Ibuprofen ingestion does not affect markers of post-exercise muscle inflammation

Purpose: We investigated if oral ingestion of ibuprofen influenced leucocyte recruitment and infiltration following an acute bout of traditional resistance exercise Methods: Sixteen male subjects were divided into two groups that received the maximum over-the-counter dose of ibuprofen (1200mg d−1) or a similarly administered placebo following lower body resistance exercise. Muscle biopsies were taken from m.vastus lateralis and blood serum samples were obtained before and immediately after exercise, and at 3 and 24 h after exercise. Muscle cross-sections were stained with antibodies against neutrophils (CD66b and MPO) and macrophages (CD68). Muscle damage was assessed via creatine kinase and myoglobin in blood serum samples, and muscle soreness was rated on a ten-point pain scale. Results: The resistance exercise protocol stimulated a significant increase in the number of CD66b+ and MPO+ cells when measured 3 h post exercise. Serum creatine kinase, myoglobin and subjective muscle soreness all increased post-exercise. Muscle leucocyte infiltration, creatine kinase, myoglobin and subjective muscle soreness were unaffected by ibuprofen treatment when compared to placebo. There was also no association between increases in inflammatory leucocytes and any other marker of cellular muscle damage. Conclusion: Ibuprofen administration had no effect on the accumulation of neutrophils, markers of muscle damage or muscle soreness during the first 24 h of post-exercise muscle recovery.

Neural mechanisms underlying perilesional transcranial direct current stimulation in aphasia: A feasibility study

Little is known about the neural mechanisms by which transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) impacts on language processing in post-stroke aphasia. This was addressed in a proof-of-principle study that explored the effects of tDCS application in aphasia during simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We employed a single subject, cross-over, sham-tDCS controlled design, and the stimulation was administered to an individualized perilesional stimulation site that was identified by a baseline fMRI scan and a picture naming task. Peak activity during the baseline scan was located in the spared left inferior frontal gyrus and this area was stimulated during a subsequent cross-over phase. tDCS was successfully administered to the target region and anodal- vs. sham-tDCS resulted in selectively increased activity at the stimulation site. Our results thus demonstrate that it is feasible to precisely target an individualized stimulation site in aphasia patients during simultaneous fMRI, which allows assessing the neural mechanisms underlying tDCS application. The functional imaging results of this case report highlight one possible mechanism that may have contributed to beneficial behavioral stimulation effects in previous clinical tDCS trials in aphasia. In the future, this approach will allow identifying distinct patterns of stimulation effects on neural processing in larger cohorts of patients. This may ultimately yield information about the variability of tDCS effects on brain functions in aphasia.

Comprehending adverbs of doubt and certainty in health communication: A multidimensional scaling approach

This research explored the feasibility of using multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis in novel combination with other techniques to study comprehension of epistemic adverbs expressing doubt and certainty (e.g., evidently, obviously, probably) as they relate to health communication in clinical settings. In Study 1, Australian English speakers performed a dissimilarity-rating task with sentence pairs containing the target stimuli, presented as "doctors' opinions". Ratings were analyzed using a combination of cultural consensus analysis (factor analysis across participants), weighted-data classical-MDS, and cluster analysis. Analyses revealed strong within-community consistency for a 3-dimensional semantic space solution that took into account individual differences, strong statistical acceptability of the MDS results in terms of stress and explained variance, and semantic configurations that were interpretable in terms of linguistic analyses of the target adverbs. The results confirmed the feasibility of using MDS in this context. Study 2 replicated the results with Canadian English speakers on the same task. Semantic analyses and stress decomposition analysis were performed on the Australian and Canadian data sets, revealing similarities and differences between the two groups. Overall, the results support using MDS to study comprehension of words critical for health communication, including in future studies, for example, second language speaking patients and/or practitioners. More broadly, the results indicate that the techniques described should be promising for comprehension studies in many communicative domains, in both clinical settings and beyond, and including those targeting other aspects of language and focusing on comparisons across different speech communities.

A reverse Stroop task with mouse tracking

In a reverse Stroop task, observers respond to the meaning of a color word irrespective of the color in which the word is printed—for example, the word red may be printed in the congruent color (red), an incongruent color (e.g., blue), or a neutral color (e.g., white). Although reading of color words in this task is often thought to be neither facilitated by congruent print colors nor interfered with incongruent print colors, this interference has been detected by using a response method that does not give any bias in favor of processing of word meanings or processing of print colors. On the other hand, evidence for the presence of facilitation in this task has been scarce, even though this facilitation is theoretically possible. By modifying the task such that participants respond to a stimulus color word by pointing to a corresponding response word on a computer screen with a mouse, the present study investigated the possibility that not only interference but also facilitation would take place in a reverse Stroop task. Importantly, in this study, participants’ responses were dynamically tracked by recording the entire trajectories of the mouse. Arguably, this method provided richer information about participants’ performance than traditional measures such as reaction time and accuracy, allowing for more detailed (and thus potentially more sensitive) investigation of facilitation and interference in the reverse Stroop task. These trajectories showed that the mouse’s approach toward correct response words was significantly delayed by incongruent print colors but not affected by congruent print colors, demonstrating that only interference, not facilitation, was present in the current task. Implications of these findings are discussed within a theoretical framework in which the strength of association between a task and its response method plays a critical role in determining how word meanings and print colors interact in reverse Stroop tasks.