Exploring the Emotional Functions of Co-Speech Hand Gesture in Language and Communication.

Research over the past four decades has built a convincing case that co-speech hand gestures play a powerful role in human cognition . However, this recent focus on the cognitive function of gesture has, to a large extent, overlooked its emotional role-a role that was once central to research on bodily expression. In the present review, we first give a brief summary of the wealth of research demonstrating the cognitive function of co-speech gestures in language acquisition, learning, and thinking.

Local control of 1-5 fraction radiotherapy regimens for spinal metastases: an analysis of the impacts of biologically effective dose and primary histology.

Background: This analysis evaluates the impacts of biologically effective dose (BED) and histology on local control (LC) of spinal metastases treated with highly conformal radiotherapy to moderately-escalated doses.

Materials And Methods: Patients were treated at two institutions from 2010-2020. Treatments with less than 5 Gy per fraction or 8 Gy in 1 fraction were excluded.

Recursive Partitioning Analysis for Local Control Achieved With Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy for the Liver, Spine, or Lymph Nodes.

Purpose: This study aims to develop a local control risk stratification using recursive partitioning analysis (RPA) for patients receiving stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) for metastatic cancer.

Methods And Materials: A single institutional database of 397 SBRT treatments to the liver, spine, and lymph nodes was constructed. All treatments required imaging follow-up to assess for local control.

A single institutional experience with central lung stereotactic body radiation therapy demonstrating encouraging results with increased inter-fraction time.

Background: Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is an effective treatment modality for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); however, there are concerns regarding potential toxicity for centrally located tumors.

Methods: This retrospective study considered patients with SBRT for central lung NSCLC (defined as a tumor within 2 cm of any mediastinal critical structure). The institutional protocol was that patients with central tumors received SBRT less frequently than daily-generally once or twice weekly.

Construing events first-hand: Gesture viewpoints interact with speech to shape the attribution and memory of agency.

Beyond conveying objective content about objects and actions, what can co-speech iconic gestures reveal about a speaker's subjective relationship to that content? The present study explores this question by investigating how gesture viewpoints can inform a listener's construal of a speaker's agency. Forty native English speakers watched videos of an actor uttering sentences with different viewpoints-that of low agency or high agency-conveyed through both speech and gesture. Participants were asked to (1) rate the speaker's responsibility for the action described in each video (encoding task) and (2) complete a surprise memory test of the spoken sentences (recall task).

A comparison of stereotactic body radiation therapy for metastases to the sacral spine and treatment of the thoracolumbar spine.

This study compares the outcomes of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) for sacral and thoracolumbar spine metastases. This analysis considered each sacral spine SBRT treatment at a single institution and a cohort of consecutive thoracolumbar treatments. 28 patients with 35 sacral treatments and 41 patients with 49 thoracolumbar treatments were included.

Stereotactic body radiation therapy for empirically treated hypermetabolic lung lesions: a single-institutional experience identifying the Charlson score as a key prognostic factor.

Background: Though pathologic evidence for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is preferred, many patients do not receive a biopsy prior to treatment with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT). This study seeks to analyze the overall survival (OS), local control, and toxicity rates for such patients.

Methods: This retrospective review included patients empirically treated with SBRT for presumed non-metastatic NSCLC at a single institution.

A single-institutional experience with low dose stereotactic body radiation therapy for liver metastases.

Aim: This study reports a single-institutional experience treating liver metastases with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT).

Materials And Methods: 107 patients with 169 lesions were assessed to determine factors predictive for local control, radiographic response, and overall survival (OS). Machine learning techniques, univariate analysis, and the Kaplan-Meier method were utilized.

Stereotactic body radiation therapy for spinal metastases: a novel local control stratification by spinal region.

Objective: This study evaluated a large cohort of patients treated with stereotactic body radiation therapy for spinal metastases and investigated predictive factors for local control, local progression-free survival (LPFS), overall survival, and pain response between the different spinal regions.

Methods: The study was undertaken via retrospective review at a single institution. Patients with a tumor metastatic to the spine were included, while patients with benign tumors or primary spinal cord cancers were excluded.

Emblem Gestures Improve Perception and Evaluation of Non-native Speech.

Traditionally, much of the attention on the communicative effects of non-native accent has focused on the accent rather than how it functions within a more natural context. The present study explores how the bodily context of co-speech emblematic gestures affects perceptual and social evaluation of non-native accent. In two experiments in two different languages, Mandarin and Japanese, we filmed learners performing a short utterance in three different within-subjects conditions: speech alone, culturally familiar gesture, and culturally unfamiliar gesture.

Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) in recurrent, persistent or oligometastatic gynecological cancers.

Objective: SBRT is a well-tolerated technique and provides local-regional control in a variety of metastatic and recurrent tumor types. The role of SBRT in extracranial recurrent, persistent, or oligometastatic gynecological tumors is not well-studied. We therefore retrospectively analyzed a sizeable number of patients in this setting.

Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) in Pelvic Lymph Node Oligometastases.

The role of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) in achieving durable local control and palliation of pain in pelvic lymph node oligometastatic disease is not well-studied. We performed a retrospective analysis of 30 patients with 43 pelvic lymph node oligometastases from various primary cancers all but one with non-prostate primaries treated at our institution with SBRT. The median follow-up time was 21 months.

Low-dose hilar and mediastinal stereotactic body radiation therapy for non-small cell lung cancer: Analysis of outcomes in patients receiving one or multiple courses of treatment.

Background: This study reports the outcomes of a single institutional experience treating non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) involving the pulmonary hilum with low-dose stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT). The authors also present a series of repeat hilar SBRT.

Methods: Inclusion criteria required treatment with SBRT for NSCLC involving regional lymph nodes of the: (i) hilum, (ii) mediastinum, (iii) aortopulmonary window (station 5), or (iv) mainstem bronchus.

Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy for Salvage Treatment of Recurrent Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.

Purpose: This study analyzes the outcomes and toxicity of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) as salvage treatment for recurrent non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Methods And Materials: This retrospective analysis considered patients treated with thoracic SBRT and a history of prior external beam radiation therapy (EBRT), SBRT, or surgical resection for NSCLC. Follow-up included positron emission tomography and computed tomography imaging at 2- to 3-month intervals.

Stereotactic radiosurgery for the treatment of bulky spine metastases.

Introduction: Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) has shown durable local control for the treatment of metastatic diseasespinal metastases. Multilevel disease or epidural or paraspinal involvement present challenges to achieving local control, and this study aims to analyze treatment outcomes for such lesions.

Methods: Patients treated at a single institution with SRS to the spine from 2010-2018 were retrospectively reviewed.

Stereotactic body radiation therapy in the treatment of ovarian cancer.

Background: This study evaluates the outcomes and toxicity of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) in ovarian cancer.

Methods: This retrospective analysis considered all patients treated with SBRT from 2009 to 2018 with a primary ovarian tumor. Follow-up included PET-CT and CT scans at 2-3 month intervals.

Exploring the Effects of Imitating Hand Gestures and Head Nods on L1 and L2 Mandarin Tone Production.

Purpose: This study investigated the impact of metaphoric actions-head nods and hand gestures-in producing Mandarin tones for first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers.

Method: In 2 experiments, participants imitated videos of Mandarin tones produced under 3 conditions: (a) speech alone, (b) speech + head nods, and (c) speech + hand gestures. Fundamental frequency was recorded for both L1 (Experiment 1) and L2 (Experiment 2a) speakers, and the output of the L2 speakers was rated for tonal accuracy by 7 native Mandarin judges (Experiment 2b).

Symptomatic Meckel's Cave Metastasis from Castration-resistant Prostate Cancer Treated with Gamma Knife Radiosurgery.

Prostate cancer commonly spreads to the axial and appendicular skeleton, but metastases to the brain parenchyma or skull base are uncommon. In the cases that this happens, the symptoms are usually associated with disease involving the orbit. Metastasis to the Meckel's cave causing trigeminal nerve palsy is an exceedingly rare entity.

Body posture and gender impact neural processing of power-related words.

Judging others' power facilitates successful social interaction. Both gender and body posture have been shown to influence judgments of another's power. However, little is known about how these two cues interact when they conflict or how they influence early processing.

Pharmacokinetics of single and repeat doses of icatibant.

Purpose: Icatibant is a bradykinin-2 receptor antagonist approved to treat acute hereditary angioedema attacks in adults. To-date, no thorough investigation of the clinical pharmacokinetic (PK) parameters of icatibant and its primary metabolites has been reported. Here we present the PK results of two phase I clinical studies of icatibant in healthy human volunteers.

A speaker's gesture style can affect language comprehension: ERP evidence from gesture-speech integration.

In face-to-face communication, speech is typically enriched by gestures. Clearly, not all people gesture in the same way, and the present study explores whether such individual differences in gesture style are taken into account during the perception of gestures that accompany speech. Participants were presented with one speaker that gestured in a straightforward way and another that also produced self-touch movements.

Social eye gaze modulates processing of speech and co-speech gesture.

In human face-to-face communication, language comprehension is a multi-modal, situated activity. However, little is known about how we combine information from different modalities during comprehension, and how perceived communicative intentions, often signaled through visual signals, influence this process. We explored this question by simulating a multi-party communication context in which a speaker alternated her gaze between two recipients.

Effects of hand gestures on auditory learning of second-language vowel length contrasts.

Purpose: Research has shown that hand gestures affect comprehension and production of speech at semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic levels for both native language and second language (L2). This study investigated a relatively less explored question: Do hand gestures influence auditory learning of an L2 at the segmental phonology level?

Method: To examine auditory learning of phonemic vowel length contrasts in Japanese, 88 native English-speaking participants took an auditory test before and after one of the following 4 types of training in which they (a) observed an instructor in a video speaking Japanese words while she made syllabic-rhythm hand gesture, (b) produced this gesture with the instructor, (c) observed the instructor speaking those words and her moraic-rhythm hand gesture, or (d) produced the moraic-rhythm gesture with the instructor.

Results: All of the training types yielded similar auditory improvement in identifying vowel length contrast.

Exploring the role of hand gestures in learning novel phoneme contrasts and vocabulary in a second language.

Co-speech hand gestures are a type of multimodal input that has received relatively little attention in the context of second language learning. The present study explored the role that observing and producing different types of gestures plays in learning novel speech sounds and word meanings in an L2. Naïve English-speakers were taught two components of Japanese-novel phonemic vowel length contrasts and vocabulary items comprised of those contrasts-in one of four different gesture conditions: Syllable Observe, Syllable Produce, Mora Observe, and Mora Produce.