Background and methods-Perturbations in energetic metabolism and impaired atrial contractility may play an important role in the pathogenesis of atrial fibrillation (AF). Besides, atrial stretch is commonly associated with AF. However, the atrial energetics of stretch-related AF are poorly understood. Here, we measured indicators of energy metabolism during acute-stretch related AF. PCr, adenine nucleotides and derivatives concentrations as well as the activity of the F 0 F 1 -ATPase and Na,K-ATPase were obtained after one hour of stretch and/or AF in isolated rabbit hearts and compared to control hearts without stretch and AF.
Binaural pitch diplacusis refers to a perceptual anomaly whereby the same sound is perceived as having a different pitch depending on whether it is presented in the left or the right ear. Results in the literature suggest that this phenomenon is more prevalent, and larger, in individuals with asymmetric hearing loss than in individuals with symmetric hearing. However, because studies devoted to this effect have thus far involved small samples, the prevalence of the effect, and its relationship with interaural asymmetries in hearing thresholds, remain unclear. In this study, psychometric functions for interaural pitch comparisons were measured in 55 subjects, including 12 normal-hearing and 43 hearing-impaired participants. Statistically significant pitch differences between the left and right ears were observed in normal-hearing participants, but the effect was usually small (less than 1.5/16 octave, or about 7%). For the hearing-impaired participants, statistically significant interaural pitch differences were found in about three-quarters of the cases. Moreover, for about half of these participants, the difference exceeded 1.5/16 octaves and, in some participants, was as large as or larger than 1/4 octave. This was the case even for the lowest frequency tested, 500 Hz. The pitch differences were weakly, but significantly, correlated with the difference in hearing thresholds between the two ears, such that larger threshold asymmetries were statistically associated with larger pitch differences. For the vast majority of the hearing-impaired participants, the direction of the pitch differences was such that pitch was perceived as higher on the side with the higher (i.e., ‘worse’) hearing thresholds than on the opposite side. These findings are difficult to reconcile with purely temporal models of pitch perception, but may be accounted for by place-based or spectrotemporal models.
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