Corrigendum: Regional and Temporal Differences in Brain Activity With Morally Good or Bad Judgments in Men: A Magnetoencephalography Study.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2021.596711.].

MEG activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during optic flow stimulations detects mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease.

Dorsal stream, which has a neuronal connection with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), is known to be responsible for detection of motion including optic flow perception. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), this study aimed to examine neural responses to optic flow stimuli with looming motion in the DLPFC in patients with mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease (AD-MCI) compared with cognitively unimpaired participants (CU). We analyzed the neural responses by evaluating maximum source-localized power for the AD-MCI group (n = 11) and CU (n = 20), focusing on six regions of interest (ROIs) that form the DLPFC: right and left dorsal Brodmann area 9/46 (A9/46d), Brodmann area 46 (A46) and ventral Brodmann area 9/46 (A9/46v). We found significant differences in the maximum power between the groups in the left A46 and A9/46v. Moreover, in the left A9/46v, the maximum power significantly correlated with the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised general memory score and delayed recall score. The maximum power in the left A9/46v also revealed high performance in AD-MCI versus CU classification with the area under the ROC curve of 0.90. This study demonstrated that MEG during the optic flow task can be useful in discriminating AD-MCI from CU.

Insulin-like growth factor-1 level is a poor diagnostic indicator of growth hormone deficiency.

We evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) for screening growth hormone deficiency (GHD) to determine the usefulness of IGF-1 as a screening test. Among 298 consecutive children who had short stature or decreased height velocity, we measured IGF-1 levels and performed growth hormone (GH) secretion test using clonidine, arginine, and, in cases with different results of the two tests, L-dopa. Patients with congenital abnormalities were excluded. GHD was defined as peak GH ≤ 6.0 ng/mL in the two tests. We identified 60 and 238 patients with and without GHD, respectively. The mean IGF-1 standard deviation (SD) was not significantly different between the GHD and non-GHD groups (p = 0.23). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis demonstrated the best diagnostic accuracy at an IGF-1 cutoff of - 1.493 SD, with 0.685 sensitivity, 0.417 specificity, 0.25 positive and 0.823 negative predictive values, and 0.517 area under the curve. Correlation analysis revealed that none of the items of patients' characteristics increased the diagnostic power of IGF-1. IGF-1 level had poor diagnostic accuracy as a screening test for GHD. Therefore, IGF-1 should not be used alone for GHD screening. A predictive biomarker for GHD should be developed in the future.

Regional and Temporal Differences in Brain Activity With Morally Good or Bad Judgments in Men: A Magnetoencephalography Study.

Many neuroimaging studies on morality focus on functional brain areas that relate to moral judgment specifically in morally negative situations. To date, there have been few studies on differences in brain activity under conditions of being morally good and bad along a continuum. To explore not only the brain regions involved but also their functional connections during moral judgments, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG), which is superior to other imaging modalities for analyzing time-dependent brain activities; only men were recruited because sex differences might be a confounding factor. While analyses showed that general patterns of brain activation and connectivity were similar between morally good judgments (MGJs) and morally bad judgments (MBJs), activation in brain areas that subserve emotion and "theory of mind" on the right hemisphere was larger in MGJ than MBJ conditions. In the left local temporal region, the connectivity between brain areas related to emotion and reward/punishment was stronger in MBJ than MGJ conditions. The time-frequency analysis showed distinct laterality (left hemisphere dominant) occurring during early moral information processing in MBJ conditions compared to MGJ conditions and phase-dependent differences in the appearance of theta waves between MBJ and MGJ conditions. During MBJs, connections within the hemispheric regions were more robust than those between hemispheric regions. These results suggested that the local temporal region on the left hemisphere is more important in the execution of MBJs during early moral valence processing than in that with MGJs. Shorter neuronal connections within the hemisphere may allow to make MBJs punctual.

Atypical body movements during night in young children with autism spectrum disorder: a pilot study.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) reportedly suffer from sleep problems at a higher rate than typically developing (TD) children. Several previous studies have reported differences in sleep indices (e.g., sleep latency) in children with ASD. However, no previous studies have focused specifically on the time course of body movements. In the present study, we investigated the time course of body movements in young TD children and young children with ASD as well as the relationship between body movements during night and social ability. Seventeen TD children and 17 children with ASD participated in this study (5 to 8 years old). We used an accelerometer attached to the waist to record movements during night and measured the average time course of body movements for 3 nights. Our results demonstrated that the rate of body movement 2 to 3 hours after the onset of body stillness was higher in children with ASD than in TD children. In addition, the higher rate of body movement at 0.5 to 1 hour after the onset of body stillness was associated with a lower social ability in the children with ASD. Our results suggested that the time course of body movements is an objective behavioural index for young children with ASD.

A Patient with MPO-ANCA-positive IgA Nephropathy Diagnosed with the Clinical Onset of Macrohematuria.

A 21-year-old woman presented with renal dysfunction during macrohematuria. A kidney biopsy revealed IgA nephropathy with a small percentage of crescent formation and macrohematuria-associated tubular injury. Macrohematuria-associated acute kidney injury could explain her renal dysfunction. However, she was seropositive for myeloperoxidase (MPO)-anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA) and showed fibrin deposition around one arteriole. Corticosteroids and mycophenolate mofetil were administered as for ANCA vasculitis, and the serum creatinine, abnormal urinalysis and MPO-ANCA titer all gradually ameliorated. The presence of extra-glomerular vasculitis, which was probably induced by ANCA, suggested that MPO-ANCA was an exacerbating factor for her prolonged renal dysfunction. This condition has so far only rarely been addressed in ANCA-positive IgA nephropathy.

Unusual developmental pattern of brain lateralization in young boys with autism spectrum disorder: Power analysis with child-sized magnetoencephalography.

AIMS: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often described as comprising an unusual brain growth pattern and aberrant brain lateralization. Although it is important to study the pathophysiology of the developing ASD cortex, examples of physiological brain lateralization in young children with ASD have yet to be well examined. METHODS: Thirty-eight boys with ASD (aged 3-7 years) and 38 typically developing (TD) boys (aged 3-8 years) concentrated on video programs and their brain activities were measured non-invasively. We employed a customized child-sized magnetoencephalography system in which the sensors were located as close to the brain as possible for optimal recording in young children. To produce a credible laterality index of the brain oscillations, we defined two clusters of sensors corresponding to the right and left hemispheres. We focused on the laterality index ([left - right]/[left+right]) of the relative power band in seven frequency bands. RESULTS: The TD group displayed significantly rightward lateralized brain oscillations in the theta-1 frequency bands compared to the ASD group. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to demonstrate unusual brain lateralization of brain oscillations measured by magnetoencephalography in young children with ASD.

Comparative genomics approach to the expression of figalpha, one of the earliest marker genes of oocyte differentiation in medaka (Oryzias latipes).

We analyzed molecular cascades of sex differentiation in medaka gonads by examining the transcriptional regulation of the oocyte-expressed gene, figalpha. We first confirmed that figalpha is one of the earliest marker genes of oocyte differentiation by quantitative RT-PCR and in situ hybridization. Expression of putative figalpha target genes, zpc4 and zpb, followed that of figalpha. A meiosis-specific gene, scp3, showed expression temporally and spatially similar to figalpha. To characterize the cis-regulatory sequences of figalpha, we compared genomic organizations of vertebrate figalpha genes. Both number and sequence homology of the C-terminal exons showed divergence, suggesting their less important roles. In the frog, Xenopus tropicalis, and in many teleosts, figalpha is located between hexokinase 2 and beta-adducin. We compared this genomic region for potential cis-regulatory elements and found no DNA stretches with high homology. In spite of this lack of sequence similarities, fluorescent protein transgenes surrounded with figalpha flanking sequences from the compact genomes of fugu or Tetraodon faithfully reproduced the endogenous expression of figalpha in the medaka oocytes, indicating conserved regulatory mechanisms.