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This article explores possibilities for the emergence of queer lives and queer subjectivities in dementia care, the meaning of being queer for people living in residential dementia care and how they relate to queer subjectivity. Our study, drawing on qualitative interviews with four people living in dementia care homes, show how being queer was associated with earlier phases of one's life course and youthful, sexually active bodies. The dementia care home was described as a depersonalized, desexualized and segregated spatial condition where queer subjectivities could not emerge. However, although participants rarely became recognizable and intelligible as queer in the care context their positionalities must be understood in more complex terms than visible/invisible. Instead people in dementia care sometimes engaged in queer opacity as a tactic to refuse visibility in a care context characterized by surveillance and lack of control and agency.

Introduction Loss of blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity is hypothesised to be one of the earliest microvascular signs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Existing BBB integrity imaging methods involve contrast agents or ionising radiation, and pose limitations in terms of cost and logistics. Arterial spin labelling (ASL) perfusion MRI has been recently adapted to map the BBB permeability non-invasively. The DEveloping BBB-ASL as a non-Invasive Early biomarker (DEBBIE) consortium aims to develop this modified ASL-MRI technique for patient-specific and robust BBB permeability assessments. This article outlines the study design of the DEBBIE cohorts focused on investigating the potential of BBB-ASL as an early biomarker for AD (DEBBIE-AD). Methods and analysis DEBBIE-AD consists of a multicohort study enrolling participants with subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment and AD, as well as age-matched healthy controls, from 13 cohorts. The precision and accuracy of BBB-ASL will be evaluated in healthy participants. The clinical value of BBB-ASL will be evaluated by comparing results with both established and novel AD biomarkers. The DEBBIE-AD study aims to provide evidence of the ability of BBB-ASL to measure BBB permeability and demonstrate its utility in AD and ADrelated pathologies. Ethics and dissemination Ethics approval was obtained for 10 cohorts, and is pending for 3 cohorts. The results of the main trial and each of the secondary endpoints will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Purpose: Adjuvant radio(chemo)therapy (RT) is part of the standard treatment of gliomas. Safety margins ensuring the coverage of microscopic tumour expansion of diffusely infiltrating gliomas and compensating for systematic positioning errors inevitably result in the normal-appearing (NA) brain tissue surrounding the tumour to be affected by radiation. The aim of the study was to investigate dose- and time-dependent diffusion alterations of NA white matter (WM) structures following RT using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS). Methods: As part of a prospective, longitudinal study, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of 24 grade II-IV glioma patients treated with photons, protons or mixed-modality therapy were acquired. MRIs before RT and 3-monthly during follow-up obtained up to three years after RT included diffusion tensor images (DTI) (TR/TE=6500/66ms, 2×2×2mm³, 32 directions, b=1000mm/s²). Fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), axial diffusivity (AD), and radial diffusivity (RD) were calculated from the DTI data. Corresponding radiation dose maps and clinical target volume (CTV) contours were aligned to MRI using ANTs. NA tissue was defined as brain tissue, excluding the CTV and areas of T2-hyperintensities. All FA images were nonlinearly registered to the “FMRI58B-FA atlas” from FSL with ANTs before applying parts of the TBSS algorithm to create a FA skeleton (Figure 1). The FA skeleton was combined with the “JHU-ICBM-labels-1mm atlas” to measure the diffusion in 19 WM structures. Relative signal changes of each WM structure were calculated as the difference between follow-up and the corresponding baseline signal and evaluated using a paired t-test. A multivariate linear mixed effects model was applied to determine diffusion changes as function of time after RT and mean dose delivered to the corresponding structure. Data from paired structures of the right and left hemispheres were combined for the analysis. Structures containing less than 50 vo

One of the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the loss of blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity. Arterial spin labeling (ASL) MRI is a non-invasive way to measure perfusion and several other hemodynamic and physiological parameters, including vascular permeability. The DEveloping BBB-ASL as non-Invasive Early biomarker (DEBBIE) consortium aims to develop and integrate innovative techniques to allow robust BBB permeability assessments by ASL to develop a sensitive, non-invasive, and early biomarker for AD and related dementias. This work summarizes our planned efforts to develop and establish an MRI-based BBB permeability biomarker.

Introduction: Loss of blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity is hypothesized to be one of the earliest microvascular signs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Arterial spin labeling (ASL) perfusion MRI has recently been adapted to map the BBB permeability non-invasively. This article outlines the study design of the DEveloping BBB-ASL as a non-Invasive Early biomarker (DEBBIE) consortium, focused on investigating the potential of BBB-ASL as an early biomarker for AD (DEBBIE-AD). Methods: DEBBIE-AD consists of 13 cohorts enrolling participants from subjective cognitive decline to AD, as well as healthy controls across the lifespan. The reproducibility and accuracy of BBB-ASL will be evaluated in healthy participants, and its clinical value will be evaluated with both established and novel AD biomarkers. Expected endpoints: DEBBIE-AD aims to provide evidence on the ability of BBB-ASL to measure BBB permeability and demonstrate its utility in AD-related pathologies, which may provide new targets for treatment.

Purpose: Radio(chemo)therapy is used as standard treatment for glioma patients. The surrounding normal tissue is inevitably affected by the irradiation. The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate perfusion alterations in the normal-appearing tissue after proton irradiation and assess the dose sensitivity of the normal tissue perfusion. Methods: In 14 glioma patients, a sub-cohort of a prospective clinical trial (NCT02824731), perfusion changes in normal-appearing white matter (WM), grey matter (GM) and subcortical GM structures, i.e. caudate nucleus, hippocampus, amygdala, putamen, pallidum and thalamus, were evaluated before treatment and at three-monthly intervals after proton beam irradiation. The relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV) was assessed with dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI and analysed as the percentage ratio between follow-up and baseline image (∆rCBV). Radiation-induced alterations were evaluated using Wilcoxon signed rank test. Dose and time correlations were investigated with univariate and multivariate linear regression models. Results: No significant ∆rCBV changes were found in any normal-appearing WM and GM region after proton beam irradiation. A positive correlation with radiation dose was observed in the multivariate regression model applied to the combined ∆rCBV values of low (1-20Gy), intermediate (21-40Gy) and high (41-60Gy) dose regions of GM (p<0.001), while no time dependency was detected in any normal-appearing area. Conclusion: The perfusion in normal-appearing brain tissue remained unaltered after proton beam therapy. In further studies, a direct comparison with changes after photon therapy is recommended to confirm the different effect of proton therapy on the normal-appearing tissue.

This chapter engages in critical dialogues between dementia studies and feminist scholarship. More specifically, the chapter explores how feminist studies can be useful for thinking and rethinking dementia and difference. The chapter engages with two feminist genealogies: feminist difference theory and feminist standpoint theory. Dementia has frequently been conceptualised in terms of negative difference as loss and deterioration, in particular in bio-medical discourse. More recent discourses have in contrast sought to underscore the sameness and normality of people with dementia, but this approach also functions to reinstate people with dementia into cognonormative Western modernist ideals of activity, agency and autonomy. Feminist difference theorists, however, provide ways of thinking affirmative difference. This approach to difference is neither a recourse to pathological difference nor to assimilationist sameness, but enables ways of thinking dementia as lived and embodied difference. The second approach to difference, feminist standpoint theory, concerns the different positionalities of people with dementia. In this argument, people with dementia, in particular those experiencing multiple forms of oppression, are understood as holding epistemic privilege – a particular knowledge of the oppressions of cognitive ableism. The chapter proposes a ‘“demented” standpoint’ as a way of approaching the different and unique knowledge of people with dementia and discusses further how this requires radical rethinking of methodologies in dementia studies.

In this chapter we set out certain guiding co-ordinates for future critical methodologies for dementia studies and appraise existing approaches through a critical lens. The chapter brings into dialogue the work of two critical commentators and considers the implications of their work for dementia studies. The first, Alison Kafer, has outlined an integrative approach that marries feminist, queer and crip perspectives to propose a political-relational framing of illness and disability. The second, Patti Lather, a feminist ethnographer, has called for a different kind of ethnography, one that works in the ruins of confident social sciences and that embraces uncertainty and unknowing as methodological strengths. We focus particularly upon word-based and spoken methods, raising questions about the status of this type of research data and how it is handled and subsequently communicated. In particular, we seek to disrupt and open to question common assumptions, routines and unmarked aspects of the research process in dementia scholarship. Drawing upon arguments and insights developed in the course of this book, our discussion leads to a call for dementia researchers to bring ourselves closer in to the experiences of people living with dementia while questioning and distancing ourselves from notions of dementia as a fixed and stable category.

This chapter introduces critical dementia studies and gives a brief overview of the chapters and the thinking behind the structure of the volume. The introduction discusses the timeliness of critical dementia studies and the impetus behind the volume. Dementia is commonly understood as a disease category, ahistorical and value-free. Critical dementia studies, however, approaches dementia as a socially produced, political category, open to transformation and social change. Overall, critical dementia studies encompasses a diverse set of approaches that problematise, defamiliarise, denaturalise and destabilise common assumptions and orthodoxies in dementia research, policy and practice.

Low bioavailability of the vital element iron (Fe) limits primary production in large regions of the Southern Ocean, thus impacting phytoplankton community structures. Primary productivity seems to be particularly sensitive to the reduced form of iron (Fe(II)), which is thought to be the most readily bioavailable redox form of Fe in the ocean. Here, we investigated the impact of temperature (3 °C, 5 °C and 7 °C) and Fe(II) additions (+ 5 nM) on growth of two Southern Ocean phytoplankton species Fragilariopsis cylindrus and Phaeocystis antarctica in coastal and open ocean water. At all tested temperatures, growth rates of P. antarctica were significantly higher with added iron, compared to the treatments without added iron in both waters. Temperature only had a significant effect on the growth rate of this species when it was raised to 7 °C in all treatments. For F. cylindrus, growth rates only significantly increased with iron addition at 7 °C in both water types. Temperature did not affect the growth rate of F. cylindrus except for a significant reduction without iron addition at 7 °C in coastal water. These results highlight the complex interactions between Fe bioavailability and temperature on Southern Ocean phytoplankton growth. Thus, certain Southern Ocean phytoplankton species may have higher growth rates in regions of the ocean that will warm the most and possibly experience greater Fe supply under future climate conditions, such as coastal regions. This may result in changes in phytoplankton community structures with implications for carbon sequestration efficiency under future climate conditions., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published