Affect sharing and prosocial motivation are integral parts of empathy that are conceptually and mechanistically distinct. We used a neurodegenerative disease (NDG) lesion model to examine the neural ...correlates of these two aspects of real-world empathic responding. The study enrolled 275 participants, including 44 healthy older controls and 231 patients diagnosed with one of five neurodegenerative diseases (75 Alzheimer's disease, 58 behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), 42 semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), 28 progressive supranuclear palsy, and 28 non-fluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA). Informants completed the Revised Self-Monitoring Scale's Sensitivity to the Expressive Behavior of Others (RSMS-EX) subscale and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index's Empathic Concern (IRI-EC) subscale describing the typical empathic behavior of the participants in daily life. Using regression modeling of the voxel based morphometry of T1 brain scans prepared using SPM8 DARTEL-based preprocessing, we isolated the variance independently contributed by the affect sharing and the prosocial motivation elements of empathy as differentially measured by the two scales. We found that the affect sharing component uniquely correlated with volume in right>left medial and lateral temporal lobe structures, including the amygdala and insula, that support emotion recognition, emotion generation, and emotional awareness. Prosocial motivation, in contrast, involved structures such as the nucleus accumbens (NaCC), caudate head, and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which suggests that an individual must maintain the capacity to experience reward, to resolve ambiguity, and to inhibit their own emotional experience in order to effectively engage in spontaneous altruism as a component of their empathic response to others.
•Human lesion models can reveal the necessary and sufficient neuroanatomy of empathy.•Affect sharing (AS) and prosocial motivation (PM) derive from distinct neural circuits.•Temporal structures mediate emotion recognition/generation/awareness supporting AS.•Frontal-subcortical structures mediate reward/inhibition of emotion supporting PM.
The complex index of refraction of liquid HNO3/H2O and H2SO4/HNO3/H2O has been obtained at different temperatures and acid concentrations. FT-IR specular reflectance spectra were obtained for 30, 54, ...and 64 wt % aqueous HNO3 and for four different H2SO4/HNO3/H2O mixtures in the temperature region from 293 to 183 K. The complex index of refraction was obtained from the reflectance spectra with the Kramers−Kronig transformation. The optical constants of the binary and ternary mixtures vary with the acid concentration and the temperature. The results demonstrate that vibrational bands originating from the sulfate species are more sensitive to changes in temperature than the bands originating from vibrations in the nitrate species; only minor changes in the nitrate vibrational bands are observed as the temperature decreases below 248 K.
Abstract A possible role of anomalies in number and insertion of pulmonary veins (PV) in initiating atrial fibrillation (AF) has been suggested. It has been shown as well that changes in anatomy of ...PVs such as enlargement may have an effect on arrhythmogenesis. The aim of the study was to compare anatomy of the left atrium (LA) and PVs in patients with AF and control subjects. Methods Eighty two patients were evaluated with 64-slice computed tomography (MSCT). Fifty one of them were referred to catheter ablation with history of highly symptomatic AF — AF(+) group. Thirty one control subjects had no history of AF and were referred to MSCT for noninvasive evaluation of different pathologies which finally were excluded — AF(−) group. Study groups did not differ in regard to age, sex, presence of hypertension and left ventricular systolic function. Diameters of PV ostia were measured in anterior–posterior (AP) and superior–inferior (SI) directions. Venous ostium index was calculated as a ratio between these measurements. Results The diameter of LA was higher in AF(+) patients than in the AF(−) patients (39 ± 6 mm vs. 35 ± 4 mm, p < 0.005). In 68.6% of AF(+) patients and in 83.9% of AF(−) patients the anatomical pattern was typical with two right and two left PVs. Additional PVs were detected in 6 patients, only in AF(+) group ( p < 0.05). Common ostia were more frequently found in AF(+) subjects (37.2% vs. 19.3, p = 0,08), mainly left-sided. In AF(+) group mean SI diameters of both-sided superior PVs and left inferior veins were larger. All AP diameters except for right inferior PVs were also larger in AF(+) group than in control cases. Conclusions Variations in the PVs anatomy are more common and diameters of ostial portions of the veins are larger in AF patients than in control subjects. These findings suggest that further studies on the role of structural abnormalities of PVs in arrhythmogenesis are needed.
Readout ASICs for silicon drift detectors Fiorini, C.; Alberti, R.; Bombelli, L. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
12/2010, Letnik:
624, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Semiconductor drift detectors (SDDs) are widely used in X-ray spectroscopy due to their excellent performances in terms of energy resolution and detection-rate. Suitable low noise readout electronics ...have to be designed in order to exploit the SDD intrinsic performances. The integration of this electronics in custom application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) is mandatory when the compactness of the detection system (detector and electronics) and the need to read out multi-elements SDDs are primary requirements. This work describes the development of three circuits for SDDs, which are a charge sensitive preamplifier operating in the pulsed reset regime, a fast shaping amplifier for high-count rates applications and a multi-channel ASIC that provides the whole analog processing and multiplexing of the signals from SDD arrays. The ASICs have been tested with SDDs with on-chip JFET and the results are presented here.
X-ray diffraction and
27Al multiquantum MAS NMR combined with global elemental analysis have been used to identify and quantify extra-framework aluminum (EFAL) in Y zeolites stabilized by steaming ...followed by EFAL extraction using nitric acid, ammonium hexafluorosilicate (AHFS) or ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA). Both the ease of extraction and the type of EFAL extracted are found to vary with the strength and nature of the leaching agent. Polymeric amorphous alumina, removed easily at low concentrations of nitric acid, is extracted progressively with increasing concentrations of other agents. This type of EFAL accounts for less than half of the extra-framework aluminum. Aluminum atoms linked to the zeolite framework in a distorted tetrahedral environment are also removed by acid leaching but are resistant to high concentrations of AHFS and EDTA, whereas isolated cationic EFAL shows the reverse behavior.
Silicon drift photodetector arrays for the HICAM gamma camera Busca, P.; Peloso, R.; Fiorini, C. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
12/2010, Letnik:
624, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Silicon drift detectors (SDDs) have shown to be a competitive device for the readout of scintillators with respect to conventional photodetectors, thanks to their high quantum efficiency and low ...electronics noise. Recently, they have been successfully employed in first small prototypes of Anger cameras to achieve sub-millimeter spatial resolution in gamma-ray imaging. To cover larger formats of Anger cameras, in particular in the framework of the HICAM project, specially focused on human imaging, we have developed new SDD arrays of larger active areas. To assemble photodetector planes of several cm
2, we have designed a basic unit composed by a linear array of 5 SDDs of 1
cm
2 active area each. In this work, we present the results of the experimental characterization of these photodetector arrays in direct X-ray detection to evaluate the electronics noise, as well as gamma-ray detection with a scintillator.
Arguments for restricting access to legal marriage for same‐sex couples are commonly based in claims about differences between heterosexual and same‐sex couples regarding the social and psychological ...meaning of marriage. This mixed methods study examined meanings of intimacy and relational experience in a purposive North American sample of members of long‐term heterosexual and same‐sex couples (N = 150) in order to examine the validity of meaning‐based justifications for restricted access to legal marriage. Guided autobiographical techniques elicited narrative accounts of four significant events in participants’ relationships. Directed Content Analyses revealed no detectable differences between members of heterosexual and same‐sex couples in multiple qualitative and quantitative indicators of the meaning of intimacy. Members of same‐sex couples, however, evidenced experiences of stigmatization more frequently than heterosexuals. By integrating theoretical and methodological approaches across psychological and sociological traditions within a mixed methods study, the present findings usefully inform ongoing policy debates regarding the legalization of same‐sex marriage.
The most common method for time pick-off from signals coming from SiPMs coupled to scintillator crystals in PET applications is the Leading Edge Triggering. In this work we propose a new filtering ...scheme to be applied before the discriminator. It implements a type of baseline compensation aimed at the reduction of the time jitter due to the dark counts of the detector and is based on a simple analog filter, which is well suited for an ASIC implementation. We describe a circuit, built with discrete components, that implements the filter. Finally we report on the Coincidence Resolving Time measurements performed coupling the circuit to the real detector, composed of a SiPM built at FBK and a LYSO crystal, for the detection of 511 keV photons. The results obtained are promising, showing that the method is quite effective in reducing the impact of the detector noise on the timing performance of the system.
Radiation damage effects of protons and X-rays on silicon photomultipliers Acerbi, Fabio; Altamura, A.R.; Di Ruzza, B. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
February 2023, 2023-02-00, Letnik:
1047
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are highly-sensitive photodetectors emerging as the technology of choice for many applications. In high-energy physics experiments and as the detectors for space ...instruments they are often exposed to a large amount of irradiation. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in assessing the performance deterioration of such detectors after ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, such as protons, neutrons and X or gamma rays. It is interesting to compare the radiation damage effects on several types of SiPMs, to assess the main deterioration mechanisms on SiPM performances.
In this work we report on the irradiation by protons and X-rays of several types of small-area (∼1 mm2) SiPMs, produced in FBK with different technologies. We show and compare the most interesting results of the online measurements, taken just after each irradiation step, for both irradiations. We performed and monitored the current variation during a room temperature annealing. Finally we characterized all the main functional performance of the irradiated SiPMs, highlighting the most interesting variations.
The DRAGO gamma camera Fiorini, C; Gola, A; Peloso, R ...
Review of scientific instruments,
04/2010, Letnik:
81, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In this work, we present the results of the experimental characterization of the DRAGO (DRift detector Array-based Gamma camera for Oncology), a detection system developed for high-spatial resolution ...gamma-ray imaging. This camera is based on a monolithic array of 77 silicon drift detectors (SDDs), with a total active area of 6.7 cm(2), coupled to a single 5-mm-thick CsI(Tl) scintillator crystal. The use of an array of SDDs provides a high quantum efficiency for the detection of the scintillation light together with a very low electronics noise. A very compact detection module based on the use of integrated readout circuits was developed. The performances achieved in gamma-ray imaging using this camera are reported here. When imaging a 0.2 mm collimated (57)Co source (122 keV) over different points of the active area, a spatial resolution ranging from 0.25 to 0.5 mm was measured. The depth-of-interaction capability of the detector, thanks to the use of a Maximum Likelihood reconstruction algorithm, was also investigated by imaging a collimated beam tilted to an angle of 45 degrees with respect to the scintillator surface. Finally, the imager was characterized with in vivo measurements on mice, in a real preclinical environment.
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