Categorical perception (CP) is the unique phenomenon that gradually morphed physical feature in a stimulus continuum tends to be perceived as discrete representations. CP has been evidenced in several modalities in the sensor perception. The first study of CP of phonetic perception was performed in 1957. However, the early CP studies focused on segmental features. The first study of CP of pitch contours was performed until 1976. This article will review the results of previous studies focus on the categorical perception applies to the lexical tone perception.
Humans ; Language ; Phonetics ; Speech Perception

Previous studies have shown that hearing loss people are more likely to have not only abnormal speech communication, but also psychological problems especially emotional disorders, cognitive impairments and personality defects. Therefore, it is necessary to provide psychological support to patients during they accept medical therapy.
Communication ; Hearing Loss ; complications ; psychology ; Humans ; Mental Disorders ; Mental Health ; Speech

Audiometry, Speech ; Humans ; Language

Objective To observe the effects of pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMFs) or/and exercise on the area bone mineral density (aBMD) and volume bone mineral density (vBMD) of rats with osteoporosis induced by tretinoin gastric perfusion.Methods 100 female SD rats were randomly divided into 5 groups with 20 rats in each group： PEMFs group, exercise group, PEMFs plus exercise group, osteoporosis group and healthy control group. Except for the healthy control group, the osteoporosis models of other 4 groups were built by tretinoin gastric perfusion. After the building of models, each group was intervened with different treatment. In the 4th, 6th and 8th week after treatment, relevant Results of aBMD and vBMD were tested.Results Compared with the osteoporosis group, the BMD of the rats of PEMFs group, exercise group, PEMFs plus exercise group significantly increased significantly ( P＜0.05) in the 6th week, 4th week and 4th week after treatment respectively. In the 6th and 8th week, there was no significant differences among the PEMFs plus exercise group, the exercise group and the PEMFs group ( P>0.05).Conclusion PEMFs can increase the BMD of the rats with osteoporosis as well as exercise. PEMFs takes effect slower than exercise.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the physical and mental health status of post-linguistic cochlear implantees, and then to explore the effectiveness on of different rehabilitation programs. METHOD: Mandarin hearing in noise test (MHINT), personal report of communication apprehension (PRCA-24) and Nijmegen cochlear implant questionnaire (NCIQ) were used to measure the hearing ability, mental health degree and the health related life quality in 36 post-linguistic cochlear implant users, respectively. The improvement of subjects' physical and mental health levels was compared with among different rehabilitation programs, including family training program, auditory habilitation program and psychological intervention program. RESULT: (1) Family training program only can improve the subject's hearing ability (P < 0.05), but failed to ease the communication apprehension; ((2) Auditory habilitation program can both significantly improve the subjects' hearing ability (P < 0.01) and ease the fear of talking face to face (P < 0.01); (3) Psychological intervention program can significantly increase the auditory abilities (P < 0.01), reduce the communication apprehension (P < 0.01) and improve the quality of life. CONCLUSION Post-linguistic cochlear implantees had obvious mental symptoms. It was very important to design an effective rehabilitation program to improvement the living quality of hearing loss people.
Anxiety ; Cochlear Implantation ; rehabilitation ; Cochlear Implants ; Deafness ; Hearing Loss ; Hearing Tests ; Humans ; Language ; Linguistics ; Mental Health ; Noise ; Quality of Life ; Speech ; Surveys and Questionnaires

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the mental health level of the post-linguistic deafen adult, to analyze factors affecting the mental health level. METHOD: Fifty-two adult patients with severe to extremely severe post-linguistic hearing loss were randomly selected to participate the study. A self-reporting questionnaire drew up by researchers was used to collect sociological data of the participants. The self-rating anxiety scale (SAS), self-rating depression scale (SDS) and personal report of communication apprehension (PRCA-24) were used to measure the mental health degree of 52 post-linguistic hearing loss adults. To analyze related factors affecting the mental health in post-linguistic deafen adult. RESULT: (1) Majority of post-linguistic deafen adult have mental symptoms, including 24 subjects (46.15%) with anxiety feeling, 18 subjects (34.61%) with depression feeling and 45 subjects (86.54%) with communication apprehension. (2) Gander, with/without tinnitus, duration of hearing loss, education background and family support had significant correlation with the mental health level of subjects. Higher incident rate of mental symptoms were found in male (OR = 2.246), with tinnitus (OR = 0.536), short duration (OR = 1.397, 1.530), high education background (OR = 0.323) and poor family support (OR = 1.724). CONCLUSION The mental health of the post-linguistic deafen adult was worse than that of the normal people, pathological feature and sociological factors were significantly correlated to the psychological evaluation. It is very important to pay attention on mental health and to give effective counseling of hearing loss people.
Adult ; Anxiety ; complications ; Depression ; complications ; Female ; Hearing Loss ; complications ; psychology ; Humans ; Language Development ; Male ; Mental Health ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Tinnitus

Perforator stroke(PS)is one of peri-procedural complications associated with stenting of intracranial arterial stenosis.A lot of perforator arteries are derived from intracranial arteries with difference from coronary arteries,because once the intracranial perforator arteries of crucial regions are occluded,may lead to fatal prognosis.Three hypothesis have been used to explain PS including snow-plowing,stent jailing effect and in-stent neointimal growth.In vivo models,investigators have already found these phenomenas.After much attention been paid on PS,authors have published a report covered with a large amount of cases in 2006. The author figured out that patients with perforator infarct adjacent to the stenotie segment(PIAS)under MRI beforehand would have higher chance occurring PS after stenting of intracranial stenosis.The patients with priority of PS easily are affected by the morphology,location,etiology,sites,the type and equipments.Many yet unsolved problems including the prevention would arouse us to go deeper into for the exploration of the mechanism.(J Intervent Radiol,2007,16:858-862)

Objective To explore the CT features in CD_(117)-weak and CD_(117)-negative gastrointestinal stromal tumors(GIST).Methods The CD_(117)-weak and CD_(117)-negative Gist proved by pathologically and sur- gically in 13 cases were retrospectively analyzed.Results The tumor was located in the stomach in 6 cases, small intestine in 4 cases,colorectum in 2 cases,greater omentum in one case.The most common clinical manifestations were abdominal pain or discomfort in 6 cases,hematemesis or melena in 3 cases.Malignant tu- mors occurred in 8 cases.Benign tumors occurred in 5 cases.A soft tissue was identified in all 13 cases in CT examination.The CT examinations revealed cystic regions and bleeding in 5 cases.Calcification was not noted within the masses in all cases.The mean diameter of benign tumors was 3.4 cm?2.8 cm while that of malig- nant tumor was 7.5 cm?6.2 cm.All the cases underwent operation,the resection rate was 100%.After follow up from 6 months to 4 years in 10 cases,1 case died of tumor recurrence and metastasis,the others survived. Conclusion CD_(117)-weak and CD_(117)-negative Gist occurred more common in the stomach.CT is useful in lo- cation and differentiation of CD_(117)-weak and CD_(117)-negative gastric stromal tumors with regard to benign or malignant.Surgery is the main method for final diagnosis and treatment.

BACKGROUND:It is discovered recently that miRNA is a new regulator that is able to have an impact on gene expression and miRNA contributes to proliferation, differentiation and self-renewal of pluripotent stem cels.
OBJECTIVE:To investigate the mechanism by which miR-155 regulates chondrogenic differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cels.
METHODS: Sixty healthy Sprague-Dawley aged 12 weeks were randomized into study group and control group, with 30 in each group. Under anesthesia, rats were sacrificed to harvest bone marrow of the lower limbs. Then bone marrow mesenchymal stem cels were isolated, cultured, and transfected with miR-155 mimics in the study group and a negative control sequence in the control group. After chondrogenic induction, RT-PCR was used to detect the expressions of Sox9, Colagen II, Aggrecan and Colagen X gene, and western blot assay to detect the expression of Sox9 and Runx2 proteins.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Compared with the control group, the mRNA expressions of Sox9, Colagen II and Aggrecan were higher, but the mRNA expression of Colagen X was lower in the study group (P < 0.05); the protein expression of Sox9 was higher, but the protein expression of Runx2 was lower in the study group (P < 0.05). These findings indicate that miR-155 promotes the chondrogenic differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cels and moreover, it can suppress the hypertrophy trend of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cels differentiating into chondrocytes.

Objective To investigate the value of the cold supernatant in the clinical practice. Methods 25 cases of TTP got a direct infusion of cold supernatant or plasma exchange using cold supernatant as fluid replacement and with medications at the same time. Then we observed the clinical treatment effect of all the cases. Results The clinical remission rate of 25 cases of TTP was 80%. Conclusion The cold supernatant could be used as a new blood component in clinical application,especially for the treatment of thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA). It not only can save valuable blood resources,but also can reduce the economic costs of patients.