Anhedonia symptoms: The assessment of brain functional mechanism following music stimuli using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to investigate the effect of music stimulation on the brain functional mechanism of depressed patients with anhedonia symptoms using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). METHODS: Participants in this study included 20 healthy subjects as the control group, 25 subjects with depression and no anhedonia as the intervention group A, and 24 subjects with depression and anhedonia as the intervention group B. The safely emotional stimulation was done by Iranian music. To investigate the effect of music therapy on the brain, a task including 50 tracks of 12 s Iranian music (traditional and pop) was used. Finally, the data were analyzed using SPM Toolbox in MATLAB software. RESULTS: The results showed that brain patterns in depressed patients with and without anhedonia could be distinguished based on positive and negative musical stimuli (p < 0.05). Important fMRI biomarker such as effective connectivity strength related to the fronto-limbic network, including the supragenual ACC, subgenual ACC, AMYG, and FFG were evaluated in depressed patients with anhedonia. CONCLUSION: This was the first study to investigate the neural circuits involved in music-related emotional processing in patients with anhedonia symptoms. These findings could help advance neurological understandings of anhedonia and suggest new treatments.

A Novel Classification Method using Effective Neural Network and Quantitative Magnetization Transfer Imaging of Brain White Matter in Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis.

Background: Quantitative Magnetization Transfer Imaging (QMTI) is often used to quantify the myelin content in multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions and normal appearing brain tissues. Also, automated classifiers such as artificial neural networks (ANNs) can significantly improve the identification and classification processes of MS clinical datasets. Objective: We classified patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) from healthy subjects using QMTI and T1 longitudinal relaxation time data of brain white matter, then the performance of three ANN-based classifiers have been investigated. Materials and Methods: The input features of ANN algorithms, including multilayer perceptron (MLP), radial basis function (RBF) and ensemble neural networks based on Akaike information criterion (ENN-AIC) were extracted in the form of QMTI and T1 mean values from parametric maps. The ANNs quantitative performance is measured by the standard evaluation of confusion matrix criteria. Results: The results indicate that ENN-AIC-based classification method has achieved 90% accuracy, 92% sensitivity and 86% precision compared to other ANN models. NPV, FPR and FDR values were found to be 0.933, 0.125 and 0.133, respectively, according to the proposed ENN-AIC model. A graphical representation of how to track actual data by the predictive values derived from ANN algorithms, was also presented. Conclusion: It has been demonstrated that ENN-AIC as an effective neural network improves the quality of classification results compared to MLP and RBF.In addition, this research provides a new direction to classify a large amount of quantitative MRI data that can help the physician in a correct MS diagnosis.

Prognostic value of brain tissue pathological changes in patients with clinically isolated syndromes (CIS) suggestive of multiple sclerosis using magnetization transfer ratio (MTR).

The aim of this study is to investigate abnormalities in the brain tissue of patients with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) suggestive of multiple sclerosis (MS). In this method, magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) parameter accompanied with segmentation regional measurements and histogram analysis were used to improve the evaluation of disease progression in CIS patients. Conventional MR imaging protocols such as T1-weighted, T2-weighted, T2-FLAIR as well as MT-2DSPGR were performed on four CIS patients and four normal subjects. White matter, gray matter and lesion masks were segmented from T2-weighted images and superimposed on MTR map using FSL software. Lesions were classified into isontense and severely hypointense according to their signal intensities relative to white matter on the T1-weighted images. MTR parameters of these two lesion types, normal appearing white matter (NAWM) and normal appearing gray matter (NAGM) were analyzed in comparison with those of normal controls. The MTR histograms of NAWM and NAGM were also generated for each segmented brain tissues. A significant reduction was found in mean white matter MTR and the histogram peak position between CIS patients and healthy subjects. The MTR histogram for NAWM showed also a total shift to the left. The MTR value for gray matter in CIS patients was similar to that of controls. Isointense lesions have significantly higher MTR values than severely hypointense lesions. Significant reduction in NAWM-MTR compared to normal subjects shows that pathological changes outside visible lesions on conventional MR images occur among patients with CIS at presentation. Quantitative MT imaging can help to evaluate the extent of global damage in the brain tissue.

A comparison of perspectives on breastfeeding between two generations of black American women.

PURPOSE: To determine differences in breastfeeding perspectives between two generations of black American women with and without access to governmental food assistance programs (i.e., WIC). DATA SOURCES: Descriptive, comparative study of a convenience sample of 118 black American women in their childbearing years and beyond conducted in a primary rural health care clinic serving an indigent population. CONCLUSIONS: A significant difference was found between breastfeeding perceptions and rate among younger black American women on WIC program and their mothers without access to these programs. The availability of free formula through WIC programs has partially influenced the rate of breastfeeding among the young black American women. The other significant influencing factor was public embarrassment at breastfeeding. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: An extensive educational campaign is needed in order to influence the public's perceptions of breastfeeding as an embarrassment. The success of programs such as WIC must be measured beyond the first six months of an infant's life.

Microencapsulation of allopurinol by solvent evaporation and controlled release investigation of drugs.

The microencapsulation of drugs is gaining importance in many research activities. A common technique for preparing microcapsules is the solvent evaporation method which is simple but has a large number of reaction control parameters. This study reports the microcapsulation of allopurinol by the solvent evaporation method and the release of the drug from the microcapsules. The effect of concentration of poly(vinyl alcohol) (as a surfactant), molecular weight of ethyl cellulose and stirrer speed in the preparative method were studied. The effect of molecular weight of ethyl cellulose and particle size on drug release were also investigated. It has been found that the drug release is decreased with increasing molecular weight of polymer and increasing particle size.