Modulation in alpha band activity reflects syntax composition: an MEG study of minimal syntactic binding.

Successful sentence comprehension requires the binding, or composition, of multiple words into larger structures to establish meaning. Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated the neural mechanisms involved in binding at the syntax level, in a task where contributions from semantics were minimized. Participants were auditorily presented with minimal sentences that required binding (pronoun and pseudo-verb with the corresponding morphological inflection; "she grushes") and pseudo-verb wordlists that did not require binding ("cugged grushes"). Relative to no binding, we found that syntactic binding was associated with a modulation in alpha band (8-12 Hz) activity in left-lateralized language regions. First, we observed a significantly smaller increase in alpha power around the presentation of the target word ("grushes") that required binding (-0.05 to 0.1 s), which we suggest reflects an expectation of binding to occur. Second, during binding of the target word (0.15-0.25 s), we observed significantly decreased alpha phase-locking between the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left middle/inferior temporal cortex, which we suggest reflects alpha-driven cortical disinhibition serving to strengthen communication within the syntax composition neural network. Altogether, our findings highlight the critical role of rapid spatial-temporal alpha band activity in controlling the allocation, transfer, and coordination of the brain's resources during syntax composition.

Activation of immune cell proteasomes in peripheral blood of smokers and COPD patients: implications for therapy.

BACKGROUND: Immune cells contain a specialised type of proteasome, i.e. the immunoproteasome, which is required for intracellular protein degradation. Immunoproteasomes are key regulators of immune cell differentiation, inflammatory activation and autoimmunity. Immunoproteasome function in peripheral immune cells might be altered by smoking and in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), thereby affecting immune cell responses. METHODS: We analysed the expression and activity of proteasome complexes in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) isolated from healthy male young smokers as well as from patients with severe COPD and compared them with matching controls. RESULTS: Proteasome expression was upregulated in COPD patients as assessed by quantitative reverse transcriptase-PCR and mass spectrometry-based proteomic analysis. Proteasome activity was quantified using activity-based probes and native gel analysis. We observed distinct activation of immunoproteasomes in the peripheral blood cells of young male smokers and severely ill COPD patients. Native gel analysis and linear regression modelling confirmed robust activation and elevated assembly of 20S proteasomes, which correlated significantly with reduced lung function parameters in COPD patients. The immunoproteasome was distinctly activated in COPD patients upon inflammatory cytokine stimulation of PBMCs in vitro. Inhibition of the immunoproteasome reduced pro-inflammatory cytokine expression in COPD-derived blood immune cells. CONCLUSIONS: Given the crucial role of chronic inflammatory signalling and the emerging involvement of autoimmune responses in COPD, therapeutic targeting of the immunoproteasome might represent a novel therapeutic concept for COPD.

One-minute sit-to-stand test is practical to assess and follow the muscle weakness in cystic fibrosis.

BACKGROUND: Quadriceps muscle weakness and reduced exercise tolerance are prevalent and associated with a worse prognosis in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). The one-minute sit-to-stand test (1STST) has been proposed to evaluate functional exercise capacity and quadriceps strength. RESEARCH QUESTION: The aim of the study was to verify the relationship between the 1STST and the maximal isometric voluntary contraction of the quadriceps (MVCQ) evaluated by the dynamometer in stable patients with CF and to evaluate the impact of intravenous (IV) antibiotherapy. METHODS: Dynamometer and 1STST were performed in stable patients with CF at a routine visit, the admission and the discharge of an IV antibiotherapy. Patients wore an activity monitor during 72 h during IV treatment. RESULTS AND SIGNIFICANCE: 51 stable patients with CF at a routine visit and 30 treated with IV antibiotherapy were recruited. In stable patients, the 1STST was reduced to a mean of 2101 nxkg (657-SD), representing a median of 79% (7; 142-min; max)) of the predicted values (%PV) as well as the MVCQ to 78.64 N-m (23.21; 170.34), representing 57%PV (26). The 1STST was correlated to MVCQ (r = 0.536; p < 0.0001) and lung function (r = 0.508; p = 0.0001). Over the IV antibiotherapy course, the 1STST improves significantly like lung function and body mass index while a positive trend for MVCQ was observed. The gain of 1STST was correlated to the change in MVCQ (r = 0.441; p = 0.02) and was significantly higher in hospitalized patients versus home therapy. The 1STST is a good alternative to the dynamometer to evaluate and assess muscular weakness for the routine visit and IV antibiotherapy.

Correction to: Systematic reporting to improve the emergency medical response to major incidents: a pilot study.

ERRATUM: The original article [1] contains an error whereby all authors' names were mistakenly interchanged. The original article has now been corrected to present the authors' names correctly.

Systematic reporting to improve the emergency medical response to major incidents: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND: Major incidents affect us globally, and are occurring with increasing frequency. There is still no evidence-based standard regarding the best medical emergency response to major incidents. Currently, reports on major incidents are non-standardised and variable in quality. This pilot study examines the first systematic reports from a consensus-based, freely accessible database, aiming to identify how descriptive analysis of reports submitted to this database can be used to improve the major incident response. METHODS: Majorincidentreporting.net is a website collecting reports on major incidents using a standardised template. Data from these reports were analysed to compare the emergency response to each incident. RESULTS: Data from eight reports showed that effective triage by experienced individuals and the use of volunteers for transport were notable successes of the major incident response. Inadequate resources, lack of a common triage system, confusion over command and control and failure of communication were reported failures. The following trends were identified: Fires had the slowest times for several aspects of the response and the only three countries to have a single dialling number for all three emergency services had faster response times. Helicopter Emergency Medical services (HEMS) were used for transport and treatment in rural locations and for triage and treatment in urban locations. In two incidents, a major incident was declared before the arrival of the first Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel. CONCLUSION: This study shows that we can obtain relevant data from major incidents by using systematic reporting. Though the sample size from this pilot study is not large enough to draw any specific conclusions it illustrates the potential for future analyses. Identified lessons could be used to improve the emergency medical response to major incidents.

Healthy Aging and Sentence Production: Disrupted Lexical Access in the Context of Intact Syntactic Planning.

Healthy aging does not affect all features of language processing equally. In this study, we investigated the effects of aging on different processes involved in fluent sentence production, a complex task that requires the successful execution and coordination of multiple processes. In Experiment 1, we investigated age-related effects on the speed of syntax selection using a syntactic priming paradigm. Both young and older adults produced target sentences quicker following syntactically related primes compared to unrelated primes, indicating that syntactic facilitation effects are preserved with age. In Experiment 2, we investigated age-related effects in syntactic planning and lexical retrieval using a planning scope paradigm: participants described moving picture displays designed to elicit sentences with either initial coordinate or simple noun phrases and, on half of the trials, the second picture was previewed. Without preview, both age groups were slower to initiate sentences with larger coordinate phrases, suggesting a similar phrasal planning scope. However, age-related differences did emerge relating to the preview manipulation: while young adults displayed speed benefits of preview in both phrase conditions, older adults only displayed speed preview benefits within the initial phrase (coordinate condition). Moreover, preview outside the initial phrase (simple condition) caused older adults to become significantly more error-prone. Thus, while syntactic planning scope appears unaffected by aging, older adults do appear to encounter problems with managing the activation and integration of lexical items into syntactic structures. Taken together, our findings indicate that healthy aging disrupts the lexical, but not the syntactic, processes involved in sentence production.

Structural priming is determined by global syntax rather than internal phrasal structure: Evidence from young and older adults.

Structural priming refers to the tendency of speakers to repeat syntactic structures across sentences. We investigated the extent to which structural priming persists with age and whether the effect depends upon highly abstract syntactic representations that only encompass the global sentence structure or whether representations are specified for internal constituent phrasal properties. In Experiment 1, young and older adults described transitive verb targets that contained the plural morphology of the patient role ("The horse is chasing the frogs/The frogs are being chased by the horse."). While maintaining the conceptual and global syntactic structure of the prime, we manipulated the internal phrasal structure of the patient role to either match (plural; "The king is punching the builders/The builders are being punched by the king.") or mismatch (coordinate noun phrase; "The king is punching the pirate and the builder/The pirate and the builder are being punched by the king.") the target. In both age groups, we observed limited priming of onset latencies, but robust effects of choice structural priming-participants produced more passive targets following passive primes-that critically did not vary dependent on whether the internal constituent structure matched or mismatched between the prime and target. Experiment 2 replicated these findings for the agent role: choice structural priming was unaffected by age or changes to the prime noun phrase type. This demonstrates that global, not internal, syntactic structure determines syntactic choices in young and older adults, as predicted by residual activation and implicit learning models of structural priming. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Aging and syntactic representations: Evidence of preserved syntactic priming and lexical boost.

Young adults can be primed to reuse a syntactic structure across otherwise unrelated utterances but it is not known whether this phenomenon exists in older adults. In a dialogue task, young and older adults described transitive verb target pictures after hearing active or passive sentences. Both groups were more likely to produce a passive sentence following a passive prime than following an active prime (indicating syntactic priming), and this effect increased when the prime and target involved the same verb (indicating lexical boost). These effects were statistically equivalent in young and older adults, suggesting that the syntactic representations underlying sentence production are unaffected by normal aging. (PsycINFO Database Record

Major incident in Kent: a case report.

A major incident was declared after a road traffic accident involving 150 cars and 200 people in Kent, England. The emergency services oversaw coordination of the scene, recovery and triage of casualties and transfer of patients to hospital. The crash was one of the worst seen on British roads and it has been hailed as a miracle that there were no deaths and very few serious injuries.This case report is a retrospective analysis of the regional health system's response to the crash. The structure is based on the content of a report submitted using an online open access template for major incident reporting (Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med 22: 5, 2014; http://www.majorincidentreporting.org ). A more comprehensive analysis of the incident has also been the theme of a Masters thesis (Hardy S. Reporting Major Incidents in England: Putting Theory into Practice. England: Queen Mary's University of London; 2014).