Edible plant oils provide a crucial source of lipids for human nutrition. Owing to the complex processing of some high-quality variants, including Styrian pumpkin seed oil, edible plant oils have become susceptible to food fraud by adulteration with cheaper vegetable oils, compromising both authenticity and quality. To address this issue, a workflow was developed utilizing QTOF-MS/MS to search for triacylglycerol markers indicative of adulteration and subsequently adapted them for routine analysis using triple quadrupole MS/MS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Intraoperative Neurophysiological Monitoring (IOM) is widely used in neurosurgery but specific guidelines are lacking. Therefore, we can assume differences in IOM application between Neurosurgical centers.
Research Question: The section of Functional Neurosurgery of the Italian Society of Neurosurgery realized a survey aiming to obtain general data on the current practice of IOM in Italy.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a part of the mainstream public discourse beyond expert communities about its risks, benefits, and need for regulation. In particular, since 2014, the news media have intensified their coverage of this emerging technology and its potential impact on most domains of society. Although many studies have analyzed traditional media coverage of AI, analyses of social media, especially video-sharing platforms, are rare.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF. Chronic motor impairments of arms and hands as the consequence of a cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) have a tremendous impact on activities of daily life. A considerable number of people however retain minimal voluntary motor control in the paralyzed parts of the upper limbs that are measurable by electromyography (EMG) and inertial measurement units (IMUs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLocomotion is a complex task involving excitatory and inhibitory circuitry in spinal gray matter. While genetic knockouts examine the function of individual spinal interneuron (SpIN) subtypes, the phenotype of combined SpIN loss remains to be explored. We modified a kainic acid lesion to damage intermediate gray matter (laminae V-VIII) in the lumbar spinal enlargement (spinal L2-L4) in female rats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearchers and practitioners have unanimously acknowledged the impact of legacy media coverage of past pandemics as well as COVID-19 and its importance for health-related risk communication. Therefore, this study provides scholars and health communication practitioners with a deeper understanding of the patterns, main themes, and limitations of media reporting and peer-reviewed research in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in different national media environments. Because the objective is to evaluate patterns, this paper focuses on early quantitative and automated content analyses for theoretical contribution, geographic diversity, methodological rigor, and inclusion of risk and crisis communication theory.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAtherosclerosis, the leading cause of cardiovascular disease responsible for the majority of deaths worldwide, cannot be sufficiently explained by established risk factors, including hypercholesterolemia. Elevated plasma homocysteine is an independent risk factor for atherosclerosis and is strongly linked to cardiovascular mortality. However, the role of homocysteine in atherosclerosis is still insufficiently understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMovement intention detection using electroencephalography (EEG) is a challenging but essential component of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) for people with motor disabilities.The goal of this study is to develop a new experimental paradigm to perform asynchronous online detection of movement based on low-frequency time-domain EEG features, concretely on movement-related cortical potentials. The paradigm must be easily transferable to people without any residual upper-limb movement function and the BCI must be independent of upper-limb movement onset measurements and external cues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReaching and grasping is an essential part of everybody's life, it allows meaningful interaction with the environment and is key to independent lifestyle. Recent electroencephalogram (EEG)-based studies have already shown that neural correlates of natural reach-and-grasp actions can be identified in the EEG. However, it is still in question whether these results obtained in a laboratory environment can make the transition to mobile applicable EEG systems for home use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEye movements and blinks contaminate electroencephalographic (EEG) and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) activity. As the eye moves, the corneo-retinal dipole (CRD) and eyelid introduce potential/field changes in the M/EEG activity. These eye artifacts can affect a brain-computer interface and thereby impinge on neurofeedback quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Loss of balance control can have serious consequences on interaction between humans and machines as well as the general well-being of humans. Perceived balance perturbations are always accompanied by a specific cortical activation, the so-called perturbation-evoked potential (PEP). In this study, we investigate the possibility to classify PEPs from ongoing EEG.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Daily life tasks can become a significant challenge for motor impaired persons. Depending on the severity of their impairment, they require more complex solutions to retain an independent life. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are targeted to provide an intuitive form of control for advanced assistive devices such as robotic arms or neuroprostheses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
July 2019
The aim of the MoreGrasp project is to develop a non-invasive, multimodal user interface including a brain-computer interface (BCI) for control of a grasp neuroprostheses in individuals with high spinal cord injury (SCI). The first results of the ongoing MoreGrasp clinical feasibility study involving end users with SCI are presented. This includes BCI screening sessions, in which we investigate the electroencephalography (EEG) patterns associated with single, natural movements of the upper limb.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
July 2019
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) might provide an intuitive way for severely motor impaired persons to operate assistive devices to perform daily life activities. Recent studies have shown that complex hand movements, such as reach-and-grasp tasks, can be decoded from the low frequency of the electroencephalogram (EEG). In this work we investigated whether additional features extracted from the frequency-domain of alpha and beta bands could improve classification performance of rest vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIEEE Trans Biomed Eng
June 2020
While most tasks of daily life can be handled through a small number of different grasps, many tasks require the action of both hands. In these bimanual tasks, the second hand has either a supporting role (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFor Brain-Computer interfaces (BCIs), system calibration is a lengthy but necessary process for successful operation. Co-adaptive BCIs aim to shorten training and imply positive motivation to users by presenting feedback already at early stages: After just 5 min of gathering calibration data, the systems are able to provide feedback and engage users in a mutual learning process. In this work, we investigate whether the retraining stage of co-adaptive BCIs can be adapted to a semi-supervised concept, where only a small amount of labeled data is available and all additional data needs to be labeled by the BCI itself.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe show that persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) retain decodable neural correlates of attempted arm and hand movements. We investigated hand open, palmar grasp, lateral grasp, pronation, and supination in 10 persons with cervical SCI. Discriminative movement information was provided by the time-domain of low-frequency electroencephalography (EEG) signals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Pituitary tumors are a heterogeneous group of lesions that are usually benign. Therefore, a proper understanding of the anatomy, physiology, and pathology is mandatory to achieve favorable outcomes. Accordingly, diagnostic tests and treatment guidelines should be determined and implemented.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNervus intermedius neuralgia is an extremely rare craniofacial neuralgia characterized by intermittent episodes of pain located deep in the ear that last for seconds or minutes and are often triggered by sensory or mechanical stimuli at the posterior wall of the auditory canal without any underlying pathology. Pain can be associated with disorders of lacrimation, salivation, and taste. Despite the fact that the majority of cases is idiopathic, reports can be found in the literature, where this neuralgia is secondary to a neurovascular conflict between the seventh cranial nerve and anterior-inferior cerebellar artery, posterior-inferior cerebellar artery, and vertebral artery or their branches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: In this manuscript, we consider factors that may affect the design of a hybrid brain-computer interface (BCI). We combine neural correlates of natural movements and interaction error-related potentials (ErrP) to perform a 3D reaching task, focusing on the impact that such factors have on the evoked ErrP signatures and in their classification.
Approach: Users attempted to control a 3D virtual interface that simulated their own hand, to reach and grasp two different objects.
Background: In this work, we share our experiences made at the world-wide first CYBATHLON, an event organized by the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich), which took place in Zurich in October 2016. It is a championship for severely motor impaired people using assistive prototype devices to compete against each other. Our team, the Graz BCI Racing Team MIRAGE91 from Graz University of Technology, participated in the discipline "Brain-Computer Interface Race".
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBrain-Computer Interfaces may present an intuitive way for motor impaired end users to operate assistive devices of daily life. Recent studies showed that complex kinematics like grasping can be successfully decoded from low frequency electroencephalogram. In this work we present a hierarchical method to asynchronously discriminate two different grasps often used in daily life actions (palmar, pincer) from a combined set of motor execution and motor intention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSolitary juvenile xanthogranuloma (SJX) of the spine is an extremely rare proliferative histiocytic disorder with only few cases reported in literature. We present the first case of intramedullary spinal SJX. A 22-year-old male presented with a nine-month history of progressively worsening sphincteric disturbances and saddle hypoesthesia.
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