Assessing spoken word recognition in children who are deaf or hard of hearing: a translational approach

Under natural conditions, listeners use both auditory and visual speech cues to extract meaning from speech signals containing many sources of variability. However, traditional clinical tests of spoken word recognition routinely employ isolated words or sentences produced by a single talker in an auditory-only presentation format. The more central cognitive processes used during multimodal integration, perceptual normalization, and lexical discrimination that may contribute to individual variation in spoken word recognition performance are not assessed in conventional tests of this kind. In this article, we review our past and current research activities aimed at developing a series of new assessment tools designed to evaluate spoken word recognition in children who are deaf or hard of hearing. These measures are theoretically motivated by a current model of spoken word recognition and also incorporate "real-world" stimulus variability in the form of multiple talkers and presentation formats. The goal of this research is to enhance our ability to estimate real-world listening skills and to predict benefit from sensory aid use in children with varying degrees of hearing loss.     

Strategies to minimize variability and bias associated with manual pipetting in ligand binding assays to assure data quality of protein therapeutic quantification

Bioanalytical laboratories require accurate and precise pipetting to assure reproducible and accurate results for reliable data. Two areas where pipetting differences among analysts lead to poor reproducibility are long term stability testing and sample dilution. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the problems with manual pipetting, describe an automation strategy to mitigate risks associated with manual pipetting, and provide recommendations on a control strategy that properly monitors samples requiring dilutions.     

SGK3 is associated with estrogen receptor expression in breast cancer

While breast cancer mortality rate has seen a steady decline in the last few decades, advances in better treatment and diagnostic tools remain important as we come into the age of personalized therapy. In this report, we describe our studies of SGK3's role in breast cancer. SGK3 (also known as CISK) is a member of the AGC family of kinases. Our previous work indicates that SGK3 functions downstream of the PI 3-kinase cascade and shares molecular and biochemical similarities with Akt. Here, we show that SGK3 expression is linked to estrogen receptor (ER) both in breast caner cell lines and in primary tumor samples. Our analysis also indicated a positive correlation between SGK3 expression and tumor prognosis. Importantly, our immunochemistry analysis of human tumor samples established a clinical link between SGK3 expression and ER+ tumors. These findings implicate SGK3 as an additional component to a complex and heterogeneous disease, and point to the potential benefits of incorporating SGK3 into the process of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.     

Characterizing aggressive behavior in a forensic population

The concept of a dichotomous versus a continuous aggression model continues to be debated within the research literature. The Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale (IPAS; M. S. Stanford, R. J. Houston, C. W. Mathias, et al., 2003) is a newly developed self-report instrument designed to classify an individual's aggressive behavior as predominantly premeditated or predominantly impulsive. The IPAS consists of 30-items that are scored on a 5-point Likert scale. This study used a nonrandom sample of convenience (N = 85) from a forensic state hospital. Principal-components analysis of the 30 items revealed 2 distinct factors (Impulsive and Premeditated Aggression), which accounted for 33% of the variance. The results of this study further validate the bimodal classification of aggression through its application to a forensic sample. The implications for general assessment, diagnosis, and treatment are discussed.     

Neurochemical changes in the RVM associated with peripheral inflammatory pain stimuli

A greater knowledge of the neurochemical changes occurring during pain states will undoubtedly aid in the discovery of effective pain pharmacotherapies. This study highlights the acute effects of inflammatory agents on neurochemical changes in the rostral ventromedial medulla (RVM), a supraspinal site involved in the processing of painful stimuli. Consistent with previous reports, a peripheral injection of 0.1 mg prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)) into the intraplantar area of the rat paw produced thermal hypersensitivity that peaked 10 min after administration. In vivo microdialysis studies in the same animals revealed that this behavioral response correlated with a greater than 2-fold increase (230%) in extracellular serotonin (5-HT) levels in the RVM. In contrast, levels of other neurotransmitters measured, including norepinephrine and dopamine, were not altered in animals receiving this inflammatory agent. Similar to PGE(2), an intraplantar injection of capsaicin (0.1 mg) produced a robust thermal hypersensitivity that was paralleled by a 3-fold increase in levels of 5-HT in the RVM. The next series of experiments showed that acute administration of the opioid analgesic, morphine (5.6 mg/kg; IP), attenuated PGE(2)-induced thermal hypersensitivity and reversed the increase in extracellular 5-HT observed in the RVM. Taken together, these findings extend previous reports of central neurochemical changes during inflammatory pain conditions and show that the combination of behavioral endpoints with microdialysis can yield important insights into the neurochemical environment of the pain circuitry.