Preserving Right Pre-motor and Posterior Prefrontal Cortices Contribute to Maintaining Overall Basic Emotion

Basic emotions such as happiness, sadness, and anger are universal, regardless of the human species, and are governed by specific brain regions. A recent report revealed that mentalizing, which is the ability to estimate other individuals’ emotional states via facial expressions, can be preserved with the help of awake surgery. However, it is still questionable whether we can maintain the ability to understand others’ emotions by preserving the positive mapping sites of intraoperative assessment. Here, we demonstrated the cortical regions related to basic emotions via awake surgery for patients with frontal glioma and investigated the usefulness of functional mapping in preserving basic emotion. Of the 56 consecutive patients with right cerebral hemispheric glioma who underwent awake surgery at our hospital, intraoperative assessment of basic emotion could be successfully performed in 22 patients with frontal glioma and were included in our study. During surgery, positive responses were found in 18 points in 12 patients (54.5%). Of these, 15 points from 11 patients were found at the cortical level, mainly the premotor and posterior part of the prefrontal cortices. Then, we focused on cortical 15 positive mappings with 40 stimulations and investigated the types of emotions that showed errors by every stimulation. There was no specific rule for the region-emotional type, which was beyond our expectations. In the postoperative acute phase, the test score of basic emotion declined in nine patients, and of these, it decreased under the cut-off value (Z-score ≤ −1.65) in three patients. Although the total score declined significantly just after surgery (p = 0.022), it recovered within 3 months postoperatively. Our study revealed that through direct electrical stimulation (DES), the premotor and posterior parts of the prefrontal cortices are related to various kinds of basic emotion, but not a single one. When the region with a positive mapping site is preserved during operation, basic emotion function might be maintained although it declines transiently after surgery.

Forever a profession in the making? The intermediate status of project managers in Germany

Research typically finds that several new professions are barely institutionalized. Labels such as ‘semi-profession’, ‘emerging profession’, or ‘commercialized profession’ have been developed to capture this notion of professions in the making. Yet there is limited understanding of the factors contributing to such an intermediate status. Employing a relational perspective on professions, we study the case of project managers in Germany to shed light on the underlying reasons for this limited institutionalization. We show how project managers in Germany face a particular field of relations populated by various stakeholders, including neighboring occupations embedded in existing institutional structures, which helps explain their sustained status as a profession in the making. Our study contributes to the literature by revealing the reasons for this limited institutionalization, and by offering a positive mapping of professions in the making, as opposed to seeing them either as failed professionalization projects or merely as a stage in the process toward full professionalization.

Difficulty in identification of the frontal language area in patients with dominant frontal gliomas that involve the pars triangularis

OBJECTIVE Identification of language areas using functional brain mapping is sometimes impossible using current methods but essential to preserve language function in patients with gliomas located within or near the frontal language area (FLA). However, the factors that influence the failure to detect language areas have not been elucidated. The present study evaluated the difficulty in identifying the FLA in dominant-side frontal gliomas that involve the pars triangularis (PT) to determine the factors that influenced failed positive language mapping. METHODS Awake craniotomy was performed on 301 patients from April 2000 to October 2013 at Tokyo Women's Medical University. Recurrent cases were excluded, and patients were also excluded if motor mapping indicated their glioma was in or around the motor area on the dominant or nondominant side. Eighty-two consecutive cases of primary frontal glioma on the dominant side were analyzed for the present study. MRI was used for all patients to evaluate whether tumors involved the PT and to perform language functional mapping with a bipolar electrical stimulator. Eighteen of 82 patients (mean age 39 ± 13 years) had tumors that showed involvement of the PT, and the detailed characteristics of these 18 patients were examined. RESULTS The FLA could not be identified with intraoperative brain mapping in 14 (17%) of 82 patients; 11 (79%) of these 14 patients had a tumor involving the PT. The negative response rate in language mapping was only 5% in patients without involvement of the PT, whereas this rate was 61% in patients with involvement of the PT. Univariate analyses showed no significant correlation between identification of the FLA and sex, age, histology, or WHO grade. However, failure to identify the FLA was significantly correlated with involvement of the PT (p < 0.0001). Similarly, multivariate analyses with the logistic regression model showed that only involvement of the PT was significantly correlated with failure to identify the FLA (p < 0.0001). In 18 patients whose tumors involved the PT, only 1 patient had mild preoperative dysphasia. One week after surgery, language function worsened in 4 (22%) of 18 patients. Six months after surgery, 1 (5.6%) of 18 patients had a persistent mild speech deficit. The mean extent of resection was 90% ± 7.1%. Conclusions Identification of the FLA can be difficult in patients with frontal gliomas on the dominant side that involve the PT, but the positive mapping rate of the FLA was 95% in patients without involvement of the PT. These findings are useful for establishing a positive mapping strategy for patients undergoing awake craniotomy for the treatment of frontal gliomas on the dominant side. Thoroughly positive language mapping with subcortical electrical stimulation should be performed in patients without involvement of the PT. More careful continuous neurological monitoring combined with subcortical electrical stimulation is needed when removing dominant-side frontal gliomas that involve the PT.

CONTINUOUS GENERALIZED (θ, ϕ)-SEPARATING DERIVATIONS ON ARCHIMEDEAN ALMOST f-ALGEBRAS

Let A be an ℓ-algebra and let θ and ϕ be two endomorphisms of A. The couple (θ, ϕ) is called to be separating if xy = 0 implies θ(x)ϕ(y) = 0. If in addition θ and ϕ are ring endomorphisms of A, then the couple (θ, ϕ) is said to be ring-separating. An additive mapping δ : A → A is called (θ, ϕ)-separating derivation on A if there exists a (θ, ϕ)-separating couple with δ(xy) = δ(x)θ(y) + ϕ(x)δ(y), holds for all x, y ∈ A. If an addition θ, ϕ and δ are continuous, then δ is called a continuous (θ, ϕ)-ring-separating derivation. If in addition the couple (θ, ϕ) is ring-separating then δ is called a continuous (θ, ϕ)-ring-separating derivation. An additive mapping F : A → A is called a continuous generalized (θ, ϕ)-separating derivation on A if F is continuous mapping and if there exists a derivation d : A → A such that θ and ϕ are continuous, (θ, ϕ) is a separating couple and F(xy) = F(x)θ(y) + ϕ(x)d(y), holds for all x, y ∈ A. In this paper, we give a description of continuous (θ, ϕ)-ring-separating derivations on some ℓ-algebras. This generalizes a well-known theorem by Colville, Davis, and Keimel [Positive derivations on f-rings, J. Austral. Math. Soc23 (1977) 371–375] and generalizes the results of Boulabiar in [Positive derivations on almost f-rings, Order19 (2002) 385–395], Ben Amor [On orthosymmetric bilinear maps, Positivity14(1) (2010) 123–130] and Toumi et al. in [Order bounded derivations on Archimedean almost f-algebras, Positivity14(2) (2010) 239–245]. Moreover, inspiring from [Toumi, Order-bounded generalized derivations on Archimedean almost f-algebras, Commun. Algebra38(1) (2010) 154–164], it is shown that the notion of continuous generalized (θ, ϕ)-separating derivation on an archimedean almost f-algebra A is the concept of generalized θ-multiplier, that is an additive mapping satisfying F(xyz) = F(x)θ(yz), for all x, y, z ∈ A. In the case where A is an archimedean f-algebra, the situation improves. Indeed, the collection of all continuous generalized (θ, ϕ)-separating derivation on A coincides with the concept of θ-multiplier, that is an additive mapping satisfying F(xy) = F(x)θ(y), for all x, y ∈ A. If in addition A is a Dedekind complete vector lattice and θ is a positive mapping, then the set of all order bounded generalized of the form (θ, ϕ)-separating derivations on A, under composition, is an archimedean lattice-ordered algebra.

Martingale convergence in von Neumann algebras

Let N be a von Neumann subalgebra of a von Neumann algebra M. A linear mapping π: M → N is called a retraction if it is idempotent and has norm one. By a result of Tomiyama(15) a retraction is a positive mapping and is a module homo-morphism over N. A retraction is normal if it is ultraweakly continuous, and faithful if it does not annihilate any nonzero positive element of M. Suppose that (Nn)n≥1 is an increasing sequence of von Neumann subalgebras of M whose union is weakly dense in M and that, for each n, πn: M → Nn is a faithful normal retraction. The sequence (πn) is called a martingale if, whenever m ≥ n,