Maintaining optimal cognitive functioning throughout the lifespan is a public health priority. Evaluation of cognitive outcomes following interventions to promote and preserve brain structure and ...function in older adults, and associated neural mechanisms, are therefore of critical importance. In this randomized controlled trial, we examined the behavioral and neural outcomes following mindfulness training (
= 72), compared to a cognitive fitness program (
= 74) in healthy, cognitively normal, older adults (65-80 years old). To assess cognitive functioning, we used the Preclinical Alzheimer Cognitive Composite (PACC), which combines measures of episodic memory, executive function, and global cognition. We hypothesized that mindfulness training would enhance cognition, increase intrinsic functional connectivity measured with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) between the hippocampus and posteromedial cortex, as well as promote increased gray matter volume within those regions. Following the 8-week intervention, the mindfulness training group showed improved performance on the PACC, while the control group did not. Furthermore, following mindfulness training, greater improvement on the PACC was associated with a larger increase in intrinsic connectivity within the default mode network, particularly between the right hippocampus and posteromedial cortex and between the left hippocampus and lateral parietal cortex. The cognitive fitness training group did not show such effects. These findings demonstrate that mindfulness training improves cognitive performance in cognitively intact older individuals and strengthens connectivity within the default mode network, which is particularly vulnerable to aging affects.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02628548, identifier NCT02628548.
Mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a growing interest in the functional impact of masks on speech and communication. Prior work has shown that masks dampen sound, impede visual ...communication cues, and reduce intelligibility. However, more work is needed to understand how speakers change their speech while wearing a mask and to identify strategies to overcome the impact of wearing a mask. Data were collected from 19 healthy adults during a single in-person session. We investigated the effects of wearing a KN95 mask on speech intelligibility, as judged by two speech-language pathologists, examined speech kinematics and acoustics associated with mask-wearing, and explored KN95 acoustic filtering. We then considered the efficacy of three speaking strategies to improve speech intelligibility: Loud, Clear, and Slow speech. To inform speaker strategy recommendations, we related findings to self-reported speaker effort. Results indicated that healthy speakers could compensate for the presence of a mask and achieve normal speech intelligibility. Additionally, we showed that speaking loudly or clearly—and, to a lesser extent, slowly—improved speech intelligibility. However, using these strategies may require increased physical and cognitive effort and should be used only when necessary. These results can inform recommendations for speakers wearing masks, particularly those with communication disorders (e.g., dysarthria) who may struggle to adapt to a mask but can respond to explicit instructions. Such recommendations may further help non-native speakers and those communicating in a noisy environment or with listeners with hearing loss.
Despite significant advancements in automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, even the best performing ASR systems are inadequate for speakers with impaired speech. This inadequacy may be, in ...part, due to the challenges associated with acquiring a sufficiently diverse training sample of disordered speech. Speakers with dysarthria, which refers to a group of divergent speech disorders secondary to neurologic injury, exhibit highly variable speech patterns both within and across individuals. This diversity is currently poorly characterized and, consequently, difficult to adequately represent in disordered speech ASR corpora. In this article, we consider the variable expressions of dysarthria within the context of established clinical taxonomies (e.g., Darley, Aronson, and Brown dysarthria subtypes). We also briefly consider past and recent efforts to capture this diversity quantitatively using speech analytics. Understanding dysarthria diversity from the clinical perspective and how this diversity may impact ASR performance could aid in (1) optimizing data collection strategies for minimizing bias; (2) ensuring representative ASR training sets; and (3) improving generalization of ASR for difficult-to-recognize speakers. Our overarching goal is to facilitate the development of robust ASR systems for dysarthric speech using clinical knowledge.
The polarization observables T,E,P,H, and G in photoproduction of η mesons off protons are measured for photon energies from threshold to W=2400 MeV (T), 2280 MeV (E), 1620 MeV (P,H), or 1820 MeV ...(G), covering nearly the full solid angle. The data are compared to predictions from the SAID, MAID, JüBo, and BnGa partial-wave analyses. A refit within the BnGa approach including further data yields precise branching ratios for the Nη decay of nucleon resonances. A Nη-branching ratio of 0.33±0.04 for N(1650)1/2− is found, which reduces the large and controversially discussed Nη-branching ratio difference of the two lowest mass JP=1/2−-resonances significantly.
The BGOOD experimental setup at ELSA Alef, S.; Bauer, P.; Bayadilov, D. ...
The European physical journal. A, Hadrons and nuclei,
04/2020, Letnik:
56, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The BGOOD experiment at the ELSA facility in Bonn has been commissioned within the framework of an international collaboration. The experiment pursues a systematic investigation of non-strange and ...strange meson photoproduction, in particular
t
-channel processes at low momentum transfer. The setup uniquely combines a central almost
4
π
acceptance BGO crystal calorimeter with a large aperture forward magnetic spectrometer providing excellent detection of both neutral and charged particles, complementary to other setups such as Crystal Barrel, Crystal Ball, LEPS and CLAS.
The differential cross sections and unpolarized spin-density matrix elements for the reaction γp→pω were measured using the CBELSA/TAPS experiment for initial photon energies ranging from the ...reaction threshold to 2.5 GeV. These observables were measured from the radiative decay of the ω meson, ω→π0γ. The cross sections cover the full angular range and show the full extent of the t-channel forward rise. The overall shape of the angular distributions in the differential cross sections and unpolarized spin-density matrix elements are in fair agreement with previous data. In addition, for the first time, a beam of linearly-polarized tagged photons in the energy range from 1150 MeV to 1650 MeV was used to extract polarized spin-density matrix elements.
These data were included in the Bonn–Gatchina partial wave analysis (PWA). The dominant contribution to ω photoproduction near threshold was found to be the 3/2+ partial wave, which is primarily due to the sub-threshold N(1720)3/2+ resonance. At higher energies, pomeron-exchange was found to dominate whereas π-exchange remained small. These t-channel contributions as well as further contributions from nucleon resonances were necessary to describe the entire dataset: the 1/2−, 3/2−, and 5/2+ partial waves were also found to contribute significantly.
.
Results from measurements of the photoproduction of
η
mesons from quasifree protons and neutrons are summarized. The experiments were performed with the CBELSA/TAPS detector at the electron ...accelerator ELSA in Bonn using the
η
→
3
π
0
→
6
γ
decay. A liquid deuterium target was used for the measurement of total cross sections and angular distributions. The results confirm earlier measurements from Bonn and the MAMI facility in Mainz about the existence of a narrow structure in the excitation function of
γ
n
→
n
η
. The current angular distributions show a forward-backward asymmetry, which was previously not seen, but was predicted by model calculations including an additional narrow
P
11
state. Furthermore, data obtained with a longitudinally polarized, deuterated butanol target and a circularly polarized photon beam were analyzed to determine the double polarization observable
E
. Both data sets together were also used to extract the helicity-dependent cross sections
σ
1
/
2
and
σ
3
/
2
. The narrow structure in the excitation function of
γ
n
→
n
η
appears associated with the helicity-1/2 component of the reaction.
Purpose: There is increasing interest in using automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems to evaluate impairment severity or speech intelligibility in speakers with dysarthria. We assessed the ...clinical validity of one currently available off-the-shelf (OTS) ASR system (i.e., a Google Cloud ASR API) for indexing sentence-level speech intelligibility and impairment severity in individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and we provided guidance for potential users of such systems in research and clinic. Method: Using speech samples collected from 52 individuals with ALS and 20 healthy control speakers, we compared word recognition rate (WRR) from the commercially available Google Cloud ASR API (Machine WRR) to clinician-provided judgments of impairment severity, as well as sentence intelligibility (Human WRR). We assessed the internal reliability of Machine and Human WRR by comparing the standard deviation of WRR across sentences to the minimally detectable change (MDC), a clinical benchmark that indicates whether results are within measurement error. We also evaluated Machine and Human WRR diagnostic accuracy for classifying speakers into clinically established categories. Results: Human WRR achieved better accuracy than Machine WRR when indexing speech severity, and, although related, Human and Machine WRR were not strongly correlated. When the speech signal was mixed with noise (noise-augmented ASR) to reduce a ceiling effect, Machine WRR performance improved. Internal reliability metrics were worse for Machine than Human WRR, particularly for typical and mildly impaired severity groups, although sentence length significantly impacted both Machine and Human WRRs. Conclusions: Results indicated that the OTS ASR system was inadequate for early detection of speech impairment and grading overall speech severity. While Machine and Human WRR were correlated, ASR should not be used as a one-to-one proxy for transcription speech intelligibility or clinician severity ratings. Overall, findings suggested that the tested OTS ASR system, Google Cloud ASR, has limited utility for grading clinical speech impairment in speakers with ALS.
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