Studies examining age of onset (AoO) effects in childhood bilingualism have provided mixed results as to whether early sequential bilingual children (eL2) differ from simultaneous bilingual children (2L1) and L2 children on the acquisition of morphosyntax. Differences between the three groups have been attributed to other factors such as length of exposure (LoE), language abilities, and the phenomenon to be acquired. The present study investigates whether four- to five-year-old German-speaking eL2 children differ from 2L1 children on the acquisition of wh-questions, and whether these differences can be explained by AoO, LoE, and/or knowledge of case marking. The 2L1 children outperformed the eL2 children in terms of accuracy; however, both bilingual groups exhibited similar error patterns. This suggests that 2L1 and eL2 bilingual children are sensitive to the same morphosyntactic cues, when comprehending wh-questions. Finally, children's performance on the different types of wh-questions was explained by a combination of knowledge of case marking, LoE, and AoO.

Aims: The objective of this study was to investigate the relation between impaired fine motor skills in Parkinson disease (PD) patients and their cognitive status, and to determine whether fine motor skills are more impaired in PD patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) than in non-MCI patients. Methods: Twenty PD MCI and 31 PD non-MCI patients (mean age 66.7 years, range 50-84, 36 males/15 females), all right-handed, took part in a motor performance test battery. Steadiness, precision, dexterity, velocity of arm-hand movements, and velocity of wrist-finger movements were measured and compared across groups and analyzed for confounders (age, sex, education, severity of motor symptoms, and disease duration). Statistical analysis included t tests corrected for multiple testing, and a linear regression with stepwise elimination procedure was used to select significant predictors for fine motor function. Results: PD MCI patients performed significantly worse in precision (p < 0.05), dexterity (p < 0.05), and velocity (arm-hand movements; p < 0.05) compared to PD non-MCI patients. The fine motor function skills were confounded by age. Conclusions: Fine motor skills in PD MCI patients are impaired compared to PD non-MCI patients. Investigating the relation between the fine motor performance and MCI in PD might be a relevant subject for future research.

A new method for the quantitative assessment of acute ototoxic side effects of drugs is described. It is suitable for screening purposes. The method is based on the determination of the toxic dose (TD50) which causes a defined hearing loss in 50% of the animals tested. The hearing loss is defined as a complete suppression of the compound action potential (CAP) of the auditory nerve, elicited by clicks 30 dB above threshold. This is approximately equivalent to a clinical hearing loss of 30 dB. The TD50 is used to estimate the therapeutic range. With this approach ototoxic side effects of furosemide, piretanide and bumetanide were compared quantitatively in cats. The TD50 values for CAP suppression were 18.37 mg/kg for furosemide; 4.29 mg/kg for piretanide and 2.21 mg/kg for bumetanide. As equipotent diuretic doses are 2.61 mg/kg for furosemide, 0.26 mg/kg for piretanide and 1.16 mg/kg for bumetanide, it appears that the relative ototoxicity is least for piretanide and highest for bumetanide. Plasma concentrations, determined initially and when recovery of CAP to 50% of control had occurred, indicate that bumetanide may be more slowly eliminated from the cochlear spaces than furosemide and piretanide. In addition azosemide and ozolinone were tested. The TD50 for azosemide was less than 10 mg/kg. With ozolinone where there are two isomers, only the diuretic (-)ozolinone was ototoxic; the TD50 was less than 100 mg/kg.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Introduction: Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) ameliorates motor function in patients with Parkinson's disease and allows reducing dopaminergic therapy. Beside effects on motor function STN-DBS influences many non-motor symptoms, among which decline of verbal fluency test performance is most consistently reported. The surgical procedure itself is the likely cause of this decline, while the influence of the electrical stimulation is still controversial. STN-DBS also produces widespread changes of cortical activity as visualized by quantitative EEG. The present study aims to link an alteration in verbal fluency performance by electrical stimulation of the STN to alterations in quantitative EEG.Methods: Sixteen patients with STN-DBS were included. All patients had a high density EEG recording (256 channels) while testing verbal fluency in the stimulator on/off situation. The phonemic, semantic, alternating phonemic and semantic fluency was tested (Regensburger Wortflüssigkeits-Test).Results: On the group level, stimulation of STN did not alter verbal fluency performance. EEG frequency analysis showed an increase of relative alpha2 (10–13 Hz) and beta (13–30 Hz) power in the parieto-occipital region (p ≤ 0.01). On the individual level, changes of verbal fluency induced by stimulation of the STN were disparate and correlated inversely with delta power in the left temporal lobe (p < 0.05).Conclusion: STN stimulation does not alter verbal fluency performance in a systematic way at group level. However, when in individual patients an alteration of verbal fluency performance is produced by electrical stimulation of the STN, it correlates inversely with left temporal delta power.