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Objective To assess the efficacy of long-lasting repeated high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) over the precuneus on consciousness recovery in patients with minimally conscious state (MCS). Methods A prospective case-control study was carried out on 40 MCS patients admitted in the Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University from June 2018 to January 2021. They were randomly divided into HD-tDCS group (n=20) and control group (n=20). The patients in the control group received routine treatment, while those in the HD-tDCS group were treated with HD-tDCS protocol over the precuneus (at 2 mA, for 20 min per time, twice per day for 14 d, with totally 28 sessions) on the basis of routine treatment. Gender, age, duration of consciousness, Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) scores before (T0), and at a single session (T1), 7 d (T2), and 14 d (T3) were recorded and analyzed. Results The CRS-R score at T3 was significantly higher in the HD-tDCS group than the control group (P < 0.05). In the control group, 2 MCS patients demonstrated a new sign of consciousness at T3, and the CRS-R scores at T1, T2 and T3 were not significantly changed than those at T0. While in the HD-tDCS group, 17 patients showed a new sign of consciousness, and the CRS-R scores at T1, T2, and T3 were obviously increased when compared with those at T0 (P < 0.05). And the scores of visual, auditory and motor subscales at T3 were also statistically elevated than the scores at baseline (P < 0.01). Conclusion Long-lasting repeated HD-tDCS over the precuneus improves the recovery of consciousness in MCS patients at the 14th day of neuromodulation, especially in the visual, auditory and motor aspects of conscious behaviors.

Against the backdrop of increasingly severe global climate change, the risk of rainstorm-induced waterlogging has become the primary threat to the safety of historic and cultural districts worldwide. This paper focuses on the historic and cultural districts of Beijing, China, and explores techniques and methods for identifying extreme rainstorm warnings in cultural heritage areas. Refined warning and forecasting have become important non-engineering measures to enhance these districts' waterlogging prevention control and emergency management capabilities. This paper constructs a rainstorm-induced waterlogging risk warning model tailored for Beijing's historical and cultural districts. This model system encompasses three sets of models: a building waterlogging early-warning model, a road waterlogging early-warning model, and a public evacuation early-warning model. During the construction of the model, the core concepts and determination methods of "1 h rainfall intensity water logging index" and "the waterlogging risk index in historical and cultural districts" were proposed. The construction and application of the three models take into full account the correlation between rainfall intensity and rainwater accumulation, while incorporating the characteristics of flood resilience in buildings, roads, and the society in districts. This allows for a precise grading of warning levels, leading to the formulation of corresponding warning response measures. Empirical tests have shown that the construction method proposed in this paper is reliable. The innovative results not only provide a new perspective and method for the early-warning of rainstorm-induced waterlogging, but also offer scientific support for emergency planning and response in historical and cultural districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An audiovisual object may contain multiple semantic features, such as the gender and emotional features of the speaker. Feature-selective attention and audiovisual semantic integration are two brain functions involved in the recognition of audiovisual objects. Humans often selectively attend to one or several features while ignoring the other features of an audiovisual object. Meanwhile, the human brain integrates semantic information from the visual and auditory modalities. However, how these two brain functions correlate with each other remains to be elucidated. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we explored the neural mechanism by which feature-selective attention modulates audiovisual semantic integration. During the fMRI experiment, the subjects were presented with visual-only, auditory-only, or audiovisual dynamical facial stimuli and performed several feature-selective attention tasks. Our results revealed that a distribution of areas, including heteromodal areas and brain areas encoding attended features, may be involved in audiovisual semantic integration. Through feature-selective attention, the human brain may selectively integrate audiovisual semantic information from attended features by enhancing functional connectivity and thus regulating information flows from heteromodal areas to brain areas encoding the attended features.