Background: Numerous functional genomics approaches have been developed to study the model organism yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, with the aim of systematically understanding the biology of the cell. Some of these techniques are based on yeast growth differences under different conditions, such as those generated by gene mutations, chemicals or both. Manual inspection of the yeast colonies that are grown under different conditions is often used as a method to detect such growth differences.

Background This study sought to predict postsurgical seizure freedom from pre-operative diagnostic test results and clinical information using a rapid automated approach, based on supervised learning methods in patients with drug-resistant focal seizures suspected to begin in temporal lobe. Method We applied machine learning, specifically a combination of mutual information-based feature selection and supervised learning classifiers on multimodal data, to predict surgery outcome retrospectively in 20 presurgical patients (13 female; mean age±SD, in years 33±9.7 for females, and 35.3±9.4 for males) who were diagnosed with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) and subsequently underwent standard anteromesial temporal lobectomy. The main advantage of the present work over previous studies is the inclusion of the extent of ipsilateral neocortical gray matter atrophy and spatiotemporal properties of depth electrode-recorded seizures as training features for individual patient surgery planning. Results A maximum relevance minimum redundancy (mRMR) feature selector identified the following features as the most informative predictors of postsurgical seizure freedom in this study's sample of patients: family history of epilepsy, ictal EEG onset pattern (positive correlation with seizure freedom), MRI-based gray matter thickness reduction in the hemisphere ipsilateral to seizure onset, proportion of seizures that first appeared in ipsilateral amygdala to total seizures, age, epilepsy duration, delay in the spread of ipsilateral ictal discharges from site of onset, gender, and number of electrode contacts at seizure onset (negative correlation with seizure freedom). Using these features in combination with a least square support vector machine (LS-SVM) classifier compared to other commonly used classifiers resulted in very high surgical outcome prediction accuracy (95%). Conclusions Supervised machine learning using multimodal compared to unimodal data accurately predicted postsurgical outcome in patients with atypical MTLE.

This study aimed to investigate associations between obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and cortical thickness in older adults with subjective and objective cognitive difficulties, who are considered "at-risk" for dementia.83 middle-aged to older adults (51-88 years) underwent neuropsychological testing, polysomnography assessment of OSA and a structural magnetic resonance imaging brain scan. A principal components analysis was performed on OSA measures. Cortical thickness and subcortical volumes were compared to extracted components of "oxygen desaturation" and "sleep disturbance".Oxygen desaturation was significantly related to reduced cortical thickness in the bilateral temporal lobes (left: r=-0.44, p<0.001; right: r=-0.39, p=0.003). Conversely, sleep disturbance was associated with increased thickness in the right postcentral gyrus (r=0.48, p<0.001), pericalcarine (r=0.50, p=0.005) and pars opercularis (r=0.46, p=0.009) and increased volume of the hippocampus and amygdala. Decreased thickness in the bilateral temporal regions was associated with reduced verbal encoding (r=0.28, p=0.010).Given the clinical significance of this sample in terms of dementia prevention, these changes in grey matter reveal how OSA might contribute to neurodegenerative processes in older adults.

Hypersynchronous (HYP) and low voltage fast (LVF) activity are two separate ictal depth EEG onsets patterns often recorded in presurgical patients with MTLE. Evidence suggests the mechanisms generating HYP and LVF onset seizures are distinct, including differential involvement of hippocampal and extra-hippocampal sites. Yet the extent of extra-hippocampal structural alterations, which could support these two common seizures, is not known. In the current study, preoperative MRI from 24 patients with HYP or LVF onset seizures were analyzed to determine changes in cortical thickness and relate structural changes to spatiotemporal properties of the ictal EEG. Overall, onset and initial ipsilateral spread of HYP onset seizures involved mesial temporal structures, whereas LVF onset seizures involved mesial and lateral temporal as well as orbitofrontal cortex. MRI analysis found reduced cortical thickness correlated with longer duration of epilepsy. However, in patients with HYP onsets, the most affected areas were on the medial surface of each hemisphere, including parahippocampal regions and cingulate gyrus, whereas in patients with LVF onsets, the lateral surface of the anterior temporal lobe and orbitofrontal cortex showed the greatest effect. Most patients with HYP onset seizures were seizure-free after resective surgery, while a higher proportion of patients with LVF onset seizures had only worthwhile improvement. Our findings confirm the view that recurrent seizures cause progressive changes in cortical thickness, and provide information concerning the structural basis of two different epileptogenic networks responsible for MTLE. One, identified by HYP ictal onsets, chiefly involves hippocampus and is associated with excellent outcome after standardized anteromedial temporal resection, while the other also involves lateral temporal and orbitofrontal cortex and a seizure-free surgical outcome occurs less after this procedure. These results suggest that a more extensive tailored resection may be required for patients with the second type of MTLE.

Summary The vast majority of patients with idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder will develop a neurodegenerative α‐synuclein‐related condition, such as Parkinson’s disease or dementia with Lewy bodies. The pathology underlying dream enactment overlaps anatomically with the brainstem regions that regulate circadian core body temperature. Previously, nocturnal core body temperature regulation has been shown to be impaired in Parkinson’s disease. However, no study to date has investigated nocturnal core body temperature changes in patients with idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder, which may prove to be an early objective biomarker for α‐synucleinopathies. Ten healthy controls, 15 patients with idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder, 31 patients with Parkinson’s disease and six patients with dementia with Lewy bodies underwent clinical assessment and nocturnal polysomnography with core body temperature monitoring. A validated cosinor method was utilised for core body temperature analysis. No differences in mesor, nadir or time of nadir were observed between groups. However, when compared with healthy controls, the amplitude of the nocturnal core body temperature (mesor minus nadir) was significantly reduced in patients with idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder, Parkinson’s disease with concurrent rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder and dementia with Lewy bodies (p < 0.001, p = 0.043 and p = 0.017, respectively). Importantly, this relationship was not seen in those patients with Parkinson’s disease without rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder. In addition, there was a significant negative correlation between amplitude of the core body temperature and self‐reported rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder symptoms. Changes in thermoregulatory circadian rhythm may be specifically associated with the pathology underlying rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder rather than simply that of α‐synucleinopathy. These findings implicate thermoregulatory dysfunction as a potential early biomarker for development of rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder‐associated neurodegeneration, and suggest that subpopulations with differing pathological underpinnings might exist in Parkinson’s disease.

Insomnia disorder (ID) is a heterogeneous disorder with proposed subtypes based on objective sleep duration. We speculated that insomnia subtyping with additional power spectral analysis and measurement of response to acute sleep restriction may be informative in overall assessment of ID. To explore alternative classifications of ID subtypes, insomnia patients (n = 99) underwent two consecutive overnight sleep studies: (i) habitual sleep opportunity (polysomnography, PSG) and, (ii) two hours less sleep opportunity (electroencephalography, EEG), with the first night compared to healthy controls (n = 25). ID subtypes were derived from data-driven classification of PSG, EEG spectral power and interhemispheric EEG asymmetry index. Three insomnia subtypes with different sleep duration and NREM spectral power were identified. One subtype (n = 26) had shorter sleep duration and lower NREM delta power than healthy controls (short-sleep delta-deficient; SSDD), the second subtype (n = 51) had normal sleep duration but lower NREM delta power than healthy controls (normal-sleep delta-deficient; NSDD) and a third subtype showed (n = 22) no difference in sleep duration or delta power from healthy controls (normal neurophysiological sleep; NNS). Acute sleep restriction improved multiple objective sleep measures across all insomnia subtypes including increased delta power in SSDD and NSDD, and improvements in subjective sleep quality for SSDD (p = 0.03), with a trend observed for NSDD (p = 0.057). These exploratory results suggest evidence of novel neurophysiological insomnia subtypes that may inform sleep state misperception in ID and with further research, may provide pathways for personalised care.

Background: People with severe motor impairments often require an alternative access pathway, such as a binary switch, to communicate and to interact with their environment. A wide range of access pathways have been developed from simple mechanical switches to sophisticated physiological ones. In this manuscript we report the inaugural investigation of infrared thermography as a non-invasive and non-contact access pathway by which individuals with disabilities can interact and perhaps eventually communicate.

We used whole-head magnetoencephalography to investigate cortical activity during two oromotor activities foundational to speech production. 13 adults performed mouth opening and phoneme (/ pa/) production tasks to a visual cue. Jaw movements were tracked with an ultrasound-emitting device. Trials were time-locked to both stimulus onset and peak of jaw displacement. An eventrelated beamformer source reconstruction algorithm was used to detect areas of cortical activity for each condition. Beamformer output was submitted to iterative K-means clustering analyses. The time course of neural activity at each cluster centroid was computed for each individual and condition. Peaks were identified and latencies submitted for statistical analysis to reveal the relative timing of activity in each brain region. Stimulus locked activations for the mouth open task included a progression from left cuneus to left frontal and then right pre-central gyrus. Phoneme generation revealed the same sequence but with bilateral frontal activation. When time locked to jaw displacement, the mouth open condition showed left frontal followed by right frontal-temporal areas. Phoneme generation showed a complicated sequence of bilateral temporal and frontal areas. This study used three unique approaches (beamforming, clustering and jaw tracking) to demonstrate the temporal progression of neural activations that underlie the motor control of two simple oromotor tasks. These findings have implications for understanding clinical conditions with deficits in articulatory control or motor speech planning.