Quality of life outcomes in patients undergoing facial gender affirming surgery: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Facial gender-affirming surgery (FGAS), one of many transition-related surgeries (TRSs), "feminizes" the faces of transgender and gender diverse (TGD) patients undergoing transition. However, it is difficult to demonstrate the medical necessity of FGAS in terms of postoperative quality of life (QoL) outcomes due to a lack of standardized assessment tools. Thus, FGAS remains largely unsubsidized in North America.

Facial Gender-Affirming Surgery: Frontal Bossing Surgical Techniques, Outcomes and Safety.

Background: Facial gender-affirming surgery (FGAS) is described as a set of surgical procedures done to feminize the soft tissue and the facial skeleton, allowing for transfeminine individuals to be recognizable as women to others. It is established in the literature that the most significant facial area for determination of gender is the forehead (Spiegel in Laryngoscope 121:250-261, 2011). This article describes the author's three main surgical techniques used in forehead feminization and reports on the results.

The Montréal Classification of urethral lengthening for phalloplasty in transmasculine patients-surgical techniques and urethral complications.

Introduction: Phalloplasties are one of the most performed genital surgeries in the treatment of gender dysphoria for transmasculine patients. Urethral lengthening is an essential component of phalloplasties. Few techniques have been described for the creation of this pars fixa urethra.

Sleepless and desynchronized: Impaired inter trial phase coherence of steady-state potentials following sleep deprivation.

Sleep loss has detrimental effects on cognitive and emotional functioning. These impairments have been associated with alterations in EEG measures of power spectrum and event-related potentials, however the impact of sleep loss on inter trial phase coherence (ITPC), a measure of phase consistency over experimental trials, remains mostly unknown. ITPC is thought to reflect the ability of the neural response to temporally synchronize with relevant events, thus optimizing information processing.

Volitional limbic neuromodulation exerts a beneficial clinical effect on Fibromyalgia.

Volitional neural modulation using neurofeedback has been indicated as a potential treatment for chronic conditions that involve peripheral and central neural dysregulation. Here we utilized neurofeedback in patients suffering from Fibromyalgia - a chronic pain syndrome that involves sleep disturbance and emotion dysregulation. These ancillary symptoms, which have an amplificating effect on pain, are known to be mediated by heightened limbic activity.

Dependency Network Analysis (DEPNA) Reveals Context Related Influence of Brain Network Nodes.

Communication between and within brain regions is essential for information processing within functional networks. The current methods to determine the influence of one region on another are either based on temporal resolution, or require a predefined model for the connectivity direction. However these requirements are not always achieved, especially in fMRI studies, which have poor temporal resolution.

Human mesostriatal response tracks motivational tendencies under naturalistic goal conflict.

Goal conflict situations, involving the simultaneous presence of reward and punishment, occur commonly in real life, and reflect well-known individual differences in the behavioral tendency to approach or avoid. However, despite accumulating neural depiction of motivational processing, the investigation of naturalistic approach behavior and its interplay with individual tendencies is remarkably lacking. We developed a novel ecological interactive scenario which triggers motivational behavior under high or low goal conflict conditions.

Comparison between human awake, meditation and drowsiness EEG activities based on directed transfer function and MVDR coherence methods.

This study examined the electroencephalogram functional connectivity (coherence) and effective connectivity (flow of information) of selected brain regions during three different attentive states: awake, meditation and drowsiness. For the estimation of functional connectivity (coherence), Welch and minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) methods were compared. The MVDR coherence was found to be more suitable since it is both data and frequency dependent and enables higher spectral resolution, while Welch's periodogram-based approach is both data and frequency independent.

Information flow and coherence of EEG during awake, meditation and drowsiness.

A comparison of coupling (information flow) and coherence (connectedness) of the brain regions between human awake, meditation and drowsiness states was carried out in this study. The Directed Transfer Function (DTF) method was used to estimate the coupling or brain's flow of information between different regions during each condition. Welch and Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (MVDR) methods were utilised to estimate the coherence between brain areas.

The wandering mood: psychological and neural determinants of rest-related negative affect.

Rest related negative affect (RRNA) has gained scientific interest in the past decade. However, it is mostly studied within the context of mind-wandering (MW), and the relevance of other psychological and neural aspects of the resting state to its' occurrence has never been studied. Several indications associate RRNA with internally directed attention, yet the nature of this relation remains largely unknown.

The dark side of the alpha rhythm: fMRI evidence for induced alpha modulation during complete darkness.

The unique role of the EEG alpha rhythm in different states of cortical activity is still debated. The main theories regarding alpha function posit either sensory processing or attention allocation as the main processes governing its modulation. Closing and opening eyes, a well-known manipulation of the alpha rhythm, could be regarded as attention allocation from inward to outward focus though during light is also accompanied by visual change.

Robust modeling based on optimized EEG bands for functional brain state inference.

The need to infer brain states in a data driven approach is crucial for BCI applications as well as for neuroscience research. In this work we present a novel classification framework based on Regularized Linear Regression classifier constructed from time-frequency decomposition of an EEG (electro-encephalography) signal. The regression is then used to derive a model of frequency distributions that identifies brain states.

Towards a neuroscience of mind-wandering.

Mind-wandering (MW) is among the most robust and permanent expressions of human conscious awareness, classically regarded by philosophers, clinicians, and scientists as a core element of an intact sense of self. Nevertheless, the scientific exploration of MW poses unique challenges; MW is by nature a spontaneous, off task, internal mental process which is often unaware and usually difficult to control, document or replicate. Consequently, there is a lack of accepted modus operandi for exploring MW in a laboratory setup, leading to a relatively small amount of studies regarding the neural basis of MW.

Spatio-temporal indications of sub-cortical involvement in leftward bias of spatial attention.

A leftward bias is well known in humans and animals, and commonly related to the right hemisphere dominance for spatial attention. Our previous fMRI study suggested that this bias is mediated by faster conduction from the right to left parietal cortices, than the reverse (Siman-Tov et al., 2007).

CLLD8/KMT1F is a lysine methyltransferase that is important for chromosome segregation.

Proteins bearing a SET domain have been shown to methylate lysine residues in histones and contribute to chromatin architecture. Methylation of histone H3 at lysine 9 (H3K9) has emerged as an important player in the formation of heterochromatin, chromatin condensation, and transcriptional repression. Here, we have characterized a previously undescribed member of the histone H3K9 methyltransferase family named CLLD8 (or SETDB2 or KMT1F).

Never resting brain: simultaneous representation of two alpha related processes in humans.

Brain activity is continuously modulated, even at "rest". The alpha rhythm (8-12 Hz) has been known as the hallmark of the brain's idle-state. However, it is still debated if the alpha rhythm reflects synchronization in a distributed network or focal generator and whether it occurs spontaneously or is driven by a stimulus.

The New Stories/New Cultures after-school enrichment program: a direct cultural intervention.

This article describes the organization, curriculum, and outcomes for New Stories/New Cultures, an activity-based program for after-school enrichment in five schools in the low-income neighborhood near a major American university. The program encourages students (70% Hispanic-American, 30% African-American) to experience themselves as producers of culture, not just as consumers. Its methods include (a) creative team use of video equipment and other expressive media and (b) lessons about media literacy (i.

Isodisomy of chromosome 7 in a patient with cystic fibrosis: could uniparental disomy be common in humans?

Maternal isodisomy for chromosome 7 was observed in a 4-year-old cystic fibrosis patient with very short stature. In an examination of 11 DNA polymorphisms spanning the entire length of chromosome 7, no paternal contribution could be shown in seven informative loci. Paternity was examined with probes for five polymorphic loci on the Y chromosome, for the pseudo beta-globin locus on chromosome 11 and by Jeffreys's hypervariable probes.