Publications by authors named "Maria Zimmermann"

Congenital deafness enhances responses of auditory cortices to non-auditory tasks, yet the nature of the reorganization is not well understood. Here, naturalistic stimuli are used to induce neural synchrony across early deaf and hearing individuals. Participants watch a silent animated film in an intact version and three versions with gradually distorted meaning.

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Unlabelled: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a multifactorial pathology, with most cases having a sporadic origin. Recently, knock-in (KI) mouse models, such as the novel humanized amyloid-β (hAβ)-KI, have been developed to better resemble sporadic human AD.

Methods: Here, we compared hippocampal publicly available transcriptomic profiles of transgenic (5xFAD and APP/PS1) and KI (hAβ-KI) mouse models with early- (EOAD) and late- (LOAD) onset AD patients.

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The second wave of COVID-19 occurred in South America in early 2021 and was mainly driven by Gamma and Lambda variants. In this study, we aimed to describe the emergence and local genomic diversity of the SARS-CoV-2 Lambda variant in Argentina, from its initial entry into the country until its detection ceased. Molecular surveillance was conducted on 9356 samples from Argentina between October 2020 and April 2022, and sequencing, phylogenetic, and phylogeographic analyses were performed.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has lately been driven by Omicron. This work aimed to study the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron lineages during the third and fourth waves of COVID-19 in Argentina. Molecular surveillance was performed on 3431 samples from Argentina, between EW44/2021 and EW31/2022.

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Training can influence behavioral performance and lead to brain reorganization. In particular, training in one modality, for example, auditory, can improve performance in another modality, for example, visual. Previous research suggests that one of the mechanisms behind this phenomenon could be the cross-modal recruitment of the sensory areas, for example, the auditory cortex.

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Background And Objectives: To assess the concordance and discordance between the core Alzheimer disease (AD) CSF biomarkers and [F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-PET patterns evaluated clinically in memory clinic patients who meet appropriate use criteria for AD biomarker investigations.

Methods: We retrospectively assessed participants with atypical and/or early-onset dementia evaluated at a tertiary care memory clinic. All individuals underwent CSF evaluations for Aβ42, phosphorylated tau (P-tau181) and total tau, and brain [F]FDG-PET.

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Abnormalities in the expression of metabotropic glutamate receptor type 5 (mGluR5) have been observed in the hippocampus of patients with drug-resistant mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (mTLE). studies in mTLE hippocampal surgical specimens have shown increased mGluR5 immunoreactivity, while whole brain imaging using positron emission tomography (PET) demonstrated reduced hippocampal mGluR5 availability. To further understand mGluR5 abnormalities in mTLE, we performed a saturation autoradiography study with [H]ABP688 (a negative mGluR5 allosteric modulator).

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In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, students had to cope with the challenging situation of handling a vast amount of potentially conflicting online information while staying informed. Reading conflicting scientific information has been shown to require cognitive effort for one to integrate it successfully, but reading such information during a crisis-such as the COVID-19 pandemic-may cause additional emotional stress, as students also had to cope with critical aspects of the pandemic (e.g.

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Objective: Previous positron emission tomography (PET) studies using [ C]ABP688 show reduced metabotropic glutamate receptor type 5 (mGluR5) allosteric binding site availability in the epileptogenic hippocampus of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) patients. However, the link between mGluR5 abnormalities and postsurgical outcomes remains unclear. Here, we test whether reduced PET [ C]ABP688 binding in cornu ammonis (CA) sectors more vulnerable to glutamatergic excitotoxicity relates to surgical outcomes.

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Many urgent problems that societies currently face-from climate change to a global pandemic-require citizens to engage with scientific information as members of democratic societies as well as to solve problems in their personal lives. Most often, to solve their epistemic aims (aims directed at achieving knowledge and understanding) regarding such socio-scientific issues, individuals search for information online, where there exists a multitude of possibly relevant and highly interconnected sources of different perspectives, sometimes providing conflicting information. The paper provides a review of the literature aimed at identifying (a) constraints and affordances that scientific knowledge and the online information environment entail and (b) individuals' cognitive and motivational processes that have been found to hinder, or conversely, support practices of engagement (such as critical information evaluation or two-sided dialogue).

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In everyday life, people seek, evaluate, and use online sources to underpin opinions and make decisions. While education must promote the skills people need to critically question the sourcing of online information, it is important, more generally, to understand how to successfully promote the acquisition of any skills related to seeking online information. This review outlines technologies that aim to support users when they collaboratively seek online information.

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Early sensory deprivation, such as deafness, shapes brain development in multiple ways. Deprived auditory areas become engaged in the processing of stimuli from the remaining modalities and in high-level cognitive tasks. Yet, structural and functional changes were also observed in non-deprived brain areas, which may suggest the whole-brain network changes in deaf individuals.

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Determining antigen specificity is vital for understanding B cell biology and for producing human monoclonal antibodies. We describe here a powerful method for identifying B cells that recognize membrane antigens expressed on cells. The technique depends on two characteristics of the interaction between a B cell and an antigen-expressing cell: antigen-receptor-mediated extraction of antigen from the membrane of the target cell, and B cell activation.

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Background: According to the language expectancy theory and the communication accommodation theory, health information seekers' trust evaluations of Web-based videos are determined by interplays between content and seekers' expectations on vloggers' appropriate language use in specific contexts of Web-based communication.

Objectives: Two investigations focused on differences both between vloggers' language styles and between users' general trust in specific Web-based platforms to investigate how the context of Web-based communication can be characterized (research question, RQ1). Thereafter, we investigated whether information uncertainty, vloggers' language style, and context of Web-based communication affect seekers' trust evaluations of videos (RQ2).

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Context: Germany and Switzerland have introduced diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) for hospital reimbursement. This scoping review aims to evaluate if empirical evidence exists on the effect of the DRG introduction.

Methods: Medline via PubMed, Embase (Elsevier), CINAHL, PsychINFO, and Psyndex were systematically screened for studies from 2003 onwards using keywords-DRG, prospective payment system, and lump sum-in English, German, and French.

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Numerous school-based prevention programs have been developed by scientists and practitioners to address sexual violence in adolescence. However, such programs struggle with two major challenges. First, the effectiveness of many well-established practitioner programs has not been rigorously evaluated.

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Background: Online health forums are widely used, but the quality of advice differs as much as the knowledge backgrounds of the audience members who receive the advice. It is important to understand how people judge the information given online. In line with the communication accommodation theory (CAT), online forums represent specific social contexts of communication which can present either accommodative or nonaccommodative language to an audience.

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Training can induce cross-modal plasticity in the human cortex. A well-known example of this phenomenon is the recruitment of visual areas for tactile and auditory processing. It remains unclear to what extent such plasticity is associated with changes in anatomy.

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The principles that guide large-scale cortical reorganization remain unclear. In the blind, several visual regions preserve their task specificity; ventral visual areas, for example, become engaged in auditory and tactile object-recognition tasks. It remains open whether task-specific reorganization is unique to the visual cortex or, alternatively, whether this kind of plasticity is a general principle applying to other cortical areas.

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Autoantibodies against myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG) are associated with autoimmune central nervous system diseases like acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM). For ADEM, it is speculated that a preceding infection is the trigger of the autoimmune response, but the mechanism connecting the infection to the production of MOG antibodies remains a mystery. We reasoned that the ability of B cells to capture cognate antigen from cell membranes, along with small quantities of coexpressed "bystander" antigens, might enable B-cell escape from tolerance.

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Objective: To monitor the systemic immune responses of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) under treatment with GNbAC1, a monoclonal antibody against the envelope protein of the MS- associated retrovirus, during a phase 2a trial.

Methods: We analyzed the composition of immune cell subsets and the activation level of monocytes by flow cytometry and the response against viral and vaccine antigens by ELISpot.

Results: None of the endpoints measured revealed any immunosuppressive effect of the therapeutic antibody.

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Sepsis remains the most important cause of acute kidney injury (AKI) in critically ill patients and is an independent predictor of poor outcome. The administration of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to animals reproduces most of the clinical features of sepsis, including AKI, a condition associated with renal cellular dysfunction and apoptosis. Erythropoietin (EPO) is a well known cytoprotective multifunctional hormone, which exerts anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-apoptotic and angiogenic effects in several tissues.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to evaluate speech outcomes and the presence of palatal fistulas in cleft patients using two surgical techniques: the von Langenbeck repair and the Furlow procedure.
  • The trial utilized a factorial design, randomizing participants into 8 groups based on the type of lip and palatal repair, plus the timing of surgery.
  • Results indicated that the Furlow procedure improved speech-related velopharyngeal function, but it had a higher rate of palatal fistula occurrence, particularly in patients with wider clefts and when specific surgical techniques were not applied.
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Objective: Cleft palate increases the risk of chronic middle ear disease and hearing loss. The goal of this report was to determine which of two palate surgeries and which timing of palate surgery were associated with better otologic and audiologic outcomes in children with unilateral cleft lip and palate at 5 to 6 years of age.

Design: Subjects were randomly assigned to the von Langenbeck with intravelar veloplasty or Furlow palate repair, to palate surgery at 9 to 12 months or 15 to 18 months of age, and to the Spina or Millard lip repair.

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