Identification and capsular serotype sequetyping of Streptococcus pneumoniae strains.

Purpose: Correct serotype identification of Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) is important for monitoring disease epidemiology and assessing the impacts of pneumococcal vaccines. Furthermore, correct identification and differentiation of the pathogenic S. pneumoniae from closely related commensal species of the mitis group of the genus Streptococcus are essential for correct serotype identification.

Selective attention to sound location or pitch studied with event-related brain potentials and magnetic fields.

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and magnetic fields (ERFs) were used to compare brain activity associated with selective attention to sound location or pitch in humans. Sixteen healthy adults participated in the ERP experiment, and 11 adults in the ERF experiment. In different conditions, the participants focused their attention on a designated sound location or pitch, or pictures presented on a screen, in order to detect target sounds or pictures among the attended stimuli.

Orienting and maintenance of spatial attention in audition and vision: multimodal and modality-specific brain activations.

We studied orienting and maintenance of spatial attention in audition and vision. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in nine healthy subjects revealed activations in the same superior and inferior parietal, and posterior prefrontal areas in the auditory and visual orienting tasks when these tasks were compared with the corresponding maintenance tasks. Attention-related activations in the thalamus and cerebellum were observed during the auditory orienting and maintenance tasks and during the visual orienting task.

Orienting and maintenance of spatial attention in audition and vision: an event-related brain potential study.

We examined the effects of orienting and maintenance of attention on performance and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in audition and vision. Our subjects selectively attended to sounds or pictures in one location (Maintenance of attention) or alternated the focus of their auditory or visual attention between left and right locations (Orienting of attention) in order to detect and press a response button to infrequent targets among the attended stimuli. Reaction times were longer in the Auditory Orienting condition and hit rates were lower and false alarm rates higher in the Visual Orienting condition than in the corresponding Maintenance conditions.

Distributed cortical networks for focused auditory attention and distraction.

We used behavioral measures and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the effects of parametrically varied task-irrelevant pitch changes in attended sounds on loudness-discrimination performance and brain activity in cortical surface maps. Ten subjects discriminated tone loudness in sequences that also included infrequent task-irrelevant pitch changes. Consistent with results of previous studies, the task-irrelevant pitch changes impaired performance in the loudness discrimination task.