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PURPOSE: During invasive electrophysiological studies (EPS), atrial fibrillation (AF) can be induced in patients without a history of AF. However, the prognostic value is not well evaluated in this population. Our aim was to investigate whether AF inducibility in those patients is associated with future clinical episodes of AF; whether non-inducibility is predictive of freedom from new-onset AF and finally, to examine clinical factors associated with inducibility. METHODS: Medical records from patients undergoing EPS between the years 2011 and 2014 were analysed retrospectively with 62 patients matching our inclusion criteria. Patients were divided into subgroups according to their inducibility status and underwent follow-up. Patients were assessed by a structured telephone interview, data from the further treating physicians and ECG recordings. RESULTS: AF was inducible in 19 patients ("induction group") and not inducible in the remaining 43 ("control group"). Inducibility was associated with a higher age (p=0.002), lower GFR (p=0.002), higher CHAD2S2-VASc score (p=0.004) and diagnosis of mitral (p=0.014), tricuspid (p=0.017) and pulmonary (p=0.026) valve insufficiency. Three months after EPS, 89.5% of all inducible patients were free of diagnosed AF, in contrast to 100% of those without inducibility (p=0.031). At three years, no significant difference was left (p=0.162). CONCLUSION: AF inducibility was found more often in an older population with cardiac comorbidities. While inducibility was associated with an increased rate of diagnosed new-onset clinical AF in the months after testing, non-inducibility seemed to be associated with freedom from AF at least in the short to medium term. However, there was no significant difference in the long term follow-up.
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Humans follow another person's eye gaze to objects of interest to the other, thereby establishing joint attention, a first step toward developing a theory of the other's mind. Previous functional MRI studies agree that a "gaze-following patch" (GFP) of cortex close to the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) is specifically implicated in eye gaze-following. The location of the GFP is in the vicinity of the posterior members of the core face-processing system that consists of distinct patches in ventral visual cortex, the STS, and frontal cortex, also involved in processing information on the eyes. To test whether the GFP might correspond to one of the posterior face patches, we compared the pattern of blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) imaging contrasts reflecting the passive vision of static faces with the one evoked by shifts of attention guided by the eye gaze of others. The viewing of static faces revealed the face patch system. On the other hand, eye gaze-following activated a cortical patch (the GFP) with its activation maximum separated by more than 24 mm in the right and 19 mm in the left hemisphere from the nearest face patch, the STS face area (FA). This segregation supports a distinct function of the GFP, different from the elementary processing of facial information.