Electrophysiological correlates of processing faces of younger and older individuals

The 'own-age bias' in face processing suggests that the age of a face constitutes one important factor that influences attention to and memory for faces. The present experiment investigated electrophysiological correlates of processing faces of younger and older individuals. Younger participants were presented with pictures of unfamiliar younger and older faces in the context of a gender categorization task. A comparison of event-related potentials showed that early components are sensitive to faces of different ages: (i) larger positive potential peaking at 160 ms (P200) for older than younger faces at fronto-central electrodes; (ii) larger negative potential peaking at 252 ms (N200) for younger than older faces at fronto-central electrodes; (iii) larger negative-going deflection peaking at 320 ms (N250) for younger than older faces at occipito-temporal electrodes; and (iv) larger late positive potential peaking at 420 ms (LPP 420) for older than younger faces at parietal and other electrodes. We discuss similarities between the present study and a previously published study of faces of different races as suggesting involvement of comparable electrophysiological responses when differentiating between stimulus categories.     

Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the effects of task demand context on facial affect appraisal in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia patients display impaired performance and brain activity during facial affect recognition. These impairments may reflect stimulus-driven perceptual decrements and evaluative processing abnormalities. We differentiated these two processes by contrasting responses to identical stimuli presented under different contexts. Seventeen healthy controls and 16 schizophrenia patients performed an fMRI facial affect detection task. Subjects identified an affective target presented amongst foils of differing emotions. We hypothesized that targeting affiliative emotions (happiness, sadness) would create a task demand context distinct from that generated when targeting threat emotions (anger, fear). We compared affiliative foil stimuli within a congruent affiliative context with identical stimuli presented in an incongruent threat context. Threat foils were analysed in the same manner. Controls activated right orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)/ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) more to affiliative foils in threat contexts than to identical stimuli within affiliative contexts. Patients displayed reduced OFC/VLPFC activation to all foils, and no activation modulation by context. This lack of context modulation coincided with a 2-fold decrement in foil detection efficiency. Task demands produce contextual effects during facial affective processing in regions activated during affect evaluation. In schizophrenia, reduced modulation of OFC/VLPFC by context coupled with reduced behavioural efficiency suggests impaired ventral prefrontal control mechanisms that optimize affective appraisal.     

Risk factors for overactive bladder in the elderly population: A community‐based study with face‐to‐face interview

Objectives: The aim of this study was to measure the prevalence of and risk factors for overactive bladder (OAB) in the elderly. Methods: A cross‐sectional study of elderly subjects was conducted by analyzing data from a community‐based Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment on people aged 70 years or older. Trained interviewers performed face‐to‐face interviews for the assessment of urological symptoms. OAB definition was based on urgency and eight or more episodes of urination per day. The subjects completed a self‐administered questionnaire including lifestyle evaluation, Geriatric Depression Scale, Mini‐Mental Status Examination and medical history. Brachial‐ankle pulse wave velocity was recorded to assess atherosclerotic disease. The analysis included 833 subjects, after the exclusion of 115 subjects who provided insufficient information. Results: Based on the definition of OAB, 153 subjects (18.4%) were identified as having OAB. Univariate analysis showed a significant association between OAB and depressive symptoms. Multivariate analysis showed that the risk of having OAB was significantly higher in subjects with depressive symptoms, current drinkers, and overweight subjects with odds ratios of 2.37 (1.60–3.52, 95% confidence interval), 1.65 (1.04–2.62), and 1.51 (1.02–2.24), respectively. Conclusions: This is the first report to show an association between OAB and depressive symptoms and alcohol intake in an epidemiological study of elderly people. The reasons for these correlations remain unclear, but should be the foci of future OAB studies.     

Psychosocial impact of childhood face burns: a multicenter, prospective, longitudinal study of 390 children and adolescents

Introduction

This two-year longitudinal study of the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of children with face burns was conducted in three regional pediatric burn care centers. Subjects were 390 children less than 18 years old at injury, admitted for burn treatment from September 2001 to December 2004.

Methods

HRQoL was assessed using the age-specific Burn Outcomes Questionnaire (BOQ) administered at scheduled time points following discharge up to 24 months thereafter. A psychosocial score was determined from domains of the BOQ, and these scores from children with both face burns and grafts were compared to those of children with non-face burns or with face burns but no face grafts.

Results

The parents of both the 0-4 year olds and the 5-18 year olds, who had facial burns and grafts, reported decreased BOQ psychosocial scores. When the teenagers (11-18 year olds) with facial burns and grafts filled out the BOQ themselves, they also reported low psychosocial scores compared to those with no facial burns with grafts.

Conclusions

Severe face burn influences HRQoL in children. Additional psychosocial support is suggested to enhance recovery for patients with severe face burns and their families during the years following injury.     

The social brain in adolescence: evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging and behavioural studies

Social cognition is the collection of cognitive processes required to understand and interact with others. The term ‘social brain’ refers to the network of brain regions that underlies these processes. Recent evidence suggests that a number of social cognitive functions continue to develop during adolescence, resulting in age differences in tasks that assess cognitive domains including face processing, mental state inference and responding to peer influence and social evaluation. Concurrently, functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies show differences between adolescent and adult groups within parts of the social brain. Understanding the relationship between these neural and behavioural observations is a challenge. This review discusses current research findings on adolescent social cognitive development and its functional MRI correlates, then integrates and interprets these findings in the context of hypothesised developmental neurocognitive and neurophysiological mechanisms.     

无创通气时应用康惠尔透明贴预防鼻面部皮肤压疮的效果观察

目的：观察康惠尔透明贴（以下简称透明贴）预防无创机械通气病人鼻面部压疮的疗效.方法：将应用无创机械通气病人80例,随机分成2组,为预防面部损害,观察组采用透明贴,对照组常规使用无创通气,不采用任何措施,无创通气8天时,观察组面部损害3例,占7.5%,对照组面部损害11例,占27.5%.经统计学处理,两组间有显著性差异（P〈0.05）.因此,预防鼻面部皮肤压迫性损害,使用透明贴护理优于单纯的常规护理.结论：采用透明贴预防无创机械通气病人鼻面部压疮有显著疗效.     

Seeing the invisible: the scope and limits of unconscious processing in binocular rivalry

When an image is presented to one eye and a very different image is presented to the corresponding location of the other eye, the two images compete for conscious representations, such that only one image is visible at a time while the other is suppressed. Called binocular rivalry, this phenomenon and its deviants have been extensively exploited to study the mechanism and neural correlates of consciousness. In this paper, we propose a framework - the unconscious binding hypothesis - to distinguish unconscious processing from conscious processing. According to this framework, the unconscious mind not only encodes individual features but also temporally binds distributed features to give rise to cortical representations; unlike conscious binding, however, unconscious binding is fragile. Under this framework, we review evidence from psychophysical and neuroimaging studies and come to two important conclusions. First, processing of invisible features depends on the "level" of the features as defined by their neural mechanisms. For low-level simple features, prolonged exposure to visual patterns (e.g. tilt) and simple translational motion can alter the appearance of subsequent visible features (i.e. adaptation). For invisible high-level features, complex spiral motion cannot produce adaptation, nor can objects/words enhance subsequent processing of related stimuli (i.e. priming). Yet images of tools can activate the dorsal pathway. Second, processing of invisible features has functional significance. Although invisible central cues cannot orient attention, invisible erotic pictures in the periphery can nevertheless guide attention, likely through emotional arousal; reciprocally, the processing of invisible information can be modulated by attention.     

Familiar Face Recognition in Children with Autism: The Differential use of Inner and Outer Face Parts

We investigated whether children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) have a deficit in recognising familiar faces. Children with ASD were given a forced choice familiar face recognition task with three conditions: full faces, inner face parts and outer face parts. Control groups were children with developmental delay (DD) and typically developing (TD) children. Children with ASD and children with DD recognised slightly fewer faces than did TD children, but there was no ASD-specific deficit. All groups displayed the same pattern of face part superiority: full-face superiority over inner face, and inner face superiority over outer face. Therefore, the pattern of familiar face recognition by children with ASD was similar to the pattern found in other children.     

fMRI investigation of working memory for faces in autism: visual coding and underconnectivity with frontal areas

Brain activation and functional connectivity were investigated in high functioning autism using functional magnetic resonance imaging in an n-back working memory task involving photographic face stimuli. The autism group showed reliably lower activation compared with controls in the inferior left prefrontal area (involved in verbal processing and working memory maintenance) and the right posterior temporal area (associated with theory of mind processing). The participants with autism also showed activation in a somewhat different location in the fusiform area than the control participants. These results suggest that the neural circuitry of the brain for face processing in autism may be analyzing the features of the face more as objects and less in terms of their human significance. The functional connectivity results revealed that the abnormal fusiform activation was embedded in a larger context of smaller and less synchronized networks, particularly indicating lower functional connectivity with frontal areas. In contrast to the underconnectivity with frontal areas, the autism group showed no underconnectivity among posterior cortical regions. These results extend previous findings of abnormal face perception in autism by demonstrating that the abnormalities are embedded in an abnormal cortical network that manages to perform the working memory task proficiently, using a visually oriented, asocial processing style that minimizes reliance on prefrontal areas.     

Selective transcutaneous delivery of energy to porcine soft tissues using Intense Ultrasound (IUS)

OBJECTIVE: Various energy delivery systems have been utilized to treat superficial rhytids in the aging face. The Intense Ultrasound System (IUS) is a novel modality capable of transcutaneously delivering controlled thermal energy at various depths while sparing the overlying tissues. The purpose of this feasibility study was to evaluate the response of porcine tissues to various IUS energy source conditions. Further evaluation was performed of the built-in imaging capabilities of the device. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Simulations were performed on ex vivo porcine tissues to estimate the thermal dose distribution in tissues after IUS exposures to determine the unique source settings that would produce thermal injury zones (TIZs) at given depths. Exposures were performed at escalating power settings and different exposure times (in the range of 1-7.6 J) using three IUS handpieces with unique frequencies and focal depths. Ultrasound imaging was performed before and after IUS exposures to detect changes in tissue consistency. Porcine tissues were examined using nitro-blue tetrazolium chloride (NBTC) staining sensitive for thermal lesions, both grossly and histologically. The dimensions and depth of the TIZs were measured from digital photographs and compared. RESULTS: IUS can reliably achieve discrete, TIZ at various depths within tissue without surface disruption. Changes in the TIZ dimensions and shape were observed as source settings were varied. As the source energy was increased, the thermal lesions became larger by growing proximally towards the tissue surface. Maximum lesion depth closely approximated the pre-set focal depth of a given handpiece. Ultrasound imaging detected well-demarcated TIZ at depths within the porcine muscle tissue. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates the response of porcine tissue to various energy dose levels of Intense Ultrasound. Further study, especially on human facial tissue, is necessary in order to understand the utility of this modality in treating the aging face and potentially, other cosmetic applications.