A gender recognition method based on EEG microstates.

BACKGROUND: Gender carries important information related to male and female characteristics, and a large number of studies have attempted to use physiological measurement methods for gender classification. Although previous studies have shown that there exist statistical differences in some Electroencephalographic (EEG) microstate parameters between males and females, it is still unknown that whether these microstate parameters can be used as potential biomarkers for gender classification based on machine learning. METHODS: We used two independent resting-state EEG datasets: the first dataset included 74 females and matched 74 males, and the second one included 42 males and matched 42 females. EEG microstate analysis based on modified k-means clustering method was applied, and temporal parameter and nonlinear characteristics (sample entropy and Lempel-Ziv complexity) of EEG microstate sequences were extracted to compare between males and females. More importantly, these microstate temporal parameters and complexity were tried to train six machine learning methods for gender classification. RESULTS: We obtained five common microstates for each dataset and each group. Compared with the male group, the female group has significantly higher temporal parameters of microstate B, C, E and lower temporal parameters of microstate A and D, and higher complexity of microstate sequence. When using combination of microstate temporal parameters and complexity or only microstate temporal parameters as classification features in an independent test set (the second dataset), we achieved 95.2% classification accuracy. CONCLUSION: Our research findings indicate that the dynamics of microstate have considerable Gender-specific alteration. EEG microstates can be used as neurophysiological biomarkers for gender classification.

The effects of ECMO on neurological function recovery of critical patients: A double-edged sword.

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) played an important role in the treatment of patients with critical care such as cardiac arrest (CA) and acute respiratory distress syndrome. ECMO is gradually showing its advantages in terms of speed and effectiveness of circulatory support, as it provides adequate cerebral blood flow (CBF) to the patient and ensures the perfusion of organs. ECMO enhances patient survival and improves their neurological prognosis. However, ECMO-related brain complications are also important because of the high risk of death and the associated poor outcomes. We summarized the reported complications related to ECMO for patients with CA, such as north-south syndrome, hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury, impaired intracranial vascular autoregulation, embolic stroke, intracranial hemorrhage, and brain death. The exact mechanism of ECMO on the role of brain function is unclear. Here we review the pathophysiological mechanisms associated with ECMO in the protection of neurologic function in recent years, as well as the ECMO-related complications in brain and the means to improve it, to provide ideas for the treatment of brain function protection in CA patients.

EEG microstate in first-episode drug-naive adolescents with depression.

A growing number of studies have revealed significant abnormalities in electroencephalography (EEG) microstate in patients with depression, but these findings may be affected by medication. Therefore, how the EEG microstates abnormally change in patients with depression in the early stage and without the influence of medication has not been investigated so far. Resting-state EEG data and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) were collected from 34 first-episode drug-naïve adolescent with depression and 34 matched healthy controls. EEG microstate analysis was applied and nonlinear characteristics of EEG microstate sequences were studied by sample entropy and Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZC). The microstate temporal parameters and complexity were tried to train an SVM for classification of patients with depression. Four typical EEG microstate topographies were obtained in both groups, but microstate C topography was significantly abnormal in depression patients. The duration of microstate B, C, D and the occurrence and coverage of microstate B significantly increased, the occurrence and coverage of microstate A, C reduced significantly in depression group. Sample entropy and LZC in the depression group were abnormally increased and were negatively correlated with HDRS. When the combination of EEG microstate temporal parameters and complexity of microstate sequence was used to classify patients with depression from healthy controls, a classification accuracy of 90.9% was obtained. Abnormal EEG microstate has appeared in early depression, reflecting an underlying abnormality in configuring neural resources and transitions between distinct brain network states. EEG microstate can be used as a neurophysiological biomarker for early auxiliary diagnosis of depression.

Efficient and Highly Accurate Diagnosis of Malignant Hematological Diseases Based on Whole-Slide Images Using Deep Learning.

Hematopoietic disorders are serious diseases that threaten human health, and the diagnosis of these diseases is essential for treatment. However, traditional diagnosis methods rely on manual operation, which is time consuming and laborious, and examining entire slide is challenging. In this study, we developed a weakly supervised deep learning method for diagnosing malignant hematological diseases requiring only slide-level labels. The method improves efficiency by converting whole-slide image (WSI) patches into low-dimensional feature representations. Then the patch-level features of each WSI are aggregated into slide-level representations by an attention-based network. The model provides final diagnostic predictions based on these slide-level representations. By applying the proposed model to our collection of bone marrow WSIs at different magnifications, we found that an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.966 on an independent test set can be obtained at 10× magnification. Moreover, the performance on microscopy images can achieve an average accuracy of 94.2% on two publicly available datasets. In conclusion, we have developed a novel method that can achieve fast and accurate diagnosis in different scenarios of hematological disorders.

Study on the Regulation Effect of Optogenetic Technology on LFP of the Basal Ganglia Nucleus in Rotenone-Treated Rats.

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurological degenerative disease that cannot be completely cured, although drugs can improve or alleviate its symptoms. Optogenetic technology, which stimulates or inhibits neurons with excellent spatial and temporal resolution, provides a new idea and approach for the precise treatment of Parkinson's disease. However, the neural mechanism of photogenetic regulation remains unclear. Objective: In this paper, we want to study the nonlinear features of EEG signals in the striatum and globus pallidus through optogenetic stimulation of the substantia nigra compact part. Methods: Rotenone was injected stereotactically into the substantia nigra compact area and ventral tegmental area of SD rats to construct rotenone-treated rats. Then, for the optogenetic manipulation, we injected adeno-associated virus expressing channelrhodopsin to stimulate the globus pallidus and the striatum with a 1 mW blue light and collected LFP signals before, during, and after light stimulation. Finally, the collected LFP signals were analyzed by using nonlinear dynamic algorithms. Results: After observing the behavior and brain morphology, 16 models were finally determined to be successful. LFP results showed that approximate entropy and fractal dimension of rats in the control group were significantly greater than those in the experimental group after light treatment (p < 0.05). The LFP nonlinear features in the globus pallidus and striatum of rotenone-treated rats showed significant statistical differences before and after light stimulation (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Optogenetic technology can regulate the characteristic value of LFP signals in rotenone-treated rats to a certain extent. Approximate entropy and fractal dimension algorithm can be used as an effective index to study LFP changes in rotenone-treated rats.

Classification of Schizophrenia by Combination of Brain Effective and Functional Connectivity.

At present, lots of studies have tried to apply machine learning to different electroencephalography (EEG) measures for diagnosing schizophrenia (SZ) patients. However, most EEG measures previously used are either a univariate measure or a single type of brain connectivity, which may not fully capture the abnormal brain changes of SZ patients. In this paper, event-related potentials were collected from 45 SZ patients and 30 healthy controls (HCs) during a learning task, and then a combination of partial directed coherence (PDC) effective and phase lag index (PLI) functional connectivity were used as features to train a support vector machine classifier with leave-one-out cross-validation for classification of SZ from HCs. Our results indicated that an excellent classification performance (accuracy = 95.16%, specificity = 94.44%, and sensitivity = 96.15%) was obtained when the combination of functional and effective connectivity features was used, and the corresponding optimal feature number was 15, which included 12 PDC and three PLI connectivity features. The selected effective connectivity features were mainly located between the frontal/temporal/central and visual/parietal lobes, and the selected functional connectivity features were mainly located between the frontal/temporal and visual cortexes of the right hemisphere. In addition, most of the selected effective connectivity abnormally enhanced in SZ patients compared with HCs, whereas all the selected functional connectivity features decreased in SZ patients. The above results showed that our proposed method has great potential to become a tool for the auxiliary diagnosis of SZ.