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Relations between time and rhythm perception are discussed in this review of psychophysical research relevant to the multiple-look effect and dynamic-attending theory. Discrimination of two neighboring intervals that are marked by three successive sounds is improved when the presentation of the first (standard, S) interval is repeated before that of the second (comparison, C), as SSSSC. This improvement in sensitivity, called the multiple-look effect, occurs because listeners (1) perceive regular rhythm during the repetition of the standard interval, (2) predict the timing of subsequent sounds, and (3) detect sounds that are deviated from the predicted timing. The dynamic-attending theory attributes such predictions to the entrainment of attentional rhythms. An endogenous attentional rhythm is synchronized with the periodic succession of sounds marking the repeated standard. The standard and the comparison are discriminated on the basis of whether the ending marker of the comparison appears at the peak of the entrained attentional rhythm. This theory is compatible with the findings of recent neurophysiological studies that relate temporal prediction to neural oscillations.

In this study, we examined the difference in the processing of one’s own name and other people’s names using a mental rotation task. In Experiment 1, the observer’s own name and other common names were presented visually. In Experiment 2, the observer’s name and the names of people who were familiar to the observer were presented. The observer saw the name and judged whether it was mirror-reversed or not. The results show that reaction times and error rates were shorter, when the observer processed his/her own name compared to when processing others names. These findings might be due to peculiarities and familiarity of one’s own name.

A large number of studies have demonstrated the sequential effect, in which the response in the current trial is assimilated towards that of the immediately preceding trial in a decision making task. However, most previous studies have only examined the effect in situations where the response was given after each stimulus presentation. In this study, we examined whether the sequential effect existed when observers responded after the presentation of two stimuli. After two pictures of male faces were presented successively, participants rated the attractiveness of each face on a 9-point scale. The results showed that the second response was assimilated towards the first (Experiment 1), but the first response contrasted with (shifted away from) the second (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that preceding and succeeding contexts may differentially modulate our decision making.

A 50-year-old female patient underwent distal gastrectomy and intraperitoneal CDDP administration for advanced gastric cancer accompanied by severe peritoneal dissemination. She valued her quality of life and chose an oral anticancer drug, S-1, as a postoperative chemotherapy agent. S-1 was administered at a dose of 100mg/body/day for 4 weeks, followed by a 2- week rest. There were no adverse events due to S-1 and no exacerbation of peritoneal dissemination in the 5 years following surgery. The S-1 administration schedule was then changed to alternate-day administration. Eight years after the surgery, the patient discontinued S-1 treatment and has since survived for 11 years with no obvious cancer recurrence.

A 67-year-old man was diagnosed to have sigmoid colon cancer with peritonitis carcinomatosa. The cancer was surgically resected, and he thereafter underwent chemotherapy with mFOLFOX6+bevacizumab. He complained of gingival swelling throughout treatment and osteonecrosis of the jaw was noted. The bevacizumab therapy was therefore discontinued and the necrotic tissue removed. No recurrent necrosis has occurred. The addition of bevacizumab to the FOLFOX or FOLFIRI chemotherapy regimens has been shown to improve the survival rate and response rate in colorectal cancer. Osteonecrosis of the jaw is a rare toxicity of bevacizumab. Bevacizumab might compromise the microvessel integrity in the jaw, which thus may lead to bone necrosis. Osteonecrosis of the jaw in this case recovered after the discontinuation of bevacizumab and the removal of the necrotic tissue. The pathogenesis and treatment of osteonecrosis have not been elucidated.

Genital candidiasis occurs mainly in women referred as vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC), and occasionally occurs in men as to be called balanitis. VVC is one of the most common causes of infectious vaginitis. Approximately three-quarters of women will experience an episode of VVC at least once in their life and 5-8% of them will have more than four attacks within a year; this condition has been designated as recurrent VVC (RVVC). Causative agent in majority of VVC is Candida albicans, but occasionally VVC is caused by other Candida spp. VVC is not traditionally considered a sexually transmitted disease. On occasion sexual transmission of Candida can occur during vaginal intercourse. Particularly Candida transmission and sexual behaviors are linked to RVVC. Epidemiological evidence suggests that anogenital and, especially, orogenital contact transmits Candida.

We examined the attentional constraints of the contextual cueing effect known to occur only for attended items. We focused on whether the items not only attended to but also inhibited afterwards yield the effect or not. We adopted a hybrid paradigm of visual marking and contextual cueing procedures. In the experiment, half the distractors preceded the others and a target for one second. The results showed the contextual cueing effect even with visually marked items. These results suggest that spatial configurations previously attended to and inhibited afterwards can be encoded as visual context.

We carried out transthoracic Doppler echocardiography on 38 patients with hypertensive intracerebral hemorrhage(ICH) to examine cardiac functions. The ratio of myocardial hypertrophy and the prevalence of valvular regurgitation were investigated. The E/A ratio which reflects left ventricular diastolic function and the ejection fraction(EF) of each patient were also studied to demonstrate cardiac functions in patients with hypertensive ICH. Myocardial hypertrophy was found in 39.5% of patients with hypertensive ICH. The aortic regurgitation showed a trend to have a higher prevalence in patients with hypertensive ICH when compared to normal volunteer group. Although there was no significant differences in the ejection fraction between groups, the E/A ratio in patients with hypertensive ICH showed a significantly lower value than in normal volunteer group. Therefore, transthoracic Doppler echocardiography demonstrated that patients with intracerebral ICH showed a trend to have a myocardial hypertrophy, aortic valvular regurgitation, and the lower ventricular diastolic function. Thus, transthoracic Doppler echocardiography is useful to evaluate cardiac functions in patients with hypertensive ICH.

We carried out transthoracic Doppler echocardiography on 213 patients with ischemic cerebrovascular disease to examine cardiac functions. The prevalence of valvular regurgitation, left ventricular diastolic function (E/A ratio), and ejection fraction (EF) of each patient were studied by transthoracic Doppler echocardiography. In patients with embolic strokes, the prevalence of valvular regurgitation of the left ventricular system such as mitral regurgitation was significantly higher than that of normal controls. In contrast, there was no significant difference in the prevalence of valvular regurgitation in the right ventricular system. Although there was no significant difference in the ejection fraction between groups, the E/A ratio in patients with ischemic cerebrovascular disease showed a significantly lower value than that in normal controls. Patients with ischemic cerebrovascular disease showed a tendency to have an atherosclerotic change in the systemic arteries including cerebral and coronary arteries, reflecting an aggravation of cardiac wall compliance and diastolic dysfunction resulting in lowering of the E/A ratio. Thus, transthoracic Doppler echocardiography was useful to evaluate cardiac diastolic dysfunction and valvular regurgitation in patients with ischemic cerebrovascular disease.

Platelet function tests have been utilized for a long time as a useful tool for the diagnosis of qualitative platelet disorders. However, recently reports suggest that platelet function tests currently available in routine laboratory do not necessarily reflect in vivo hemostatic states. First of all, bleeding time could sometimes be non-informative for the following reasons; 1) Duke method, the most popular method in Japan, has poor reproducibility, 2) there is no appropriate method for monitoring of aspirin ingestion, 3) prolongation of bleeding time does not correlate with the amount of blood loss during surgery. Platelet adhesion is still measured by the ability of platelets to be retained on glass beads. However, this test is unable to detect selectively platelet adhesion. Thus, the test in which platelets can exclusively adhere to subendothelial components such as collagen, may be required. Platelet aggregation has been mostly analyzed by the changes in light transmittance in platelet rich plasma (PRP) with a platelet aggregometer. However, this test totally depends on the platelet count in PRP or duration of time after taking blood from patients. Moreover, platelet aggregation in this system is optimally observed and is hardly detectable when the in vivo Ca++ concentration has been chelated. Furthermore, the test could not detect small platelet aggregates, thus being unable to measure the early phase of platelet aggregation. These observations suggest that more simple and specific tests should be developed and become available in routine laboratory.

Determination of FDP D-dimer (D-dimer) has been recently developed for the diagnosis of thrombotic diseases with secondary fibrinolysis. We have studied the correlation between D-dimer and FDP-E concentrations in plasma from 282 patients with 630 samples. A linear correlation (r = 0.9269) was observed between the values of FDP-E and D-dimer. However, 13 out of 282 cases revealed an apparent dissociation of D-dimer concentrations from FDP-E values. Among them, 4 of these 13 cases (Group A) have shown to possess higher level of D-dimer when compared with the expected values from FDP-E, while 9 of 13 cases (Group B) revealed lower levels of D-dimer than that expected from FDP-E. All of Group A patients have been diagnosed as disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). On the other hand, in Group B patients, 6 of 9 were shown to have a widespread metastasis of cancer and 2 of them were under treatment with urokinase. To study whether Group B patients were under hypercoagulable or hyper-fibrinolytic state, we have examined ratios of AT III/alpha 2 PI and PIC/TAT in these cases. It has been shown that 4 of 9 patients in Group B have higher ratios of both AT III/alpha 2 PI and PIC/TAT if compared with other patients than Group B. This suggests that patients in Group B have been under hyper-fibrinolytic states.

To evaluate the causes of psychic disturbances after operation, three different psychological tests, Spielberger's rating scale "The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)", Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI) and Baum test, were performed during perioperative periods in 25 patients who received simple total hysterectomy. The score of the A-Trait analyzed from STAI that is trait anxiety, did not change significantly, while the score of the A-State analyzed from that, that is state anxiety, decreased significantly in postoperative period. Especially, the score of the A-State showed gradual decreasing tendency during perioperative period in the patients, who were classified as N+ group in MPI, showing the tendency of nervousness. On the contrary, in the patients of N- group, showing no tendency of nervousness, the score of the A-State increased significantly immediately before operation. In Baum test, most of the patients showed some psychological disturbances even during the postoperative period. From the Baum test, it was shown that they had psychologic fragility and lability even postoperatively, in spite of stabilization of general status.

This study was conducted in patients with stage III gastric cancer who were admitted and gastrectomized in our Department of Surgery during July 1971 to March 1980. The control group consisted of 32 patients who were treated with mitomycin C and FT -207 during the first half of the period and the levamisole (LMS) group of 32 patients who were treated with the same regimen plus LMS during the latter half of the period. No significant statistical difference in their back ground factors was found. The LMS group was treated with 150 mg/day of LMS for 3 consecutive days every other week starting 3 days before operation. The follow-up study up to 30 postoperative months indicated an enhancing effect of LMS on the survival rate in patients with gastric cancer stage III undergoing curative resection. LMS proved to be effective on inhibition of the tumor growth when the tumor sizes ranged 4.0 to 7.9 cm, and the metastases were limited within the regional lymph node.

Detection of circulating anticoagulant (CA) is clinically important in patients with SLE, habitual abortion and other hemorrhagic and thrombotic disorders. We have studied CA in 83 patients with such disorders. Thirty-one of 83 (37%) had positive CA and 16 of 83 (19%) had negative CA, while 36 of 83 (44%) showed borderline pattern of CA. The experiment was undertaken to detect CA clearly in patients with borderline CA, by using diluted APTT or PT reagents. When we used 5% diluted reagent in APTT or 50% diluted reagent in PT, constant value of clotting time showed 1.8% or 1.2%, respectively. Seven of 10 with borderline CA cases tested here revealed positive CA by using diluted reagents. Furthermore 2 of remaining 3 with borderline CA cases showed positive anti-cardiolipin antibodies, suggesting of presence of lupus anticoagulants. These results suggest that CA in borderline cases should be considered to be positive and to be possibly derived from lupus anticoagulants.