Decoding of Baby Calls: Can Adult Humans Identify the Eliciting Situation from Emotional Vocalizations of Preverbal Infants?

Preverbal infants often vocalize in emotionally loaded situations, yet the communicative potential of these vocalizations is not well understood. The aim of our study was to assess how accurately adult listeners extract information about the eliciting situation from infant preverbal vocalizations. Vocalizations of 19 infants aged 5-10 months were recorded in 3 negative (Pain, Isolation, Demand for Food) and 3 positive (Play, Reunion, After Feeding) situations. The recordings were later rated by 333 adult listeners on the scales of emotional valence and intensity. Subsequently, the listeners assigned the eliciting situations in a forced choice task. Listeners were almost perfectly able to discriminate whether a recording came from a negative or a positive situation. Their discrimination may have been based on perceived valence as they consistently assigned higher valence when listening to positive, and lower valence when listening to negative, recordings. Ability to identify the particular situation within the negative or positive realm was substantially weaker, with only three of the six situations being discriminated above chance. The best discriminated situation, Play, was associated with high perceived intensity. The weak qualitative discrimination of negative situations seemed to be based on graded perception of negative recordings, from the most intense and unpleasant (assigned to Pain) to the least intense and least unpleasant (assigned to Demand for Food). Parenthood and younger age, but not gender of listeners, had weak positive effects on the accuracy of judgments. Our results indicate that adults almost flawlessly distinguish positive and negative infant sounds, but are rather inaccurate regarding identification of the specific needs of the infant and may normally employ other sensory channels to gain this information.     

Translational Analysis of Effects of Prenatal Cocaine Exposure on Human Infant Cries and Rat Pup Ultrasonic Vocalizations

Spectral and temporal features of human infant crying may detect neurobehavioral effects of prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE). Finding comparable measures of rodent ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) would promote translational analyses by controlling the effects of correlated variables that confound human studies. To this end, two studies examined the sensitivity of similar acoustic structures in human infant and rat pup vocalizations to effects of PCE. In Study 1, cry sounds of 107 one month-old infants were spectrum analyzed to create a novel set of measures and to detect the presence of hyperphonation - a qualitative shift to an atypically high fundamental frequency (basic pitch) associated with neurobehavioral insult. Infants with PCE were compared to infants with prenatal polydrug-exposure (PPE) without cocaine and with infants in a standard comparison (SC) group with no prenatal drug exposure. In Study 2, USVs of 118 five day-old rat pups with either PCE, prenatal saline exposure or no prenatal exposures were spectrum analyzed to detect the presence of frequency shifts – acoustic features that have a frequency waveform similar to that of hyperphonation. Results of study 1 showed PCE had two sets of sex-dependent effects on human infants: PCE males had higher pitched cries with more dysphonation (turbulence); PCE females had longer pauses between fewer cry sounds that were of lower amplitude than comparison groups. PCE and PPE infants had more cries with hyperphonation than SC infants. In study 2, PCE pups had a greater percentage of USVs with shift in the acoustic structure than pups in the two control groups. As such, the novel measures of human infant crying and rat pup USVs were sensitive to effects of PCE. These studies provide the first known translational analysis of similar acoustic structures of vocalizations in two species to detect adverse effects of prenatal drug exposure.     

Population Coding of Forelimb Joint Kinematics by Peripheral Afferents in Monkeys

Various peripheral receptors provide information concerning position and movement to the central nervous system to achieve complex and dexterous movements of forelimbs in primates. The response properties of single afferent receptors to movements at a single joint have been examined in detail, but the population coding of peripheral afferents remains poorly defined. In this study, we obtained multichannel recordings from dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons in cervical segments of monkeys. We applied the sparse linear regression (SLiR) algorithm to the recordings, which selects useful input signals to reconstruct movement kinematics. Multichannel recordings of peripheral afferents were performed by inserting multi-electrode arrays into the DRGs of lower cervical segments in two anesthetized monkeys. A total of 112 and 92 units were responsive to the passive joint movements or the skin stimulation with a painting brush in Monkey 1 and Monkey 2, respectively. Using the SLiR algorithm, we reconstructed the temporal changes of joint angle, angular velocity, and acceleration at the elbow, wrist, and finger joints from temporal firing patterns of the DRG neurons. By automatically selecting a subset of recorded units, the SLiR achieved superior generalization performance compared with a regularized linear regression algorithm. The SLiR selected not only putative muscle units that were responsive to only the passive movements, but also a number of putative cutaneous units responsive to the skin stimulation. These results suggested that an ensemble of peripheral primary afferents that contains both putative muscle and cutaneous units encode forelimb joint kinematics of non-human primates.     

Two novel isovaleryl-CoA dehydrogenase gene mutations in a Chinese infant

Isovaleric acidemia (IVA) is a rare inherited metabolic disease caused by a deficiency in isovaleryl-CoA dehydrogenase (IVD). Newborn screening with tandem mass spectrometry leads to early identification of individuals with risk of IVA. The family specific mutations are useful for prenatal diagnosis. Molecular genetic analysis helps to further confirm the clinical diagnosis of IVA. We describe here the clinical and metabolic features of a Chinese infant with early onset IVA. Sequence analysis of the IVD gene identifies compound heterozygous mutations in this patient, c.39G > A (p.W13X) nonsense mutation and c.597C > G (p.I199M) missense mutation, both of which are previously unreported. Structural analyses suggest that the p.I199M missense mutation may destabilize the IVD monomer structure and affect the interaction between IVD and flavin adenine dinucleotide. Both the clinical and genetic features of this patient help to further expand our knowledge of IVA.     

Physiological reactivity to infant crying: a behavioral genetic study

In this study, we examined adults' cardiac reactivity to repeated infant cry sounds in a genetically informative design. Three episodes of cry stimuli were presented to a sample of 184 adult twin pairs. Cardiac reactivity increased with each cry episode, indicating that subjects were increasingly sensitized to repeated infant distress signals. Non‐parents showed more cardiac reactivity than parents, and males displayed a larger increase in heart rate (HR) in response to repeated cry sounds than females. Multivariate genetic modeling showed that the genetic component of adults' HR while listening to infant crying was substantial. Genetic factors explained 37–51% of the variance in HR and similar genes influenced HR at baseline and HR reactivity to infant crying. The remaining variance in HR across the cry paradigm was accounted for by unique environmental influences (including measurement error). These results point to genetic and experiential effects on HR reactivity to infant crying that may contribute to the explanation of variance in sensitive and harsh parenting.     

A self-adapting approach for the detection of bursts and network bursts in neuronal cultures

Dissociated networks of neurons typically exhibit bursting behavior, whose features are strongly influenced by the age of the culture, by chemical/electrical stimulation or by environmental conditions. To help the experimenter in identifying the changes possibly induced by specific protocols, we developed a self-adapting method for detecting both bursts and network bursts from electrophysiological activity recorded by means of micro-electrode arrays. The algorithm is based on the computation of the logarithmic inter-spike interval histogram and automatically detects the best threshold to distinguish between inter- and intra-burst inter-spike intervals for each recording channel of the array. An analogous procedure is followed for the detection of network bursts, looking for sequences of closely spaced single-channel bursts. We tested our algorithm on recordings of spontaneous as well as chemically stimulated activity, comparing its performance to other methods available in the literature.     

利用GIS对吉林针阔混交林TM遥感图像分类方法的初探

为提高林区TM遥感图像自动分类识别精度,在GIS技术辅助下,以吉林省汪清林业局针阔混交林TM遥感图像为例,对研究区DEM、坡向等地理因子和土壤类型等环境因子与森林植被分布之间的内在规律进行了定量分析,并结合对遥感图像预分类的定性分析,形成分类知识库,建立了适用于针阔混交林的自动分类识别专家系统.分类试验证明,该系统能比较明显地削弱混合像元和地形阴影的影响,分类精度较无监督分类法提高了14.22%,Kappa指数为0.7556,达到区别森林类型的分类目的.将GIS数据引入专家系统,应用先验知识建立推理机制,可以解决遥感图像中云区和云阴影区由于不能接收到正确的光谱值而无法进行分类的问题.     

Automating the identification of DNA variations using quality-based fluorescence re-sequencing: analysis of the human mitochondrial genome.

Diagnostic re-sequencing plays a central role in medical and evolutionary genetics. In this report we describe a process that applies fluorescence-based re-sequencing and an integrated set of analysis tools to automate and simplify the identification of DNA variations using the human mitochondrial genome as a model system. Two programs used in genome sequence analysis (Phred, a base-caller, and Phrap, a sequence assembler) are applied to assess the quality of each base call across the sequence. Potential DNA variants are automatically identified and 'tagged' by comparing the assembled sequence with a reference sequence. We also show that employing the Consed program to display a set of highly annotated reference sequences greatly simplifies data analysis by providing a visual database containing information on the location of the PCR primers, coding and regulatory sequences and previously known DNA variants. Among the 12 genomes sequenced 378 variants including 29 new variants were identified along with two heteroplasmic sites, automatically detected by the PolyPhred program. Overall we document the ease and speed of performing high quality and accurate fluorescence-based re-sequencing on long tracts of DNA as well as the application of new approaches to automatically find and view DNA variants among these sequences.     

Partial monosomy 7q syndrome due to distal interstitial deletion

Summary A female infant was ascertained at 10 weeks because of failure to thrive and a peculiar cry and was found to have few morphologic variants. Her karyotype was 46,XX,del(7)(q3105: :q3405). The parental karyotypes were normal. At one year she manifested physical retardation and development delay and required surgery for gastroesophageal incompetence. The phenotypic characteristics of this patient and those of six previously reported cases of 7q medial or distal interstitial deletion include many anomalies. Morphologic abnormalities of the head, ears, eyes, mouth, chest, hands, feet, and nerves combined with characteristics of birth weight, growth, and development define a detectable syndrome. An unusual cry may help in the recognition of this new syndrome.     

Molecular recognition. I. Automatic identification of topographic surface features

The phenomenon of molecular recognition depends strongly on surface complementarity between associating molecular units, analogous to the assembly of a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. The driving force for association is solvent entropy, which increases when protrusions of the irregular surface of one subunit fit snugly into invaginations of the other, squeezing out intervening water. To model this process, an algorithm is presented that automatically finds the prominent topographic surface features of rigid α-helices in proteins of known structure. When the algorithm was applied to two interacting helices from flavodoxin, only a small number of such features were found, and they accounted for the observed complementarity. Using this algorithm, molecular docking can be reduced to a tractable problem by a docking strategy based on exhaustive trial of combinations of surface features.     

31株苏云金芽孢杆菌杀虫晶体蛋白基因型鉴定及表达产物研究

利用已建立的苏云金芽孢杆菌cry基因的PCRRFLP鉴定体系,鉴定了31株Bt菌株的cry基因类型,并进行了SDSPAGE分析和杀虫生物活性测定。研究表明：25株含cry1基因,表达蛋白130～150kD;其中16株含有对鞘翅目和鳞翅目害虫皆有活性的cry1I基因,其表达蛋白为81kD;15株同时含有cry1和cry2基因(13株表达蛋白约为60kD);10株含有未知待定基因;6株不含所鉴定的cry基因(其中2株有表达产物)。室内生物测定表明：cry1、cry2基因表达的菌株对鳞翅目害虫具有高杀虫活性,7株对舞毒蛾和膜翅目——杨叶蜂幼虫具有较高杀虫活性;含有cry1Aa\,cry1Ac\,cry2或cry1Ab\,cry1Ac\,cry2基因组合的菌株对棉铃虫幼虫均显示杀虫活性,其中6、12、30号菌株毒力最强。不含上述cry基因的菌株均无杀虫活性。以上结果证明,通过cry基因类型鉴定和表达产物的SDSPAGE分析可以预测菌株的杀虫活性。     

The interaction of perception and attention at different stages in individual development

In the study carried out on children aged 10 years (51 persons), subjects aged 16-17 (11) and adults (19) characteristics of the perception and attention interaction were studied by means of electrophysiological parameters analysis (ERP, CNV, EEG) of the process of solution of various visual tasks. It has been shown that adequate brain provision of this process is based in adults both on the functional topographic differentiation and specialization of separate perceptive operations and on the possibility of controlling generalized and local activating influences according to task requirements. In children aged 10, not differing from the adults by the success of the perceptive activity, age peculiarities of its strategy are revealed connected with functional brain organization. Basic distinctive features of children perceptive activity are intensified regional specificity manifested both in responses to relevant and non-relevant stimuli, and excessive generalized activation testifying to incomplete structural-functional maturation of the frontal regions of the cerebral cortex. Increasing functional activity of these structures in ontogenesis provides for the selectivity of perceptive, cognitive and activating processes, adequate to the requirements of the task.     

Thermostable lichenase as a translational reporter

Hybrid genes containing the reporter gene for thermostable lichenase and model genes recA, recA1, cry3a, cry3aM, and ssp1 were constructed. The expression of these genes was studied in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. The presence of lichenase in the hybrid proteins was shown to facilitate analysis of the hybrid protein expression in transgenic organisms. Owing to high relative activity and thermostability of lichenase, the activity of this enzyme can be measured by simple, rapid and sensitive qualitative and quantitative methods that do not require costly equipment and reagents. Using the zymograms method, molecular masses of the lichenase-containing hybrid proteins can be precisely estimated. This method is proposed instead of Western blotting using lichenase as a translational reporter. Our results showed that the use of thermostable lichenase as a translational reporter yields the data that are problematic to obtain using traditional methods of gene expression analysis, which is of importance for fundamental and applied research.     

Central blood oxygen saturation vs crying in preterm newborns

Infant cry characteristics reflect the development and possibly the integrity of the central nervous system. This study evaluates the distress occurring during cry in preterm newborn infants, as related to decrease of central blood oxygenation. A recording system was developed, that allows synchronised, non-invasive monitoring of blood oxygenation and audio recordings of newborn infant's cry. Cry episodes were identified by an automatic system allowing further analysis of the changes induced by the cry episodes on the oxygen saturation level in the central nervous system. Specifically, decrease in the oxygenation level appears during a cry episode, followed by recovery of the oxygenation after the cry episode is over. In the present work we compare a group of preterm infants with a control group of full term newborns in order to detect possible differences between the two sets of patients.Results indicate that a similar decrease in oxygenation level occurs in both groups of patients, but the recovery time after the crying episode is more stable and rapid in full term newborns than in preterm ones. This could prove useful for clinicians and nurses in the prevention of developmental diseases for this class of patients.     

Maximum likelihood estimations in a nonlinear self-exciting point process model

A nonlinear model generating a self-exciting point process is formulated and identification of the model using maximum likelihood estimations is discussed. Simulations have been performed and parameters are estimated numerically. (Dis)advantages with respect to identification approaches based on correlation densities are outlined. This method may function as a basis to interpret simultaneous recordings of single units in terms of underlying wiring diagrams.     

Topology representing network enables highly accurate classification of protein images taken by cryo electron-microscope without masking

In single-particle analysis, a three-dimensional (3-D) structure of a protein is constructed using electron microscopy (EM). As these images are very noisy in general, the primary process of this 3-D reconstruction is the classification of images according to their Euler angles, the images in each classified group then being averaged to reduce the noise level. In our newly developed strategy of classification, we introduce a topology representing network (TRN) method. It is a modified method of a growing neural gas network (GNG). In this system, a network structure is automatically determined in response to the images input through a growing process. After learning without a masking procedure, the GNG creates clear averages of the inputs as unit coordinates in multi-dimensional space, which are then utilized for classification. In the process, connections are automatically created between highly related units and their positions are shifted where the inputs are distributed in multi-dimensional space. Consequently, several separated groups of connected units are formed. Although the interrelationship of units in this space are not easily understood, we succeeded in solving this problem by converting the unit positions into two-dimensional (2-D) space, and by further optimizing the unit positions with the simulated annealing (SA) method. In the optimized 2-D map, visualization of the connections of units provided rich information about clustering. As demonstrated here, this method is clearly superior to both the multi-variate statistical analysis (MSA) and the self-organizing map (SOM) as a classification method and provides a first reliable classification method which can be used without masking for very noisy images.     

Assessment of near-infrared spectral information for rapid monitoring of bioprocess quality.

Access to real-time process information is desirable for consistent and efficient operation of bioprocesses. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is known to have potential for providing real-time information on the quantitative levels of important bioprocess variables. However, given the fact that a typical NIR spectrum encompasses information regarding almost all the constituents of the sample matrix, there are few case studies that have investigated the spectral details for applications in bioprocess quality assessment or qualitative bioprocess monitoring. Such information would be invaluable in providing operator-level assistance on the progress of a bioprocess in industrial-scale productions. We investigated this aspect and report the results of our investigation. Near-infrared spectral information derived from scanning unprocessed culture fluid (broth) samples from a complex antibiotic production process was assessed for a data set that incorporated bioprocess variations. Principal component analysis was applied to the spectral data and the loadings and scores of the principal components studied. Changes in the spectral information that corresponded to variations in the bioprocess could be deciphered. Despite the complexity of the matrix, near-infrared spectra of the culture broth are shown to have valuable information that can be deconvoluted with the help of factor analysis techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA). Although complex to interpret, the loadings and score plots are shown to offer potential in process diagnosis that could be of value in the rapid assessment of process quality, and in data assessment prior to quantitative model development.     

Epidemiological surveillance

A case of Campylobacter infection in a 2-day old infant is described. The possibility for a newborn infant to get infected with Campylobacter jejuni directly from the infected mother in the process of parturition is considered. The methods of the laboratory diagnosis of Campylobacter infection, including the main principles of the identification of Campylobacter species, are presented. The possibility of using the enzyme immunoassay for the serological diagnosis of Campylobacter infection is shown. The possible ways and factors of the transfer of this infection to newborn infants are discussed.     

Epilepsy and Nonlinear Dynamics

This overview summarizes findings obtained from analyzing electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings from epilepsy patients with methods from the theory of nonlinear dynamical systems. The last two decades have shown that nonlinear time series analysis techniques allow an improved characterization of epileptic brain states and help to gain deeper insights into the spatial and temporal dynamics of the epileptic process. Nonlinear EEG analyses can help to improve the evaluation of patients prior to neurosurgery, and with an unequivocal identification of precursors of seizures, they can be of great value in the development of seizure warning and prevention techniques.     

Help Seeking Behavior of Women with Self-Discovered Breast Cancer Symptoms: A Meta-Ethnographic Synthesis of Patient Delay

Background and Objective

Patient delay makes a critical contribution to late diagnosis and poor survival in cases of breast cancer. Identifying the factors that influence patient delay could provide information for adopting strategies that shorten this delay. The aim of this meta-ethnography was to synthesize existing qualitative evidence in order to gain a new understanding of help seeking behavior in women with self-discovered breast cancer symptoms and to determine the factors that influence patient delay.

Methods

The design was a meta-ethnography approach. A systematic search of the articles was performed in different databases including Elsevier, PubMed, ProQuest and SCOPUS. Qualitative studies with a focus on help seeking behaviors in women with self-discovered breast cancer symptoms and patient delay, published in the English language between 1990 and 2013 were included. The quality appraisal of the articles was carried out using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme qualitative research checklist and 13 articles met the inclusion criteria. The synthesis was conducted according to Noblit and Hare’s meta-ethnographic approach (1988), through reciprocal translational analysis and lines-of-argument.

Findings

The synthesis led to identification of eight repeated key concepts including: symptom detection, initial symptom interpretation, symptom monitoring, social interaction, emotional reaction, priority of medical help, appraisal of health services and personal-environmental factors. Symptom interpretation is identified as the important step of the help seeking process and which changed across the process through active monitoring of their symptoms, social interactions and emotional reactions. The perceived seriousness of the situation, priority to receive medical attention, perceived inaccessibility and unacceptability of the health care system influenced women’s decision-making about utilizing health services.

Conclusion

Help seeking processes are influenced by multiple factors. Educational programs aimed at correcting misunderstandings, erroneous social beliefs and improving self-awareness could provide key strategies to improve health policy which would reduce patient delay.