Background: Lung cancer is a heterogeneous disease and the primary cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. Somatic mutations, including large structural variants, are important biomarkers in lung cancer for selecting targeted therapy. Genomic studies in lung cancer have been conducted using short-read sequencing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough the integration of information across multiple senses can enhance object representations in memory, how multisensory information affects the formation of categories is uncertain. In particular, it is unclear to what extent categories formed from multisensory information benefit object recognition over unisensory inputs. Two experiments investigated the categorisation of novel auditory and visual objects, with categories defined by spatial similarity, and tested generalisation to novel exemplars.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) is a highly heterogeneous cancer with poor survival. Standard curative treatment is chemotherapy with or without radiotherapy followed by oesophagectomy. Genomic heterogeneity is a feature of OAC and has been linked to treatment resistance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEndobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) is often the only source of tumor tissue from patients with advanced, inoperable lung cancer. EBUS-TBNA aspirates are used for the diagnosis, staging, and genomic testing to inform therapy options. Here we extracted DNA and RNA from 220 EBUS-TBNA aspirates to evaluate their suitability for whole genome (WGS), whole exome (WES), and comprehensive panel sequencing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiet can influence cognitive functioning in older adults and is a modifiable risk factor for cognitive decline. However, it is unknown if an association exists between diet and lower-level processes in the brain underpinning cognition, such as multisensory integration. We investigated whether temporal multisensory integration is associated with daily intake of fruit and vegetables (FV) or products high in fat/sugar/salt (FSS) in a large sample (N = 2,693) of older adults (mean age = 64.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGeometrical knowledge is typically taught to children through a combination of vision and repetitive drawing (i.e. haptics), yet our understanding of how different spatial senses contribute to geometric perception during childhood is poor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe investigated participants' ability to differentiate between random and organized two-dimensional tactile tiles with embossed dots and examined how this ability varies with size and participant age. Four experiments were conducted to evaluate the effect of these variations on participants' capacity to utilize touch in identifying which of two stimuli exhibited greater randomness. Participants were instructed to explore embossed tiles using both hands.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt is well established that physical activity leads to numerous health, cognitive, and psychological benefits. However, to date, very few studies have investigated the impact of physical activity on multisensory perception, that is, the brain's capacity to integrate information across sensory modalities. Furthermore, it is unknown what level of long-term physical activity is associated with multisensory integration in adults.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is evidence that cardiovascular function can influence sensory processing and cognition, which are known to change with age. However, whether the precision of unisensory and multisensory temporal perception is influenced by cardiovascular activity in older adults is uncertain. We examined whether seated resting heart rate (RHR) was associated with unimodal visual and auditory temporal discrimination as well as susceptibility to the audio-visual Sound Induced Flash Illusion (SIFI) in a large sample of older adults (N = 3232; mean age = 64.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhilos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci
September 2023
Although object categorization is a fundamental cognitive ability, it is also a complex process going beyond the perception and organization of sensory stimulation. Here we review existing evidence about how the human brain acquires and organizes multisensory inputs into object representations that may lead to conceptual knowledge in memory. We first focus on evidence for two processes on object perception, multisensory integration of redundant information (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe precision of temporal multisensory integration is associated with specific aspects of physical functioning in ageing, including gait speed and incidents of falling. However, it is unknown if such an association exists between multisensory integration and grip strength, an important index of frailty and brain health and predictor of disease and mortality in older adults. Here, we investigated whether temporal multisensory integration is associated with longitudinal (eight-year) grip strength trajectories in a large sample of 2,061 older adults (mean age = 64.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOesophageal adenocarcinoma is a poor prognosis cancer and the molecular features underpinning response to treatment remain unclear. We investigate whole genome, transcriptomic and methylation data from 115 oesophageal adenocarcinoma patients mostly from the DOCTOR phase II clinical trial (Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry-ACTRN12609000665235), with exploratory analysis pre-specified in the study protocol of the trial. We report genomic features associated with poorer overall survival, such as the APOBEC mutational and RS3-like rearrangement signatures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSustained integration of sensory inputs over increased temporal delays is associated with reduced cognitive and physical functioning in older adults and adverse outcomes such as falls. Here, we explored the relationship between multisensory integration and a clinically relevant measure of balance/postural control; Sit-to-Stand Time, the efficiency with which an older adult can transition between a seated and a standing posture. We investigated whether temporal multisensory integration was associated with performance on the Five-Times Sit-to-Stand Test (FTSST) in a large sample of 2556 older adults (mean age = 63.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSustained multisensory integration over long inter-stimulus time delays is typically found in older adults, particularly those with a history of falls. However, the extent to which the temporal precision of audio-visual integration is associated with longitudinal fall or fall risk trajectories is unknown. A large sample of older adults (N = 2319) were grouped into longitudinal trajectories of self-reported fall incidents (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhilos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci
June 2023
Age-related sensory decline impacts cognitive performance and exposes individuals to a greater risk of cognitive decline. Integration across the senses also changes with age, yet the link between multisensory perception and cognitive ageing is poorly understood. We explored the relationship between multisensory integration and cognitive function in 2875 adults aged 50 + from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Multisensory integration is the ability to appropriately merge information from different senses for the purpose of perceiving and acting in the environment. During walking, information from multiple senses must be integrated appropriately to coordinate effective movements. We tested the association between a well characterised multisensory task, the Sound-Induced Flash Illusion (SIFI), and gait speed in 3255 participants from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Self-reported sensory data provide important insight into an individual's perception of sensory ability. It remains unclear what factors predict longitudinal change in self-reported sensory ability across multiple modalities during healthy aging. This study examined these associations in a cohort of older adults for vision, hearing, taste, and smell.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnthropogenic disturbance contributes to global change by reshaping the ecological niche space available to biological communities. Quantifying the range of functional response traits required for species persistence is central towards understanding the mechanisms underlying community disassembly in disturbed landscapes. We used intensive field surveys of cloud forest bird communities across seven replicate landscapes undergoing agricultural conversion in the Peruvian Andes to examine how a suite of 16 functional response traits related to morphology, diet, foraging behaviour and environmental niche breadth predict (1) species-specific abundance changes in countryside habitats compared to forest and (2) differential changes to the ecological niche space occupied by communities.
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