Correction: Language Experience Predicts Eye Movements During Online Auditory Comprehension

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.5334/joc.285.].

Reduction in creatine metabolites in macrophages exposed to small molecule analogues of the anti-inflammatory parasitic worm product ES-62

ES-62, a protein secreted by Acanthocheilonema viteae, is anti-inflammatory by virtue of covalently attached phosphorylcholine (PC) residues and thus a library of drug-like small molecule analogues (SMAs) based on its PC moieties has been designed for therapeutic purposes. Two members, SMAs 11a and 12b, were previously found to suppress production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMMs) exposed to cytosine-phosphate-guanosine oligodeoxynucleotides (CpG), agonists for Toll-like receptor 9. In order to explore the mechanism of action underlying such activities, an untargeted mass spectrometry-based metabolomics screen was undertaken. Stimulation of BMMs with CpG produced significant metabolic changes relating to glycolysis and the TCA cycle but the SMAs had little impact on this. Also, the SMAs did not promote alterations in metabolites known to be associated with macrophage M1/M2 polarization. Rather, BMMs exposed to SMAs 11a or 12b prior to CpG treatment, or even alone, revealed downregulation of metabolites of creatine, a molecule whose major role is in the transport of high energy phosphate from the mitochondria to the cytosol. These data therefore provide insight into a possible mechanism of action of molecules with significant therapeutic potential that has not previously been described for parasitic worm products.

Language Experience Predicts Eye Movements During Online Auditory Comprehension

Experience-based theories of language processing suggest that listeners use the properties of their previous linguistic input to constrain comprehension in real time (e.g. MacDonald & Christiansen, 2002; Smith & Levy, 2013; Stanovich & West, 1989; Mishra, Pandey, Singh, & Huettig, 2012). This project investigates the prediction that individual differences in experience will predict differences in sentence comprehension. Participants completed a visual world eye-tracking task following Altmann and Kamide (1999) which manipulates whether the verb licenses the anticipation of a specific referent in the scene (e.g. The boy will eat/move the cake). Within this paradigm, we ask (1) are there reliable individual differences in language-mediated eye movements during this task? If so, (2) do individual differences in language experience correlate with these differences, and (3) can this relationship be explained by other, more general cognitive abilities? Study 1 finds evidence that language experience predicts an overall facilitation in fixating the target, and Study 2 replicates this effect and finds that it remains when controlling for working memory, inhibitory control, phonological ability, and perceptual speed.

Integration of fundamental frequency and voice-onset-time to voicing categorization: Listeners with normal hearing and bimodal hearing configurations

This study investigates the integration of word-initial fundamental frequency (F0) and voice-onset-time (VOT) in stop voicing categorization for adult listeners with normal hearing (NH) and unilateral cochlear implant (CI) recipients utilizing a bimodal hearing configuration [CI + contralateral hearing aid (HA)]. Categorization was assessed for ten adults with NH and ten adult bimodal listeners, using synthesized consonant stimuli interpolating between /ba/ and /pa/ exemplars with five-step VOT and F0 conditions. All participants demonstrated the expected categorization pattern by reporting /ba/ for shorter VOTs and /pa/ for longer VOTs, with NH listeners showing more use of VOT as a voicing cue than CI listeners in general. When VOT becomes ambiguous between voiced and voiceless stops, NH users make more use of F0 as a cue to voicing than CI listeners, and CI listeners showed greater utilization of initial F0 during voicing identification in their bimodal (CI + HA) condition than in the CI-alone condition. The results demonstrate the adjunctive benefit of acoustic hearing from the non-implanted ear for listening conditions involving spectrotemporally complex stimuli. This finding may lead to the development of a clinically feasible perceptual weighting task that could inform clinicians about bimodal efficacy and the risk-benefit profile associated with bilateral CI recommendation.

Video speeding can be efficient and speeding-induced preference cost can be lessened by selective speeding

Over the past decade, screen-captured instructional videos have become popular tools for learning. Viewers wanting to learn efficiently can play these videos at faster-than-normal speeds, a feature offered by hosting services such as YouTube. Although previous research suggests that moderate speeding may not lessen learning, little research has tested this form of media for speeding-induced learning impairments. Further, even if learning is not impaired by speeding, the degree to which users find speed increases taxing and/or unpleasant is unknown. We therefore created a set of screen-captured instructional videos and tested whether speeding them by up to 250% affected learning, perceived workload, and preferences. Speed increases of up to 200% minimally affected learning, but even modest 150% speed increases substantially increased perceived workload and reduced viewer preferences. However, we were able to create videos that were more selectively speeded by concentrating speeding on pauses and relatively unimportant and slow speech. These videos were just as time efficient as the 150% speeded videos, but viewers preferred them. Our findings demonstrate that speeded instructional videos have the potential to facilitate efficient learning, and they suggest techniques such as selective speeding that may be used to support efficiency while lessening viewer preference costs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The contribution of form repetition to listeners' expectation of givenness in online reference resolution

Although it is clear that unaccented referring expressions are associated with given information in a discourse (Dahan et al., 2002), it is less clear what aspects of givenness are relevant. We examine whether listeners' expectation of givenness depends on repetition of a referring expression or on contextual evocation of a referent. The results from two visual world eye-tracking experiments suggest that for interpretation, listeners associated reduced prominence with a repeated referring expression. Listeners expect previously evoked referents to be candidates for reduced referring expressions only when they are referred to with the exact same referential form. The data also suggest that when referents are referred to with different referential forms across utterances, accenting facilitates linking those forms for co-reference.

Evaluation of amoxicillin, metronidazole and gentamicin dosage regimens for use in antibiotic prophylaxis in colorectal surgery

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate amoxicillin, metronidazole and gentamicin dosage regimens for antibiotic prophylaxis in colorectal surgery.

METHODS

The study was conducted in 20 patients undergoing colorectal surgery. Patients received one or two doses of amoxicillin 1000 mg, metronidazole 500 mg and gentamicin 3 mg/kg ideal body weight, banded by height. Antibiotic concentrations were measured up to 7 h post dose. Population pharmacokinetic (PopPK) analysis with NONMEM followed by Monte Carlo simulation of different dosage regimens was used to estimate the PTA for potential organisms associated with surgical site infections (SSIs).

RESULTS

A median of 5 (range 3-6) concentrations were available per patient. CL and V of all antibiotics were related to weight; gentamicin CL was also related to CLCR. The administered doses maintained the desired PTA up to 8 h for the Streptococcus anginosus group but not for enterococci, Bacteroides fragilis group, MSSA, and Escherichia coli. An additional 500 mg amoxicillin every 4 h was sufficient to achieve the PTA for most relevant organisms but 2 hourly dosing was required for patients at risk of infective endocarditis. A metronidazole dose of 1000 mg was required for patients >85 kg. In patients with CLCR >50 mL/min, 5 mg/kg gentamicin (with an additional 2.5 mg/kg in prolonged surgery at 6 h) maintained PTA targets for >10 h.

CONCLUSIONS

PopPK analysis with Monte Carlo simulation identified prophylactic antibiotic regimens that would maintain the PTA for organisms associated with SSIs during short- and long-duration colorectal surgery.

Evidence of Absence: Abstract Metrical Structure in Speech Planning

Rhythmic structure in speech is characterized by sequences of stressed and unstressed syllables. A large body of literature suggests that speakers of English attempt to achieve rhythmic harmony by evenly distributing stressed syllables throughout prosodic phrases. The question remains as to how speakers plan metrical structure during speech production and whether it is planned independently of phonemes. To examine this, we designed a tongue twister task consisting of disyllabic word pairs with overlapping phonological segments and either matching or non-matching metrical structure. Results showed that speakers had more difficulty producing metrically regular word pairs, compared to irregular pairs; that is, word pairs with irregular meter had faster productions and fewer speech errors in this production task. This finding of metrical regularity inhibiting production is inconsistent with an abstract metrical structure that is planned independently of phonemes at the point of phonological encoding.

Prosody indexes both competence and performance

Prosody is an important feature of language that conveys a wide range of information. However, prosody is widely considered to be a difficult domain of study within the language sciences. One consequence of this is that existing grammatical theories of prosody fail to explain prosodic choices that seem to arise from nonlinguistic cognitive demands, such as communicative context, top-down expectations, and recent articulatory and acoustic experience. We provide an account of some of these phenomena and argue that linguistic theories that do not incorporate these factors into models of prosody are likely to mischaracterize its role in language. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language in Mind and Brain Psychology > Language Linguistics > Linguistic Theory.

Masking auditory feedback does not eliminate repetition reduction

Repetition reduces word duration. Explanations of this process have appealed to audience design, internal production mechanisms, and combinations thereof (e.g. Kahn & Arnold, 2015). Jacobs, Yiu, Watson, and Dell (2015) proposed the auditory feedback hypothesis, which states that speakers must hear a word, produced either by themselves or another speaker, in order for duration reduction on a subsequent production. We conducted a strong test of the auditory feedback hypothesis in two experiments, in which we used masked auditory feedback and whispering to prevent speakers from hearing themselves fully. Both experiments showed that despite limiting the sources of normal auditory feedback, repetition reduction was observed to equal extents in masked and unmasked conditions, suggesting that repetition reduction may be supported by multiple sources, such as somatosensory feedback and feedforward signals, depending on their availability.

Word Recall is Affected by Surrounding Metrical Context

It has been claimed that English has a metrical structure, or rhythm, in which stressed and unstressed syllables alternate. In previous research regular, alternating patterns have been shown to facilitate online language comprehension. Expanding these findings to downstream processing would lead to the prediction that metrical regularity enhances memory. Research from the memory literature, however, indicates that regular patterns are less salient and therefore less well remembered, and also that strings of similar sounds are harder to remember. This work suggests that, like lists of words with similar sounds, lists of words with similar metrical patterns are less accurately remembered than comparable metrically irregular patterns. The present study tests these conflicting predictions by examining the effects of metrical regularity in a recall task. We find that words are better recalled when they do not match their metrical context, suggesting that a regular metrical structure may not be beneficial in all contexts.

Individual differences in syntactic processing: Is there evidence for reader-text interactions?

There remains little consensus about whether there exist meaningful individual differences in syntactic processing and, if so, what explains them. We argue that this partially reflects the fact that few psycholinguistic studies of individual differences include multiple constructs, multiple measures per construct, or tests for reliable measures. Here, we replicated three major syntactic phenomena in the psycholinguistic literature: use of verb distributional statistics, difficulty of object-versus subject-extracted relative clauses, and resolution of relative clause attachment ambiguities. We examine whether any individual differences in these phenomena could be predicted by language experience or general cognitive abilities (phonological ability, verbal working memory capacity, inhibitory control, perceptual speed). We find correlations between individual differences and offline, but not online, syntactic phenomena. Condition effects on reading time were not consistent within individuals, limiting their ability to correlate with other measures. We suggest that this might explain controversy over individual differences in language processing.

Effects of Participant Engagement on Prosodic Prominence

It is generally assumed that prosodic cues that provide linguistic information, like discourse status, are driven primarily by the information structure of the conversation. This article investigates whether speakers have the capacity to adjust subtle acoustic-phonetic properties of the prosodic signal when they find themselves in contexts in which accurate communication is important. Thus, we examine whether the communicative context, in addition to discourse structure, modulates prosodic choices when speakers produce acoustic prominence. We manipulated the discourse status of target words in the context of a highly communicative task (i.e., working with a partner to solve puzzles in the computer game Minecraft) and in the context of a less communicative task more typical of psycholinguistic experiments (i.e., picture description). Speakers in the more communicative task produced prosodic cues to discourse structure that were more discriminable than those in the less communicative task. In a second experiment, we found that the presence or absence of a conversational partner drove some, but not all, of these effects. Together, these results suggest that speakers can modulate the prosodic signal in response to the communicative and social context.

Hair nicotine concentration measurement in cats and its relationship to owner-reported environmental tobacco smoke exposure

OBJECTIVES

To investigate the association between hair nicotine concentration in cats and owner-reported exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Owner questionnaires documented exposure. Nicotine was extracted from hair by sonification in methanol followed by hydrophilic interaction chromatography with mass spectrometry. Relationships between hair nicotine concentration and owner-reported exposure were examined using hypothesis-testing statistics and receiver operating characteristic curve analysis.

RESULTS

The hair nicotine concentration of reportedly exposed cats was significantly higher than unexposed cats and groups of cats with different levels of exposure had significantly different median hair nicotine concentrations corresponding to exposure. A hair nicotine concentration of 0·1 ng/mg had a specificity of 98% (95% confidence interval: 83 to 100) and a sensitivity of 69% (95% confidence interval: 54 to 84) for detecting environmental tobacco smoke exposure. Outdoors access, coat colour, urban or rural environment and length of time living with the owner were not obviously associated with hair nicotine concentration.

CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Feline hair nicotine concentration appears strongly associated with owner-reported environmental tobacco smoke exposure. Feline hair nicotine concentration could therefore be used as a biomarker for tobacco smoke exposure, allowing future studies to assess whether exposed cats have an increased risk of specific diseases.

Evidence for the Influence of Syntax on Prosodic Parsing

We investigate whether expectations based on syntactic position influence the processing of intonational boundaries. In a boundary detection task, we manipulated a) the strength of cues to the presence of a boundary and b) whether or not a location in the sentence was a plausible location for an intonational boundary to occur given the syntactic structure. Listeners consistently reported hearing more boundaries at syntactically licensed locations than at syntactically unlicensed locations, even when the acoustic evidence for an intonational boundary was controlled. This suggests that the processing of an intonational boundary is a product of both acoustic cues and listener expectations.

The use of control charts by laypeople and hospital decision-makers for guiding decision making

Graphs presenting healthcare data are increasingly available to support laypeople and hospital staff's decision making. When making these decisions, hospital staff should consider the role of chance-that is, random variation. Given random variation, decision-makers must distinguish signals (sometimes called special-cause data) from noise (common-cause data). Unfortunately, many graphs do not facilitate the statistical reasoning necessary to make such distinctions. Control charts are a less commonly used type of graph that support statistical thinking by including reference lines that separate data more likely to be signals from those more likely to be noise. The current work demonstrates for whom (laypeople and hospital staff) and when (treatment and investigative decisions) control charts strengthen data-driven decision making. We present two experiments that compare people's use of control and non-control charts to make decisions between hospitals (funnel charts vs. league tables) and to monitor changes across time (run charts with control lines vs. run charts without control lines). As expected, participants more accurately identified the outlying data using a control chart than using a non-control chart, but their ability to then apply that information to more complicated questions (e.g., where should I go for treatment?, and should I investigate?) was limited. The discussion highlights some common concerns about using control charts in hospital settings.

Why are repeated words produced with reduced durations? Evidence from inner speech and homophone production

Acoustic reduction for repeated words could be the result of articulation and motor practice (Lam & Watson, 2014), facilitated production (Kahn & Arnold, 2015; Gahl et al., 2012), or audience design and shared common ground (Galati & Brennan, 2010). We sought to narrow down what kind of facilitation leads to repetition reduction. Repetition could, in principle, facilitate production on a conceptual, lexical, phonological, articulatory, or acoustic level (Kahn & Arnold, 2015). We compared the durations of the second utterance of a target word when the initial production was aloud or silent. The silent presentation either involved unmouthed or mouthed inner speech. Overt production, unmouthed and mouthed inner speech all led to reduction in target word onsets, but target word durations were only shortened when a word was initially said aloud. In an additional experiment, we found that prior naming of a homophone of the target word also led to duration reduction. The results suggest that repetition reduction occurs when there is a recently experienced auditory memory of the item. We propose that duration may be controlled in part by auditory feedback during production, the use of which can be primed by recent auditory experience.

Reduction in Prosodic Prominence Predicts Speakers' Recall: Implications for Theories of Prosody

Repeated words are often reduced in prosodic prominence, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. The present study contrasted two theories: does prosodic reduction reflect the choice of a particular linguistic form, or does ease of retrieval within the language production system lead to facilitated, less prominent productions? One test of facilitation-based theories is suggested by findings on human memory: Whether a second presentation of an item benefits later memory is predicted by the item's availability at the time of the second presentation. If prosodic reduction partially reflects facilitated retrieval, it should predict later memory. One naïve participant described to another participant routes on a map. Critical items were mentioned twice. Following the map task, the speaker attempted written recall of the mentioned items. As expected, acoustic intensity of the second mentions predicted later recall in the same way that difficulty of retrieval has in other tasks. This pattern suggests that one source of prosodic reduction is facilitation within the language production system.

Synthesizing meaning and processing approaches to prosody: performance matters

Words vary in acoustic prominence; for example repeated words tend to be reduced, while focused elements tend to be acoustically prominent. We discuss two approaches to this phenomenon. On the message-based view, acoustic choices signal the speaker's meaning or pragmatics, or are guided by syntactic structure. On the facilitation-based view, reduced forms reflect facilitation of production processing mechanisms. We argue that message-based constraints correlate systematically with production facilitation. Moreover, we argue that discourse effects on acoustic reduction may be at least partially mediated by processing facilitation. Thus, research needs to simultaneously consider both competence (message) and performance (processing) constraints on prosody, specifically in terms of the psychological mechanisms underlying acoustic reduction. To facilitate this goal, we present preliminary processing models of message-based and facilitation-based approaches, and outline directions for future research.

Characterisation of triterpenes and new phenolic lipids in Cameroonian propolis

Chemical investigation of a sample of propolis originating from North-Western Cameroon led to the isolation of thirteen alk(en)ylphenols (1-13) (inseparable mixture) along with α-amyrin (14), β-amyrin (15), lupeol (16), cycloartenol (17), mangiferonic acid (18), ambonic acid (19), mangiferolic acid (20), ambolic acid (21), isomangiferolic acid (22) and nine alk(en)ylresorcinols (23-31) (inseparable mixture). All compounds were identified following analysis of their spectroscopic data and comparison with previously published reports. Compounds (8), (12), (13) and (30) are new natural products. GC-MS analysis carried out on the alk(en)ylphenol and alk(en)ylresorcinol mixtures (dimethyl disulphide trimethylsilyl derivatives) revealed the presence of saturated and mono-unsaturated compounds with side chain lengths ranging from C11 to C19 and C15 to C19, respectively. The position of the double bond in mono-unsaturated derivatives was established from the characteristic fragments resulting from the cleavage of the bond between the two methylthio-substituted carbons. The most abundant compound in each mixture was 3-(12'Z-heptadecenyl)-phenol (10) and 5-(12'Z-heptadecenyl)-resorcinol (29). This study is the first to report the presence of triterpenes (except for lupeol) and phenolic lipids, including eighteen compounds previously unreported in bee glue, in an African sample.

Repetition reduction: lexical repetition in the absence of referent repetition

Compared to words that are new to a discourse, repeated words are produced with reduced acoustic prominence. Although these effects are often attributed to priming in the production system, the locus of the effect within the production system remains unresolved because, in natural speech, repetition often involves repetition of referents and lexical items simultaneously. Therefore, repetition reduction could be due to repeated mention of a referent or to repetition of a word or referring expression. In our study, we use an event description task to test whether repetition reduction is due to repetition of lexical items or to repeated mention of referents. The results show that repeated lexical items lead to reduced duration and intensity even in the absence of referent repetition, whereas repeated referents lead to reduced intensity alone. The general pattern suggests that repetition reduction is due most strongly to repetition of the lexical item, rather than repeated mention of the referent.

Can intonational phrase structure be primed (like syntactic structure)?

In 3 experiments, we investigated whether intonational phrase structure can be primed. In all experiments, participants listened to sentences in which the presence and location of intonational phrase boundaries were manipulated such that the recording included either no intonational phrase boundaries, a boundary in a structurally dispreferred location, a boundary in a preferred location, or boundaries in both locations. In Experiment 1, participants repeated the sentences to test whether they would reproduce the prosodic structure they had just heard. Experiments 2 and 3 used a prime-target paradigm to evaluate whether the intonational phrase structure heard in the prime sentence might influence that of a novel target sentence. Experiment 1 showed that participants did repeat back sentences that they had just heard with the original intonational phrase structure, yet Experiments 2 and 3 found that exposure to intonational phrase boundaries on prime trials did not influence how a novel target sentence was prosodically phrased. These results suggest that speakers may retain the intonational phrasing of a sentence, but this effect is not long-lived and does not generalize across unrelated sentences. Furthermore, these findings provide no evidence that intonational phrase structure is formulated during a planning stage that is separate from other sources of linguistic information.

What happened (and what didn't): Discourse constraints on encoding of plausible alternatives

Three experiments investigated how font emphasis influences reading and remembering discourse. Although past work suggests that contrastive pitch contours benefit memory by promoting encoding of salient alternatives, it is unclear both whether this effect generalizes to other forms of linguistic prominence and how the set of alternatives is constrained. Participants read discourses in which some true propositions had salient alternatives (e.g., British scientists found the endangered monkey when the discourse also mentioned French scientists) and completed a recognition memory test. In Experiments 1 and 2, font emphasis in the initial presentation increased participants' ability to later reject false statements about salient alternatives but not about unmentioned items (e.g., Portuguese scientists). In Experiment 3, font emphasis helped reject false statements about plausible alternatives, but not about less plausible alternatives that were nevertheless established in the discourse. These results suggest readers encode a narrow set of only those alternatives plausible in the particular discourse. They also indicate that multiple manipulations of linguistic prominence, not just prosody, can lead to consideration of alternatives.

A validated and stability indicating HPLC method for analysis of diminazene aceturate and antipyrine combination in a ready injectable solution

Diminazene aceturate and Antipyrine combination therapy is widely used in veterinary medicine. A simple reverse HPLC method for the analysis of samples of a ready injectable formulation containing a mixture of active ingredients and inactive excipients has been developed. The HPLC analysis was carried out using a reversed phase (RP)-C18 (250 mm×4.0 mm, 5 μm) column. The isocratic mobile phase consisted of a mixture of acetonitrile, methanol, phosphate buffer and hexane sulfonate; the flow rate was 0.6 mL/min and ultraviolet detection was at 291 nm. This method was validated in accordance with FDA and ICH guidelines and showed good linearity, accuracy, precision, selectivity and the system suitability results were within the acceptance criteria. A stability-indicating study was also carried out and indicated that this method could be used for purity and degradation evaluation of these formulations.

Alice's adventures in um-derland: Psycholinguistic sources of variation in disfluency production

This study tests the hypothesis that three common types of disfluency (fillers, silent pauses, and repeated words) reflect variance in what strategies are available to the production system for responding to difficulty in language production. Participants' speech in a storytelling paradigm was coded for the three disfluency types. Repeats occurred most often when difficult material was already being produced and could be repeated, but fillers and silent pauses occurred most when difficult material was still being planned. Fillers were associated only with conceptual difficulties, consistent with the proposal that they reflect a communicative signal whereas silent pauses and repeats were also related to lexical and phonological difficulties. These differences are discussed in terms of different strategies available to the language production system.

Interpreting Pitch Accents in Online Comprehension: H* vs. L+H*

Although the presence or absence of a pitch accent clearly can play an important role in signaling the discourse and information structure of an utterance, whether the form of an accent determines the type of information it conveys is more controversial. We used an eye-tracking paradigm to investigate whether H*, which has been argued to signal new information, evokes different eye fixations than L+H*, which has been argued to signal the presence of contrast. Our results demonstrate that although listeners interpret these accents differently, their interpretive domains overlap. L+H* creates a strong bias toward contrast referents whereas H* is compatible with both new and contrast referents.

The effects of age on the strategic use of pitch accents in memory for discourse: a processing-resource account

In two experiments, we investigated age-related changes in how prosodic pitch accents affect memory. Participants listened to recorded discourses that contained two contrasts between pairs of items (e.g., one story contrasted British scientists with French scientists and Malaysia with Indonesia). The end of each discourse referred to one item from each pair; these references received a pitch accent that either denoted contrast (L + H* in the ToBI system) or did not (H*). A contrastive accent on a particular pair improved later recognition memory equally for young and older adults. However, older adults showed decreased memory if the other pair received a contrastive accent (Experiment 1). Young adults with low working memory performance also showed this penalty (Experiment 2). These results suggest that pitch accents guide processing resources to important information for both older and younger adults but diminish memory for less important information in groups with reduced resources, including older adults.

Transcriptional regulation of neurodevelopmental and metabolic pathways by NPAS3

The basic helix-loop-helix PAS (Per, Arnt, Sim) domain transcription factor gene NPAS3 is a replicated genetic risk factor for psychiatric disorders. A knockout (KO) mouse model exhibits behavioral and adult neurogenesis deficits consistent with human illness. To define the location and mechanism of NPAS3 etiopathology, we combined immunofluorescent, transcriptomic and metabonomic approaches. Intense Npas3 immunoreactivity was observed in the hippocampal subgranular zone-the site of adult neurogenesis--but was restricted to maturing, rather than proliferating, neuronal precursor cells. Microarray analysis of a HEK293 cell line over-expressing NPAS3 showed that transcriptional targets varied according to circadian rhythm context and C-terminal deletion. The most highly up-regulated NPAS3 target gene, VGF, encodes secretory peptides with established roles in neurogenesis, depression and schizophrenia. VGF was just one of many NPAS3 target genes also regulated by the SOX family of transcription factors, suggesting an overlap in neurodevelopmental function. The parallel repression of multiple glycolysis genes by NPAS3 reveals a second role in the regulation of glucose metabolism. Comparison of wild-type and Npas3 KO metabolite composition using high-resolution mass spectrometry confirmed these transcriptional findings. KO brain tissue contained significantly altered levels of NAD(+), glycolysis metabolites (such as dihydroxyacetone phosphate and fructose-1,6-bisphosphate), pentose phosphate pathway components and Kreb's cycle intermediates (succinate and α-ketoglutarate). The dual neurodevelopmental and metabolic aspects of NPAS3 activity described here increase our understanding of mental illness etiology, and may provide a mechanism for innate and medication-induced susceptibility to diabetes commonly reported in psychiatric patients.

The disfluent discourse: Effects of filled pauses on recall

We investigated the mechanisms by which fillers, such as uh and um, affect memory for discourse. Participants listened to and attempted to recall recorded passages adapted from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The type and location of interruptions were manipulated through digital splicing. In Experiment 1, we tested a processing time account of fillers' effects. While fillers facilitated recall, coughs matched in duration to the fillers impaired recall, suggesting that fillers' benefits cannot be attributed to adding processing time. In Experiment 2, fillers' locations were manipulated based on norming data to be either predictive or non-predictive of upcoming material. Fillers facilitated recall in both cases, inconsistent with an account in which listeners predict upcoming material using past experience with the distribution of fillers. Instead, these results suggest an attentional orienting account in which fillers direct attention to the speech stream but do not always result in specific predictions about upcoming material.

Effects of pitch accents in attachment ambiguity resolution

Previous work has found that listeners prefer to attach ambiguous syntactic constituents to nouns produced with a pitch accent (Schafer et al., 1996). This study examines what factors underlie previously established accent attachment effects by testing whether these effects are driven by a preference to attach syntactic constituents to new or important information (the Syntax Hypothesis) or whether there is a bias to respond to post-sentence probe questions with an accented word (the Salience Hypothesis). One of the predictions of the Salience Hypothesis is that selection of accented words should be greater when a sentence is complex and processing resources are limited. The results from the experiments presented here show that the probability of listeners' selecting accented words when asked about the interpretation of a relative clause varies with sentence type: listeners selected accented words more frequently in long sentences than in short sentences, consistent with the predictions of the Salience Hypothesis. Furthermore, Experiment 4 demonstrates that listeners are more likely to respond to post-sentence questions with accented words than with non-accented words, even when no ambiguity is present, and even when the response results in an incorrect answer. These findings suggest that accent-driven attachment effects found in earlier studies reflect a post-sentence selection process rather than a syntactic processing mechanism.

Recognition memory reveals just how CONTRASTIVE contrastive accenting really is

The effects of pitch accenting on memory were investigated in three experiments. Participants listened to short recorded discourses that contained contrast sets with two items (e.g. British scientists and French scientists); a continuation specified one item from the set. Pitch accenting on the critical word in the continuation was manipulated between non-contrastive (H* in the ToBI system) and contrastive (L+H*). On subsequent recognition memory tests, the L+H* accent increased hits to correct statements and correct rejections of the contrast item (Experiments 1-3), but did not impair memory for other parts of the discourse (Experiment 2). L+H* also did not facilitate correct rejections of lures not in the contrast set (Experiment 3), indicating that contrastive accents do not simply strengthen the representation of the target item. These results suggest comprehenders use pitch accenting to encode and update information about multiple elements in a contrast set.

Recognition memory reveals just how CONTRASTIVE contrastive accenting really is

The effects of pitch accenting on memory were investigated in three experiments. Participants listened to short recorded discourses that contained contrast sets with two items (e.g. British scientists and French scientists); a continuation specified one item from the set. Pitch accenting on the critical word in the continuation was manipulated between non-contrastive (H* in the ToBI system) and contrastive (L+H*). On subsequent recognition memory tests, the L+H* accent increased hits to correct statements and correct rejections of the contrast item (Experiments 1-3), but did not impair memory for other parts of the discourse (Experiment 2). L+H* also did not facilitate correct rejections of lures not in the contrast set (Experiment 3), indicating that contrastive accents do not simply strengthen the representation of the target item. These results suggest comprehenders use pitch accenting to encode and update information about multiple elements in a contrast set.

Use of a solvent-free dry matrix coating for quantitative matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization imaging of 4-bromophenyl-1,4-diazabicyclo(3.2.2)nonane-4-carboxylate in rat brain and quantitative analysis of the drug from laser microdissected tissue regions

A dry matrix application for matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MALDI MSI) was used to profile the distribution of 4-bromophenyl-1,4-diazabicyclo(3.2.2)nonane-4-carboxylate, monohydrochloride (BDNC, SSR180711) in rat brain tissue sections. Matrix application involved applying layers of finely ground dry alpha-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid (CHCA) to the surface of tissue sections thaw mounted onto MALDI targets. It was not possible to detect the drug when applying matrix in a standard aqueous-organic solvent solution. The drug was detected at higher concentrations in specific regions of the brain, particularly the white matter of the cerebellum. Pseudomultiple reaction monitoring imaging was used to validate that the observed distribution was the target compound. The semiquantitative data obtained from signal intensities in the imaging was confirmed by laser microdissection of specific regions of the brain directed by the imaging, followed by hydrophilic interaction chromatography in combination with a quantitative high-resolution mass spectrometry method. This study illustrates that a dry matrix coating is a valuable and complementary matrix application method for analysis of small polar drugs and metabolites that can be used for semiquantitative analysis.

A solvent-free matrix application method for matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization imaging of small molecules

Matrix application continues to be a critical step in sample preparation for matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry imaging (MSI). Imaging of small molecules such as drugs and metabolites is particularly problematic because the commonly used washing steps to remove salts are usually omitted as they may also remove the analyte, and analyte spreading is more likely with conventional wet matrix application methods. We have developed a method which uses the application of matrix as a dry, finely divided powder, here referred to as dry matrix application, for the imaging of drug compounds. This appears to offer a complementary method to wet matrix application for the MALDI-MSI of small molecules, with the alternative matrix application techniques producing different ion profiles, and allows the visualization of compounds not observed using wet matrix application methods. We demonstrate its value in imaging clozapine from rat kidney and 4-bromophenyl-1,4-diazabicyclo(3.2.2)nonane-4-carboxylic acid from rat brain. In addition, exposure of the dry matrix coated sample to a saturated moist atmosphere appears to enhance the visualization of a different set of molecules.

Accent detection is a slippery slope: Direction and rate of F0 change drives listeners' comprehension

The present study tests whether listeners use F0, duration, or some combination of the two to identify the presence of an accented word in a short discourse. Participants' eye movements to previously mentioned and new objects were monitored as participants listened to instructions to move objects in a display. The name of the target object on critical trials was resynthesized from naturally-produced utterances so that it had either high or low F0 and either long or short duration. Fixations to the new object were highest when there was a steep rise in F0. Fixations to the previously mentioned object were highest when there was a steep drop in F0. These results suggest that listeners use F0 slope to make decisions about the presence of an accent, and that F0 and duration by themselves do not solely determine accent interpretation.

Experimental and theoretical advances in prosody: A review

Research on prosody has recently become an important focus in various disciplines, including Linguistics, Psychology, and Computer Science. This article reviews recent research advances on two key issues: prosodic phrasing and prosodic prominence. Both aspects of prosody are influenced by linguistic factors such as syntactic constituent structure, semantic relations, phonological rhythm, pragmatic considerations, and also by processing factors such as the length, complexity or predictability of linguistic material. Our review summarizes recent insights into the production and perception of these two components of prosody and their grammatical underpinnings. While this review only covers a subset of a broader set of research topics on prosody in cognitive science, they are representative of a tendency in the field toward a more interdisciplinary approach.

Penetration of topical and subconjunctival corticosteroids into human aqueous humour and its therapeutic significance

Topical and subconjunctival corticosteroids are some of the most effective and compelling treatment options in ocular inflammatory diseases. A systematic review of literature indexed by Ovid MEDLINE & EMBASE was performed up to December 2008. There are few studies on their aqueous penetration in human subjects. This review article discusses the penetration of different ocular corticosteroids into human aqueous humour along with the therapeutic implications on management of ocular surface diseases, immune-related corneal diseases, anterior uveitis and postoperative anti-inflammatory use. In the context of the paucity of well-constructed, prospective clinical trials comparing the efficacy of different corticosteroids, it provides guiding principles for the use of topical corticosteroids. Dexamethasone alcohol 0.1% and prednisolone acetate 1% are potent corticosteroids, but the latter achieves the highest aqueous concentration within 2 h and maintains higher levels for 24 h. Subconjunctival corticosteroids provide very high concentrations in the aqueous which maintain higher concentrations for longer periods.

A chemometric study of chromatograms of tea extracts by correlation optimization warping in conjunction with PCA, support vector machines and random forest data modeling

A reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separation was established for profiling water soluble compounds in extracts from tea. Whole chromatograms were pre-processed by techniques including baseline correction, binning and normalisation. In addition, peak alignment by correction of retention time shifts was performed using correlation optimization warping (COW) producing a correlation score of 0.96. To extract the chemically relevant information from the data, a variety of chemometric approaches were employed. Principle component analysis (PCA) was used to group the tea samples according to their chromatographic differences. Three principal components (PCs) described 78% of the total variance after peak alignment (64% before) and analysis of the score and loading plots provided insight into the main chemical differences between the samples. Finally, PCA, support vector machines (SVMs) and random forest (RF) machine learning methods were evaluated comparatively on their ability to predict unknown tea samples using models constructed from a predetermined training set. The best predictions of identity were obtained by using RF.

Metabolomic profiling of Drosophila using liquid chromatography Fourier transform mass spectrometry

Hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) interfaced with an Orbitrap Fourier transform mass spectrometer (FT-MS) was used to carry out metabolomic profiling of the classical Drosophila mutation, rosy (ry). This gene encodes a xanthine oxidase/dehydrogenase. In addition to validating the technology by detecting the same changes in xanthine, hypoxanthine, urate and allantoin that have been reported classically, completely unsuspected changes were detected in each of the tryptophan, arginine, pyrimidine and glycerophospholipid metabolism pathways. The rosy mutation thus ramifies far more widely than previously detected.