Brief Report: Specificity of Interpersonal Synchrony Deficits to Autism Spectrum Disorder and Its Potential for Digitally Assisted Diagnostics

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - Reliably diagnosing autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in adulthood poses a challenge to clinicians due to the absence of specific diagnostic markers....     

Impact of dynamic bottom-up features and top-down control on the visual exploration of moving real-world scenes in hemispatial neglect

Patients with hemispatial neglect are severely impaired in orienting their attention to contralesional hemispace. Although motion is one of the strongest attentional cues in humans, it is still unknown how neglect patients visually explore their moving real-world environment. We therefore recorded eye movements at bedside in 19 patients with hemispatial neglect following acute right hemisphere stroke, 14 right-brain damaged patients without neglect and 21 healthy control subjects. Videos of naturalistic real-world scenes were presented first in a free viewing condition together with static images, and subsequently in a visual search condition. We analyzed number and amplitude of saccades, fixation durations and horizontal fixation distributions. Novel computational tools allowed us to assess the impact of different scene features (static and dynamic contrast, colour, brightness) on patients' gaze. Independent of the different stimulus conditions, neglect patients showed decreased numbers of fixations in contralesional hemispace (ipsilesional fixation bias) and increased fixation durations in ipsilesional hemispace (disengagement deficit). However, in videos left-hemifield fixations of neglect patients landed on regions with particularly high dynamic contrast. Furthermore, dynamic scenes with few salient objects led to a significant reduction of the pathological ipsilesional fixation bias. In visual search, moving targets in the neglected hemifield were more frequently detected than stationary ones. The top-down influence (search instruction) could neither reduce the ipsilesional fixation bias nor the impact of bottom-up features. Our results provide evidence for a strong impact of dynamic bottom-up features on neglect patients' scanning behaviour. They support the neglect model of an attentional priority map in the brain being imbalanced towards ipsilesional hemispace, which can be counterbalanced by strong contralateral motion cues. Taking into account the lack of top-down control in neglect patients, bottom-up stimulation with moving real-world stimuli may be a promising candidate for future neglect rehabilitation schemes.     

Increased S100B+ NK cell counts in acutely ill schizophrenia patients are correlated with the free cortisol index, but not with S100B serum levels

Several studies have provided evidence for increased S100B serum concentrations in schizophrenia. The pathophysiological significance of this finding is still uncertain because S100B is involved in many cellular mechanisms and is not astrocyte-specific as was previously assumed. S100B is also expressed by subsets of CD3+ CD8+ T cells and natural killer (NK) cells and may therefore be linked to the immune hypothesis of schizophrenia. We have quantified S100B+ CD3+ CD8+ T cells and NK cells by flow cytometry in the peripheral blood of 26 acutely ill schizophrenia cases and 32 matched controls. In parallel, S100B concentrations and the free cortisol index (FCI), a surrogate marker for stress axis activity, were determined in serum samples from the same blood draw. Psychopathology was monitored using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). The patient group had increased S100B+ NK cell counts (P=0.045), which correlated with the FCI (r=0.299, P=0.026) but not with the PANSS or the elevated (P=0.021) S100B serum concentrations. S100B+ CD3+ CD8+ T cell counts were not significantly changed in the patient group and did neither correlate with the FCI and PANSS, nor with S100B serum concentrations. In conclusion, despite the observation of an increase in S100B+ NK cells in schizophrenia patients, the lack of a correlation with serum S100B concentrations suggests that these cells are probably not a major source of S100B in the blood of schizophrenia patients. Notably, elevated S100B+ NK cell counts may be linked with stress axis activation.     

Deep brain stimulation for camptocormia in dystonia and Parkinson’s disease

Camptocormia, or “bent spine syndrome”, may occur in various movement disorders such as primary dystonia or idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD). Although deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established treatment in refractory primary dystonia and advanced PD, few data are available on the effect of DBS on camptocormia comparing these two conditions. Seven patients (4 with dystonia, 3 with PD; mean age 60.3 years at surgery, range 39–73 years) with camptocormia were included in the study. Five patients underwent bilateral GPi DBS and two patients underwent bilateral STN DBS guided by CT-stereotactic surgery and microelectrode recording. Pre- and postoperative motor assessment included the BFM in the dystonia patients and the UPDRS in the PD patients. Severity of camptocormia was assessed by the BFM subscore for the trunk at the last available follow-up at a mean of 17.3 months (range 9–36 months). There were no surgical complications. In the four patients with dystonia there was a mean improvement of 53% in the BFM motor score (range 41–79%) and of 63% (range 50–67%) in the BFM subscore for the trunk at the last available follow-up (mean 14.3 months, range 9–18 months). In the three patients with camptocormia in PD who underwent bilateral STN DBS (2 patients) or pallidal DBS (1 patient), the PD symptoms improved markedly (mean improvement in the UPDRS motor subscore stimulation on/medication off 55%, range 49–61%), but there was no or only mild improvement of camptocormia in the two patients who underwent STN DBS, and only moderate improvement in the patient with GPi DBS at the last available follow-up (mean 21 months, range 12–36 months). GPi DBS is an effective treatment for camptocormia in dystonia. The response of camptocormia to chronic STN or GPi DBS in PD is more heterogenous. The latter may be due to a variety of causes and needs further clarification.     

Therapie des Lokalrezidivs nach Rektumkarzinom

During the last decade no gastrointestinal tumor underwent such profound modifications in diagnostics and therapy as rectal cancer (total mesorectal excision, multimodal therapy). Despite all efforts and continuous improvements in the results of oncological treatment, local recurrence of rectal carcinoma is still a considerable problem. Optimized surgery methods and multimodal therapies allow a local recurrence rate lowered to about 6%. Without surgical intervention the 5-year survival rate after local recurrence is approximately 4%, and the median survival time in a palliative situation is about 13 months and often associated with considerable restriction of quality of life. Morbidity after complex pelvic surgery is still high, but its mortality rate in highly professional surgical centers has reached an acceptable level of about 6%. Surgical oncology today has the ability for remarkable improvement in the prognosis of locally recurrent rectal cancer. After R0 resection the 5-year survival rate is nearly 30%.     

The relationship of schools to emotional health and bullying

Objectives:  

To examine the extent to which school climate and school pressure could predict other aspects of adolescents’ lives, most particularly their emotional health and bullying. Furthermore, the study sought to investigate if these relationships were consistent across countries.