Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Japan Epidemiological Association  

<p><b>Background</b></p><p>There is limited evidence on the relationship between educational attainment and health markers in Japan. This study examined the associations of education level with cardiometabolic markers and health behaviors in a large Japanese population.</p><p><b>Methods</b></p><p>This cross-sectional study used health-related data (medical claims and health checkup results) from public health insurance enrollees linked with national census data between April 2020 and March 2021 from 16 municipalities. Participants were categorized according to education level: low (junior high school graduates or lower), middle (high school graduates), and high (vocational school graduates or higher). The study outcomes were cardiometabolic markers (waist circumference, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, HbA1c, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol) and health behaviors (smoking habit, drinking habit, restful sleep, and regular exercise). Linear regression and modified Poisson regression analyses were performed to analyze the associations between education levels and the outcomes. The analyses were also conducted according to sex and age (39-64 and 65-75 years).</p><p><b>Results</b></p><p>The study cohort comprised 61,684 participants. Higher education levels were generally associated with better cardiometabolic markers, but were also linked with higher low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels. In addition, higher education levels were associated with better health behaviors. The magnitude of association was more pronounced in women and middle-aged persons.</p><p><b>Conclusions</b></p><p>These findings provide a broad overview of the associations between educational attainment and health markers in a large Japanese population, and deepen our understanding of health disparities.</p>

DOI： 10.2188/jea.je20250683

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Authorship：Lead author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：SAGE Publications  

Objective

This study aimed to examine whether sleep maintenance efficiency (SME) and total sleep time (TST), measured by wristband devices tracking both movement and heart rate patterns, are associated with systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP).

Methods

This cross-sectional study was conducted using data from 72 individuals who participated in a Japanese municipality's project for improving sleep quality. Fitbit-derived sleep data were linked with health checkup and claims data. Linear regression analyses were conducted with SBP or DBP as the dependent variable, and SME or TST as the independent variable. We constructed simple and multivariable models that adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise habit, restful sleep, and antihypertensive medication use.

Results

SBP significantly decreased with higher SME in the simple model ( B  = −1.92 mmHg, p  = 0.01) and the multivariable model ( B  = −1.87 mmHg, p  = 0.02). When SME was analyzed as quartile groups in the multivariable model, the lowest group had a significantly higher SBP ( B  = 8.51 mmHg, p  = 0.04) than the highest group. This negative association was also observed in sensitivity analyses with bootstrapping that focused on participants without antihypertensive medication use and participants with normotensive SBP. SME showed no association with DBP, and TST showed no association with SBP or DBP.

Conclusion

SME was associated with SBP, whereas TST showed no clear association. Sleep quality assessments using wearable devices may provide useful insights that support the prevention of blood pressure elevation and population health monitoring.

DOI： 10.1177/20552076261420875

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Other Link： https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/20552076261420875

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Wiley  

Aims

Schizophrenia (SZ) is associated with abnormalities in both spontaneous and task‐evoked neural oscillations, and growing evidence shows that shift patterns of oscillatory activity between resting and task states are also disturbed. However, no study has simultaneously examined the frequency‐ and state‐specific characteristics of oscillatory deficits in SZ. Using an auditory steady‐state response (ASSR) paradigm, we aimed to examine the differential sensitivity of oscillatory measures to SZ and to assess rest–task shifts across multiple frequency bands.

Methods

We recorded resting‐state activity and 40 Hz ASSR of 66 neurotypical controls (NC) and 68 SZ patients using electroencephalography (EEG). 40 Hz stimulus‐evoked activity was measured using evoked power, phase‐locking factor (PLF), and phase‐locking angle, whereas multi‐frequency (4–100 Hz) spontaneous activity during ASSR and resting states was assessed using induced and resting power. The state‐dependent shifts in spontaneous activity between the resting and ASSR states were evaluated over a broad frequency range.

Results

Both induced and resting power in the low‐frequency range (4–10 Hz) were elevated over widespread regions in SZ patients relative to NC. Gamma‐band (39–100 Hz) induced power then demonstrated excellent ability to discriminate between SZ and NC. In addition, SZ patients showed a reduced rest–task shift in the theta‐beta band (5–23 Hz) spontaneous power, most pronounced in the alpha‐band (8–13 Hz).

Conclusion

The present study confirmed the utility of gamma‐band induced power during ASSR stimulation for differentiating SZ patients from NC. Importantly, our results also highlight the pathophysiological significance of the reduced rest–task shift pattern of spontaneous activity mainly in the alpha‐band in SZ patients.

DOI： 10.1111/pcn.13880

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN  

<p>When distinguishing stop consonants, Korean listeners use the fundamental frequency of the following vowel (F0) as well as the voice onset time (VOT). However, it is unclear whether the F0 and VOT of natural speech sounds play an effective role in hearing nonnative stops. In the present study, we examined whether Korean listeners perceive Japanese voiced stops, rather than Japanese voiceless stops, as being similar to Korean lenis stops depending on F0 and VOT. Native Korean listeners matched a speech sound starting with either a Japanese voiced or voiceless stop to a target. The targets were meaningful visual words starting with a lenis stop in Experiment 1 and meaningless speech sounds starting with a lenis stop in Experiment 2. Native Japanese listeners, who primarily use VOT for stop distinction, also participated in Experiment 2. The results revealed that the extent to which Korean listeners chose voiced stops was influenced consistently by F0, and the pattern of results differed between Korean and Japanese listeners. These findings suggest that even when hearing natural speech sounds, Korean listeners use F0 when judging the similarity between lenis and nonnative stops.</p>

DOI： 10.1250/ast.44.66

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Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

The purpose of the present study was to identify neural activities reflecting language differences in acoustic cue weighting for phonetic perception. We examined whether brainstem and early cortical auditory responses to voice-onset time (VOT) and onset frequency of fundamental frequency (onset F0) were different between two groups of listeners, native Japanese speakers and Korean second-language learners of Japanese, who use a VOT and onset F0, respectively, as the primary perceptual cue for voicing. In the experiment, we measured auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) and cortical N1 response of the Japanese and Korean participants while listening to stop-consonant stimuli varying in VOT and onset F0 (10 ms and 80 Hz, 30 ms and 80 Hz, or 30 ms and 120 Hz). We found that the N1 response was much more sensitive to VOT distinction in the Japanese than Korean participants, although the distinction of onset F0 was not reflected in early cortical responses in either language groups. There was no obvious difference in the ABRs between the Japanese and Korean participants. These results suggest that early cortical auditory activity is related to the processing of acoustic cue weighting for phonetic perception, while brainstem auditory activity is stimulus-dependent.

DOI： 10.1016/j.neulet.2020.135154

Language：English  

Venue：九州大学（福岡）   Country：Japan  

Language：English  

Venue：福岡国際会議場（福岡）   Country：Japan  

Language：Japanese  

Venue：京都テルサ（京都）   Country：Japan  

Event date： 2026.1

Language：English   Presentation type：Poster presentation  

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Event date： 2025.10

Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

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