Meditation-type specific reduction in infra-slow activity of electroencephalogram.

Purpose: Meditation is renowned for its positive effects on cognitive abilities and stress reduction. It has been reported that the amplitude of electroencephalographic (EEG) infra-slow activity (ISA, < 0.1 Hz) is reduced as the stress level decreases. Consequently, we aimed to determine if EEG ISA amplitude decreases as a result of meditation practice across various traditions. Methods: To this end, we analyzed an open dataset comprising EEG data acquired during meditation sessions from experienced practitioners in the Vipassana tradition-which integrates elements of focused attention and open monitoring, akin to mindfulness meditation-and in the Himalayan Yoga and Isha Shoonya traditions, which emphasize focused attention and open monitoring, respectively. Results: A general trend was observed where EEG ISA amplitude tended to decrease in experienced meditators from these traditions compared to novices, particularly significant in the 0.03-0.08 Hz band for Vipassana meditators. Therefore, our analysis focused on this ISA frequency band. Specifically, a notable decrease in EEG ISA amplitude was observed in Vipassana meditators, predominantly in the left-frontal region. This reduction in EEG ISA amplitude was also accompanied by a decrease in phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) between the ISA phase and alpha band (8-12 Hz) amplitude, which implied decreased neural excitability fluctuations. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that not only does EEG ISA amplitude decrease in experienced meditators from traditions that incorporate both focused attention and open monitoring, but this decrease may also signify a diminished influence of neural excitability fluctuations attributed to ISA.

Neural Biomarkers for Identifying Atopic Dermatitis and Assessing Acupuncture Treatment Response Using Resting-State fMRI.

Purpose: Only a few studies have focused on the brain mechanisms underlying the itch processing in AD patients, and a neural biomarker has never been studied in AD patients. We aimed to develop a deep learning model-based neural signature which can extract the relevant temporal dynamics, discriminate between AD and healthy control (HC), and between AD patients who responded well to acupuncture treatment and those who did not. Patients and Methods: We recruited 41 AD patients (22 male, age mean ± SD: 24.34 ± 5.29) and 40 HCs (20 male, age mean ± SD: 26.4 ± 5.32), and measured resting-state functional MRI signals. After preprocessing, 38 functional regions of interest were applied to the functional MRI signals. A long short-term memory (LSTM) was used to extract the relevant temporal dynamics for classification and train the prediction model. Bootstrapping and 4-fold cross-validation were used to examine the significance of the models. Results: For the identification of AD patients and HC, we found that the supplementary motor area (SMA), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), temporal pole, precuneus, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex showed significantly greater prediction accuracy than the chance level. For the identification of high and low responder to acupuncture treatment, we found that the lingual-parahippocampal-fusiform gyrus, SMA, frontal gyrus, PCC and precuneus, paracentral lobule, and primary motor and somatosensory cortex showed significantly greater prediction accuracy than the chance level. Conclusion: We developed and evaluated a deep learning model-based neural biomarker that can distinguish between AD and HC as well as between AD patients who respond well and those who respond less to acupuncture. Using the intrinsic neurological abnormalities, it is possible to diagnose AD patients and provide personalized treatment regimens.

Auditory influence on stickiness perception: an fMRI study of multisensory integration.

This study explored how the human brain perceives stickiness through tactile and auditory channels, especially when presented with congruent or incongruent intensity cues. In our behavioral and functional MRI (fMRI) experiments, we presented participants with adhesive tape stimuli at two different intensities. The congruent condition involved providing stickiness stimuli with matching intensity cues in both auditory and tactile channels, whereas the incongruent condition involved cues of different intensities. Behavioral results showed that participants were able to distinguish between the congruent and incongruent conditions with high accuracy. Through fMRI searchlight analysis, we tested which brain regions could distinguish between congruent and incongruent conditions, and as a result, we identified the superior temporal gyrus, known primarily for auditory processing. Interestingly, we did not observe any significant activation in regions associated with somatosensory or motor functions. This indicates that the brain dedicates more attention to auditory cues than to tactile cues, possibly due to the unfamiliarity of conveying the sensation of stickiness through sound. Our results could provide new perspectives on the complexities of multisensory integration, highlighting the subtle yet significant role of auditory processing in understanding tactile properties such as stickiness.

Effects of Frontal Theta Rhythms in a Prior Resting State on the Subsequent Motor Imagery Brain-Computer Interface Performance.

Dealing with subjects who are unable to attain a proper level of performance, that is, those with brain-computer interface (BCI) illiteracy or BCI inefficients, is still a major issue in human electroencephalography (EEG) BCI systems. The most suitable approach to address this issue is to analyze the EEG signals of individual subjects independently recorded before the main BCI tasks, to evaluate their performance on these tasks. This study mainly focused on non-linear analyses and deep learning techniques to investigate the significant relationship between the intrinsic characteristics of a prior idle resting state and the subsequent BCI performance. To achieve this main objective, a public EEG motor/movement imagery dataset that constituted two individual EEG signals recorded from an idle resting state and a motor imagery BCI task was used in this study. For the EEG processing in the prior resting state, spectral analysis but also non-linear analyses, such as sample entropy, permutation entropy, and recurrent quantification analyses (RQA), were performed to obtain individual groups of EEG features to represent intrinsic EEG characteristics in the subject. For the EEG signals in the BCI tasks, four individual decoding methods, as a filter-bank common spatial pattern-based classifier and three types of convolution neural network-based classifiers, quantified the subsequent BCI performance in the subject. Statistical linear regression and ANOVA with post hoc analyses verified the significant relationship between non-linear EEG features in the prior resting state and three types of BCI performance as low-, intermediate-, and high-performance groups that were statistically discriminated by the subsequent BCI performance. As a result, we found that the frontal theta rhythm ranging from 4 to 8 Hz during the eyes open condition was highly associated with the subsequent BCI performance. The RQA findings that higher determinism and lower mean recurrent time were mainly observed in higher-performance groups indicate that more regular and stable properties in the EEG signals over the frontal regions during the prior resting state would provide a critical clue to assess an individual BCI ability in the following motor imagery task.

Neural correlates of tactile hardness intensity perception during active grasping.

While tactile sensation plays an essential role in interactions with the surroundings, relatively little is known about the neural processes involved in the perception of tactile information. In particular, it remains unclear how different intensities of tactile hardness are represented in the human brain during object manipulation. This study aims to investigate neural responses to various levels of tactile hardness using functional magnetic resonance imaging while people grasp objects to perceive hardness intensity. We used four items with different hardness levels but otherwise identical in shape and texture. A total of Twenty-five healthy volunteers participated in this study. Before scanning, participants performed a behavioral task in which they received a pair of stimuli and they were to report the perceived difference of hardness between them. During scanning, without any visual information, they were randomly given one of the four objects and asked to grasp it. We found significant blood oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses in the posterior insula in the right hemisphere (rpIns) and the right posterior lobe of the cerebellum (rpCerebellum), which parametrically tracked hardness intensity. These responses were supported by BOLD signal changes in the rpCerebellum and rpIns correlating with tactile hardness intensity. Multidimensional scaling analysis showed similar representations of hardness intensity among physical, perceptual, and neural information. Our findings demonstrate the engagement of the rpCerebellum and rpIns in perceiving tactile hardness intensity during active object manipulation.

Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Neural Dynamics in Theta Oscillations Related to the Inhibition of Habitual Behavior.

The human brain carries out cognitive control for the inhibition of habitual behaviors by suppressing some familiar but inappropriate behaviors instead of engaging specific goal-directed behavior flexibly in a given situation. To examine the characteristics of neural dynamics related to such inhibition of habitual behaviors, we used a modified rock-paper-scissors (RPS) task that consisted of a basic, a lose-, and a win-conditioned game. Spectral and phase synchrony analyses were conducted to examine the acquired electroencephalogram signals across the entire brain during all RPS tasks. Temporal variations in frontal theta power activities were directly in line with the stream of RPS procedures in accordance with the task conditions. The lose-conditioned RPS task gave rise to increases in the local frontal power and global phase-synchronized pairs of theta oscillations. The activation of the global phase-synchronized network preceded the activation of frontal theta power. These results demonstrate that the frontal regions play a pivotal role in the inhibition of habitual behaviors-stereotyped and ingrained stimulus-response mappings that have been established over time. This study suggests that frontal theta oscillations may be engaged during the cognitive inhibition of habitual behaviors and that these oscillations characterize the degree of cognitive load required to inhibit habitual behaviors.

Involvement of bilateral insula in brand extension evaluation: an fMRI study.

The present study aims to investigate functional involvement of brain areas in consumers' evaluation of brand extension that refers to the use of well-established brand for launching new offerings. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning, participants viewed a beverage brand name followed by an extension goods name selected from the beverage or household appliance categories. They responded acceptability to given brand extension. Both acceptability responses and reaction time revealed a noticeable pattern that participants responded to acceptable stimuli more carefully. General linear model (GLM) analyses revealed the involvement of insular activity in brand extension evaluation. Especially, insular activity was lateralized according to valence. Furthermore, its activity could explain behavioral response in parametric modulation model. According to these results, we speculate that insula activity is relevant to emotional processing. Finally, we divided neural activities during brand extension into separated clusters using a hierarchical clustering-based connectivity analysis. Excluding two of them related to sensorimotor functions for behavioral responses, the remaining cluster, including bilateral insula, was likely to reflect brand extension assessment. Hence, we speculate that consumers' brand extension evaluation may involve emotional processes, shown as insular activity.

Eco friendly nanofluidic platforms using biodegradable nanoporous materials.

Splendid advancement of micro/nanofluidic researches in the field of bio- and chemical-analysis enables various ubiquitous applications such as bio-medical diagnostics and environmental monitoring, etc. In such devices, nanostructures are the essential elements so that the nanofabrication methods have been major issues since the last couple of decades. However, most of nanofabrication methods are sophisticated and expensive due to the requirement of high-class cleanroom facilities, while low-cost and biocompatible materials have been already introduced in the microfluidic platforms. Thus, an off-the-shelf and biodegradable material for those nanostructures can complete the concept of an eco-friendly micro/nanofluidic platform. In this work, biodegradable materials originated from well-known organisms such as human nail plate and denatured hen egg (albumen and yolk) were rigorously investigated as a perm-selective nanoporous membrane. A simple micro/nanofluidic device integrated with such materials was fabricated to demonstrate nanofluidic phenomena. These distinctive evidences (the visualization of ion concentration polarization phenomenon, ohmic/limiting/over-limiting current behavior and surface charge-governed conductance) can fulfill the requirements of functional nanostructures for the nanofluidic applications. Therefore, while these materials were less robust than nano-lithographically fabricated structures, bio-oriented perm-selective materials would be utilized as a one of key elements of the biodegradable and eco friendly micro/nanofluidic applications.

Predictive Values of Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio, Platelet-to-Lymphocyte Ratio, and Other Prognostic Factors in Pediatric Patients With Bell's Palsy.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Bell's palsy (BP) is the most frequent cause of unilateral facial paralysis, and inflammation is believed to play an important role in pathogenesis. Due to its rarity, however, no consensus has been reached regarding optimum treatment or factors affecting prognosis. In the present study, treatment outcomes and prognostic factors of BP were investigated in pediatric patients who underwent steroid therapy. The goal was to investigate the relationship between BP and inflammation using multiple inflammatory markers, including neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), mean platelet volume (MPV), and red cell distribution width (RDW). MATERIALS AND METHODS: In all, 54 patients diagnosed with BP and 39 healthy randomly selected controls were enrolled in this retrospective study. Demographic characteristics and complete blood cell count test results were compared. In addition, prognostic factors were sought by dividing the 54 patients with BP into 2 groups according to the House-Brackmann grading system: low grade BP (grades II and III) and high grade BP (grades IV and V). Serum samples were analyzed retrospectively on initial presentation and 6 months after the symptom begins. Meaningful hematological parameters include NLR, PLR, MPV, and RDW. RESULTS: The NLR values in the BP group were significantly higher than in the control group. The NLR value in the 2 groups of patients with BP differed significantly. The mean PLR value in the BP group was higher than in the control group; however, there were no significant differences between the low-grade and high-grade BP groups nor were there any statically significant differences in the other characteristics. CONCLUSION: The NLR and PLR values are readily accessible parameters that may be useful prognostic markers in pediatric patients with BP. Further studies are required to confirm these results and their utility in predicting prognosis and treating pediatric patients with BP.

Cortical Representation of Tactile Stickiness Evoked by Skin Contact and Glove Contact.

Even when we are wearing gloves, we can easily detect whether a surface that we are touching is sticky or not. However, we know little about the similarities between brain activations elicited by this glove contact and by direct contact with our bare skin. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated which brain regions represent stickiness intensity information obtained in both touch conditions, i.e., skin contact and glove contact. First, we searched for neural representations mediating stickiness for each touch condition separately and found regions responding to both mainly in the supramarginal gyrus and the secondary somatosensory cortex. Second, we explored whether surface stickiness is encoded in common neural patterns irrespective of how participants touched the sticky stimuli. Using a cross-condition decoding method, we tested whether the stickiness intensities could be decoded from fMRI signals evoked by skin contact using a classifier trained on the responses elicited by glove contact, and vice versa. Our results found shared neural encoding patterns in the bilateral angular gyri and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and suggest that these areas represent stickiness intensity information regardless of how participants touched the sticky stimuli. Interestingly, we observed that neural encoding patterns of these areas were reflected in participants' intensity ratings. This study revealed common and distinct brain activation patterns of tactile stickiness using two different touch conditions, which may broaden the understanding of neural mechanisms related to surface texture perception.

Cognitive and Emotional Aspects of Cupping Therapy.

Cupping therapy has recently gained public attention and is widely used in many regions. Some patients are resistant to being treated with cupping therapy, as visually unpleasant marks on the skin may elicit negative reactions. This study aimed to identify the cognitive and emotional components of cupping therapy. Twenty-five healthy volunteers were presented with emotionally evocative visual stimuli representing fear, disgust, happiness, neutral emotion, and cupping, along with control images. Participants evaluated the valence and arousal level of each stimulus. Before the experiment, they completed the Fear of Pain Questionnaire-III. In two-dimensional affective space, emotional arousal increases as hedonic valence ratings become increasingly pleasant or unpleasant. Cupping therapy images were more unpleasant and more arousing than the control images. Cluster analysis showed that the response to cupping therapy images had emotional characteristics similar to those for fear images. Individuals with a greater fear of pain rated cupping therapy images as more unpleasant and more arousing. Psychophysical analysis showed that individuals experienced unpleasant and aroused emotional states in response to the cupping therapy images. Our findings suggest that cupping therapy might be associated with unpleasant-defensive motivation and motivational activation. Determining the emotional components of cupping therapy would help clinicians and researchers to understand the intrinsic effects of cupping therapy.

Perception of surface stickiness in different sensory modalities: an functional MRI study.

Surface texture can be perceived not only from tactile, but also from auditory and visual sensory cues. In our previous psychophysical study, we demonstrated that humans can recognize surface stickiness using only one kind of sensory modality without any difficulty. However, the brain regions that would be activated by non-corresponding sensory cues, for example, auditory and visual cues, remain unknown. In this human functional MRI study, we explored brain regions associated with surface stickiness perception in each of three different sensory modalities, and sought for common neural activities across modalities. In the tactile condition, participants actually touched a sticky surface with their right index finger. In the auditory and visual conditions, audio and video clips of tactile explorations of a sticky surface were presented and participants were asked to recall the perceived stickiness as vividly as possible. Our results, based on a general linear model analysis, showed that somatosensory cortices including postcentral gyrus, anterior insula, and anterior intraparietal sulcus were significantly activated across all modalities. Moreover, we observed significant activation of primary sensory regions of each modality. A follow-up conjunction analysis identified that postcentral gyrus, anterior intraparietal sulcus, precentral gyrus, and supplementary motor area were activated in common. These findings could deepen our understanding of the surface stickiness perception in the human brain.

Heparin therapy as adjuvant treatment for profound idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss.

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS: This study aimed to provide evidence of whether unfractionated heparin used as adjuvant therapy in conjunction with systemic corticosteroid therapy improves hearing recovery in patients with profound idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL), and to compare the effect of this treatment with those of additional intratympanic corticosteroid therapy. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective chart review. METHODS: Eighty-seven patients with profound ISSNHL (≥90 dB) and who had been admitted at a tertiary referral center between 2010 and 2018 were retrospectively reviewed, 67 patients for additional intratympanic corticosteroid injection (ITSI) (ITSI group) and 21 for adjuvant heparin therapy (heparin group). Hearing recovery was evaluated by grade assessment according to the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery criteria. RESULTS: Of the patients in the heparin group, 42.8% recovered serviceable hearing, which was significantly higher than the recovery rates (19.7%) of those in the ITSI group. Particularly, in patients with pretreatment hearing level of 90 to 100 dB, adjuvant heparin therapy enhanced therapeutic effects with a significant hearing recovery rate of 80%. However, in patients with initial hearing level >100 dB, the rates of significant hearing recovery in the two groups were roughly equal and remained unsatisfactory (8.1% in the ITSI group and 9.1% in the heparin group). CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that the treatment of profound ISSNHL with adjuvant heparin therapy, in combination with systemic steroid therapy, results in higher hearing recovery rates when compared to combined local and systemic corticosteroid therapy, without serious complications. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: 3b Laryngoscope, 130:1310-1315, 2020.

Surface Stickiness Perception by Auditory, Tactile, and Visual Cues.

This study aimed to explore the psychophysical bases of multisensory surface stickiness perception by investigating how sensitively humans perceive different levels of stickiness intensity conveyed by auditory, tactile, and visual cues. First, we sorted five different sticky stimuli by perceived intensity in ascending order for each modality separately and evaluated the discrimination sensitivities of each participant using a fitted psychometric curve. Results showed that perceptual intensity orders were not identical to physical intensity order and that the sequential order of perceived intensities for different modalities was inconsistent. Moreover, estimated perceptual sensitivities to surface stickiness indicated that auditory cues result in better discrimination sensitivity than tactile and visual cues. Second, we calculated the relative perceptual distances of stickiness intensities using multidimensional scaling. A follow-up statistical test demonstrated that the perceptual mapping of vision and touch are similar but that auditory perception is different. These results suggest that the discriminability of stickiness intensity is best served by auditory cues and that texture information processing in the auditory domain is distinctive from that of other modalities.

Dynamics of driftless preconcentration using ion concentration polarization leveraged by convection and diffusion.

Over the past several decades, separation and preconcentration methods of (bio)molecules have been actively developed for various biomedical and chemical processes such as disease diagnostics, point of care test and environmental monitoring. Among the great developments of the electrokinetic method in a micro/nanofluidic platform is the ion concentration polarization (ICP) phenomenon, in which a target molecule is accumulated near a permselective nanoporous membrane under an applied electric field. ICP method has been actively studied due to its easy implementation and high preconcentration/separation efficiency. However, the dynamic behavior of preconcentrated analytes has not yet been fully studied, especially driftless migration, where the applied electric field is orthogonal to the direction of the drift migration. Here, we demonstrate anomalous shapes of preconcentrated analytes (either plug or dumbbell shape) and the morphologies were analytically modeled by the leverage of convection and diffusion migration. This model was experimentally verified with various lengths of DNA and the limiting cases (convection-free environment in paper-based microfluidic device and extremely low diffusivity of red blood cells) were also shown to confirm the model. Thus, this study not only provides an insight into the fundamental electrokinetic dynamics of molecules in an ICP platform but also plays a guiding role for the design of a nanofluidic preconcentrator for a lab on a chip application.

Shared neural representations of tactile roughness intensities by somatosensation and touch observation using an associative learning method.

Previous human fMRI studies have reported activation of somatosensory areas not only during actual touch, but also during touch observation. However, it has remained unclear how the brain encodes visually evoked tactile intensities. Using an associative learning method, we investigated neural representations of roughness intensities evoked by (a) tactile explorations and (b) visual observation of tactile explorations. Moreover, we explored (c) modality-independent neural representations of roughness intensities using a cross-modal classification method. Case (a) showed significant decoding performance in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the supramarginal gyrus (SMG), while in the case (b), the bilateral posterior parietal cortices, the inferior occipital gyrus, and the primary motor cortex were identified. Case (c) observed shared neural activity patterns in the bilateral insula, the SMG, and the ACC. Interestingly, the insular cortices were identified only from the cross-modal classification, suggesting their potential role in modality-independent tactile processing. We further examined correlations of confusion patterns between behavioral and neural similarity matrices for each region. Significant correlations were found solely in the SMG, reflecting a close relationship between neural activities of SMG and roughness intensity perception. The present findings may deepen our understanding of the brain mechanisms underlying intensity perception of tactile roughness.

TAS-118 (S-1 plus leucovorin) versus S-1 in patients with gemcitabine-refractory advanced pancreatic cancer: a randomised, open-label, phase 3 study (GRAPE trial).

BACKGROUND: In our previous randomised phase 2 study for patients with gemcitabine-refractory advanced pancreatic cancer, S-1 plus leucovorin improved progression-free survival compared with S-1 alone. Here, we evaluated the efficacy of TAS-118 (S-1 plus leucovorin) versus S-1 in overall survival (OS). PATIENTS AND METHODS: This randomised, open-label, phase 3 study was conducted at 58 centres in Japan and Korea. Patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer that progressed during first-line gemcitabine-based chemotherapy or recurred during or after post-operative gemcitabine-based adjuvant treatment were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive either S-1 (40-60 mg, twice daily for 4 weeks in a 6-week cycle) or TAS-118 (S-1 40-60 mg plus leucovorin 25 mg, twice daily for 1 week in a 2-week cycle). The primary end-point was OS. RESULTS: A total of 603 patients were randomised, and 300 and 301 patients received TAS-118 and S-1, respectively. There was no difference in OS between groups (median OS for TAS-118 versus S-1, 7.6 months versus 7.9 months; hazard ratio [HR], 0.98 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.82-1.16]; P = 0.756). Progression-free survival was significantly longer with TAS-118 than S-1 (median, 3.9 months versus 2.8 months; HR, 0.80 [95% CI, 0.67-0.95]; P = 0.009). There were interactions between Japan and Korea (P = 0.004) and between unresectable and recurrent disease (P = 0.025) in OS. Incidence, profile and severity of adverse events were similar between groups. CONCLUSION: TAS-118 did not improve OS in patients with gemcitabine-refractory advanced pancreatic cancer compared to S-1. Further studies are needed to find patients who have benefit from adding leucovorin to S-1.

Decoding visual roughness perception: an fMRI study.

The neural substrates of tactile roughness perception have been investigated by many neuroimaging studies, while relatively little effort has been devoted to the investigation of neural representations of visually perceived roughness. In this human fMRI study, we looked for neural activity patterns that could be attributed to five different roughness intensity levels when the stimuli were perceived visually, i.e., in absence of any tactile sensation. During functional image acquisition, participants viewed video clips displaying a right index fingertip actively exploring the sandpapers that had been used for the behavioural experiment. A whole brain multivariate pattern analysis found four brain regions in which visual roughness intensities could be decoded: the bilateral posterior parietal cortex (PPC), the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) extending to the primary motor cortex (M1) in the right hemisphere, and the inferior occipital gyrus (IOG). In a follow-up analysis, we tested for correlations between the decoding accuracies and the tactile roughness discriminability obtained from a preceding behavioural experiment. We could not find any correlation between both although, during scanning, participants were asked to recall the tactilely perceived roughness of the sandpapers. We presume that a better paradigm is needed to reveal any potential visuo-tactile convergence. However, the present study identified brain regions that may subserve the discrimination of different intensities of visual roughness. This finding may contribute to elucidate the neural mechanisms related to the visual roughness perception in the human brain.

Diffusiophoretic exclusion of colloidal particles for continuous water purification.

It has been observed that colloidal particles are anomalously repelled from the interface of nanoporous materials and water by up to hundreds of micrometers even if there is no additional external field present. Recently, the physical origin of this anomalous repulsion has turned out to be diffusiophoretic migration triggered by an ion exchange process through the interface. Since the repulsive force is induced by a salt gradient only, the phenomenon can be applied to a microscale water purification platform without the need for any external power sources. In this work, we suggest a micro/nanofluidic device for continuous water purification utilizing long-range diffusiophoretic migration around ion exchangeable surfaces. An ion concentration boundary layer was characterized by the Sherwood number (Sh) which is a key dimensionless number to describe the purification process. Depending on Sh, we have theoretically and experimentally demonstrated that long-range diffusiophoretic exclusion can be used for continuous water purification. Finally, our platform can be used as a highly energy-efficient and portable water treatment option for operations such as purification, disinfection, water softening, etc.