Journal articles on the topic 'Late discriminative negativity'

Fragestellung: Defizite im auditiven Kurzzeitgedächtnis werden als Ursache u. a. für Sprachentwicklungs- und Lese-Rechtschreibstörungen diskutiert. Für die ersten Lebensjahre fehlen bislang jedoch aussagefähige Untersuchungen zum Kurzzeitgedächtnis. Ziel der vorliegenden Studie war es, bei jüngeren Kindern die Dauer des auditiven sensorischen Gedächtnisses mit objektiven Methoden zu bestimmen. Methodik: In Gruppen unauffällig entwickelter, zwei- (n = 37) bzw. sechsjähriger (n = 52) Kinder wurden mit einem passiven auditiven Oddball-Paradigma und variablem Interstimulusintervall (ISI: 0.5–5 s, je nach Gruppe) ereigniskorrelierte Potenziale (EKP) abgeleitet. Ergebnisse: Bei kurzem ISI waren eine Mismatch Negativity (MMN) und eine Late Discriminative Negativity (LDN) und bei langem ISI eine P3a zu beobachten. Eine ISI-Abhängigkeit war für die MMN und LDN statistisch zu belegen. Die Änderung der EKP-Komponentenstruktur trat bei den sechsjährigen Kindern bei einem deutlich längeren ISI als bei den zweijährigen ein. Schlussfolgerungen: Die Punkte des Verschwindens von MMN und LDN bei ISI–Verlängerung sprechen dafür, dass die Dauer des auditiven sensorischen Gedächtnisses bei zweijährigen Kindern etwa 1–2 s und bei sechsjährigen 3–5 s beträgt. Allerdings scheinen an der Kurzzeitspeicherung akustischer Signale verschiedene Mechanismen mit unterschiedlicher Dauer der Speicherung beteiligt zu sein, da eine P3a auch nach Verschwinden von MMN und LDN noch ableitbar ist.

People differ in their ability to perceive second language (L2) sounds. In early bilinguals the variability in learning L2 phonemes stems from speech-specific capabilities (Díaz, Baus, Escera, Costa & Sebastián-Gallés, 2008). The present study addresses whether speech-specific capabilities similarly explain variability in late bilinguals. Event-related potentials were recorded (using a design similar to Díaz et al., 2008) in two groups of late Dutch–English bilinguals who were good or poor in overtly discriminating the L2 English vowels /ε-æ/. The mismatch negativity, an index of discrimination sensitivity, was similar between the groups in conditions involving pure tones (of different length, frequency, and presentation order) but was attenuated in poor L2 perceivers for native, unknown, and L2 phonemes. These results suggest that variability in L2 phonemic learning originates from speech-specific capabilities and imply a continuity of L2 phonemic learning mechanisms throughout the lifespan.

Abstract Abstract 4333 Adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) differs from pediatric ALL by higher frequency of unfavorable biological features including cytogenetics (often t(9;22), rare t(12;21)), slower molecular response (MRD negativity is lower at day near +30 in adults - 47% vs 80%; Bruggemmann, Blood, 2006; Borowitz, Blood, 2010), more toxicity followed by less complience, all this translating in less efficacy. Another very important, early and simple predictor of antileukamia effect in ALL is prednisolone (PRD) sensitivity, that is to say tumor clearance within one week of prephase. It's a well documented fact in childhood ALL, but scarcely characterized in adults. 35% of adults with ALL are considered to be resistant to PRDN compaired to 10% children after evaluation of PB blast count on day +8 (Annino, Blood, 2002; Shrappe, Leukemia 2002), but few data exists about bone marrow blasts clearance. We initiated a prospective multicenter trial for Ph-negative ALL under the age of 55 based on: 1.evaluation of blast clearance in b/m after 7 days of PRD and its substitution by dexamethazone (DEXA) if blast count was 25% and more. 2. “no interruptions” protocol with 8 weeks induction and 5 consolidation phases followed by 2-years maintenance. 3. prolonged L-asparaginase application at 10.000 IU weekly in induction, once in two weeks in consolidations, twice a month in maintenance (total proposed dose 560.000 IU). The study started in April, 2009. 20 participating centers enrolled 77 patients (median age 27y (16-55), 44f, 33m, 61,5%=B-lin, 38,6%=T-lin; 41% with normal karyotype (NK)). 30,7% of patients were in the standrad risk (SR) group (WBC <30 for B-Lin, <100 for T-Lin, EGIL BII-III, T-III; LDH < 2N, No late CR, t(4;11)-), 69,3% - in the high risk (HR) group (WBC >30 for B-Lin, >100 for T-Lin, EGIL BI, T-I-II-IV; LDH > 2N, No late CR, t(4;11)+). The analysis was performed in June, 2010, and comprised 70 pts. The data on the day +8 b/m count was reported in 67 pts: 70% of them had b/m blasts 25% and more, thus were considered as non-responders to PRD (60 mg/m2) and were switched to DEXA (10 mg/m2). It's worth to note that the proportion of non-responders to PRD was almost equal in the SR and HR groups: 12 of 20 (60%) in SR and 35 of 47 (74,5%). CR rate was high in both risk groups (SR=95,5%; HR=89,4%) and immunological subsets (B=91,4%;T=91,6%). For the whole group of analysed patients (n=70) there were 5 induction deaths (7,1%) and 1 resistant leukemia (1,4%). Median of days without treatment during induction period was 8 days (0-56). Death in remission was reported in 2 of 64 CR pts (3,1%). Relapses occurred in 4/64 (4,2%). Within the short period of follow-up (14 mo) the probability of OS for 70 patients constituted 78,8%, DFS – 76,7%, continuous CR – 81,2%. The difference in DFS between PRD responders and non-responders was at borderline: 63,3% vs 93,8% (p=0,1), and statistically proved in pts with NK vs all other abnormalities: 100% vs 72% (p=0,03). Age, WBC, immunophenotype, risk group, time without treatment did not influence survival. We concluded that in adult Ph-negative ALL the proportion of non-responders to PRD is very high (70%), thus providing much poorer results than in children; sensitivity to PRD may still be used as very simple discriminative marker of unfavorable prognosis. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Our brains rapidly respond to human faces and can differentiate between many identities, retrieving rich semantic emotional-knowledge information. Studies provide a mixed picture of how such information affects event-related potentials (ERPs). We systematically examined the effect of feature-based attention on ERP modulations to briefly presented faces of individuals associated with a crime. The tasks required participants ( N = 40 adults) to discriminate the orientation of lines overlaid onto the face, the age of the face, or emotional information associated with the face. Negative faces amplified the N170 ERP component during all tasks, whereas the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) components were increased only when the emotional information was attended to. These findings suggest that during early configural analyses (N170), evaluative information potentiates face processing regardless of feature-based attention. During intermediate, only partially resource-dependent, processing stages (EPN) and late stages of elaborate stimulus processing (LPP), attention to the acquired emotional information is necessary for amplified processing of negatively evaluated faces.

This study examined behavioral and neurophysiological indices of discrimination of an English vowel contrast [ɪ–ɛ] by early and late bilingual Spanish–English speakers, compared to monolingual English speakers. Electrophysiological measures (Mismatched Negativity – MMN) and behavioral measures (AX discrimination and forced-choice identification) were employed to examine perception of a nine-step vowel continuum, re-synthesized from natural tokens. Results revealed that (i) both monolingual and early bilinguals showed similar behavioral perception while late bilinguals performed more poorly on all behavioral tasks; and (ii) monolinguals showed robust evidence of discrimination (MMN) at a pre-attentive level that was significantly larger than found for either early or late bilinguals. These findings suggested that early input of English vowels to bilinguals did not necessarily lead to robust, automatic processing, as measured at a more attention-independent neural level; but earlier experience with a second language allowed for native-like speech perception measured with behavioral tasks.

We examine whether early acquisition of a second language (L2) leads to native-like neural processing of phonemic contrasts that are absent in the L1. Four groups (adult and child monolingual speakers of English; adult and child early bilingual speakers of English and Spanish, exposed to both languages before 5 years of age) participated in a study comparing the English /ɪ/ - /ε/ contrast. Neural measures of automatic change detection (Mismatch Negativity, MMN) and attention (Processing Negativity, PN and Late Negativity, LN) were measured by varying whether participants tracked the stimulus stream or not. We observed no effect of bilingualism on the MMN, but adult bilinguals differed significantly from adult monolinguals on neural indices of attention. The child bilinguals were indistinguishable from their monolingual peers. This suggest that learning a L2 before five years of age leads to native-like phoneme discrimination, but bilinguals develop increased attentional sensitivity to speech sounds.

Abstract In this study, we examine the association between perceived age discrimination at the workplace and job stress, with depressive symptoms among currently working late-middle-aged adults. In particular, we investigate whether the association between these work-related factors and depression varies by the strength of their social networks. We use data from the Panel on Ageing and Transitions in Health Survey (PATHS) a national study of 1654 Singaporean citizens and permanent residents aged 50 to 59 years, conducted in 2016-2017. We account for age and other sociodemographic characteristics, measures of economic status, occupation, early retirement intentions, personality traits, as well as multiple physical health measures. Our findings indicate that age discrimination at work and job stress are both positively associated with higher depressive symptom scores. The relationship between age discrimination and depressive symptoms however varies by social networks, with age discrimination negatively associated with depressive symptom scores among those with larger friends-based social networks. Our findings indicate that while psychological wellbeing of late middle-aged workers is adversely affected by age discrimination and job stress, these workers benefit from wider and deeper social connections with friends. Our results provide empirical support to previous research that suggests that friends-based social networks yield distinct benefits in terms of subjective well-being and increased self-worth.

Early blind participants outperform controls on several spatially oriented perceptual tasks such as sound localization and tactile orientation discrimination. Previous studies have suggested that the recruitment of occipital cortex in the blind is responsible for this improvement. For example, electroencephalographic studies showed an enlarged posterior negativity for the blind in these tasks compared to controls. In our study, the question was raised whether the early blind are also better at tasks in which the duration of auditory and tactile stimuli must be discriminated. The answer was affirmative. Our electroencephalographic data revealed an enlarged posterior negativity for the blind relative to controls. Source analyses showed comparable solutions in the case of auditory and tactile targets for the blind. These findings support the interpretation of these negativities in terms of a supramodal rather than a modality-specific process, although confirmation with more spatially sensitive methods seems necessary. We additionally examined whether the early blind are less affected by irrelevant tactile or auditory exogenous cues preceding auditory or tactile targets than controls. No differences in alerting and orienting effects of these cues were found between the blind and the controls. Together, our results support the view that major differences between early blind participants and sighted controls on auditory and tactile duration discrimination tasks relate to a late and likely supramodal process that takes place in occipital areas.

Abstract The processing of fearful facial expressions is prioritized by the human brain. This priority is maintained across various information processing stages as evident in early, intermediate and late components of event-related potentials (ERPs). However, emotional modulations are inconsistently reported for these different processing stages. In this pre-registered study, we investigated how feature-based attention differentially affects ERPs to fearful and neutral faces in 40 participants. The tasks required the participants to discriminate either the orientation of lines overlaid onto the face, the sex of the face or the face’s emotional expression, increasing attention to emotion-related features. We found main effects of emotion for the N170, early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP). While N170 emotional modulations were task-independent, interactions of emotion and task were observed for the EPN and LPP. While EPN emotion effects were found in the sex and emotion tasks, the LPP emotion effect was mainly driven by the emotion task. This study shows that early responses to fearful faces are task-independent (N170) and likely based on low-level and configural information while during later processing stages, attention to the face (EPN) or—more specifically—to the face’s emotional expression (LPP) is crucial for reliable amplified processing of emotional faces.

This paper reviews our recent studies on the effects of aging on human information processing. In these studies the event-related potentials of the brain (ERPs) recorded in visual discrimination tasks were compared in younger and older groups of subjects in four experiments. We obtained a slight age-related delay of the NA component of the ERP. This component is a correlate of elementary pattern-identification processes. Obvious latency differences appeared on the anterior positivity, selection negativity, and N2b components in tasks where the target stimuli were defined by two stimulus characteristics. These components are correlates of attentional processes, i.e., the results support the view emphasizing age-related decline of the attentional processes. In the elderly the late positivity was less sensitive to stimulus probability, and in the older groups this component was more evenly distributed over the scalp. These results are considered as an indication that the structure of stimulus sequences was less efficiently represented in the older subjects.

Although antiretroviral treatment (ART) access has been universal in recent years, few studies have examined if this policy contributes to the mental health of the patients. This study assessed depression and its relations with health-related quality of life (HRQOL), which is defined as the status of general well-being, physical, emotional, and psychological, among HIV patients. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 482 patients at five outpatient clinics. Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and EuroQol-5 dimensions-5 levels (EQ-5D-5L) were used to assess the severity of depression and HRQOL. About one-fifth of patients reported symptoms of depression. According to the result of a multivariate logistic regression model, patients who had a lower number of CD4 cells at the start of ART, who received ART in the clinic without HIV counseling and testing (HCT) services, who had a physical health problem, and who experienced discrimination were more likely to have depression. Depression was associated with significantly decreased HRQOL. Depression is prevalent and significantly negatively associated with HRQOL of HIV/AIDS patients. We recommend screening for depression and intervening in the lives of depressed individuals with respect to those who start ART late, and we also recommend community-based behavioral change campaigns to reduce HIV discrimination.

In contrast to native language acquisition, adult second-language (L2) acquisition occurs under highly variable learning conditions. Although most adults acquire their L2 at least partially through explicit instruction, as in a classroom setting, many others acquire their L2 primarily through implicit exposure, as is typical of an immersion environment. Whether these differences in acquisition environment play a role in determining the neural mechanisms that are ultimately recruited to process L2 grammar has not been well characterized. This study investigated this issue by comparing the ERP response to novel L2 syntactic rules acquired under conditions of implicit exposure and explicit instruction, using a novel laboratory language-learning paradigm. Native speakers tested on these stimuli showed a biphasic response to syntactic violations, consisting of an earlier negativity followed by a later P600 effect. After merely an hour of training, both implicitly and explicitly trained learners who were capable of detecting grammatical violations also elicited P600 effects. In contrast, learners who were unable to discriminate between grammatically correct and incorrect sentences did not show significant P600 effects. The magnitude of the P600 effect was found to correlate with learners' behavioral proficiency. Behavioral measures revealed that successful learners from both the implicit and explicit groups gained explicit, verbalizable knowledge about the L2 grammar rules. Taken together, these results indicate that late, controlled mechanisms indexed by the P600 play a crucial role in processing a late-learned L2 grammar, regardless of training condition. These findings underscore the remarkable plasticity of later, attention-dependent processes and their importance in lifelong learning.

Behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures were used to elucidate the neural mechanisms of involuntary engagement of attention by novelty and change in the acoustic environment. The behavioral measures consisted of the reaction time (RT) and performance accuracy (hit rate) in a forced-choice visual RT task where subjects were to discriminate between odd and even numbers. Each visual stimulus was preceded by an irrelevant auditory stimulus, which was randomly either a “standard” tone (80%), a slightly, higher “deviant” tone (10%), or a natural, “novel” sound (10%). Novel sounds prolonged the RT to successive visual stimuli by 17 msec as compared with the RT to visual stimuli that followed standard tones. Deviant tones, in turn, decreased the hit rate but did not significantly affect the RT. In the ERPs to deviant tones, the mismatch negativity (MMN), peaking at 150 msec, and a second negativity, peaking at 400 msec, could be observed. Novel sounds elicited an enhanced N1, with a probable overlap by the MMN, and a large positive P3a response with two different subcomponents: an early centrally dominant P3a, peaking at 230 msec, and a late P3a, peaking at 315 msec with a right-frontal scalp maximum. The present results suggest the involvement of two different neural mechanisms in triggering involuntary attention to acoustic novelty and change: a transient-detector mechanism activated by novel sounds and reflected in the N1 and a stimulus-change detector mechanism activated by deviant tones and novel sounds and reflected in the MMN. The observed differential distracting effects by slightly deviant tones and widely deviant novel sounds support the notion of two separate mechanisms of involuntary attention.

Faces showing expressions of happiness or anger were presented together with sentences that described happiness-inducing or anger-inducing situations. Two main variables were manipulated: (i) congruency between contexts and expressions (congruent/incongruent) and (ii) the task assigned to the participant, discriminating the emotion shown by the target face (emotion task) or judging whether the expression shown by the face was congruent or not with the context (congruency task). Behavioral and electrophysiological results (event-related potentials (ERP)) showed that processing facial expressions was jointly influenced by congruency and task demands. ERP results revealed task effects at frontal sites, with larger positive amplitudes between 250–450 ms in the congruency task, reflecting the higher cognitive effort required by this task. Effects of congruency appeared at latencies and locations corresponding to the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) components that have previously been found to be sensitive to emotion and affective congruency. The magnitude and spatial distribution of the congruency effects varied depending on the task and the target expression. These results are discussed in terms of the modulatory role of context on facial expression processing and the different mechanisms underlying the processing of expressions of positive and negative emotions.

Objectives. To explore the differences of immune disorders in peripheral blood between patients with early-onset Parkinson’s disease (EOPD) and late-onset Parkinson’s disease (LOPD). Methods. We retrospectively reviewed medical records of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and healthy controls between June 2002 and July 2017. At last, we included 117 PD patients who were divided into EOPD and LOPD according to whether onset age of PD was after 50 and 99 controls divided into E-Control (match for EOPD) and L-Control (match for LOPD) according to whether their age was after 53 which was onset age plus median of disease duration. We compared the ratios of cells between multiple groups and performed the multinominal logistic regression analysis to explore the relationship between ratios and subtypes of PD. We also carried out the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis to estimate the diagnostic value of the variable. Results. Lymphocyte-red blood cell ratio (LRR) was lower in LOPD compared with that in EOPD or L-Control. LRR was also negatively associated with LOPD (OR: 0.623; 95% CI: 0.397–0.980; P=0.040). The ROC curve analysis showed the optimal cutoff value of 4.53 (×10−4) of LRR for discrimination of LOPD versus L-Control (sensitivity: 0.596, specificity: 0.764). The area under curve (AUC) was 0.721. As for LOPD versus EOPD, the optimal threshold of LRR was 4.10 (×10−4) (sensitivity: 0.516, specificity: 0.745). AUC was 0.641. Conclusions. Peripheral immune disorders might play an important part in the pathological progression of LOPD. Also, LRR has potential diagnostic value.

Many changes have occurred in Higher Education Institutions (HEI), which contribute to high levels of work stress among academic staff members and that impact on job satisfaction, job involvement and job engagement. Owing to these changes, academics attached to tertiary institutions are being confronted with specific career obstacles that impact negatively on their job satisfaction and productivity. Our purpose in this study was to determine, from the academic's point of view, the role that HEIs can play to address these obstacles. In terms of positive psychology, persons should not only become aware of their problems, but also come up with alternative solutions on how to address them. A sample of 93 academics from one university, representing the early, middle, and late career stages was selected. The data were obtained by means of the Delphi technique in order to enable respondents to reveal fully what they were experiencing. Respondents were requested to suggest specific actions that could be taken to address the career obstacles academics are confronted with. The most important solutions were related to better remuneration, more effective management of role overload, more effective performance management, more training and development opportunities, more support regarding individual career management, more effective general management, more support regarding research outputs, elimination of discrimination practices, transformation initiatives, encouraging of entrepreneurship, improvement of equipment and working conditions, creation of job security, and promotion of networking.

Background: Penile echo-color Doppler ultrasound (PCDU) is the gold standard for the diagnosis of arterial erectile dysfunction (ED). Its reliability in patients with anxiety was questioned, due to false-positive results. Aim: To assess the penile hemodynamic response to intracavernous injection (ICI) of alprostadil in patients with anxiety-related ED. Methods: Patients with non-organic ED and a 5-item International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF-5) score ranging between 5 and 7 were enrolled. They were asked to compile the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) questionnaire to assess the degree of anxiety and were divided according to the GAD-7 score in Group 1 with minimal level of anxiety (n = 20), Group 2 with mild anxiety (n = 20), Group 3 with moderate anxiety (n = 20), and Group 4 with severe anxiety (n = 20). Peak systolic velocity (PSV) and the end-diastolic velocity (EDV) were sampled in all patients, through PCDU in the flaccid state, and 5, 10, 15, and 20 min after ICI of alprostadil at the standard dose of 10 μg. Results: In penile flaccidity, the patients showed a mean PSV of 8.0 ± 4.0 cm/s. The degree of anxiety was found to significantly influence both PSV and EDV at all assessed time-points. Particularly, it was negatively associated with the PSV at time 5 (r = −0.9, p < 0.01), 10 (r = −0.9, p < 0.01), 15 (r = −0.9, p < 0.01), and 20 (r = −0.7, p < 0.01) minutes, and positively with the EDV at time 5 (r = 0.7, p < 0.01), 10 (r = 0.6, p < 0.01), 15 (r = 0.5, p < 0.01), and 20 (r = 0.3, p < 0.01) minutes. Although all patients showed a mean dynamic PSV > 25 cm/s (which excluded an arterial ED according to the current guidelines), a peculiar hemodynamic pattern was found in patients with severe anxiety. In these patients, normal PSV values were reached only after 20 min from ICI, suggesting a “late-responder” profile. Conclusion: If further studies confirm the existence of a distinct hemodynamic profile in patients with severe anxiety, sampling the PSV and the EDV values could be proposed, for detecting patients with severe anxiety-related ED. Dynamic PCDU could be considered an accurate diagnostic test in patients with non-organic ED, since zero false-positive results were found in the present study. PSV in the flaccid state is not able to discriminate between arterial- or non-organic ED.

Abstract Prolonged thrombocytopenia is one of late complications in patients underwent allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT), but its pathogenic process is unclear in the majority of cases. In this study, mechanisms for thrombocytopenia in allo-HSCT recipients were examined using a series of parameters useful for discriminating immune thrombocytopenia from bone marrow failure. Forty-one patients who underwent allo-HSCT and survived for >100 days without recurrence were enrolled. Of these, 20 (49%) had prolonged thrombocytopenia (<100 x 109/L for ≥3 months). As controls, 81 with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), 12 with aplastic anemia (AA), 41 healthy donors were used. Circulating B cells producing anti-GPIIb/IIIa antibodies, an index for plasma glycocalicin normalized for the individual platelet count (GCI) and plasma thrombopoietin (TPO) were measured as indices of anti-platelet autoantibody response, platelet turnover and platelet production, respectively. A period between HSCT and blood examination was shorter in allo-HSCT with thrombocytopenia than in those without (P = 0.02), but other clinical characteristics, including age, underlying disease, stem cell source, GVHD prophylaxis regimen, and the presence or absence of chronic GVHD, were not different. Anti-GPIIb/IIIa antibody-producing B cells in allo-HSCT were significantly more frequent than those in AA (P = 0.002) and healthy controls (P < 0.001), but were less frequent than those in ITP (P = 0.002). GCI in allo-HSCT was higher than that in healthy controls (P = 0.01), but was lower than GCI in ITP (P < 0.001). Allo-HSCT recipients had a higher TPO level compared with ITP (P = 0.01) and healthy controls (P = 0.02), but had a lower level compared with AA (P = 0.004). In allo-HSCT, anti-GPIIb/IIIa antibody-producing B cell frequency, TPO and GCI were greater in patients with thrombocytopenia than those without (P = 0.01, < 0.001 and < 0.001, respectively). In addition, there were a negative correlation between platelet count and GCI (r = 0.66, P < 0.001), or TPO (r = 0.52, P < 0.001). Step-wise multiple regression analysis revealed that GCI and TPO were factors independently associated with platelet count in allo-HSCT. ITP and AA patients and healthy controls were classified based on levels of GCI and TPO: 72% of 32 ITP showed GCIhigh/TPOlow; 67% of 9 AA showed GCIlow/TPOhigh; and all 17 healthy controls showed GCIlow/TPOlow. Eighteen allo-HSCT recipients with thrombocytopenia represented heterogeneous distribution: 3 with GCIhigh/TPOlow (ITP-like), 6 with GCIlow/TPOhigh (AA-like), 6 with GCIhigh/TPOhigh (mixed features) and 3 with GCIlow/TPOlow. A therapeutic response to immunosuppressive treatment was observed in 2 of 2 GCIhigh/TPOlow, one of 4 GCIlow/TPOhigh, 2 of 6 GCIhigh/TPOhigh, and none of one GCIlow/TPOlow. In an allo-HSCT recipient with GCIhigh/TPOlow, platelet count responded to high-dose prednisolone and anti-GPIIb/IIIa antibody-producing B cells and GCI were negatively correlated with platelet count during the course, compatible with immune thrombocytopenia. In summary, mechanisms for prolonged thrombocytopenia after allo-HSCT are heterogeneous, but mainly caused by impaired platelet production, autoantibody-mediated platelet destruction, or a combination of both. GCI and TPO are useful markers for evaluating a pathogenic process for thrombocytopenia and predicting a therapeutic response to immunosuppressive therapies in allo-HSCT recipients.

In the present study, we examine the interactive effect of vowels on Mandarin fricative sibilants using a passive oddball paradigm to determine whether the HEIGHT features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence preceding consonants with unspecified features. The stimuli are two pairs of Mandarin words ([sa] ∼ [ʂa] and [su] ∼ [ʂu]) contrasting in vowel HEIGHT ([LOW] vs. [HIGH]). Each word in the same pair was presented both as standard and deviant, resulting in four conditions (/standard/[deviant]: /sa/[ʂa] ∼ /ʂa/[sa] and /su/[ʂu] ∼ /ʂu/[su]). In line with the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon (FUL) model, asymmetric patterns of processing were found in the [su] ∼ [ʂu] word pair where both the MMN (mismatch negativity) and LDN (late discriminative negativity) components were more negative in /su/[ʂu] (mismatch) than in /ʂu/[su] (no mismatch), suggesting the spreading of the feature [HIGH] from the vowel [u] to [ʂ] on the surface. In the [sa] ∼ [ʂa] pair, however, symmetric negativities (for both MMN and LDN) were observed as there is no conflict between the surface feature [LOW] from [a] to [ʂ] and the underlying specified feature [LOW] of [s]. These results confirm that not all features are fully specified in the mental lexicon: features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence surrounding unspecified segments.

Many studies have observed modulation of the amplitude of the neural index mismatch negativity (MMN) related to which member of a phoneme contrast [phoneme A, phoneme B] serves as the frequent (standard) and which serves as the infrequent (deviant) stimulus (i.e., AAAB vs. BBBA) in an oddball paradigm. Explanations for this amplitude modulation range from acoustic to linguistic factors. We tested whether exchanging the role of the mid vowel /ε/ vs. high vowel /ɪ/ of English modulated MMN amplitude and whether the pattern of modulation was compatible with an underspecification account, in which the underspecified height values are [−high] and [−low]. MMN was larger for /ε/ as the deviant, but only when compared across conditions to itself as the standard. For the within-condition comparison, MMN was larger to /ɪ/ deviant minus /ε/ standard than to the reverse. A condition order effect was also observed. MMN amplitude was smaller to the deviant stimulus if it had previously served as the standard. In addition, the amplitudes of late discriminative negativity (LDN) showed similar asymmetry. LDN was larger for deviant /ε/ than deviant /ɪ/ when compared to themselves as the standard. These findings were compatible with an underspecification account, but also with other accounts, such as the Natural Referent Vowel model and a prototype model; we also suggest that non-linguistic factors need to be carefully considered as additional sources of speech processing asymmetries.

Abstract Aims To establish a cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR)-based prediction model for complete systolic left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) recovery for the distinction of ‘arrhythmia-induced’ from ‘arrhythmia-mediated’ cardiomyopathy in patients with atrial tachyarrhythmias. Methods and results Two hundred and fifty-three tachyarrhythmia patients referred for catheter ablation were enrolled and underwent CMR baseline imaging; patients with a reduced LVEF &lt;50% at baseline and CMR imaging at 3-month follow-up after successful rhythm restoration constituted the final study population (n = 134). CMR at baseline consisted of standard functional cine imaging, determination of extracellular volume, and late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) imaging; follow-up CMR comprised standard functional cine imaging. Left ventricular end-diastolic volume index (LVEDVI) measurements were categorized in ‘opposite’, ‘normal’, and ‘enlarged’. At follow-up, 80% (107/134) presented with complete LVEF recovery, while in 20% (27/134) persistent LVEF impairment was observed. LVEDVI and LGE were independent predictors of complete LVEF recovery with LGE adding significant incremental value on logistic regression modelling. Model-derived probabilities for complete LVEF recovery in LVEDVI categories of opposite, normal, and enlarged for LGE negativity and positivity were 94%, 85%, and 29% and 77%, 55%, and 8%, respectively. Conclusion CMR-derived assessment of LVEDVI category and LGE allowed for identification of arrhythmia-induced cardiomyopathy with acceptable discriminative performance. Probabilities for complete LVEF recovery for the combination of opposite LVEDVI/LGE negativity and enlarged LVEDVI/LGE positivity were 94% and 8%, respectively. The CMR-based prediction model of complete LVEF recovery can be used to perform upfront stratification in atrial tachyarrhythmia-related LVEF impairment.

Aims: This study aimed to investigate phoneme perception in patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) by using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. These ERP components might contribute to the diagnostic process of PPA and its clinical variants (NFV: nonfluent variant, SV: semantic variant, LV: logopenic variant) and reveal insights about phoneme perception processes in these patients.Method: Phoneme discrimination and categorization processes were investigated by the mismatch negativity (MMN) and P300 in eight persons with early- and late-stage PPA (3 NFV, 2 LV, 2 SV, and 1 PPA-NOS; not otherwise specified) and 30 age-matched healthy adults. The mean amplitude, the onset latency, and the topographic distribution of both components in each patient were compared to the results of the control group.Results: The MMN was absent or the onset latency of the MMN was delayed in the patients with the NFV, LV, and PPA-NOS in comparison to the control group. In contrast, no differences in mean amplitudes and onset latencies of the MMN were found between the patients with the SV and the control group. Concerning the P300, variable results were found in the patients with the NFV, SV, and PPA-NOS, but the P300 of both patients with the LV was delayed and prolonged with increased mean amplitude in comparison to the control group.Conclusion: In this preliminary study, phoneme discrimination deficits were found in the patients with the NFV and LV, and variable deficits in phoneme categorization processes were found in all patients with PPA. In clinical practice, the MMN might be valuable to differentiate the SV from the NFV and the LV and the P300 to differentiate the LV from the NFV and the SV. Further research in larger and independent patient groups is required to investigate the applicability of these components in the diagnostic process and to determine the nature of these speech perception deficits in the clinical variants of PPA.

Abstract Background Hypertension often presents with microvascular rarefaction (MVR), which is closely associated with impaired angiogenesis. Early detection of MVR is essential for systemic assessment in patient with hypertension. We aimed to determine the systemic MVR through both optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) and intravital capillaroscopy, and to investigate their respective efficacies and related mechanisms associated with late endothelial progenitor cells (LEPCs) dysfunction. Methods Seventy-one hypertensive and sixty-nine age-match normotensive subjects were included in this study. All subjects received intravital capillaroscopy for skin capillary density (SCD) and OCTA for retinal capillary density (RCD) and non-perfused areas (R-NPA). Subsequently, correlation of LEPCs activities and microvascular rarefaction were examined. Results Compared with normotensive subjects, hypertensive patients had significantly lower RCD [(52.9 ± 2.9)% vs. (57.8 ± 1.6)%, P < 0.01] and higher R-NPA [(0.12 ± 0.07) mm2 vs. (0.053 ± 0.020) mm2, P < 0.01]. SCD correlated positively with RCD but negatively with R-NPA [(RCD: OR = 0.40, 95% CI 0.25–0.67, P < 0.01); (R-NPA: OR = 0.39, 95% CI − 0.0029 to 0.0011, P < 0.01)]. The discriminative powers of RCD performed best (AUC 0.79 versus SCD AUC 0.59, P < 0.001) followed by R-NPA (AUC 0.73 versus SCD AUC 0.59, P < 0.001) for systolic blood pressure. Similar pattern is also found for diastolic blood pressure (RCD AUC 0.80 versus SCD AUC 0.54, P < 0.001; R-NPA AUC 0.77 versus SCD AUC 0.54, P < 0.001). Furthermore, LEPCs tube formation was impaired in hypertensive patients (36.8 ± 2.3 vs. 28 ± 3.7, P < 0.01). After multivariate adjustments, positive correlation existed between RCD or R-NPA with LEPCs tube formation (RCD: β = 0.64, 95% CI 0.34–0.91, P < 0.01; R-NPA: β = − 24.67, 95% CI − 43.14 to − 4.63, P < 0.05) but not with SCD (β = 0.082, 95% CI 0.01–0.18, P = 0.085). Conclusion Compared to intravital capillaroscopy, OCTA is a more precise technique for early detection of hypertensive microvascular rarefaction, which is associated with the fall in LEPC-mediated angiogenesis. Both of OCTA and LEPCs function can help identify hypertension-related capillary abnormality. Trail Registration The trial is a substudy of EXCAVATION-CHN1, registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02817204 (June 26, 2016).

Abstract Background In Congo-Brazzaville, there is a lake of mental healthcare providers and facilities specialized in psychiatric care: only two psychiatrists and one psychiatric department around the country. Poor appreciation of their role and work environment can negatively impact the esteem of psychiatric staff and lead to stigma and discrimination towards patients. Aims The study aimed to assess the perception of the staff of the only psychiatric service in Congo. Material and Methods We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive, prospective survey; conducted among the psychiatric staff of the Brazzaville University Hospital in September 2019. An anonymous individual questionnaire was administered to collect: (i) socio-professional data, (ii) perceptions (assignment, role, workload and working conditions) and (iv) identify the main problems of the service. Averages and frequencies were calculated on Epi info 7.2.2.6. Results Thirty out of 42 staff had responded (71.4%), 16 were male and at their first psychiatric assignment (28/30), with an average age of 44,7±7 and seniority of 8,4 ±8,3 years. Among them: one psychiatrist, two psychologists, and 19 nurses. Their assignment in psychiatry was well perceived in 93.3% (27/30), as well as their role (the importance of psychiatric care and psychiatry). Working conditions were perceived as poor: precarious hygiene (93.3%), cohabitation with dangerous patients (82.1%), heavy workload due to lack of staff (100%). Of their professional future, 23.3% (7/30) were considering leaving. Conclusions Almost all psychiatric staff had a good perception of their role and psychiatry, but not of the working conditions. Local measures to improve working conditions must be carried out to improve the attractiveness of psychiatry and the quality of care. Key messages Staff perceived heavy workload due to lack of staff and poor working conditions. Lake of workforce will be deeply acute in psychiatry.

Abstract Background Although the number of existing cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China has been decreasing since late February 2020, the number of confirmed cases abroad is surging. Improving public knowledge of COVID-19 is critical to controlling the pandemic. This study aimed to determine China’s public knowledge of COVID-19 and the attitudes towards control measures. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted over 48 h from 22:30 29 February 2020 to 22:30 2 March 2020 based on a self-administered web-based questionnaire. The survey was conducted on the WeChat network. Exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling was applied. The questionnaire was voluntarily completed by WeChat users. The questionnaire covered basic demographic information, public knowledge of the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of COVID-19, psychological state, and attitudes towards the overall control measures. The primary outcome was the China’s public knowledge of COVID-19 and the attitudes towards control measures and secondary outcome was the psychological state of the public during this pandemic. Results The study included 10,905 participants and 10,399 valid questionnaires were included for analysis. Participants with tertiary education, younger participants and healthcare workers had better overall knowledge than other participants (all P < 0.05). Approximately 91.9% of the participants believed in person-to-person transmission and 39.1% believed in animal-to-person transmission. No significant correlation between anxiety and the number of regional existing confirmed cases was found, while participants in Hubei were more anxious than those in other regions. In general, 74.1% of the participants acknowledged the effectiveness of the overall control measures, and the percentage of participants with agreement with the overall control measures was negatively correlated with the number of regional existing confirmed cases (r = − 0.492, P = 0.007). Conclusions In conclusion, the survey revealed that the Chinese public had overall good knowledge of COVID-19 except for those indeterminate knowledges. With dynamic changes in the global pandemic situation and more research, further studies should be conducted to explore changes in public knowledge and attitudes towards COVID-19 in the future. The media could be used in a strict and regular manner to publicize knowledge of such pandemics to halt their spread.

IntroductionIn 2017, both the disability community and popular culture are using the term “inspiration porn” to describe one form of discrimination against people with disability. ABC’s Speechless, “a sitcom about a family with a son who has a disability, (has) tackled why it’s often offensive to call people with disabilities ‘inspirational’” (Wanshel). The reasons why inspiration porn is considered to be discriminatory have been widely articulated online by people with disability. Amongst them is Carly Findlay, a disabled writer, speaker, and appearance activist, who has written that:(inspiration porn) shows non-disabled people doing good deeds for disabled people—feeding them chips at McDonald’s—’serving us all lessons in kindness’: or taking them to the high school dance. These stories usually always go viral. The person with disability probably never gave their permission for the photo or story to be used in a meme or told to the media (Findlay).The definition and dynamics of inspiration porn as illustrated in this quote will be expanded upon in this paper’s critical analysis of captions. Here, the term captions is used to describe both writing found on memes and on Facebook posts (created by a “poster”), and the comments written below these posts (created by “commenters”). Facebook threads underneath posts about people with disability both “reflect and create” (Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare 202) current societal attitudes towards disability. That is, such threads not only illustrate negative societal attitudes towards disability, but can also perpetuate these attitudes by increasing people’s exposure to them. This paper will focus on a specific case study of inspiration porn on Facebook—the crowning of a student with autism as prom king—and consider both the conflict of whether people’s kind words are patronising use of language, as well as the concerns of over-disclosure used in this thread.What Is Inspiration Porn?The genesis of the term inspiration porn is commonly attributed to the late Stella Young, a disabled woman who was an advocate for people with disability. However, the term has been traced to a blog post written in February 2012 (bear). Anecdotal evidence from Lisa Harris, a disability consultant and advocate with over 20 years’ disability education experience, suggests that the term was blogged about as far back as 2006 on Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s Webpage Disability and Representation (Harris). However, it was Young who popularised the term with her 2012 article We’re Not Here for Your Inspiration and 2014 TED Talk I’m Not Your Inspiration, Thank You Very Much. Young defined inspiration porn as “an image of a person with a disability, often a kid, doing something completely ordinary—like playing, or talking, or running, or drawing a picture, or hitting a tennis ball—carrying a caption like ‘your excuse is invalid’ or ‘before you quit, try’”.It is worth noting that the use of the word porn has been considered controversial in this context. Yet it can be argued that the perception of the person with disability having achieved something great gives the person without disability a hit of positive “inspired” emotion. In this way, such inspiration could be termed as porn as it serves the purpose of fulfilling the “pornographic” self-gratification of people without disability.The term inspiration porn has historically been used in disability studies in two ways. Firstly, it has been used to describe the “ableist gaze” (Davis), which is when a person with disability is ‘seen’ through the eyes of someone without disability. Indeed, just as the “male gaze” (Mulvey) is implicit in sexualised porn, so too the “ableist gaze” is implicit in inspiration porn. Secondly, it has been used to highlight the lack of power experienced by people with disability in cultural representation (Barnes, Mercer, and Shakespeare 201). This study is a good example of the latter—it is not uncommon for people with disability to be refuted when they speak out against the inherent discrimination found within captions of (intended) kindness on Facebook threads.Inspiration porn is also a form of “objectification” (Perry) of people with disability, and is based on stereotypes (Haller and Zhang 22) about disability held by people without disability. According to Dr. Paul Sinclair, a disability scholar with 15 years’ experience in disability education, objectification and stereotyping are essential factors to understanding inspiration porn as discrimination:when a person with disability engages in their daily life, it is possible that a person without disability sees them as inspirational by superimposing his/her stereotypical perception of, or understanding about, people with disability onto the identity of the person, as a human being.Such objectification and stereotyping of people with disability is evident across various media captioning. This is particularly so in social media which often includes memes of images with “inspiring” captions—such as the ones Young highlighted as clear examples of inspiration porn, which “feature the Hamilton quote (‘The only disability in life is a bad attitude’)”. Another example of this kind of captioning is found in news items such as the 2015 article Disabled Teen Crowned Homecoming Queen in Awesome Way as featured in the article USA Today (Saggio). This article described how a student not identified as having a disability gave her homecoming queen crown to a student with a disability and captioned the YouTube clip of these students with, “High school senior [Name] was hoping she’d be crowned homecoming queen. She has cerebral palsy and has never felt like she fit in at school. What happened during the crowning ceremony will warm your heart” (Saggio). The fact that the young woman was pleased with getting the crown does not mitigate the objectifying dynamics of inspiration porn present within this example. Captioning such as this both creates and reflects some of the existing attitudes—including charity and its appeal to emotionality—that perpetuate inspiration porn.Measuring Inspiration Porn with Sentiment AnalysisThe challenge for the researcher analysing Facebook threads is how to meaningfully interpret the captions’ numerous contexts. The methodology of this research used a quantitative approach to gather numerical data about selected Facebook captions. This paper discusses data gained from a sentiment analysis (Pang and Lee; Thelwall et al.; Driscoll) of these captions within the contexts of my own and other researchers’ analyses of inspiration porn, as well as the perspectives of people with disability.The sentiment analysis was conducted using SentiStrength, a software tool that extracts both positive and negative sentiment strengths “from short informal electronic text” (Thelwall et al., 2545), and ranks it “on a numerical scale” (Driscoll 3). Sentiment analysis and SentiStrength are useful, but not perfect, tools with which to analyse Facebook captions. For example, SentiStrength determines two scales: a positive emotion measurement scale ranging from +1 (neutral) to +5 (most positive), and a negative emotion measurement scale ranging from –1 (neutral) to –5 (most negative). It calculates the positive and negative scores concurrently rather than averaging them out in order to acknowledge that captions can and do express mixed emotion (Driscoll 5).News articles about people with disability attending proms and comparable events, such as the homecoming queen example described above, are often criticised by disability activists for perpetuating inspiration porn (Mort; Findlay; Brown). Based on this criticism, sentiment analysis was used in this research to measure the emotional strength of captions—particularly their possible use of patronising language—using the Autism Speaks Facebook post as a case study. The post featured an image of a high school student with autism who had been crowned prom king.The Autism Speaks Facebook page was set up to fund “research into the causes, prevention, treatments and a cure for autism; increas(e) awareness of autism spectrum disorders; and advocat(e) for the needs of individuals with autism and their families” (Autism Speaks). The location of the prom was not specified; however, Autism Speaks is based in New York. This particular Facebook page was selected for this study based on criticism that Autism Speaks receives from disability advocates. One of the major critiques is that “(its) advertising depends on offensive and outdated rhetoric of fear and pity, presenting the lives of autistic people as tragic burdens on our families and society” (Boycott Autism Speaks). Autism Speaks has also been described as a problematic example of an organisation that “dictate(s) how disability should be perceived and dealt with. Often without input of disabled people either in the design or implementation of these organizations” (crippledscholar). This article goes on to state that “charities always frame what they do as positive and helpful even when the people who are the intended recipients disagree.”The prom king post included a photo of a young man with autism after he was crowned. He was standing beside a woman who wasn’t identified. The photo, posted by the young man’s aunt on the Autism Speaks Facebook page, included a status update that read:My autistic nephew won PROM KING today! Just so you all know, having a disability doesn’t hold you back if you don’t let it! GO [NAME]. #AutismAwareness (Autism Speaks)The following caption from the comment thread of the same Facebook post is useful as an example of how SentiStrength works. The caption read:Tears of Joy! Thank you for posting!!! Wow this gives me hope for his and my son’s and everyone’s special wonderful child nephew and niece! Way cool!However, because SentiStrength does not always accurately detect and measure sarcasm or idiomatic language usage, ”Tears” (the only negatively interpreted word in this caption) has been scored as –4, while the overall positive sentiment was scored as 3. Therefore, the final SentiStrength score of this caption was 3, –4, thereby demonstrating both the utility and limitations of SentiStrength as a sentiment analysis tool. This is useful to understand when analysing the data it produces.When analysing the entire thread, the sentiment analysis results across 238 captions, showed that 2 was the average strength of positive emotion, and that –1.16 was the average strength of negative emotion. The following section will analyse how a specific caption chosen from the most positively-scored captions from these data indicates that inspiration porn is possibly evident within.Use of Language: Kind, or Patronising?This discussion analyses the use of language in one caption from this thread, focusing on the way it likely demonstrated the ableist gaze. The caption was the most positive one from these data as scored by SentiStrength (5, –1) and read, ”CONGRATULATIONS SWEETIE!!!”. While it is noted that basing this analysis primarily on one caption provides limited insight into the dynamics of inspiration porn, this analysis forms a basis from which to consider other “inspirational” Facebook posts about people with disability. As well as this caption, this discussion will also draw upon other examples mentioned in this paper—from the homecoming queen article in USA Today to another caption on the Autism Speaks thread—to illustrate the dynamics of inspiration porn.On the surface, this congratulatory caption seems like a kind thing to post. However, inspiration porn has been identified in this analysis based on the caption’s effusive use of punctuation coupled with use of capital letters and the word “sweetie”. The excitement depicted through use of multiple exclamation marks and capital letters implies that the commenter has a personal connection with the prom king, which is a possibility. However, this possibility becomes less feasible when the caption is considered within the context of other captions that display not dissimilar use of language, as well as some that also display intimate emojis, such as grin faces and love heart eyes. Further, when this use of language is used with any consistency across a thread and is not coupled with textual information that implies a personal connection between the commenter/s and the prom king, it could be interpreted as patronising, condescending and/or infantilising. In addition, “sweetie” is a term of endearment commonly used in conversation with a romantic partner, child, or someone the speaker/writer knows intimately. While, again, it is possible that these commenters knew the prom king intimately, a more likely possibility is that he was being written to by strangers, yet using language that implied he was close to them—which would then have the same patronising connotations as above. It can therefore be argued that there is a strong possibility that this heightened use of intimate and emotional language was chosen based on his autism diagnosis.The conclusion drawn above is based in part on contextual similarities between the Autism Speaks post and its associated thread, and the aforementioned homecoming queen news article. In the former, it is likely that the young prom king was congratulated effusively because of his autism diagnosis. Similarly, in the latter article, the young woman was crowned not because she was named homecoming queen, but because the crown was given to her because of her diagnosis of cerebral palsy. As both gestures appear to have been based on others’ perceptions of these individuals’ disabilities rather than on their achievements, they are both likely to be patronising gestures.Over-DisclosureIn addition to use of language, another noteworthy issue in the captions thread on the Autism Speaks Facebook page was that many of them were from parents disclosing the diagnosis of their child. One example of this was a post from a mother that read (in part):I’ll be over here worried & concerned with the other 9,999 & ½ things to deal with, keeping up with new therapies, current therapy, we came in progress from any past therapies, meltdowns, dietary restrictions, educational requirements, The joy and difficulties of not just learning a new word but actually retaining that word, sleep, being hit, keeping him from hitting himself, tags on clothes etc. etc. [sic] (Autism Speaks)The above commenter listed a number of disability-specific issues that she experienced while raising her son who has autism. The context for her caption was a discussion, unrelated to the original post, that had sparked underneath a sub-thread regarding whether the use of person-first language (“person with autism”) or identity-first language (“Autistic person”) was best when referring to someone with autism. The relationship between inspiration porn and this intimately negative post about someone with disability is that both types of post are examples of the “ableist gaze”: inspiration porn demonstrates an exaggerated sense of positivity based on someone’s disability, and this post demonstrates disregard for the privacy of the person being posted about—perhaps due to his disability. The ease with which this negative comparison (over-disclosure) can be made between ‘inspirational’ and ‘negative’ posts illustrates in part why inspiration porn is a form of discrimination—intentional or otherwise.Furthermore, some of the children who were disclosed about on the main thread were too young to be asked consent, and it is unclear whether those who were old enough had the capacity to provide informed consent. Research has found that online over-disclosure in general is a matter of concern.The specific practice of online over-disclosure from parents about their children—with or without disability—has been raised by Leaver (151), “what happens before young people have the agency, literacy or skills to take the reins of their own selves online? Parents, guardians, loved ones and others inevitably set the initial identity parameters for young people online.” Over-disclosure is therefore also an issue that concerns people with disability, and the people closest to them.There exists both anecdotal evidence and academic research regarding online over-disclosure about people with disability. The research states that when people with physical disability disclose online, they employ strategic approaches that involve the degree to which they disclose (Furr, Carreiro, and McArthur). This suggests that there are complex factors to consider around such disclosure. Also relevant is that the practice of over-disclosure about another person’s disability, regardless of whether that disclosure is made by a close family member, has been critiqued by people (Findlay; Stoltz) within the disability community: “would you publicly share this information about your other children, an aging parent, or yourself?” (Stoltz). Finally, the practice of disability over-disclosure by anyone other than the person themselves supports the understanding that inspiration porn is not about the “object” of inspiration; rather, it serves to give pleasure (and/or pain) to the objectifier.ConclusionInspiration porn via the ableist gaze is discriminatory because it focuses on a (societally) undesirable trait in a way that serves the “gazer” at the expense of the “gazed-at”. That is, people with disability are objectified and exploited in various ways that can initially appear to be positive to people without disability. For example, when someone with disability posts or is posted about on Facebook, a person without disability might then add a caption—possibly with good intentions—that serves as their “inspired” response to what it “must” be like to have a disability. It can be argued that such captions, whether on news articles or when framing social media images, therefore either reflect or create existing social inequalities—and possibly do both.In continuing to use the term inspiration porn to describe one form of discrimination against people with disability, both the disability community and popular culture are contributing to an important narrative that scholarship needs to continue to address. Indeed, the power imbalance that is celebrated within inspiration porn is in some ways more insidious than malicious discrimination against people with disability, because it is easier to mistake as kindness. The research sample presented in this paper supports the countless expressions of anecdotal evidence given by people with disability that this “kindness” is inspiration porn; a damaging expression of the ableist gaze.ReferencesAutism Speaks. Facebook 21 May 2017 <https://www.facebook.com/autismspeaks>.Barnes, Colin, Geof Mercer, and Tom Shakespeare. Exploring Disability. 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There are many ways to construct, shape and frame a history of popular music. From a focus on performers to a stress on cities, from theories of modernity to reveling in ‘the post,’ innovative music has been matched by evocative writing about it. One arc of analysis in popular music studies focuses on the record label. Much has been written about Sun, Motown, Factory and Apple, but there are many labels that have not reached this level of notoriety and fame but offer much to our contemporary understanding of music, identity and capitalism. The aim of this article is to capture an underwritten history of 21st century music, capturing and tracking moments of collaboration, movement and contact. Through investigating a specific record label, we explore the interconnectiveness of electronica and city-based creative industries’ initiatives. While urban dance culture is still pathologised through drug scares and law and order concerns, clubbing studies and emerging theories of sonic media and auditory cultures offer a significant trigger and frame for this current research. The focus on Off World Sounds (OWS) traces a meta-independent label that summons, critiques, reinscribes and provokes the conventional narratives of capitalism in music. We show how OWS has remade and remixed the collaborations of punk to forge innovative ways of thinking about creativity, policy and popular culture. While commencing with a review of the origin, ideology and intent of OWS, the final part of the paper shows where the experiment went wrong and what can be learnt from this sonic label laboratory. Moving Off World Popular cultural studies evoke and explore discursive formations and texts that activate dissent, conflict and struggle. This strategy is particularly potent when exploring how immigration narratives fray the borders of the nation state. At its most direct, this analysis provides a case study to assess and answer some of Nabeel Zuberi’s questions about sonic topography that he raises in Sounds English. I’m concerned less with music as a reflection of national history and geography than how the practices of popular music culture themselves construct the spaces of the local, national, and transnational. How does the music imagine the past and place? How does it function as a memory-machine, a technology for the production of subjective and collective versions of location and identity? How do the techniques of sounds, images, and activities centered on popular music create landscapes with figures? (3) Dance music is mashed between creativity, consumerism and capitalism. Picking up on Zuberi’s challenge, the story of OWS is also a history of what happens to English migrants who travel to Australia, and how they negotiate the boundaries of the Australian nation. Immigration is important to any understanding of contemporary music. The two proprietors of OWS are Pete Carroll and, one of the two writers of this current article, Stephen Mallinder. Both English proprietors immigrated to Perth in Australia. They used their contacts to sign electronica performers from beyond this single city. They encouraged the tracks to move freely through lymphatic digital networks for remixing—‘lymphatic’ signalling a secondary pathway for commerce and creativity where new musical relationships were being formed outside the influence of major record companies. Performers signed to OWS form independent networks with other performers. This mobility of sound has operated in parallel with the immigration policies of the Howard government that have encouraged insularity and xenophobia. In other eras of racial inequality and discrimination, the independent record label has been not only an integral part of the music industry, but a springboard for political dissent. The histories of jazz and rhythm and blues capture a pivotal moment of independent entrepreneurialism that transformed new and strange sounds/noises into popular music. In monitoring and researching this complex process of musical movement and translation, the independent label has remained the home of the peripheral, the misunderstood, and the uncompromising. Soul music in the United States of America is an example of a sonic form that sustained independence while corporate labels made a profit. Labels like Atlantic Records became synonymous with the success of black vocal music in the 1960s and 1970s, while the smaller independent labels like Chess and Invicta constructed a brand identity. While the division between the majors and the independents increasingly dissolves, particularly at the level of distribution, the independent label remains significant as innovator and instigator. It retains its status and pedagogic function in teaching an audience about new sounds and developing aural literacies. OWS inked its well from an idealistic and collaborative period of label evolution. The punk aesthetic of the late 1970s not only triggered wide-ranging implications for youth culture, but also opened spaces for alternative record labels and label identity. Rough Trade was instrumental in imbuing a spirit of cooperation and a benign mode of competition. A shift in the distribution of records and associated merchandizing to strengthen product association—such as magazines, fanzines and T-Shirts—enabled Rough Trade to deal directly with pivotal stores and outlets and then later establish cartels with stores to provide market security and a workable infrastructure. Links were built with ancillary agents such as concert promoters, press, booking agents, record producers and sleeve designers, to create a national, then European and international, network to produce an (under the counter) culture. Such methods can also be traced in the history of Postcard Records from Edinburgh, Zoo Records from Liverpool, Warp in Sheffield, Pork Recordings in Hull, Hospital Records in London, and both Grand Central and Factory in Manchester. From the ashes of the post-1976 punk blitzkrieg, independent labels bloomed with varying impact, effect and success, but they held an economic and political agenda. The desire was to create a strong brand identity by forming a tight collaboration between artists and distributors. Perceptions of a label’s size and significance was enhanced and enlarged through this collaborative relationship. OWS acknowledged and rewrote this history of the independent label. There was a desire to fuse the branding of the label with the artists signed, released and distributed. No long term obligations on behalf of the artists were required. A 50/50 split after costs was shared. While such an ‘agreement’ appeared anachronistic, it was also a respectful nod to the initial label/artist split offered by Rough Trade. Collaboration with artists throughout the process offered clear statements of intent, with idealism undercut by pragmatism. From track selection, sleeve design, promotion strategy and interview schedule, the level of communication created a sense of joint ownership and dialogue between label and artist. This reinscription of independent record history is complex because OWS’ stable of performers and producers is an amalgamation of dub, trance, hip hop, soul and house genres. Much of trans-localism of OWS was encouraged by its base in Perth. Metaphorically ‘off world’, Perth is a pad for international music to land, be remixed, recut and re-released. Just as Wellington is the capital of Tolkien’s Middle Earth as well as New Zealand, Perth is a remix capital for Paris or New York-based performers. The brand name ‘Off World Sounds’ was designed to emphasise isolation: to capture the negativity of isolation but rewrite separation and distinctiveness with a positive inflection. The title was poached from Ridley Scott’s 1980s film Bladerunner, which was in turn based on Philip K. Dick’s story, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Affirming this isolation summoned an ironic commentary on Perth’s geographical location, while also mocking the 1980s discourses of modernity and the near future. The key was to align punk’s history of collaboration with this narrative of isolation and independence, to explore mobility, collaboration, and immigration. Spaces in the Music Discussions of place dictate a particular methodology to researching music. Dreams of escape and, concurrently, intense desires for home pepper the history of popular music. What makes OWS important to theories of musical collaboration is that not only was there a global spread of musicians, producers and designers, but they worked together in a series of strategic trans-localisms. There were precedents for disconnecting place and label, although not of the scale instigated by OWS. Fast Products, although based in Glasgow, signed The Human League from Sheffield and Gang of Four from Leeds. OWS was unique in signing artists disconnected on a global scale, with the goal of building collaborations in remixing and design. Gripper, from the north east of England, Little Egypt from New York, The Bone Idle from Vienna, Hull and Los Angeles, Looped for Pleasure from Sheffield, Barney Mullhouse from Australia and the United Kingdom, Ooblo from Manchester, Attache from Adelaide, Crackpot from Melbourne and DB Chills from Sydney are also joined by artists resident in Perth, such as Soundlab, the Ku-Ling Bros and Blue Jay. Compact Disc mastering is completed in Sydney, London, and Perth. The artwork for vinyl and CD sleeves, alongside flyers, press advertising and posters, is derived from Manchester, England. These movements in the music flattened geographical hierarchies, where European and American tracks were implicitly valued over Australian-derived material. Through pop music history, the primary music markets of the United Kingdom and United States made success for Australian artists difficult. Off World emphasised that the product was not licensed. It was previously unreleased material specifically recorded for the label and an exclusive Australian first territory release. Importantly, this licensing agreement also broadened definitions and interpretations of ‘Australian music’. Such a critique and initiative was important. For example, Paul Bodlovich, Director of the West Australian Music Industry (WAM), believed he was extending the brief of his organisation during his tenure. Once more though, rock was the framework, structure and genre of interest. Explaining the difference from his predecessor, he stated that: [James Nagy] very much saw the music industry as being only bands who were playing all original music—to him they were the only people who actually constituted the music industry. I have a much broader view on that, that all those other people who are around the band—the manager, the promoters, the labels, the audio guys, the whole shebang—that they are part of the music industry too. (33) Much was absent from his ‘whole shebang,’ including the fans who actually buy the music and attend the pubs and clubs. A diversity of genres was also not acknowledged. If hip hop, and urban music generally, is added to his list of new interests, then clubs, graf galleries, dance instructors and fashion and jewelry designers could extend the network of musical collaborations. A parody of corporate culture and a pastiche of the post-punk aesthetic, OWS networked and franchised itself into existence. It was a cottage industry superimposed onto a corporate infrastructure. Attempting to make inroads into an insular Perth arts community and build creative industries’ networks without state government policy support, Off World offered an optimistic perspective on the city’s status and value in a national and global electronic market. Yet in commercial terms, OWS failed. What OWS captures through its failures conveys more about music policy in Australia than any success. The label has been able to catalogue the lack of changes to Perth’s music policy. The proprietors, performers and designers were not approached in 2002 by the Western Australian Contemporary Music Taskforce to offer comment. Yet Matthew Benson and Poppy Wise, researchers for that report, stated that “the solution lies in the industry becoming more outwardly focused, and to do this, it must seek the input of successful professionals who have proven track records in the marketing of music nationally and globally” (9). The resultant document argued that the industry needed to the look to Sydney and Melbourne for knowledge of “international” markets. Yet Paul Bodlovich, the Director of WAM, singled out the insularity of ‘England,’ not Britain, and ‘America’ in comparison to the ‘outward’ Perth music industry: To us, they’re all centre of the universe, but they don’t look past their walls, they don’t have a clue what goes in other parts of the world … All they see say in England is English TV, or in America it’s American TV. Whereas we sit in a very isolated part of the world and we absorb culture from everywhere because we think we have to just to be on an equal arc with everyone else. We think we have to absorb stuff from other cultures because unless we do then we really are isolated … It’s a similar belief to the ongoing issue of women in the workplace, where there’s a belief that to be seen on equal footing you have to be better. (33) This knight’s move affiliation of Perth’s musicians with women in the workplace is bizarre and inappropriate. This unfortunate connection is made worse when recognizing that Perth’s music institutions and organisations, such as WAM, are dominated by white, Australian-born men. To promote the outwardness of Perth culture while not mentioning the role and function of immigration is not addressing how mobility, creativity and commerce is activated. To unify ‘England’ and ‘America,’ without recognizing the crucial differences between Manchester and Bristol, New York and New Orleans, is conservative, arrogant, and wrong. National models of music, administered by Australian-born white men and funded through grants-oriented peer review models rather than creative industries’ infrastructural initiatives, still punctuate Western Australian music. Off World Sounds has been caught in non-collaborative, nationalist models for organising culture and economics. It is always easy to affirm the specialness and difference of a city’s sound or music. While affirming the nation and rock, outsiders appear threatening to the social order. When pondering cities and electronica, collaboration, movement and meaning dance through the margins. References Benson, Matthew, and Poppy Wise. A Study into the Current State of the Western Australian Contemporary Music Industry and Its Potential for Economic Growth. Department of Culture and the Arts, Government of Western Australia, December 2002. Bodlovich, Paul. “Director’s Report.” X-Press 940 (17 Feb. 2005): 33. Zuberi, Nabeel. Sounds English: Transnational Popular Music. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2001. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brabazon, Tara, and Stephen Mallinder. "Off World Sounds: Building a Collaborative Soundscape." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/13-brabazonmallinder.php>. APA Style Brabazon, T., and S. Mallinder. (May 2006) "Off World Sounds: Building a Collaborative Soundscape," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/13-brabazonmallinder.php>.