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Background and Hypothesis Differences in sound relevance filtering in schizophrenia are proposed to represent a key index of biological changes in brain function in the illness. This study featured a computational modeling approach to test the hypothesis that processing differences might already be evident in first-episode, becoming more pronounced in the established illness. Study Design Auditory event-related potentials to a typical oddball sequence (rare pitch deviations amongst regular sounds) were recorded from 90 persons with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (40 first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum, 50 established illness) and age-matched healthy controls. The data were analyzed using dynamic causal modeling to identify the changes in effective connectivity that best explained group differences. Study Results Group differences were linked to intrinsic (within brain region) connectivity changes. In activity-dependent measures these were restricted to the left auditory cortex in first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum but were more widespread in the established illness. Modeling suggested that both established illness and first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum groups expressed significantly lower inhibition of inhibitory interneuron activity and altered gain on superficial pyramidal cells with the data indicative of differences in both putative N-methyl-d-aspartate glutamate receptor activity-dependent plasticity and classic neuromodulation. Conclusions The study provides further support for the notion that examining the ability to alter responsiveness to structured sound sequences in schizophrenia and first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum could be informative to uncovering the nature and progression of changes in brain function during the illness. Furthermore, modeling suggested that limited differences present at first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum may become more expansive with illness progression.

Amino acid transporters ASCT2 and LAT1 are coordinately enhanced in human cancers where, among other roles, they are thought to drive mammalian target-of-rapamycin (mTOR) growth signaling. To asses...

This paper describes a novel electronic nose system combined with a membrane interface probe (MIP) for detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in water. The MIP is an in situ tool that allows the detection of certain VOCs in the soil via a pushed or driven probe. The MIP was combined with a sensor array consisting of four different tin‐oxide gas sensors known as an electronic nose (e‐nose). The designed e‐nose system was calibrated in aqueous media spiked with benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and p‐xylene (BTEX) at concentrations of 100, 250, and 500 ppm. Since the experiment was conducted utilizing five repetitions for each analyte, a data set of 60 measurements was prepared for principal components analysis (PCA). The results of the PCA showed that two principal components contain more than 99% variance information and each VOC is separable and detectable by the e‐nose.