Determinants of the Lifestyle Changes during COVID-19 Pandemic in the Residents of Northern Italy.

Background: The confinement recommended during COVID-19 pandemic could affect behavior and health.

Methods: We conducted a self-reported survey in northern Italy to observe the lockdown effects on lifestyle changes and to assess their determinants. Prevalence Odds Ratio and Prevalence Risk Ratio were determined.

A compact and autoclavable system for acute extracellular neural recording and brain pressure monitoring for humans.

One of the most difficult tasks for the surgeon during the removal of low-grade gliomas is to identify as precisely as possible the borders between functional and non-functional brain tissue with the aim of obtaining the maximal possible resection which allows to the patient the longer survival. For this purpose, systems for acute extracellular recordings of single neuron and multi-unit activity are considered promising. Here we describe a system to be used with 16 microelectrodes arrays that consists of an autoclavable headstage, a built-in inserter for precise electrode positioning and a system that measures and controls the pressure exerted by the headstage on the brain with a twofold purpose: to increase recording stability and to avoid disturbance of local perfusion which would cause a degradation of the quality of the recording and, eventually, local ischemia.

Origins of 1/f2 scaling in the power spectrum of intracortical local field potential.

It has been noted that the power spectrum of intracortical local field potential (LFP) often scales as 1/f(-2). It is thought that LFP mostly represents the spiking-related neuronal activity such as synaptic currents and spikes in the vicinity of the recording electrode, but no 1/f(2) scaling is detected in the spike power. Although tissue filtering or modulation of spiking activity by UP and DOWN states could account for the observed LFP scaling, there is no consensus as to how it arises.

A multi-channel low-power system-on-chip for single-unit recording and narrowband wireless transmission of neural signal.

This paper reports a multi-channel neural recording system-on-chip (SoC) with digital data compression and wireless telemetry. The circuit consists of a 16 amplifiers, an analog time division multiplexer, an 8-bit SAR AD converter, a digital signal processor (DSP) and a wireless narrowband 400-MHz binary FSK transmitter. Even though only 16 amplifiers are present in our current die version, the whole system is designed to work with 64 channels demonstrating the feasibility of a digital processing and narrowband wireless transmission of 64 neural recording channels.

A power-efficient analog integrated circuit for amplification and detection of neural signals.

We present a neural amplifier that optimizes the trade-off between power consumption and noise performance down to the best so far reported. In the perspective of realizing a fully autonomous implantable system we also address the problem of spike detection by using a new simple algorithm and we discuss the implementation with analog integrated circuits. Implemented in 0.

A compact multichannel system for acquisition and processing of neural signals.

An increasing popularity of multichannel recordings from freely behaving animals and the need to develop a practical brain-machine interface has fuelled the development of miniature multichannel recording systems. Here we describe our prototype miniature 64-channel acquisition system that could be used for multichannel recordings in freely behaving monkeys or other large animals. The system's features include an high impedance input for neurophysiology electrodes, an integrated battery fed circuitry with a 64 low-noise multiplexed amplifiers array that permits the parallel recording of all channels, a 10-bit resolution ADC, an FPGA digital core for online processing and data transmission, a USB 2.

Experimental reconstruction of photon statistics without photon counting.

Experimental reconstructions of photon number distributions of both continuous-wave and pulsed light beams are reported. Our scheme is based on on/off avalanche photo-detection assisted by maximum-likelihood estimation and does not involve photon counting. Reconstructions of the distribution for both semiclassical and quantum states of light are reported for single-mode as well as for multi-mode beams.

Thermal photon statistics in spontaneous parametric downconversion.

We investigate photon statistics in the signal beam generated by frequency nondegenerate parametric downconversion both with and without a seed field along the idler direction. The experiments are performed on the signal generated in beta-barium borate by a traveling-wave pump pulse that is the frequency-tripled output of an amplified Nd:YLF picosecond laser. The high powers obtained allow us to measure the number of photons with a simple detection technique.