Background-Whilst the neuroanatomical underpinnings of the functional brain disconnectivity observed in patients with schizophrenia remain elusive, white matter fiber bundles of the brain are a likely candidate given that they represent the infrastructure for long-distance neural communication.

The relentless advance of drug-resistance among pathogenic microbes, mandates a search for alternative approaches that will not cause resistance. Photodynamic inactivation (PDI) involves the combination of nontoxic dyes with harmless visible light to produce reactive oxygen species that can selectively kill microbial cells. PDI can be broad-spectrum in nature and can also destroy microbial cells in biofilms. Many different kinds of nanoparticles have been studied to potentiate antimicrobial PDI by improving photosensitizer solubility, photochemistry, photophysics and targeting. This review will cover photocatalytic disinfection with titania nanoparticles, carbon nanomaterials (fullerenes, carbon nanotubes and graphene), liposomes and polymeric nanoparticles. Natural polymers (chitosan and cellulose), gold and silver plasmonic nanoparticles, mesoporous silica, magnetic and upconverting nanoparticles have all been used for PDI.

Functionalized fullerenes represent a new class of photosensitizer (PS) that is being investigated for photodynamic therapy (PDT) of various diseases including cancer. We tested the hypothesis that fullerenes could be used to mediate PDT of intraperitoneal (IP) carcinomatosis in a mouse model. In humans this form of cancer responds poorly to standard treatment and manifests as a thin covering of tumor nodules on intestines, and other abdominal organs. We used a colon adenocarcinoma cell line (CT26) stably expressing luciferase to allow monitoring of IP tumor burden in BALB/c mice by non-invasive real-time optical imaging using a sensitive low light camera. IP injection of a preparation of N-methylpyrrolidinium-fullerene formulated in Cremophor-EL micelles, followed by white-light illumination delivered through the peritoneal wall (after creation of a skin flap) produced a statistically significant reduction in bioluminescence and a survival advantage in mice.

Background-One of the cardinal features of schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) is language abnormalities. The focus of this study was to determine whether or not there are also processing abnormalities of pure tones differing in pitch and duration in SPD.Methods-Thirteen neuroleptic-naïve male subjects met full criteria for SPD and were groupmatched on age and parental socioeconomic status to 13 comparison subjects. Verbal learning was measured with the California Verbal Learning Test. Heschl's gyrus volumes were measured using structural MRI. Whole-brain fMRI activation patterns in an auditory task of listening to tones including pitch and duration deviants were compared between SPD and control subjects. In a Contributors Dickey: designed the study, collected the fMRI data, analyzed the clinical and fMRI data, and wrote the manuscript. Morocz: analyzed the fMRI data. Niznikiewicz: collected and analyzed the ERP data, and contributed to the manuscript. Voglmaier: collected and analyzed CVLT data, and performed SCID interview. Dreusicke: analyzed the fMRI data. Toner: aided in fMRI data collection. Yoo: aided in initial fMRI data collection. Khan: aided in final fMRI data presentation. Shenton: reviewed the manuscript. McCarley: reviewed the manuscript. Conflict of interestAll authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Results-In the region of the STG, SPD subjects demonstrated more activation to pitch deviants bilaterally (p<0.001); and to duration deviants in the left hemisphere (p=0.005) (two-sample t). SPD subjects also showed more bilateral parietal cortex activation to duration deviants. In no region did comparison subjects activate more than SPD subjects in either experiment. Exploratory correlations for SPD subjects suggest a relationship between peak activation on the right for deviant tones in the pitch experiment with odd speech and impaired verbal learning. There was no difference between groups on Heschl's gyrus volume. NIH Public AccessConclusions-These data suggest that SPD subjects have inefficient or hyper-responsive processing of pure tones both in terms of pitch and duration deviance that is not attributable to smaller Heschl's gyrus volumes. Finally, these auditory processing abnormalities may have significance for the odd speech heard in some SPD subjects and downstream language and verbal learning deficits.

Introduction-Persons diagnosed with schizophrenia demonstrate deficits in prosody recognition. To examine prosody along the schizophrenia spectrum, antipsychotic-naïve

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