Approximately three in ten patients with first-ever minor ischemic stroke may develop depression during the first year after stroke. Female gender, smoking, mild global cognitive impairment, and stroke recurrence predict early-onset or late-onset PSD after minor ischemic stroke.

Purpose: Current studies on endovascular intervention for intracranial atherosclerosis select patients based on luminal stenosis. Coronary studies demonstrated that fractional flow measurements assess ischemia better than anatomical stenosis and can guide patient selection for intervention. We similarly postulated that fractional flow can be used to assess ischemic stroke risk. Methods: This was a feasibility study to assess the technical use and safety of applying a pressure guidewire to measure fractional flow across intracranial stenoses. Twenty patients with severe intracranial stenosis were recruited. The percentage of luminal stenosis, distal to proximal pressure ratios (fractional flow) and the fractional flow gradients across the stenosis were measured. Procedural success rate and safety outcomes were documented. Results: All 20 patients had successful crossing of stenosis by the pressure guidewire. Ten patients underwent angioplasty, and 5 had stenting performed. There was one perforator stroke, but not related to the use of the pressure wire. For the 13 patients with complete pre- and postintervention data, the mean preintervention stenosis, fractional flow and translesional pressure gradient were 76.2%, 0.66 and 29.9 mm Hg, whilst the corresponding postintervention measurements were 24.7%, 0.88 and 10.9 mm Hg, respectively. Fractional flow (r = -0.530, p = 0.001) and the translesional pressure gradient (r = 0.501, p = 0.002) only had a modest correlation with the luminal stenosis. Conclusion: Fractional flow measurement by floating a pressure guidewire across the intracranial stenosis was technically feasible and safe in this study. Further studies are needed to validate its use for ischemic stroke risk assessment.

In neuromorphic computing networks, a flexible synaptic memristor with high recognition accuracy is highly desired. In this study, ZnO nanosheets (ZnO NS) embedded within a polymethyl methacrylate host material are used as the intermediate layer to prepare flexible synaptic memristor at a low-temperature of 80 °C. The device shows excellent switching characteristics with low SET/RESET voltages (−0.4 V/0.4 V) and stable retention characteristic (10 4 s). By modulating the conductance continuously, the flexible synaptic memristor simulates typical synaptic plasticities, including excitation post-synaptic current, paired-pulse facilitation, and spike-timing dependent plasticity. Especially, the neuromorphic system built from flexible ZnO NS-based memristors achieves a high recognition accuracy up to 97.7% for handwriting digit. Under the influence of 5% Uniform noise and 5% Gaussian noise, recognition accuracies are maintained at 94.6% and 93.7%, respectively. These properties are well maintained even when bending 1000 times at a radius of 5 mm. The flexible ZnO NS-based memristor shows great prospects in wearable devices and neural morphology calculation.

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