Musical Emotion Perception in Bimodal Patients: Relative Weighting of Musical Mode and Tempo Cues.

Several cues are used to convey musical emotion, the two primary being musical mode and musical tempo. Specifically, major and minor modes tend to be associated with positive and negative valence, respectively, and songs at fast tempi have been associated with more positive valence compared to songs at slow tempi (Balkwill and Thompson, 1999; Webster and Weir, 2005). In Experiment I, we examined the relative weighting of musical tempo and musical mode among adult cochlear implant (CI) users combining electric and contralateral acoustic stimulation, or "bimodal" hearing.

Perception of Child-Directed Versus Adult-Directed Emotional Speech in Pediatric Cochlear Implant Users.

Objectives: Cochlear implants (CIs) are remarkable in allowing individuals with severe to profound hearing loss to perceive speech. Despite these gains in speech understanding, however, CI users often struggle to perceive elements such as vocal emotion and prosody, as CIs are unable to transmit the spectro-temporal detail needed to decode affective cues. This issue becomes particularly important for children with CIs, but little is known about their emotional development.

A tonal-language benefit for pitch in normally-hearing and cochlear-implanted children.

In tonal languages, voice pitch inflections change the meaning of words, such that the brain processes pitch not merely as an acoustic characterization of sound but as semantic information. In normally-hearing (NH) adults, this linguistic pressure on pitch appears to sharpen its neural encoding and can lead to perceptual benefits, depending on the task relevance, potentially generalizing outside of the speech domain. In children, however, linguistic systems are still malleable, meaning that their encoding of voice pitch information might not receive as much neural specialization but might generalize more easily to ecologically irrelevant pitch contours.

Effects of Phantom Electrode Stimulation on Vocal Production in Cochlear Implant Users.

Objectives: Cochlear implant (CI) users suffer from a range of speech impairments, such as stuttering and vocal control of pitch and intensity. Though little research has focused on the role of auditory feedback in the speech of CI users, these speech impairments could be due in part to limited access to low-frequency cues inherent in CI-mediated listening. Phantom electrode stimulation (PES) represents a novel application of current steering that extends access to low frequencies for CI recipients.

Association Between Flat-Panel Computed Tomographic Imaging-Guided Place-Pitch Mapping and Speech and Pitch Perception in Cochlear Implant Users.

Importance: Cochlear implant users generally display poor pitch perception. Flat-panel computed tomography (FPCT) has recently emerged as a modality capable of localizing individual electrode contacts within the cochlea in vivo. Significant place-pitch mismatch between the clinical implant processing settings given to patients and the theoretical maps based on FPCT imaging has previously been noted.

Assessment and improvement of sound quality in cochlear implant users.

Objectives: Cochlear implants (CIs) have successfully provided speech perception to individuals with sensorineural hearing loss. Recent research has focused on more challenging acoustic stimuli such as music and voice emotion. The purpose of this review is to evaluate and describe sound quality in CI users with the purposes of summarizing novel findings and crucial information about how CI users experience complex sounds.

What Does Music Sound Like for a Cochlear Implant User?

Objective: Cochlear implant research and product development over the past 40 years have been heavily focused on speech comprehension with little emphasis on music listening and enjoyment. The relatively little understanding of how music sounds in a cochlear implant user stands in stark contrast to the overall degree of importance the public places on music and quality of life. The purpose of this article is to describe what music sounds like to cochlear implant users, using a combination of existing research studies and listener descriptions.

CE: Moral Distress: A Catalyst in Building Moral Resilience.

: Moral distress is a pervasive problem in the nursing profession. An inability to act in alignment with one's moral values is detrimental not only to the nurse's well-being but also to patient care and clinical practice as a whole. Moral distress has typically been seen as characterized by powerlessness and victimization; we offer an alternate view.

Impaired Perception of Sensory Consonance and Dissonance in Cochlear Implant Users.

Hypothesis: In light of previous research demonstrating poor pitch perception in cochlear implant (CI) users, we hypothesized that the presence of consonant versus dissonant chord accompaniment in real-world musical stimuli would not impact subjective assessment of degree of pleasantness in CI users.

Background: Consonance/dissonance are perceptual features of harmony resulting from pitch relationships between simultaneously presented musical notes. Generally, consonant sounds are perceived as pleasant and dissonant ones as unpleasant.

Cochlear implant users rely on tempo rather than on pitch information during perception of musical emotion.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which cochlear implant (CI) users rely on tempo and mode in perception of musical emotion when compared with normal hearing (NH) individuals.

Methods: A test battery of novel four-bar melodies was created and adapted to four permutations with alterations of tonality (major vs. minor) and tempo (presto vs.

Hyaluronan impairs vascular function and drug delivery in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer.

Objective: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is characterised by stromal desmoplasia and vascular dysfunction, which critically impair drug delivery. This study examines the role of an abundant extracellular matrix component, the megadalton glycosaminoglycan hyaluronan (HA), as a novel therapeutic target in PDA.

Methods: Using a genetically engineered mouse model of PDA, the authors enzymatically depleted HA by a clinically formulated PEGylated human recombinant PH20 hyaluronidase (PEGPH20) and examined tumour perfusion, vascular permeability and drug delivery.

Inhibition of Hedgehog signaling enhances delivery of chemotherapy in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is among the most lethal human cancers in part because it is insensitive to many chemotherapeutic drugs. Studying a mouse model of PDA that is refractory to the clinically used drug gemcitabine, we found that the tumors in this model were poorly perfused and poorly vascularized, properties that are shared with human PDA. We tested whether the delivery and efficacy of gemcitabine in the mice could be improved by coadministration of IPI-926, a drug that depletes tumor-associated stromal tissue by inhibition of the Hedgehog cellular signaling pathway.

Expression and shifting subcellular localization of the transcription factor, Foxd3, in embryonic and adult pancreas.

Multipotent progenitor cells self renew throughout an animal's lifetime and can differentiate to give rise to different cell types. Before we can fully understand the developmental potential of progenitor cells and control their differentiation both in vivo and in vitro as stem cells, identification and characterization of the genes that control stem cell fate must first be obtained. Foxd3, a member of the forkhead family of transcriptional regulators, is required for the maintenance of embryonic stem cells and trophoblast stem cells of the early mouse embryo.