BackgroundCachexia has a devastating impact on survival and quality of life for many cancer patients and contributes to nearly one‐third of all cancer deaths; also, it is associated with poor responses to chemotherapy and survival. A better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of cancer‐associated cachexia (CAC), coupled with effective therapeutic approaches, will improve management of progressive functional impairment in cancer patients. Salidroside, a phenylpropanoid glycoside in Rhodiola rosea L, has been reported to possess potential anti‐fatigue, anti‐ageing, and anti‐Alzheimer's disease properties. It is widely consumed as a nutritional supplement, but its effects on CAC and the possible mechanism remain a mystery.MethodsIn the murine models of cachexia induced by CT‐26 and Lewis lung carcinoma (LLC) tumour, respectively, main features of CAC were determined after treatment of salidroside or chemotherapy. In vitro experiments were performed using murine C2C12 myotubes, which were treated by tumour necrosis factor‐α. Levels of several critical muscle‐related signal proteins such as mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), p‐mTOR, and myosin heavy chain (MyHC) were examined using western blot both in vitro and in vivo.ResultsIn the present study, we showed the exciting effect of salidroside on the treatment of CAC. In CT‐26 and LLC models, respectively, salidroside treatment could effectively preserve the tumour‐free body weight, decrease loss of adipose and gastrocnemius muscles, alleviate tumour burden, and prolong their survival time. Additionally, in combined chemotherapy, salidroside could synergistically enhance the anti‐tumour activity of cisplatin, especially decreased or eliminated chemotherapy‐induced cachexia. Further analysis demonstrated that salidroside could significantly increase expression of mTOR, p‐mTOR, and MyHC in gastrocnemius muscle. Also, results in vitro showed that salidroside could not only obviously increase mTOR, p‐mTOR, and MyHC expression in C2C12 myotubes but also effectively rescue their down‐regulation induced by tumour necrosis factor‐α.ConclusionsIn the current study, the exciting effect of salidroside on CAC suggested that salidroside supplementation might be a promising approach for a multi‐targeted therapy for the treatment of CAC.

Learning to associate written letters/characters with speech sounds is crucial for reading acquisition. Most previous studies have focused on audiovisual integration in alphabetic languages. Less is known about logographic languages such as Chinese characters, which map onto mostly syllable-based morphemes in the spoken language. Here we investigated how long-term exposure to native language affects the underlying neural mechanisms of audiovisual integration in a logographic language using magnetoencephalography (MEG). MEG sensor and source data from 12 adult native Chinese speakers and a control group of 13 adult Finnish speakers were analyzed for audiovisual suppression (bimodal responses vs. sum of unimodal responses) and congruency (bimodal incongruent responses vs. bimodal congruent responses) effects. The suppressive integration effect was found in the left angular and supramarginal gyri (205–365 ms), left inferior frontal and left temporal cortices (575–800 ms) in the Chinese group. The Finnish group showed a distinct suppression effect only in the right parietal and occipital cortices at a relatively early time window (285–460 ms). The congruency effect was only observed in the Chinese group in left inferior frontal and superior temporal cortex in a late time window (about 500–800 ms) probably related to modulatory feedback from multi-sensory regions and semantic processing. The audiovisual integration in a logographic language showed a clear resemblance to that in alphabetic languages in the left superior temporal cortex, but with activation specific to the logographic stimuli observed in the left inferior frontal cortex. The current MEG study indicated that learning of logographic languages has a large impact on the audiovisual integration of written characters with some distinct features compared to previous results on alphabetic languages.

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Letter-speech sound (LSS) integration is crucial for initial stages of reading acquisition. However, the relationship between cortical organization for supporting LSS integration, including unimodal and multimodal processes, and reading skills in early readers remains unclear. In the present study, we measured brain responses to Finnish letters and speech sounds from 29 typically developing Finnish children in a child-friendly audiovisual integration experiment using magnetoencephalography. Brain source activations in response to auditory, visual and audiovisual stimuli as well as audiovisual integration response were correlated with reading skills and cognitive skills predictive of reading development after controlling for the effect of age. Regression analysis showed that from the brain measures, the auditory late response around 400 ms showed the largest association with phonological processing and rapid automatized naming abilities. In addition, audiovisual integration effect was most pronounced in the left and right temporoparietal regions and the activities in several of these temporoparietal regions correlated with reading and writing skills. Our findings indicated the important role of temporoparietal regions in the early phase of learning to read and their unique contribution to reading skills.

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