Publications by authors named "Manabu Arai"

This study addressed the question of whether L2 learners are able to utilize verb's argument structure information in online structural analysis. Previous L2 research has shown that L2 learners have difficulty in using verb's intransitive information to guide online syntactic processing. This is true even though L2 learners have grammatical knowledge that is correct and similar to that of native speakers.

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Many previous studies have shown that syntactic priming is stronger when the verb is repeated between the prime and target sentences. This phenomenon is known as the lexical boost and has been interpreted as evidence for a direct association between individual verbs and structural information. However, in previous experiments, we found no lexical boost with the monotransitive structure and argued that this structure is not associated with individual lexical items.

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Brodie's abscess is a relatively rare subacute form of osteomyelitis. Early diagnosis is challenging because of its insidious onset and vague symptoms. Magnetic resonance imaging is helpful in the diagnosis of Brodie's abscess; however, to date, no study has described the imaging findings of this disease in the early stage.

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It has long been debated whether non-native speakers can process sentences in the same way as native speakers do or they suffer from certain qualitative deficit in their ability of language comprehension. The current study examined the influence of prosodic and visual information in processing sentences with a temporarily ambiguous prepositional phrase ("Put the cake on the plate in the basket") with native English speakers and Japanese learners of English. Specifically, we investigated (1) whether native speakers assign different pragmatic functions to the same prosodic cues used in different contexts and (2) whether L2 learners can reach the correct analysis by integrating prosodic cues with syntax with reference to the visually presented contextual information.

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Few studies had been published regarding imaging findings of skin adnexal tumors. We experienced two giant cases of them with a characteristic mushroom-like growth pattern. MRI showed a circumscribed mushroom-like shaped mass extruding from the subcutaneous tissue with microcystic lesions.

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The current study tackles a long standing question of whether comprehenders perform structural revision when it is not forced by grammar or not. Using an eye-tracking reading paradigm, we addressed this issue by making use of global structural ambiguity in Japanese. Our results show that comprehenders initially associate a relative clause with the first potential head noun and that they revise this analysis when the second noun is lexico-semantically possible as the relative clause head, but do not when it is impossible.

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Past research has produced evidence that parsing commitments strengthen over the processing of additional linguistic elements that are consistent with the commitments and undoing strong commitments takes more time than undoing weak commitments. It remains unclear, however, whether this so-called digging-in effect is exclusively due to the length of an ambiguous region or at least partly to the extra cost of processing these additional phrases. The current study addressed this issue by testing Japanese relative clause structure, where lexical content and sentence meaning were controlled for.

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It is known that reactivation of hepatitis B virus (HBV) is an important complication of chemotherapy, and it can cause fatally severe hepatitis in some cases. A 72-year-old woman, underwent radical mastectomy for left breast cancer at the age of 35 years. In January 2008, local recurrence and multiple bone metastases occurred, and chemotherapy was started.

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Previous research reported that in processing structurally ambiguous sentences comprehenders often preserve an initial incorrect analysis even after adopting a correct analysis following structural disambiguation. One criticism is that the sentences tested in previous studies involved referential ambiguity and allowed comprehenders to make inferences about the initial interpretation using pragmatic information, suggesting the possibility that the initial analysis persisted due to comprehenders' pragmatic inference but not to their failure to perform complete reanalysis of the initial misanalysis. Our study investigated this by testing locally ambiguous relative clause sentences in Japanese, in which the initial misinterpretation contradicts the correct interpretation.

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A number of previous studies showed that comprehenders make use of lexically based constraints such as subcategorization frequency in processing structurally ambiguous sentences. One piece of such evidence is lexically specific syntactic priming in comprehension; following the costly processing of a temporarily ambiguous sentence, comprehenders experience less processing difficulty with the same structure with the same verb in subsequent processing. In previous studies using a reading paradigm, however, the effect was observed at or following disambiguating information and it is not known whether a priming effect affects only the process of resolving structural ambiguity following disambiguating input or it also affects the process before ambiguity is resolved.

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A number of previous studies reported a phenomenon of syntactic priming with young children as evidence for cognitive representations required for processing syntactic structures. However, it remains unclear how syntactic priming reflects children's grammatical competence. The current study investigated structural priming of the Japanese passive structure with 5- and 6-year-old children in a visual-world setting.

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Numerous studies have reported an effect of prosodic information on parsing but whether prosody can impact even the initial parsing decision is still not evident. In a visual world eye-tracking experiment, we investigated the influence of contrastive intonation and visual context on processing temporarily ambiguous relative clause sentences in Japanese. Our results showed that listeners used the prosodic cue to make a structural prediction before hearing disambiguating information.

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Background: There is increasing demand for minimally invasive treatments for small breast cancer mainly because of the desire for better cosmetic results. Although radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is an attractive approach as a local control method for small breast cancer, the problems of histological effectiveness and safety management remain.

Methods: A total of 29 patients including one patient with bilateral breast cancer were enrolled in this study.

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It has been revealed that sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) from patients with node-negative breast cancer involve RT-PCR detected micrometastases and isolated tumour cells. However, the prognostic significance of the pathologically undetectable micrometastases is still controversial. In this study, we evaluated Foxp3 positive regulatory T cells (Treg) in SLNs as host-side immune marker that has the potential to detect these micrometastases.

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Two visual-world eye-movement experiments investigated the nature of syntactic priming during comprehension--specifically, whether the priming effects in ditransitive prepositional object (PO) and double object (DO) structures (e.g., "The wizard will send the poison to the prince/the prince the poison?") are due to anticipation of structural properties following the verb (send) in the target sentence or to anticipation of animacy properties of the first postverbal noun.

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Background: In this study, we report a breast-conserving surgery (BCS) approach that uses projection and reproduction techniques of breast MRI obtained in the surgical position to the breast surface in patients with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) of the breast.

Study Design: Between February 2005 and January 2007, a total of 104 patients with operable breast cancer at our hospital had surgical-position breast MRI examinations. The 24 patients with relatively localized DCIS received BCS using the projection and reproduction techniques of the surgical-position breast MRI.

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Background: Success of breast-conserving surgery (BCS) following neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) depends on accurate assessment of the initial lesion. We developed a new procedure (NIPR) in which initial naked magnetic resonance images are projected onto the skin before BCS.

Methods: Thirty-five breast cancer patients underwent supine oblique MRI of the operative area.

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Benign epithelial inclusions are uncommonly found in lymph nodes, and ectopic breast tissue in axillary lymph nodes is particularly uncommon. The patient is a 48-year-old woman who had an adenoma of the nipple removed 10 years previously. A swollen lymph node with amorphous calcifications in a clustered distribution on mammogram was found in the left axilla.

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We report a case of angiosarcoma arising in the breast following breast-conserving surgery with radiation therapy for breast carcinoma. The patient, a 49-year-old postmenopausal woman, had undergone breast-conserving surgery for invasive ductal carcinoma of the left breast (pT2 pN0 M0 Stage IIA). Adjuvant radiotherapy (50 Gy with a booster dose to the tumor bed of 10 Gy) was then performed for the residual breast tissue and the patient was treated with hormone therapy (tamoxifen, 20 mg daily) for 5 years.

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Many studies have shown evidence for syntactic priming during language production (e.g., Bock, 1986).

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Background: Primary chemotherapy for breast cancer is effective as postoperative adjuvant therapy. However, one of the critical disadvantages was a treatment delay for patients with progressive disease. The present study attempts to clarify quantitative parameters on MRI which can be used to predict the sensitivity to treatment in breast cancer patients.

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P-glycoprotein (P-gp) coded with the multidrug resistance type I (MDR1) is expressed in various normal tissues including ovaries and may function as detoxification and steroid transport. The present study was performed to analyze the expression and function of MDR1 in granulosa cells stimulated with FSH, LH, estradiol-17beta (E) and progesterone (P). The granulosa cells isolated from porcine ovarian follicles were cultured for 24h in a serum-supplemented medium, and then cultured for 48h with the hormones in a serum-free culture medium.

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Port site recurrence after laparoscopic surgery for colorectal cancer patients is a rare complication. We report a case of port site recurrence in a 46-year-old woman that was detected by positron emission tomography (PET) using 18[F]-fluoro-deoxyglucose (FDG). Surgical treatment consisted of laparoscopic ileo-cecal resection and lymph node dissection.

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The present study was performed to evaluate the expression and function of P-glycoprotein (P-gp) encoded the multidrug resistance type I (MDR1) gene, protecting from xenotoxics, in porcine oocyte during in vitro maturation. Cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs) were cultured to obtain the germinal vesicle (GV), first metaphase and second metaphase (MII) oocytes. The P-gp function was assessed by means of the rhodamine 6G (R6G) efflux from oocytes with P-gp inhibitors such as verapamil and PSC-833.

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