Visual processing of music notation: a study of event-related potentials.
In reading music, the acquisition of pitch information depends mostly on the spatial position of notes, hence more spatial processing, whereas the acquisition of temporal information depends mostly on the visual features of notes and object recognition. This study used both electrophysiological and behavioral methods to compare the processing of pitch and duration in reading single musical notes. It was observed that in the early stage of note reading, identification of pitch could elicit greater N1 and N2 amplitude than identification of duration at the parietal lobe electrodes. In the later stages of note reading, identifying pitch elicited a greater negative slow wave at parietal electrodes than did identifying note duration. The sustained contribution of parietal processes for pitch suggests that the dorsal pathway is essential for pitch processing. However, the duration task did not elicit greater amplitude of any early ERP components than the pitch task at temporal electrodes. Accordingly, a double dissociation, suggesting involvement of the dorsal visual stream, was not observed in spatial pitch processing and ventral visual stream in processing of note durations.

title: The written language performance of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Taiwan.
abstract: Poor writing is common in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, the writing performance of children with ADHD has been rarely formally explored in Taiwan, so the purpose of this study was to investigate writing features of children with ADHD in Taiwan. There were 25 children with ADHD and 25 normal children involved in a standardization writing assessment - Written Language Test for Children, to assess their performance at the dictation, sentence combination, adding/deducting redical, cloze and sentence making subtests. The results showed that except for the score of the sentence combining subtest, the score of children with ADHD was lower than the normal student in the rest of the subtests. Almost 60% of ADHD children's scores were below the 25th percentile numbers, but only 20% for normal children. Thus, writing problems were common for children with ADHD in Taiwan, too. First, children with ADHD performed worse than normal children on the dictation and cloze subtests, showing the weaker abilities of retrieving correct characters from their mental lexicon. Second, children with ADHD performed worse on the adding/deducting redical subtest than normal children did. Finally, at the language level, the score of children with ADHD on the sentence combination subtest was not lower than normal children, implicating their normal grammatic competence. It is worth mentioning that Taiwanese children with ADHD ignore the details of characters when they are writing, a finding that is common across languages.

title: Exploring the association between visual perception abilities and reading of musical notation.
abstract: In the reading of music, the acquisition of pitch information depends primarily upon the spatial position of notes as well as upon an individual's spatial processing ability. This study investigated the relationship between the ability to read single notes and visual-spatial ability. Participants with high and low single-note reading abilities were differentiated based upon differences in musical notation-reading abilities and their spatial processing; object recognition abilities were then assessed. It was found that the group with lower note-reading abilities made more errors than did the group with a higher note-reading abilities in the mental rotation task. In contrast, there was no apparent significant difference between the two groups in the object recognition task. These results suggest that note-reading may be related to visual spatial processing abilities, and not to an individual's ability with object recognition.

title: Interaction of pitch and duration processing by non-musicians in reading musical notation.
abstract: To study the relation of pitch and duration processing in reading musical notation, a Stroop-like task was used by 20 non-musicians. A probe display was presented before each target note. Participants were required to process the tonal and metric information of the probe and then to make a match or mismatch decision between probe and target. The target's color informed participants which dimension (pitch or duration) required analysis. The congruity of the irrelevant dimension of the target was manipulated to examine the effect on the relevant dimension. The interference effect of the irrelevant dimension on the relevant dimension was obvious for number of errors and reaction times. This result is consistent with pitch and duration being processed interdependently and reconciles with the theory of dynamic attention.

title: Anterior clinoid process and optic strut in Koreans.
abstract: The anterior clinoid process and the optic strut are often removed during operation on the anterior part of the cavernous sinus. Therefore it is important for neurosurgeons to verify their dimensions and variations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the dimension and the variation of the anterior clinoid process and to describe the locational variation of the optic strut. Seventy-three skulls of Korean adults were used. The average length, basal width and thickness of the anterior clinoid process were 9.18 +/- 1.55, 9.63 +/- 1.49 and 5.32 +/- 1.07 mm, respectively. The average thickness of the optic strut was 2.9 +/- 1.15 mm and it was commonly attached to anterior two-fifths of the anterior clinoid process. The complete caroticoclinoid canal was observed in 4.1%, however it was incomplete in 11.6%. The incidence of a caroticoclinoid canal in Koreans was relatively low compared with other races.

title: Simulation and prediction of the adaptive immune response to influenza A virus infection.
abstract: The cellular immune response to primary influenza virus infection is complex, involving multiple cell types and anatomical compartments, and is difficult to measure directly. Here we develop a two-compartment model that quantifies the interplay between viral replication and adaptive immunity. The fidelity of the model is demonstrated by accurately confirming the role of CD4 help for antibody persistence and the consequences of immune depletion experiments. The model predicts that drugs to limit viral infection and/or production must be administered within 2 days of infection, with a benefit of combination therapy when administered early, and cytotoxic CD8 T cells in the lung are as effective for viral clearance as neutralizing antibodies when present at the time of challenge. The model can be used to investigate explicit biological scenarios and generate experimentally testable hypotheses. For example, when the adaptive response depends on cellular immune cell priming, regulation of antigen presentation has greater influence on the kinetics of viral clearance than the efficiency of virus neutralization or cellular cytotoxicity. These findings suggest that the modulation of antigen presentation or the number of lung resident cytotoxic cells and the combination drug intervention are strategies to combat highly virulent influenza viruses. We further compared alternative model structures, for example, B-cell activation directly by the virus versus that through professional antigen-presenting cells or dendritic cell licensing of CD8 T cells.

title: Differential roles of human Dicer-binding proteins TRBP and PACT in small RNA processing
abstract: During RNA interference and related gene regulatory pathways, the endonuclease Dicer cleaves precursor RNA molecules to produce microRNAs (miRNAs) and short interfering RNAs (siRNAs). Human cells encode a single Dicer enzyme that can associate with two different double-stranded RNA (dsRNA)-binding proteins, protein activator of PKR (PACT) and trans-activation response RNA-binding protein (TRBP). However, the functional redundancy or differentiation of PACT and TRBP in miRNA and siRNA biogenesis is not well understood. Using a reconstituted system, we show here that PACT and TRBP have distinct effects on Dicer-mediated dsRNA processing. In particular, we found that PACT in complex with Dicer inhibits the processing of pre-siRNA substrates when compared with Dicer and a Dicer–TRBP complex. In addition, PACT and TRBP show non-redundant effects on the production of different-sized miRNAs (isomiRs), which in turn alter target-binding specificities. Experiments using chimeric versions of PACT and TRBP suggest that the two N-terminal RNA-binding domains of each protein confer the observed differences in dsRNA substrate recognition and processing behavior of Dicer–dsRNA-binding protein complexes. These results support the conclusion that in humans, Dicer-associated dsRNA-binding proteins are important regulatory factors that contribute both substrate and cleavage specificity during miRNA and siRNA production.

title: Effects of interscalene brachial plexus block to intra-operative hemodynamics and postoperative pain for arthroscopic shoulder surgery
abstract: Although arthroscopic shoulder surgery is less invasive and painful than open shoulder surgery, it can often cause intra-operative hemodynamic instability and severe post-operative pain. This study was conducted to investigate the efficacy of the interscalene brachial plexus block (IBPB) on intra-operative hemodynamic changes and post-operative pain during arthroscopic shoulder surgery.  After institutional review board approval, 50 consecutive patients that had undergone arthroscopic shoulder surgery under general anesthesia were randomly assigned to one of two groups to evaluate intra-operative hemodynamic changes and post-operative pain control. Group 1 patients received an IBPB with 10 ml of normal saline guided by a nerve stimulator before induction, and Group 2 patients received 10 ml of 0.5% ropivacaine hydrochloride with the same technique. The heart rate and systolic and diastolic blood pressures were recorded before the incision and 1, 3, 5, 10, and 20 minutes after the incision. Pre-operative and post-operative pain was evaluated with a visual analog scale 1, 3, 6, 12, and 24 hours after surgery. The patients were given tramadol as a rescue medication option. The total volume of tramadol that was injected was also evaluated over the same intervals.  Group 2 showed significantly lower systolic and diastolic blood pressures and heart rates intra-operatively compared to Group 1 (P < 0.05). The visual analog scale pain scores, except at 24 hours after surgery, were significantly lower in Group 2 (P < 0.05). The total tramadol consumption significantly reduced in Group 2 (P < 0.05).  IBPB effectively controlled the hemodynamic changes that occurred during arthroscopic shoulder surgery as well as post-operative pain.

title: Modeling sequence evolution in acute HIV-1 infection.
abstract: We describe a mathematical model and Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of viral evolution during acute infection. We consider both synchronous and asynchronous processes of viral infection of new target cells. The model enables an assessment of the expected sequence diversity in new HIV-1 infections originating from a single transmitted viral strain, estimation of the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of the transmitted viral lineage, and estimation of the time to coalesce back to the MRCA. We also calculate the probability of the MRCA being the transmitted virus or an evolved variant. Excluding insertions and deletions, we assume HIV-1 evolves by base substitution without selection pressure during the earliest phase of HIV-1 infection prior to the immune response. Unlike phylogenetic methods that follow a lineage backwards to coalescence, we compare the observed data to a model of the diversification of a viral population forward in time. To illustrate the application of these methods, we provide detailed comparisons of the model and simulations results to 306 envelope sequences obtained from eight newly infected subjects at a single time point. The data from 68 patients were in good agreement with model predictions, and hence compatible with a single-strain infection evolving under no selection pressure. The diversity of the samples from the other two patients was too great to be explained by the model, suggesting multiple HIV-1-strains were transmitted. The model can also be applied to longitudinal patient data to estimate within-host viral evolutionary parameters.