The androgen receptor expression and its activity have different relationships with prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma.

The role of the Androgen Receptor (AR) expression and its activity in the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains inconclusive. The aim of this study is to analyze the role of the AR expression and its activity as prognostic biomarkers in HCC. Three-hundred and thirty-seven patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) (107 females; 59.42 years [SD = 13.0]) were included. To infer AR activity, the expression-profile of previously validated androgen responsive genes (ARGs) was included. AR activity was shown by the AR-Score-21 (21 ARGs) and AR-Score-13 (13 ARGs) that were computed based on the expression of the selected ARGs. Those ARGs whose expression was significantly different between histological grades were used for computing two new AR-Scores. HCC patients with higher AR expression showed a higher median overall survival (OS). AR-Score 21 and AR-Score-13 did not show any association with prognosis. Six of the 21 ARGs of the AR-Score-21 and 7 of the 13 ARGs of the AR-Score-13 showed a significant different expression profile among histological grades. Based on these differences, another two AR-Scores were computed (AR-Score-6 and AR-Score-7). They showed the relative increase of upregulated to downregulated ARGs in high-grade HCC. Higher AR activity inferred by these AR-Scores was associated with worse outcomes. The expression of AR is associated with a better prognosis in HCC. However, the activity of the AR seems to be qualitatively different among histological grades. The AR activity inferred by the shifted ARGs is associated with a worse prognosis in HCC patients.

Is it possible to measure hemodynamic changes in the prefrontal cortex through the frontal sinus using continuous wave DOT systems?

The present work shows the capability of near infrared (NIR) light to reach the cerebral cortex through the frontal sinus using continuous-wave techniques (CW-DOT) in a dual study. On the one hand, changes in time during the tracking of a blood dye in the prefrontal cortex were monitored. On the other hand, hemodynamic changes induced by low frequency of transcranial magnetic stimulation applied on the prefrontal cortex were recorded. The results show how NIR light projected through the frontal sinus reaches the cerebral cortex target, providing enough information to have a reliable measurement of cortical hemodynamic changes using CW-DOT.

The mirror neuron system and motor dexterity: what happens?

The mirror neuron system (MNS) is currently one of the most prominent areas of research in neuroscience. Some of the work has focused on the identification of factors that modulate its activity, but until now, no one has tried to identify the effect of motor ability on the MNS regions. The aim of the present work is to study a possible modulation of hand dexterity on the MNS activity. A blocked fMRI experiment has been designed, consisting of an execution condition, where participants must repeatedly perform a precision grasping pantomime, and an observation condition, where the same motor action is passively observed. A conjunction analysis was performed in order to confirm the existence of mirror activity. Moreover, participants were classified depending on their hand dexterity (measured with the Purdue Pegboard Test) as "High dexterity" or "Low dexterity" and a regression analysis was performed to investigate a possible linear relationship between the degree of dexterity and brain activity in the MNS. The conjunction analysis revealed, as expected, activity in the inferior parietal lobule, a region that constitutes one of the nuclei of the putative MNS and which is consistently activated by intransitive actions. The degree of dexterity only seems to modulate MNS regions during action execution. However, under the observation condition, no linear relationship of hand dexterity in MNS regions was registered in either the comparison between groups, or in the regression analysis. Therefore, the MNS network does not seem to be linearly modulated by the degree of motor dexterity, as occurs with other action-related factors like familiarity.