BackgroundPrevious investigations revealed that the impact of task-irrelevant emotional distraction on ongoing goal-oriented cognitive processing is linked to opposite patterns of activation in emotional and perceptual vs. cognitive control/executive brain regions. However, little is known about the role of individual variations in these responses. The present study investigated the effect of trait anxiety on the neural responses mediating the impact of transient anxiety-inducing task-irrelevant distraction on cognitive performance, and on the neural correlates of coping with such distraction. We investigated whether activity in the brain regions sensitive to emotional distraction would show dissociable patterns of co-variation with measures indexing individual variations in trait anxiety and cognitive performance.Methodology/Principal FindingsEvent-related fMRI data, recorded while healthy female participants performed a delayed-response working memory (WM) task with distraction, were investigated in conjunction with behavioural measures that assessed individual variations in both trait anxiety and WM performance. Consistent with increased sensitivity to emotional cues in high anxiety, specific perceptual areas (fusiform gyrus - FG) exhibited increased activity that was positively correlated with trait anxiety and negatively correlated with WM performance, whereas specific executive regions (right lateral prefrontal cortex - PFC) exhibited decreased activity that was negatively correlated with trait anxiety. The study also identified a role of the medial and left lateral PFC in coping with distraction, as opposed to reflecting a detrimental impact of emotional distraction.ConclusionsThese findings provide initial evidence concerning the neural mechanisms sensitive to individual variations in trait anxiety and WM performance, which dissociate the detrimental impact of emotion distraction and the engagement of mechanisms to cope with distracting emotions. Our study sheds light on the neural correlates of emotion-cognition interactions in normal behaviour, which has implications for understanding factors that may influence susceptibility to affective disorders, in general, and to anxiety disorders, in particular.
SummaryThis study retrospectively collected the clinical and laboratory data of 114 patients with Castleman disease (CD) from a single medical centre. Clinical classification identified 62 patients (54Á4%) with unicentric Castleman disease and 52 (45Á6%) with multi-centric Castleman disease. Pathological classification revealed 68 cases (59Á6%) of hyaline vascular variant, 16 (14Á1%) mixed cellular variant (Mix) and 30 (26Á3%) plasmacytic variant. Clinical complications occurred in 69 CD patients, including 37 cases of paraneoplastic pemphigus (PNP) and 25 cases with renal complications. Haematological involvement, pleural effusion and/or ascites and POEMS syndrome (polyneuropathy, organomegaly, endocrinopathy, monoclonal gammopathy and skin changes) were also found. Univariate analysis showed that presence of clinical complications and PNP were both risk factors relating to CD patient survival. Prognostic factors showing P < 0Á15 in univariate analysis and those with clinical significance were subjected to multivariate analysis using a Cox regression model. PNP presence and age over 40 years both significantly adversely affected survival. Thus, only presence of PNP was identified as an independent unfavourable survival risk factor in both univariate and multivariate analyses. Overall, the present data provide a panoramic description of CD cases and emphasize that the presence of PNP is an adverse prognostic factor.
Light reflectance by semi-infinite turbid media is modeled by a hybrid of Monte Carlo simulation and diffusion theory, which combines the accuracy of Monte Carlo simulation near the source and the speed of diffusion theory distant from the source. For example, when the turbid medium has the following optical propertiesabsorption coefficient 1 cm-', scattering coefficient 100 cm-', anisotropy 0.9, and refractive-index-matched boundary-the hybrid simulation is 7 times faster than the pure Monte Carlo simulation (100,000 photon packets were traced), and the difference between the two simulations is within 2 standard deviations of the Monte Carlo simulation.
BackgroundNeuroimaging studies in late life depression have reported decreased structural integrity of white matter tracts in the prefrontal cortex. Functional studies have identified changes in functional connectivity among several key areas involved in mood regulation. Few studies have combined structural and functional imaging. In this study we sought to examine the relationship between the uncinate fasciculus, a key fronto-temporal tract and resting state functional connectivity between the ventral prefrontal cortex ((PFC) and limbic and striatal areas.MethodsThe sample consisted of 24 older patients remitted from unipolar major depression. Each participant had a magnetic resonance imaging brain scan using standardized protocols to obtain both diffusion tensor imaging and resting state functional connectivity data. Our statistical approach compared structural integrity of the uncinate fasciculus and functional connectivity data.ResultsWe found positive correlations between left uncinate fasciculus (UF) fractional anisotropy (FA) and resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the left ventrolateral PFC and left amygdala and between the left ventrolateral PFC and the left hippocampus. In addition, we found a significant negative correlation between left ventromedial PFC-caudate rsFC and left UF FA. The right UF FA did not correlate with any of the seed region based connectivity.ConclusionsThese results support the notion that resting state functional connectivity reflects structural integrity, since the ventral PFC is structurally connected to temporal regions by the UF. Future studies should include larger samples of patients and healthy comparison subjects in which both resting state and task-based functional connectivity are examined.
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