Neural Dynamics of Improved Bimodal Attention and Working Memory in Musically Trained Children

Attention and working memory (WM) are core components of executive functions, and they can be enhanced by training. One activity that has shown to improve executive functions is musical training, but the brain networks underlying these improvements are not well known. We aimed to identify, using functional MRI (fMRI), these networks in children who regularly learn and play a musical instrument. Girls and boys aged 10–13 with and without musical training completed an attention and WM task while their brain activity was measured with fMRI. Participants were presented with a pair of bimodal stimuli (auditory and visual) and were asked to pay attention only to the auditory, only to the visual, or to both at the same time. The stimuli were afterward tested with a memory task in order to confirm attention allocation. Both groups had higher accuracy on items that they were instructed to attend, but musicians had an overall better performance on both memory tasks across attention conditions. In line with this, musicians showed higher activation than controls in cognitive control regions such as the fronto-parietal control network during all encoding phases. In addition, facilitated encoding of auditory stimuli in musicians was positively correlated with years of training and higher activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left supramarginal gyrus, structures that support the phonological loop. Taken together, our results elucidate the neural dynamics that underlie improved bimodal attention and WM of musically trained children and contribute new knowledge to this model of brain plasticity.

Necrotizing soft-tissue infections

In the realm of clinical practice, this disease entity defies applicability to any classification scheme. Of paramount importance is the early identification of all necrotizing soft-tissue infections. This requires a high index of suspicion, aided by recognition of various risk factors and organ system dysfunction out of proportion to the extent of local signs and symptoms. Expedient, aggressive surgical therapy is imperative: resuscitation, wide débridement, and antibiotic therapy. Once the infection has been controlled, continued supportive care, reconstruction, and rehabilitation can proceed.

An isolated enriched organ-specific cancer neoantigen of human lung cancer for leukocyte adherence inhibition assays

Until now, measurement of human antitumor immunity to organ-specific cancer neoantigen (OSN) by the leukocyte adherence inhibition (LAI) assay depended on using crude extracts of cancer. In this study, a new method is presented to generate and to isolate a highly enriched OSN from spent medium of a lung cancer cell line, NCI-H69, grown in chemically defined medium. Production of large quantities of OSN with minimal contamination by extraneous proteins was possible. Four physicochemical steps were used to give a 1000-fold enrichment of OSN activity: anion-exchange and molecular-sieve chromatography; Blue Sepharose affinity chromatography; and finally anion-exchange high-pressure liquid chromatography. The enriched OSN isolates showed dose-response antigenicity when tested in LAI assay with leukocytes from lung cancer patients but had no antigenicity with leukocytes from control subjects or patients having malignant melanoma, colon cancer, or pancreatic cancer. Cross-reactive antigenicity was observed with leukocytes from patients with breast cancer and slight reactivity with leukocytes from bladder cancer patients. The final isolate from the four-step separation procedure as well as the isolates produced using additional separation techniques consistently had antigenicity at less than 10 ng in blocking LAI and 500 ng in the direct assay and showed components with molecular weights of about 62,000 +/- 3,000 (SD) (p62), 40,000 +/- 3,000 (p40), and 25,000 +/- 1,000 (p25) by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The OSN isolates on two-dimensional gels showed p40 to have microheterogeneity (seven spots), with a pl from 6.2 to 7.6, and p62 and p25 as even more basic streaks. The polypeptide bearing the antigenic determinant was not purified, although we tried to separate p62, p40, and p25 to determine whether they carried the OSN determinant. The results of this study are important in showing that an isolate of an organ-specific tumor antigen containing 5 to 13 components, as determined by highly sensitive silver stains and radiolabeled patterns on single and two-dimensional gels, can be used successfully in LAI to measure tumor immune responses.