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After lying on a slanted floor for a while with the eyes closed, we may perceive it to be less slanted than at the beginning. After viewing a slanted floor while lying on a flat base, we may perceive it to be more horizontal. We investigated these postural and visual adaptations and their interactions with participants lying and sitting on the floor. The participants were adapted to a floor that was posturally, visually, or jointly slanted, and were asked to estimate the test slants around the adapting slant. The estimates were described as a linear function of the test slant with a high goodness-of-fit over the adapting slant. This supported normalization, not satiation, view. Second, the slope of the function, i.e., sensitivity to slant, in the lying position was low in the postural and visual conditions but high in the joint condition, whereas the sensitivity in the sitting position was equally high in all conditions. This was explained by an increase in visual and non-visual cues to the gravitational vertical in the sitting position, and by an abnormal pattern of intracorporeal hydrostatic pressure in the lying position. Third, in both body positions, the angle at which the slant appeared horizontal, i.e., the subjective horizontal (SH), was larger in the postural condition than in the visual condition. Finally, when the postural and visual adaptations were joint, the SH in the lying position was somewhere between the postural- and visual-alone SHs, whereas the SH in the sitting position approximated the visual-alone SH.

Long-term depression at parallel fiber-Purkinje cell synapses plays a principal role in learning in the cerebellum, which acts as a supervised learning machine. Recent experiments demonstrate various forms of synaptic plasticity at different sites within the cerebellum. In this article, we take into consideration synaptic plasticity at parallel fiber-molecular layer interneuron synapses as well as at parallel fiber-Purkinje cell synapses, and propose that the cerebellar cortex performs reinforcement learning, another form of learning that is more capable than supervised learning. We posit that through the use of reinforcement learning, the need for explicit teacher signals for learning in the cerebellum is eliminated; instead, learning can occur via responses from evaluative feedback. We demonstrate the learning capacity of cerebellar reinforcement learning using simple computer simulations of delay eyeblink conditioning and the cart-pole balancing task.

Background Patients undergoing dialysis have a high incidence of fracture, and early diagnosis is important. We report seven cases of closed rib or upper-limb fractures diagnosed by bedside ultrasonography during maintenance hemodialysis sessions and describe relevant clinical characteristics. Case presentation We identified seven patients who were injured by falls in their homes. No injuries occurred on the day of dialysis. Five of the 7 patients did not visit the emergency room. All patients complained of persistent unexplained pain during a regular hemodialysis session. Ultrasonography (US) was performed during dialysis sessions, without any reports of pain. Before US evaluation, the sensitivity of radiography for diagnosis of fracture was 25%, while the sensitivity of US was 100%. Compared with other patients in our clinic, these patients were significantly older and had lower serum albumin concentrations and lower hemodialysis efficiency as determined by Kt/V. They also had a higher incidence of diabetes and a greater need for vasopressors during dialysis. These findings were consistent with the results of previous studies of the characteristics of fractures in dialysis patients. However, blood levels of creatinine, corrected calcium, phosphate, intact parathyroid hormone, and hemoglobin, as well as bone density and blood pressure, after the previous dialysis session were not different. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first report of closed fracture of superficial bone diagnosed by bedside ultrasonography during a hemodialysis session. Ultrasonography is especially useful for diagnosis in these cases because it is noninvasive and highly accurate. Doctors should determine the differential diagnosis for closed fracture in patients undergoing dialysis, especially in those who are older, have diabetes, and are malnourished, and in those with recent contusions and persistent pain.

Computer simulation of the human brain at an individual neuron resolution is an ultimate goal of computational neuroscience. The Japanese flagship supercomputer, K, provides unprecedented computational capability toward this goal. The cerebellum contains 80% of the neurons in the whole brain. Therefore, computer simulation of the human-scale cerebellum will be a challenge for modern supercomputers. In this study, we built a human-scale spiking network model of the cerebellum, composed of 68 billion spiking neurons, on the K computer. As a benchmark, we performed a computer simulation of a cerebellum-dependent eye movement task known as the optokinetic response. We succeeded in reproducing plausible neuronal activity patterns that are observed experimentally in animals. The model was built on dedicated neural network simulation software called MONET (Millefeuille-like Organization NEural neTwork), which calculates layered sheet types of neural networks with parallelization by tile partitioning. To examine the scalability of the MONET simulator, we repeatedly performed simulations while changing the number of compute nodes from 1,024 to 82,944 and measured the computational time. We observed a good weak-scaling property for our cerebellar network model. Using all 82,944 nodes, we succeeded in simulating a human-scale cerebellum for the first time, although the simulation was 578 times slower than the wall clock time. These results suggest that the K computer is already capable of creating a simulation of a human-scale cerebellar model with the aid of the MONET simulator.

The cerebellum is a part of the brain that plays essential roles in real-time motor learning and control and even cognitive functions. Thanks to the large amount of anatomical and physiological data, we implemented a spiking network model of the cerebellum on Shoubu, an energy-efficient supercomputer with 1280 PEZY-SC processors at RIKEN. Our artificial cerebellum consists of more than one billion neurons, which is comparable to the whole cerebellum of a cat. Using 1008 of 1280 processors on Shoubu, we achieved real-time simulation, that is, a computer simulation of the model for 1 s completes within 1 s of the real world with temporal resolution of 1 ms. Effective performance was estimated as 68 teraflops in single-precision floating points, suggesting 2.6% of peak performance. We expect that the artificial cerebellum will be applicable to various engineering applications, such as robotics and brain-style artificial intelligence.

One of the grand challenges for computational neuroscience and high-performance computing is computer simulation of a human-scale whole brain model with spiking neurons and synaptic plasticity using supercomputers. To achieve such a simulation, the target network model must be partitioned onto a number of computational nodes, and the sub-network models are executed in parallel while communicating spike information across different nodes. However, it remains unclear how the target network model should be partitioned for efficient computing on next generation of supercomputers. Specifically, reducing the communication of spike information across compute nodes is essential, because of the relatively slower network performance than processor and memory. From the viewpoint of biological features, the cerebral cortex and cerebellum contain 99% of neurons and synapses and form layered sheet structures. Therefore, an efficient method to split the network should exploit the layered sheet structures. In this study, we indicate that a tile partitioning method leads to efficient communication. To demonstrate it, a simulation software called MONET (Millefeuille-like Organization NEural neTwork simulator) that partitions a network model as described above was developed. The MONET simulator was implemented on the Japanese flagship supercomputer K, which is composed of 82,944 computational nodes. We examined a performance of calculation, communication and memory consumption in the tile partitioning method for a cortical model with realistic anatomical and physiological parameters. The result showed that the tile partitioning method drastically reduced communication data amount by replacing network communication with DRAM access and sharing the communication data with neighboring neurons. We confirmed the scalability and efficiency of the tile partitioning method on up to 63,504 compute nodes of the K computer for the cortical model. In the companion paper by Yamaura et al., the performance for a cerebellar model was examined. These results suggest that the tile partitioning method will have advantage for a human-scale whole-brain simulation on exascale computers.

The cerebellum plays a critical role for sensorimotor control and learning. However, dysmetria or delays in movements’ onsets consequent to damages in cerebellum cannot be cured completely at the moment. Neuroprosthesis is an emerging technology that can potentially substitute such motor control module in the brain. A pre-requisite for this to become practical is the capability to simulate the cerebellum model in real-time, with low timing distortion for proper interfacing with the biological system. In this paper, we present a frame-based network-on-chip (NoC) hardware architecture for implementing a bio-realistic cerebellum model with ${\sim}100\ 000$ neurons, which has been used for studying timing control or passage-of-time (POT) encoding mediated by the cerebellum. The simulation results verify that our implementation reproduces the POT representation by the cerebellum properly. Furthermore, our field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based system demonstrates excellent computational speed that it can complete 1sec real world activities within 25.6 ms. It is also highly scalable such that it can maintain approximately the same computational speed even if the neuron number increases by one order of magnitude. Our design is shown to outperform three alternative approaches previously used for implementing spiking neural network model. Finally, we show a hardware electronic setup and illustrate how the silicon cerebellum can be adapted as a potential neuroprosthetic platform for future biological or clinical application.

Long-term depression (LTD) at parallel fiber-Purkinje cell (PF-PC) synapses is thought to underlie memory formation in cerebellar motor learning. Recent experimental results, however, suggest that multiple plasticity mechanisms in the cerebellar cortex and cerebellar/vestibular nuclei participate in memory formation. To examine this possibility, we formulated a simple model of the cerebellum with a minimal number of components based on its known anatomy and physiology, implementing both LTD and long-term potentiation (LTP) at PF-PC synapses and mossy fiber-vestibular nuclear neuron (MF-VN) synapses. With this model, we conducted a simulation study of the gain adaptation of optokinetic response (OKR) eye movement. Our model reproduced several important aspects of previously reported experimental results in wild-type and cerebellum-related gene-manipulated mice. First, each 1-h training led to the formation of short-term memory of learned OKR gain at PF-PC synapses, which diminished throughout the day. Second, daily repetition of the training gradually formed long-term memory that was maintained for days at MF-VN synapses. We reproduced such memory formation under various learning conditions. Third, long-term memory formation occurred after training but not during training, indicating that the memory consolidation occurred during posttraining periods. Fourth, spaced training outperformed massed training in long-term memory formation. Finally, we reproduced OKR gain changes consistent with the changes in the vestibuloocular reflex (VOR) previously reported in some gene-manipulated mice.

We investigated somatically perceived inclination of a floor on which an observer was. In the first three experiments, using blindfolded observers, we determined the point of subjective equality (PSE) and the difference limen (DL) for horizontal floor. Orientation of the lying body relative to the axis around which the floor was rotated, distance of the lying body from the rotation axis, posture (standing, sitting, and lying), and age were varied. In the fourth experiment, effects of seeing the floor were examined. The mean PSEs were accurate within ±0.25° in all experiments. The mean DLs varied with condition: 1) The largest DLs were obtained for the blindfolded observers lying orthogonally or obliquely to the rotation axis, 2) the second largest DLs for the blindfolded observers lying parallel to the rotation axis, 3) medium DLs for the blindfolded observers sitting or standing, and 4) the smallest DLs for the standing observers with visual exposure to surroundings. In the last experiment, we determined a scale for inclination from verbally estimating apparent inclination with or without a blindfold. We concluded that the ratio of shear force to normal force was used for estimation of inclination. We discussed synergy of somatic inputs and visual inputs.

While the cerebellum's role in motor function is well recognized, the nature of its concurrent role in cognitive function remains considerably less clear. The current consensus paper gathers diverse views on a variety of important roles played by the cerebellum across a range of cognitive and emotional functions. This paper considers the cerebellum in relation to neurocognitive development, language function, working memory, executive function, and the development of cerebellar internal control models and reflects upon some of the ways in which better understanding the cerebellum's status as a "supervised learning machine" can enrich our ability to understand human function and adaptation. As all contributors agree that the cerebellum plays a role in cognition, there is also an agreement that this conclusion remains highly inferential. Many conclusions about the role of the cerebellum in cognition originate from applying known information about cerebellar contributions to the coordination and quality of movement. These inferences are based on the uniformity of the cerebellum's compositional infrastructure and its apparent modular organization. There is considerable support for this view, based upon observations of patients with pathology within the cerebellum.

Timing control and gain control are twins in motor control. Deficits in precise timing control could cause various motor disturbances. The cerebellum is responsible for timing control within the range of tens to hundreds of milliseconds in both motor and cognitive domains. This implies that the cerebellum has a certain mechanism to represent the passage of time internally. This article reviews the neural mechanisms of timing control in the cerebellum.

Twenty participants observed and interpreted 16 nail-hammering movies, each of which was composed of motion of four point-lights that were attached to an actor's hand, elbow, and shoulder and the hammer head. Each participant judged the length and the weight of hammers, the sizes of the nails, and the degree of hammering skill, and rated the actor's motion in terms of briskness, lightness, regularity, smoothness, quickness, stability, complexity, and politeness. The results showed the following perceptual characteristics. A higher angular velocity of the hammer at the hand contributed to the perception of the hammering action as more skillful and brisk, whereas an increase in linear velocity of the point at the shoulder was judged as less skilled. The judgment of nail size was positively correlated with the linear velocity of the points at the hand. The judgment of hammer weight was negatively correlated with the linear velocity of the points at the hammer. The different roles that linear and angular velocities of light points play in biological motion perception were discussed.

A long-standing question in neuroscience is how the brain controls movement that requires precisely timed muscle activations. Studies using Pavlovian delay eyeblink conditioning provide good insight into this question. In delay eyeblink conditioning, which is believed to involve the cerebellum, a subject learns an interstimulus interval (ISI) between the onsets of a conditioned stimulus (CS) such as a tone and an unconditioned stimulus such as an airpuff to the eye. After a conditioning phase, the subject’s eyes automatically close or blink when the ISI time has passed after CS onset. This timing information is thought to be represented in some way in the cerebellum. Several computational models of the cerebellum have been proposed to explain the mechanisms of time representation, and they commonly point to the granular layer network. This article will review these computational models and discuss the possible computational power of the cerebellum.

生体内吸収性ポリ-L-乳酸（PLLA）メッシュと骨髄海綿骨細片（PCBM）を用いて，Tissue Engineeringを応用した下顎骨再建法を施行し，長期経過観察を行った症例について検討した。対象は術後6ヶ月の評価で，著効，有効の40例（悪性腫瘍；14例，良性腫瘍；26例）である。下顎骨切除法は辺縁切除；21例，区域切除；16例，半側切除；3例，観察期間は1年～12年（平均6年2ヶ月）であった。メッシュトレーに起因する有害事象は認められなかった。再生骨の吸収は10%未満；32例（80%），10～20%；6例，20～30%；2例で，1年以後の骨吸収は少なく，早期に咬合回復したものは骨化が進む傾向があった。通常義歯装用は21例，さらに歯科インプラント植立は5例であった。本法は下顎骨の良好な形態と機能回復を計ることが可能で，手術侵襲が少ない。義歯装着や歯科インプラントによる咬合や咀嚼機能の改善が期待できる。

In Pavlovian delay eyeblink conditioning, the cerebellum represents the passage-of-time (POT) between onsets of conditioned and unconditioned stimuli (CS and US, respectively). To study possible computational mechanisms of the POT representation we built a large-scale spiking network model of the cerebellum. Consistent with our previous rate-coding model, we found two conditions necessary for the present model to represent the POT with a dynamic population of active granule cells: (i) long temporal integration of input signals; and (ii) random recurrent connections between granule and Golgi cells. When these conditions were satisfied, a nonrecurrent sequence of active granule cell populations was generated in response to a CS and, conversely, the POT from the CS onset was able to be read out from the sequence. Specifically, simulated N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) channels with a long decay time constant at granule and Golgi cells were responsible for the long temporal integration. Thus, blocking the NMDA channels or ablating Golgi cells impaired the POT representation. Simulated glomerulus structure made POT representation robust against noise in mossy fibre inputs. Long-term potentiation induced at mossy fibre synapses on granule cells also served to enhance the robustness. We reproduced some experimental results of Pavlovian delay eyeblink conditioning using the present model. These results suggest that the recurrent network in the granular layer and NMDA channels in granule and Golgi cells play an essential role in the timing mechanisms in the cerebellum, whereas the glomerulus serves to realize a robust representation of time.

The need for long-term follow-up in Kawasaki disease is poorly recognized although cardiac sudden death attacks asymptomatic young people with past illness after a long latent period. Therefore, in order to prevent cardiac disasters, high risk groups should be identified and the prevalence rate of the disease should be determined for crisis management. A total of 9,965 consecutive freshmen at the University of Tokyo were the subject of a questionnaire. Their parents/guardians who were briefed on the diagnostic criteria of the acute phase of Kawasaki disease actually completed the questionnaire. Students with a positive diagnosis underwent rest and exercise-stress electrocardiography and routine echocardiography. The overall prevalence rate was 0.57%. The rate in males (0.63%) was greater than that in females (0.32%) (P < 0.05). Electrocardiography and routine echocardiography identified no indices specific to a past illness of Kawasaki disease. The prevalence rate indicated that about 6 in 1000 students were high risk students who needed special care while at university. Since there are few symptoms and no signs indicating a past illness of Kawasaki disease, intensive history-taking from parents/guardians who are familiar with their acute symptoms during childhood is required in order to identify those at high risk of a coronary event.

A randomized and prospective study was designed to prove the efficacy of angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARB) in the amelioration of myocardial impairment in hypertrophic nonobstructive cardiomyopathy (HNCM). Nineteen consecutive patients with HNCM were randomly assigned to two groups and then underwent cine magnetic resonance evaluation of left ventricular mass (LVM) twice just before and after one year of observation. In the ARB group, 50 mg of losartan potassium was administered once daily during the observation period. The ratio of LVM after the observation period over that before the period was blindly compared between the two groups to estimate morphologically the ameliorative effect of ARB. In the ARB group, LVM was 203 +/- 47 cm(3) before the treatment period and 190 +/- 55 cm(3) after the period and the ratio of the final LVM over the initial LVM was 0.93 +/- 0.10. In the non-ARB group the initial and final LVM values were 177 +/- 48 cm(3) and 179 +/- 45 cm(3), and the ratio of the final LVM over the initial LVM was 1.02 +/- 0.07. The ratio of the final LVM over the initial LVM in the ARB group was significantly smaller (P = 0.03) than that in the non-ARB group. The smaller ratio in the ARB group strongly indicates that ARB ameliorated the natural course of HNCM during the one year observation period. Thus, this is the first demonstration of the therapeutic efficacy of ARB in human HNCM.

Theoretical and computational models of the cerebellum typically focus on the role of parallel fiber (PF) - Purkinje cell (PKJ) synapses for learned behavior, but few emphasize the role of the molecular layer interneurons (MLIs) -- the stellate and basket cells. A number of recent experimental results suggest the role of MLIs is more important than previous models put forth. We investigate learning at PF - MLI synapses and propose a mathematical model to describe plasticity at this synapse. We perform computer simulations with this form of learning using a spiking neuron model of the MLI and show that it reproduces six in vitro experimental results in addition to simulating four novel protocols. Further, we show how this plasticity model can predict the results of other experimental protocols that are not simulated. Finally, we hypothesize what the biological mechanisms are for changes in synaptic efficacy that embody the phenomenological model proposed here.

We studied the dynamics of a neural network that has both recurrent excitatory and random inhibitory connections. Neurons started to become active when a relatively weak transient excitatory signal was presented and the activity was sustained due to the recurrent excitatory connections. The sustained activity stopped when a strong transient signal was presented or when neurons were disinhibited. The random inhibitory connections modulated the activity patterns of neurons so that the patterns evolved without recurrence with time. Hence, a time passage between the onsets of the two transient signals was represented by the sequence of activity patterns. We then applied this model to represent the trace eyeblink conditioning, which is mediated by the hippocampus. We assumed this model as CA3 of the hippocampus and considered an output neuron corresponding to a neuron in CA1. The activity pattern of the output neuron was similar to that of CA1 neurons during trace eyeblink conditioning, which was experimentally observed.

Nowadays, evidence-based medicine has entered the mainstream of clinical judgement and the human genome has been completely decoded. Even the concept of individually designed medicine, that is, tailor-made medicine, is now being discussed. Due to their complexity, however, management methods for clinical information have yet to be established. We have conducted a study on a universal technique which enables one to select or produce by employing information processing technology clinical findings from various clinical information generated in vast quantity in day-to-day clinical practice, and to share such information and/or the results of analysis between two or more institutions. In this study, clinically useful findings have been successfully obtained by systematizing actual clinical information and genomic information obtained by an appropriate collecting and management method of information with due consideration to ethical issues. We report here these medical achievements as well as technological ones which will play a role in propagating such medical achievements.

While the anatomy of the cerebellar microcircuit is well studied, how it implements cerebellar function is not understood. A number of models have been proposed to describe this mechanism but few emphasize the role of the vast network Purkinje cells (PKJs) form with the molecular layer interneurons (MLIs) – the stellate and basket cells. We propose a model of the MLI-PKJ network composed of simple spiking neurons incorporating the major anatomical and physiological features. In computer simulations, the model reproduces the irregular firing patterns observed in PKJs and MLIs in vitro and a shift toward faster, more regular firing patterns when inhibitory synaptic currents are blocked. In the model, the time between PKJ spikes is shown to be proportional to the amount of feedforward inhibition from an MLI on average. The two key elements of the model are: (1) spontaneously active PKJs and MLIs due to an endogenous depolarizing current, and (2) adherence to known anatomical connectivity along a parasagittal strip of cerebellar cortex. We propose this model to extend previous spiking network models of the cerebellum and for further computational investigation into the role of irregular firing and MLIs in cerebellar learning and function.

口腔癌患者に対し日本の口腔外科医が癌告知をどのように行っているのか, その現状と問題点をさぐる目的で本研究を行った。九州・沖縄, 近畿, 中部地区の口腔外科施設を対象に15項目からなる癌告知に関する質問表を送付した。90施設 (87.4%) より回答を得た。44施設 (48.9%) で癌告知を常時もしくは多く行っていた。27施設 (30%) では家族の了承を得た後に患者に告知を行っていた。73施設 (81.1%) は近い将来癌告知は本邦でも普及すると考えていた。57施設 (63.3%) で口腔癌告知の障害として告知後の精神的サポート体制の不十分を挙げていた。今回の調査では49%が口腔癌告知に積極的姿勢を示していた。1994年の富田の調査では70%が口腔癌告知に否定的であった。口腔外科医の癌告知に対する態度の変化は明かであった。本研究の結果より, 今後更に口腔癌の告知は普及すると思われる。しかし, 癌告知後の患者への精神的サポート体制の確立が'必要である。

症例は52歳の女性. 腹痛を主訴として前医受診, 手術にてIVC原発腫瘍と判明したため当院紹介された. IVC造影ではIVCの閉塞, 側副血行路の形成は見られなかった. 開腹すると腫瘍は中部IVCより壁外性に発育しており, 右腎静脈への浸潤を認めた. 右腎静脈を大伏在静脈にて再建した後, IVCの単純遮断下に腫瘍をIVCとともに切除し, IVCは人工血管にて再建した. 病理組織診断は平滑筋肉腫であった. 術後6か月のMRI検査ではIVCのpatencyは保たれていた. 術後17か月経過した現在, 再発の兆候なく外来通院中である. 下大静脈原発平滑筋肉腫は本邦での報告は自験例を含めて53例で, IVC切除後人工血管にて再建された症例は12例である. IVC切除にあたっては血流遮断時の体外循環の必要性, 腎静脈の処理方法などをIVC造影, 術中所見から判断することが重要である.

耳下腺腫瘤16例, 顎下腺腫瘤3例, 計19例の患者に対してCT-sialogramを行い検討した。19例の患者の年齢は5歳から78歳で平均年齢57.3歳であった。検査は術前に行い手術後の病理組織検査では良性腫瘍13例, 嚢胞1例, 悪性腫瘍4例, 悪性リンパ腫1例であった。CT-sialo.所見では腫瘤検出率は100%であり, 全例でMajor ductが描出され腫瘍と顔面神経の走行との位置関係を知る指針となった。CT-sialo.所見にて直径約10mmの上皮筋上皮癌は全く悪性を疑う像が見られなかった。CT-sialo.にて良性腫瘍と判定した2例に, 手術時周囲組織と癒着が見られた。唾液腺腫瘍の良性悪性の判定には辺縁の形状, 腫瘍内部のlow density areaや点状漏洩像の有無が有用な所見であった。CT-sialo.は腫瘍の位置, 形態など得られる情報が多く, 唾液腺腫瘍の診断に際して早期に行うべき検査方法である。

We describe an 86-year-old woman with a large parotid tumor. Ten years previously, she had first noticed a tumor about the size of the tip of the little finger in the right parotid region.The tumor had become very large. Her Hematological examination showed a pattern of severe anemia and undernourishment. Excision of the tumor was carried out, and the excised tumor measured 200×180×150mm and weighed 900g. Histological examination revealed that the tumor was a carcinoma in pleomorphic adenoma. There has been no evidence of recurrence after 3.5 years of follow up.

Background: Non-invasive assessment of volume and function on the right ventricle (RV) for pulmonary hypertension (PH) is limited. Methods and Results: Patients with PH (n=23) underwent 3-dimensional (D) echocardiography (3DECHO), with cardiac magnetic resonance imaging to confirm its precision, and right heart catheterization. On linear regression analysis the RV end-systolic volume index (ESVI) was positively correlated with pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) and mean pulmonary arterial pressure (mPAP; R=0.42 and 0.46, P=0.03 and 0.03, respectively). The RV end-diastolic volume index (EDVI) was positively correlated with mPAP (R=0.41, P

Computational models and theoretical tools are essential components in computational neuroscience. A number of models and tools have been developed and registered at various online databases such as ModelDB and J-Node Platforms. Yet, the reuse of such resources still remains quite difficult. For example, to carry out a computer simulation of a model, we have to download the program from the database, extract, read instructions, compile if the program is written in a general programming language such as C, install the appropriate neural simulator if it is written for a simulator such as GENESIS, NEURON, and NEST, and finally we may be ready to do it, if no problems occurs during all the setup mentioned above. How can we avoid this hustle? As a solution of it, we introduce a cloud-based system for online computer simulation called Simulation Platform. Simulation Platform is a cloud of virtual machines running GNU/Linux. On a virtual machine, various software including developer tools such as compilers and libraries, popular neural simulators, and scientific software such as Gnuplot, R and Octave, are pre-installed. When a user posts a request, a virtual machine is assigned to the user, and the simulation starts on that machine. The user can remotely access the virtual machine through a web browser and carries out the simulation interactively (a screenshot is shown in Fig. ​Fig.1).1). There is no need to install any software. It only requires a web browser. Therefore, Simulation Platform provides an ubiquitous computing environment for computational neuroscience research so as to free neuroscientists from tedious computer administration tasks and allow them to solely concentrate on their science. A demo site is open at http://sf4.sim.neuroinf.jp/~tyam/cns11/. Figure 1 A screenshot of a web browser during a computer simulation.

進行癌症例に対しては痛みや治療による精神的・肉体的負担の少ない治療手段によりQOLを維持することが望まれる。われわれは手術不能と考えられた進展癌症例に対して, 上甲状腺動脈あるいは外頸動脈からの体内埋め込み式one-shot動注装置を用いた化学療法を試みた。本システムは皮膚穿刺部からの感染の危険がない, カテーテルの閉塞・抜去・切断がない, 入浴・洗髪・髭剃りが可能で, 審美障害もなく日常生活に制限を加えない利点を有していた。また, 頻回の採血や点滴などの栄養補給, 抗癌剤以外の薬液の注入にも利用でき長期間にわたって安全かつ簡便に反復して使用することができた。

1977年から1990年までの14年間に口腔癌54症例に対して56回の根治手術と種々の皮弁・筋皮弁 (64皮弁) を用いて即時再建を行い, これらの症例の臨床的観察を行った。一次症例は32例 (Stage II: 5例, Stage III: 8例, Stage IV: 19例) , 二次症例は22例であった。原発部位は舌が20例, 下顎歯肉が12例, 口底が10例, 頬粘膜と口峡咽頭が5例, 上顎歯肉と顎下腺が1例であった。病理組織型は扁平上皮癌が51例, 唾液腺癌が2例, 未分化癌が1例であった。切除範囲は原発部位と病期により様々であった。再建に用いた皮弁は大胸筋皮弁が31例, DP皮弁が18例, 広背筋皮弁が7例, 前腕皮弁が5例, 胸鎖乳突筋皮弁が2例であった。平均手術時間は8時間50分, 平均出血量は14939, 皮弁の完全生着率は71.4%であった。5年累積生存率は一次症例が51.7%, 二次症例が24.1%, 全症例では42.5%であった。これらの結果より口腔癌進展例において, 切除手術と即時再建の組み合わせは有効な治療法と思われたが, 今後の課題としては適確な治療方針の選択により二次症例を減少させること, 遠隔転移の防止に有効な化学療法の開発, 重複癌の早期発見, 良好な機能回復のための中咽頭の再建法, 生体材料の開発が重要と考えられた。