Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are a core symptom of schizophrenia, and resistant to antipsychotic medication in a substantial proportion of patients. This study aimed to investigate the neural correlates of AVHs in schizophrenia patients and its response to a modified continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) by transcranial magnetic stimulation. In a cross-sectional experiment, resting-state functional magnetic resonance images were collected from 31 AVH schizophrenia patients, 26 non-AVH schizophrenia patients, and 33 sex-/age-matched healthy controls (HCs). Functional connectivity strength (FCS) maps were compared among groups by 1-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). In a longitudinal experiment, 16 and 11 AVH patients received real and sham cTBS treatment for 15 days, respectively. Notably, this was not a randomized control trail. Changes in AVH and FCS were analyzed by 2-way ANOVA and 2-sample t-test, respectively. In the cross-sectional experiment, comparison of FCS maps identified 8 clusters among groups, but only one cluster (in left cerebellum) differed significantly in AVH patients compared to both HCs and non-AVH patients. In the longitudinal experiment, the real cTBS group showed a greater improvement in symptoms and a larger FCS decrease in left cerebellum than the sham group. Pearson's correlation analysis indicated that baseline FCS of the overlapping cerebellum cluster (between the cross-sectional and longitudinal findings) was negatively correlated with symptom improvement in the real treatment group. These findings emphasize the role of the left cerebellum in both the pathophysiology and clinical treatment of AVHs in schizophrenia patients.

Objectives: Binocular rivalry is a typical example of bistable perception that arises when two monocular images are simultaneously presented to each eye. Binocular rivalry is a heritable perceptual cognitive function that is impaired in patients with schizophrenia (SZ). Despite its potential suitability as a visual endophenotype, binocular rivalry has hardly been studied in the unaffected siblings of schizophrenia (SIB). There is also little research about whether binocular rivalry is a potential visual endophenotype between SZ and SIB.Methods: In our cross-sectional study, we included 40 SZ and their unaffected SIBs, as well as 40 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC). All subjects underwent the binocular rivalry test, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and a battery of cognitive neuropsychological assessments evaluating attention, memory and executive function domains.Results: Our results demonstrate that the switching rate in SZ was significantly slower than in HC (p < 0.001), and compared to the SIB, the mean alternation rates were significantly different (p < 0.01). Moreover, there was a significant difference in mean switching rate between the SIB and the HC (p < 0.001). There was no significant correlation between the alternation rate of binocular rivalry and these cognitive tasks and the PANSS scores.Conclusion: The present study shows that SZ and SIB both exhibit changes in binocular rivalry, with SIB exhibiting intermediate performance compared with that of SZ and the HC. This supports the claim that the switching rate for SZ differs from that of SIB and suggests that binocular rivalry may qualify as a visual endophenotype for SZ.

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries have attracted extensive attention along with the urgent increasing demand for energy storage owing to the high theoretical specific capacity and energy density, abundant reserves and low cost of sulfur. However, the practical application of Li-S batteries is still impeded due to the low utilization of sulfur and serious shuttle-effect of lithium polysulfides (LiPSs). Here, we fabricated the porous honeycomb-like C 3 N 4 (PHCN) through a hard template method. As a polar material, graphitic C 3 N 4 has abundant nitrogen content (~58%), which can provide enough active sites to mitigate shuttle-effect, and then conductive reduced graphene oxide (rGO) was introduced to combine with PHCN to form PHCN/rGO composite in order to improve the utilization efficiency of sulfur. After sulfur loading, the PHCN/rGO/S cathode exhibited an initial discharge capacity of 1,061.1 mA h g −1 at 0.2 C and outstanding rate performance at high current density of 5 C (495.1 mA h g −1 ), and also retained 519 mA h g −1 after 400 cycles at 1 C. Even at high sulfur loading (4.3 mg cm −2 ), the capacity fade rate was only 0.16% per cycle at 0.5 C for 200 cycles. The above results demonstrate that the special design of PHCN/rGO composite as sulfur host has high potential application for Li-S rechargeable batteries.

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While the intrinsic safety and capacity merits of Li3VO4 endow it with great promising in LIBs, the moderate lifespan under high-rate hinders its practical application. Here, we demonstrate for the...