in the study and randomly divided into 3 groups (TN Neiguan (PC6) group, TN Zusanli (ST36) group, and sham TN group) that received corresponding treatment respectively for 4 weeks. Then, all the patients enrolled received TN PC6 combined with ST36 treatment for another 4 weeks. Dyspepsia symptom questionnaire, Medical outcomes study item short form health survey (SF-36), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale were used to assess the severity of symptoms. Gastric accommodation, gastric emptying rate, and related parameters of electrogastrogram were used to assess the pathophysiological mechanism of FD. The possible gastrointestinal hormonal mechanism involved was assessed by detecting serum ghrelin, neuropeptide Y, and vasoactive intestinal peptide. The possible duodenal inflammation mechanism involved was assessed by detecting duodenal mucosa. RESULTS: TN treatment reduced the dyspepsia symptom score ( P <0.05) and improved the quality of life. After TN treatment, the gastric accommodation ( P <0.01), the gastric emptying rate ( P <0.01), and the percentages of preprandial ( P <0.05) and postprandial ( P <0.05) gastric slow waves (GSW) were increased. The proportions of preprandial ( P <0.05) and postprandial ( P <0.05) gastric electrical rhythm disorder were reduced. The double acupoint combination therapy further enhanced the therapeutic effect of single acupoint. In addition, the levels of ghrelin ( P <0.001) and neuropeptide Y ( P <0.001) were significantly increased, the level of vasoactive intestinal peptide ( P <0.001) was significantly decreased, and the total number of mast cells ( P <0.001) in the duodenal bulb was significantly decreased after double acupoints combination therapy. CONCLUSIONS: TN treatment significantly improves the dyspepsia symptoms of FD patients and their quality of life. TN treatment increases the percentage of normal GSW, reduces the proportion of gastric electrical rhythm disorder, and improves the gastric accommodation and gastric emptying rate. The therapeutic effect of TN may be caused by regulating gastrointestinal hormone secretion and alleviating local inflammatory responses in duodenum. In addition, the improvement of TN on GSW was closely related to the decrease of bradygastria.

Prevalence and molecular characterization of Cryptosporidium spp. in dairy cattle in Central Inner Mongolia, Northern China.

BACKGROUND: Cryptosporidium is a gastrointestinal protozoan that widely exists in nature, it is an established zoonotic pathogen. Infected cattle are considered to be associated with cryptosporidiosis outbreaks in humans. In the present study, we aimed to assess the prevalence and species distribution of Cryptosporidium in dairy cattle in Central Inner Mongolia. METHODS: We focused on the small subunit ribosomal RNA gene (SSU rRNA) of Cryptosporidium and 60-kDa glycoprotein gene (gp60) of Cryptosporidium parvum. We collected 505 dairy cattle manure samples from 6 sampling sites in Inner Mongolia in 2021; the samples were divided into 4 groups based on age. DNA extraction, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), sequence analysis, and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) using SspI and MboII restriction endonucleases were performed. RFLP analysis was performed to determine the prevalence and species distribution of Cryptosporidium. RESULTS: SSU rRNA PCR revealed that the overall prevalence of Cryptosporidium infection was 29.90% (151/505), with a prevalence of 37.67% (55/146) and 26.74% (96/359) in diarrheal and nondiarrheal samples, respectively; these differences were significant. The overall prevalence of Cryptosporidium infection at the 6 sampling sites ranged from 0 to 47.06% and that among the 4 age groups ranged from 18.50 to 43.81%. SSU rRNA sequence analysis and RFLP analysis revealed the presence of 4 Cryptosporidium species, namely, C. bovis (44.37%), C. andersoni (35.10%), C. ryanae (21.85%), and C. parvum (11.92%), along with a mixed infection involving two or three Cryptosporidium species. Cryptosporidium bovis or C. andersoni was the most common cause of infection in the four age groups. The subtype of C. parvum was successfully identified as IIdA via gp60 analysis; all isolates were identified as the subtype IIdA19G1. CONCLUSIONS: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of dairy cattle infected with four Cryptosporidium species in Inner Mongolia, China, along with a mixed infection involving two or three Cryptosporidium species, with C. bovis and C. andersoni as the dominant species. Moreover, this is the first study to identify C. parvum subtype IIdA19G1 in cattle in Inner Mongolia. Our study findings provide detailed information on molecular epidemiological investigation of bovine cryptosporidiosis in Inner Mongolia, suggesting that dairy cattle in this region are at risk of transmitting cryptosporidiosis to humans.

Visuospatial ability and attention as risk factors for suicidal ideation in middle-aged and elderly schizophrenia patients: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia patients have a high risk of suicide, and their cognition function is impaired with increasing age. The association between neurocognitive and suicidality in schizophrenia patients are heterogeneous. We aimed to explore the relationship between neurocognitive function and suicidal ideation in schizophrenia patients across age groups. METHODS: A total of 587 patients with schizophrenia were enrolled in this study. The schizophrenia patients were divided into young group (aged 18-44) and middle-aged and elderly group (aged 45-70). The schizophrenia patients were divided into suicidal ideation group and non-suicidal ideation group according to the evaluation results of the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation. Insomnia symptoms were measured by the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI). Psychotic symptoms were measured by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), and cognitive function was measured by the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). RESULTS: There was a negative correlation between the age and attention scores of RBANS (P = 0.018). The young schizophrenia patients had higher risk of suicidality than middle-aged and elderly schizophrenia patients (P = 0.001). In the logistic regression analysis, the scores of ISI and positive symptoms scores of PANSS were associated with suicidal ideation among young schizophrenia patients (All P < 0.05). Age, BMI, the scores of ISI, general symptoms scores of PANSS, visuospatial scores of RBANS and attention scores of RBANS were associated with suicidal ideation in middle-aged and elderly schizophrenia patients (All P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: High visuospatial scores of RBANS and attention scores of RBANS were risk factors for suicidal ideation in middle-aged and elderly schizophrenia patients.

High-grade intraepithelial neoplasia of the cervical esophagus arising from a tiny ectopic gastric mucosa.

A 77-year-old male underwent gastroscopy in our institution. Conventional endoscopic examination revealed two ectopic gastric mucosas (EGMs) located about 17cm from the incisors. One of the EGMs was about 0.6cm in size and was round with a flat surface and a slight uplift in the center. The boundary of the uplift was clear and the villous structure disappeared. Narrow Band Imaging (NBI) showed irregular microvessels with a fine network pattern at the uplift, and there appeared to be small and punctate crypt opening (CO) in the glandular ducts. Then we performed acetic acid staining and found that the lesion showed dense and small CO clearly, suggesting differentiated gastric cancer. Histopathologic diagnosis of the biopsy specimen from the lesion was high-grade intraepithelial neoplasia.

Gastric inverted hyperplastic polyp with heterotopic pancreas: a rare case of submucosal eminence of the antrum.

A 43-year-old female underwent gastroscopy due to abdominal discomfort. Gastroscopy showed a submucosal eminence at the greater curvature of the antrum, with smooth surface mucosa, biopsy pathology suggests inflammation. We scheduled an endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) for her. EUS revealed that the size of the lesion was about 8.7mm*10.8mm, with hypoechoic changes, which originated in the submucosa. Endoscopic submucosal dissection was performed, and representative photomicrographs of histologic sections were shown. The patient was diagnosed with gastric inverted hyperplastic polyp (GIHP) with heterotopic pancreas (HP).

Solid food dysphagia caused by aortic arch malformation compressing esophagus.

A 66-year-old woman presented to our hospital with a long history of solid food dysphagia. Gastroscopy revealed that esophagus was distorted and slightly narrow in the middle section. High-resolution esophageal manometry testing was used to assess the esophageal motor function. We tried to insert the manometric catheter into the patient's stomach, but found that when the patient swallowed, the picture presented an up-down symmetry phenomenon, and the esophageal peristalsis lost its normal slope. Therefore, we believed that the manometer catheter folded back cephalad at her upper esophagus, demonstrating a strange appearance of a curly manometry catheter. Subsequently, a barium esophagram was performed and revealed that there was a stenosis in the middle of the esophagus, and the narrowest of which was about 2cm in diameter. We reviewed the computed tomography and found the aortic arch of the patient was compressing on her esophagus, causing local lumen stenosis.

Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome and reversible splenial lesion syndrome.

Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) and reversible splenial lesion syndrome are both considered uncommon conditions relatively rare. Fever, hemorrhage, and acute kidney injury are the prevailing symptoms frequently observed in cases of HFRS. We describe a case of a middle-aged man who had been hospitalized with fever and acute neurological symptoms. His main symptom was recurrent dizziness. Cranial computed tomography (CT) did not reveal any obvious lesions, such as encephalorrhagia or infarctions. The splenium of corpus callosum showed hyperintensity on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is in line with the characteristic radiographic observations of reversible splenial lesion syndrome (RESLES). Further analyses revealed that the patient's platelet counts had decreased to 7×109/L while hemorrhagic fever antibodies were positive. Eventually, the patient was diagnosed with HFRS and exhibited clinical improvements after active treatment.

Evaluation of Minimal Change Lesions Using Linked Color Imaging in Patients With Nonerosive Reflux Esophagitis.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: High prevalence of minimal change lesion (MCL) in nonerosive reflux esophagitis (NERD) patients is commonly recognized by many endoscopists. However, it is difficult to detect MCL with conventional white-light imaging (WLI) endoscopy. Linked color imaging (LCI), a novel image-enhanced endoscopy technology with strong, unique color enhancement, is used for easy recognition of early gastric cancer and detection of Helicobacter pylori infection. The aim of the study was to compare the efficacy of LCI and WLI endoscopy in evaluating MCL in patients with NER. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty-one patients with NERD and 38 subjects with nongastroesophageal reflux disease (non-GERD) were recruited in this study between August 2017 and July 2018. During upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, the distal 5 cm of the esophageal mucosal morphology at the squamocolumnar junction was visualized using WLI followed by LCI. MCL was defined as areas of erythema, blurring of the Z-line, friability, decreased vascularity, white turbid discoloration, and edema or accentuation of the mucosal folds. Three experienced endoscopists evaluated the color patterns for MCL on WLI images and on WLI combined with LCI images in both groups. A biopsy was taken 2 cm above the esophagogastric junction. Histologic slides were scored by a pathologist in a blinded manner. RESULTS: The proportion of MCL was higher in the patients with NERD (70.7%, 29/41) than in patients with non-GERD (39.5%, 15/38) using WLI combined with LCI. In 12 patients with NERD, both WLI and LCI showed normal mucosa. The MCL detection rate was significantly higher when using WLI combined with LCI than when using WLI (70.7% vs. 51.2%, P=0.039) in patients with NERD. The histopathologic score of MCL (+) was significantly higher than that of MCL (-) patients in both the NERD group (4.59±0.32 vs. 2.36±0.34, P<0.01) and the non-GERD group (3.47±0.50 vs. 2.00±0.28, P<0.01). The intraobserver reproducibility levels and interobserver agreement were better with LCI than with WLI alone. CONCLUSIONS: Frequency of MCL was higher in patients with NERD than in those with non-GERD. MCL can be identified by using WLI combined with LCI in patients with NERD. By enhancing endoscopic images, LCI is more sensitive in detecting MCL compared with WLI.

Distributed Optimal and Self-Tuning Filters Based on Compressed Data for Networked Stochastic Uncertain Systems with Deception Attacks.

In this study, distributed security estimation problems for networked stochastic uncertain systems subject to stochastic deception attacks are investigated. In sensor networks, the measurement data of sensor nodes may be attacked maliciously in the process of data exchange between sensors. When the attack rates and noise variances for the stochastic deception attack signals are known, many measurement data received from neighbour nodes are compressed by a weighted measurement fusion algorithm based on the least-squares method at each sensor node. A distributed optimal filter in the linear minimum variance criterion is presented based on compressed measurement data. It has the same estimation accuracy as and lower computational cost than that based on uncompressed measurement data. When the attack rates and noise variances of the stochastic deception attack signals are unknown, a correlation function method is employed to identify them. Then, a distributed self-tuning filter is obtained by substituting the identified results into the distributed optimal filtering algorithm. The convergence of the presented algorithms is analyzed. A simulation example verifies the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

Multidimensional Feature in Emotion Recognition Based on Multi-Channel EEG Signals.

As a major daily task for the popularization of artificial intelligence technology, more and more attention has been paid to the scientific research of mental state electroencephalogram (EEG) in recent years. To retain the spatial information of EEG signals and fully mine the EEG timing-related information, this paper proposes a novel EEG emotion recognition method. First, to obtain the frequency, spatial, and temporal information of multichannel EEG signals more comprehensively, we choose the multidimensional feature structure as the input of the artificial neural network. Then, a neural network model based on depthwise separable convolution is proposed, extracting the input structure's frequency and spatial features. The network can effectively reduce the computational parameters. Finally, we modeled using the ordered neuronal long short-term memory (ON-LSTM) network, which can automatically learn hierarchical information to extract deep emotional features hidden in EEG time series. The experimental results show that the proposed model can reasonably learn the correlation and temporal dimension information content between EEG multi-channel and improve emotion classification performance. We performed the experimental validation of this paper in two publicly available EEG emotional datasets. In the experiments on the DEAP dataset (a dataset for emotion analysis using EEG, physiological, and video signals), the mean accuracy of emotion recognition for arousal and valence is 95.02% and 94.61%, respectively. In the experiments on the SEED dataset (a dataset collection for various purposes using EEG signals), the average accuracy of emotion recognition is 95.49%.

Endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration for the diagnosis of a case of a huge abdominal mass.

Testicular mixed germ cell tumor is characterized by high degree of malignancy and prone to metastasis, the common of which is retroperitoneal lymph node metastasis. At present, EUS has a very important diagnostic value for mediastinal, enterocoelia and retroperitoneal lymph node metastasis of malignant tumors. It also has a positive value for the space occupying of parenchyma or cavity organ and can be used for the puncture operation of multiple lesions under real-time ultrasound monitoring with high safety and small complications.

dbSAP: single amino-acid polymorphism database for protein variation detection.

Millions of human single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or mutations have been identified so far, and these variants could be strongly correlated with phenotypic variations of traits/diseases. Among these variants, non-synonymous ones can result in amino-acid changes that are called single amino-acid polymorphisms (SAPs). Although some studies have tried to investigate the SAPs, only a small fraction of SAPs have been identified due to inadequately inferred protein variation database and the low coverage of mass spectrometry (MS) experiments. Here, we present the dbSAP database for conveniently accessing the comprehensive information and relationships of spectra, peptides and proteins of SAPs, as well as related genes, pathways, diseases and drug targets. In order to fully explore human SAPs, we built a customized protein database that contained comprehensive variant proteins by integrating and annotating the human SNPs and mutations from eight distinct databases (UniProt, Protein Mutation Database, HPMD, MSIPI, MS-CanProVar, dbSNP, Ensembl and COSMIC). After a series of quality controls, a total of 16 854 SAP peptides involving in 439 537 spectra were identified with large scale MS datasets from various human tissues and cell lines. dbSAP is freely available at http://www.megabionet.org/dbSAP/index.html.

[Dynamic changes of the epididymal size after vasectomy: An ultrasonographic observation].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the dynamic changes of the epididymal size 1 year after vasectomy. METHODS: Fifty male volunteers received vasoligation. Before and at 1, 2, 3, 6, and 12 months after operation, we measured the size and detected the internal echoes of the epididymis using color Doppler ultrasonography. RESULTS: The bilateral epididymides were both thickened post-operatively in all the 50 cases, with statistically significant differences between the baseline and the 1st month, the 1st and the 2nd month, the 2nd and the 3rd month, or the 3rd and the 6th month after surgery (all P < 0.01), but not between the 6th and the 12th month (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: Within 6 months after vasectomy, the bilateral epididymides manifested a progressive thickening, but basically restored their balance of secretion-absorption after 6 months.

Long-term survival outcomes of endoscopic therapy vs. surgical resection in patients with cardia gastrointestinal stromal tumor.

The ideal surgical approach for treating cardia gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) is not clearly established. This study aimed to assess the long-term survival results among patients who received endoscopic therapy (ET) or surgical resection (SR) for cardia GIST. Cardia GIST patients from 2000 to 2019 were selected from the surveillance, epidemiology, and end result (SEER) database. Multiple imputation (MI) was applied to handle missing data, and propensity score matching (PSM) was carried out to mitigate selection bias during comparisons. Demographic and clinical characteristics' effects on overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) were assessed using Kaplan-Meier analyses and multivariate Cox proportional hazard models. A total of 330 patients with cardia GIST were enrolled, including 47 (14.2%) patients with ET and 283 (85.8%) patients with SR. The 5-year OS and CSS rates in the ET and SR groups were comparable [before PSM, (OS) (76.1% vs. 81.2%, P = 0.722), (CSS) (95.0% vs. 89.3%, P = 0.186); after PSM, (OS) (75.4% vs. 85.4%, P = 0.540), (CSS) (94.9% vs. 92.0%, P = 0.099)]. Moreover, there was no significant difference between ET and SR in terms of long-term OS (hazard ratio [HR] 0.735, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.422-1.282) and CSS (HR 1.560, 95% CI 0.543-4.481). Our study found no significant disparity in long-term survival outcomes between ET and SR in cardia GIST patients, implying that ET could be a valid surgical strategy for treating cardia GIST.