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Abstract Background This study aimed to evaluate the impact of preoperative inflammatory indices and postoperative pneumonia (POP) on postoperative atrial fibrillation (POAF) in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. Methods All consecutive patients who underwent pulmonary resection at our hospital (January 2016-October 2019) were enrolled. Preoperative inflammatory indices, demographic data, surgical details, and postoperative conditions were analyzed. Univariate and multivariate analyses of risk factors associated with POAF were also conducted. Results Among the 382 patients included in the study, 32 (8.38%) developed POAF. Compared to non-POAF patients, POAF patients had greater incidence of POP (P = 0.09). Approximately 31 patients (96.9%) developed atrial fibrillation within three days after surgery. The POAF group had a significantly greater mean age (68.94 years) than did the non-POAF group (63 years) (P = 0.002). Additionally, compared to non-POAF patients, POAF patients exhibited an increased number of resected mediastinal lymph nodes (P

ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate the prevalence of carotid atherosclerosis (CAS), especially among seniors, and develop a precise risk assessment tool to facilitate screening and early intervention for high-risk individuals.MethodsA comprehensive approach was employed, integrating traditional epidemiological methods with advanced machine learning techniques, including support vector machines, XGBoost, decision trees, random forests, and logistic regression.ResultsAmong 1,515 participants, CAS prevalence reached 57.4%, concentrated within older individuals. Positive correlations were identified with age, systolic blood pressure, a history of hypertension, male gender, and total cholesterol. High-density lipoprotein (HDL) emerged as a protective factor against CAS, with total cholesterol and HDL levels proving significant predictors.ConclusionsThis research illuminates the risk factors linked to CAS and introduces a validated risk scoring tool, highlighted by the logistic classifier's consistent performance during training and testing. This tool shows potential for pinpointing high-risk individuals in community health programs, streamlining screening and intervention by clinical physicians. By stressing the significance of managing cholesterol levels, especially HDL, our findings provide actionable insights for CAS prevention. Nonetheless, rigorous validation is paramount to guarantee its practicality and efficacy in real-world scenarios.

ObjectiveSubthreshold depression (StD)/subsyndromal depression refers to a threatening precursor to depression. Aerobic exercise is a promising self-supportive adjunctive intervention and an effective measure for StD. Our study utilizes regional homogeneity (ReHo) to investigate the impact of aerobic exercise on resting-state brain function.MethodsA total of 78 subjects, aged between 18 and 48 years, (StD group, n = 44; healthy control (HC) group, n = 34) engaged in moderate-intensity aerobic exercise 3–4 times per week for 8 weeks. Resting-state brain function and structural images were acquired before and after the exercise intervention. The ReHo method was employed to analyze abnormal changes in regional brain function, and a correlation analysis was performed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) scores.ResultsThe principal observation reveals synchronous abnormalities in the right anterior cingulate gyrus of the brain in StD subjects compared to HCs at baseline, with these differences dissipating after the implementation of aerobic exercise. After completing the aerobic exercise program, the StD group exhibited a difference in the right middle cingulate gyrus, while the left supplementary motor area (SMA) was altered in the HC group.ConclusionDisparities in neural synchronization are evident between HCs and StD subjects, and the implementation of aerobic exercise intervention can effectively mitigate these distinctions, leading to a significant reduction in depressive symptoms among StD subjects. The primary mechanism of StD symptoms may involve the inhibition of the anterior cingulate gyrus, while the effects of aerobic exercise may be related to the modulation of neural synchronization of emotional reflexes. The discovery of these fMRI evidence findings may offer novel strategies for early detection and intervention in cases of StD.

Cross-modal correspondence has been consistently evidenced between shapes and other sensory attributes. Especially, the curvature of shapes may arouse the affective account, which may contribute to understanding the mechanism of cross-modal integration. Hence, the current study used the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique to examine brain activity’s specificity when people view circular and angular shapes. The circular shapes consisted of a circle and an ellipse, while the angular shapes consisted of a triangle and a star. Results show that the brain areas activated by circular shapes mainly involved the sub-occipital lobe, fusiform gyrus, sub and middle occipital gyrus, and cerebellar VI. The brain areas activated by angular shapes mainly involve the cuneus, middle occipital gyrus, lingual gyrus, and calcarine gyrus. The brain activation patterns of circular shapes did not differ significantly from those of angular shapes. Such a null finding was unexpected when previous cross-modal correspondence of shape curvature was considered. The different brain regions detected by circular and angular shapes and the potential explanations were discussed in the paper.

Social function impairment is the core deficit of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although many studies have investigated ASD through a variety of neuroimaging tools, its brain mechanism of social function remains unclear due to its complex and heterogeneous symptoms. The present study aimed to use resting-state functional magnetic imaging data to explore effective connectivity between the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ), one of the key brain regions associated with social impairment of individuals with ASD, and the whole brain to further deepen our understanding of the neuropathological mechanism of ASD. This study involved 1,454 participants from 23 sites from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE) public dataset, which included 618 individuals with ASD and 836 with typical development (TD). First, a voxel-wise Granger causality analysis (GCA) was conducted with the RTPJ selected as the region of interest (ROI) to investigate the differences in effective connectivity between the ASD and TD groups in every site. Next, to obtain further accurate and representative results, an image-based meta-analysis was implemented to further analyze the GCA results of each site. Our results demonstrated abnormal causal connectivity between the RTPJ and the widely distributed brain regions and that the connectivity has been associated with social impairment in individuals with ASD. The current study could help to further elucidate the pathological mechanisms of ASD and provides a new perspective for future research.

Background. Transient ischemic attack (TIA) is a known risk factor for stroke. Abnormal alterations in the low-frequency range of the gray matter (GM) of the brain have been studied in patients with TIA. However, whether there are abnormal neural activities in the low-frequency range of the white matter (WM) in patients with TIA remains unknown. The current study applied two resting-state metrics to explore functional abnormalities in the low-frequency range of WM in patients with TIA. Furthermore, a reinforcement learning method was used to investigate whether altered WM function could be a diagnostic indicator of TIA. Methods. We enrolled 48 patients with TIA and 41 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs). Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and clinical/physiological/biochemical data were collected from each participant. We compared the group differences between patients with TIA and HCs in the low-frequency range of WM using two resting-state metrics: amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and fractional ALFF (fALFF). The altered ALFF and fALFF values were defined as features of the reinforcement learning method involving a Q-learning algorithm. Results. Compared with HCs, patients with TIA showed decreased ALFF in the right cingulate gyrus/right superior longitudinal fasciculus/left superior corona radiata and decreased fALFF in the right cerebral peduncle/right cingulate gyrus/middle cerebellar peduncle. Based on these two rs-fMRI metrics, an optimal Q-learning model was obtained with an accuracy of 82.02%, sensitivity of 85.42%, specificity of 78.05%, precision of 82.00%, and area under the curve (AUC) of 0.87. Conclusion. The present study revealed abnormal WM functional alterations in the low-frequency range in patients with TIA. These results support the role of WM functional neural activity as a potential neuromarker in classifying patients with TIA and offer novel insights into the underlying mechanisms in patients with TIA from the perspective of WM function.

Exercise is believed to have significant cognitive benefits. Although an array of experimental paradigms have been employed to test the cognitive effects on exercising individuals, the mechanism as to how exercise induces cognitive benefits in the brain remains unclear. This study explores the effect of dynamic neural network processing with the classic Go/NoGo task with regular exercisers. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to analyze the brain activation of areas involved in executive function, especially inhibitory control. Nineteen regular joggers and twenty-one subjects as a control group performed the task, and their brain imaging data were analyzed. The results showed that at the attentive visual period, the frontal and parietal areas, including the prefrontal cortex, putamen, thalamus, lingual, fusiform, and caudate, were significantly enhanced in positive activities than the control group. On the other hand, in the following inhibitory control processing period, almost the same areas of the brains of the exercise group have shown stronger negative activation in comparison to the control group. Such dynamic temporal response patterns indicate that sports augment cognitive benefits; i.e., regular jogging increases the brain’s visual attention and inhibitory control capacities.

Previous literature reports have demonstrated that taste perception would be influenced by different internal brain status or external environment stimulation. Although there are different hypotheses about the cross-modal interactive process, it still remains unclear as of how the brain modulates and processes taste perception, particularly with different memory load. Here in this study we address this question. To do so we assign the participants different memory loads in the form of varying lengths of alphanumerical items, before tasting different concentrations of sweet or bitter tastants. After tasting they were asked to recall the alphanumerical items they were assigned. Our results show that the memory load reduces sweet and bitter taste sensitivities, from sub-threshold level to high concentration. Higher the memory load, less is the taste sensitivity. The study has extended our previous results and supports our previous hypothesis that the cognitive status, such as the general stress of memory load, influences sensory perception.

Visual information may convey different affective valences and induce our brain into different affective perceptions. Many studies have found that unpleasant stimuli could produce stronger emotional effects than pleasant stimuli could. Although there has been a notion that triangle is perceived as negative and circle as positive, there has been no systematic study to map the degrees of valence of shapes with different affective perceptions. Here, we employed four shapes (ellipse, triangle, and line-drawn happy and angry faces) to investigate the behavior and electrophysiological responses, in order to systematically study shape-induced affective perception. The reaction time delay and the event-related potential (ERP), particularly the early ERP component, were applied to find the associations with different affective perceptions. Our behavioral results showed that reaction time for angry face was significantly shorter than those for the other three types of stimuli (p