and was written by student Samantha Chiang Albany Middle School teacher James Izumizaki died recently Albany High School students joined the rest of the community in a frenzied online discussion on September 26 when news emerged that middle school teacher and coach James Izumizaki had been arrested who had just begun his fifth year of teaching at Albany Middle faced accusations of committing lewd acts with a student The news was impossible for students to ignore appearing everywhere from the local news to social media feeds Hundreds of comments were posted in response to online articles and blocks of text replaced scattered thoughts in personal statuses as each student weighed in with his or her own opinion on the events that had occurred if not unthinkable that any other event could rival the reaction generated by the arrest of the well-known Albany teacher Albany students and their families were informed by a startling robo-call that Izumizaki had passed away as a result of what was reported to be a suspected suicide the community took to social media to express a broad range of opinions The role of media in the aftermath of these events created an unprecedented response found a platform to exercise their freedom of speech through Facebook The diversity of responses sparked further discussion about the overwhelming influence of the media in the tiny town The community began to raise questions as to whether this freedom was a positive or simply inevitable aspect of a changing society Anyone who wanted a say in the issue could easily be heard “The media is just another voice that people can use to express themselves,” commented Albany High Assistant Principal Susan Charlip the media also provided opportunity for people to “get swept up without thinking about the larger picture.” The many unanswerable questions in Izumizaki’s story created voids that were quickly filled by an onslaught of responses from students and other members of the community who found an outlet to place blame on the media and the school district were among the many groups that found themselves being blamed online for what had happened in thr Izumizaki case Some of the answers created by the online Albany community escalated into full-fledged battles between those who viewed the situation in opposite ways Some showed indignation on behalf of Izumizaki and expressed anger towards those who even suggested that Izumizaki was guilty Others clearly supported the young accusers criticising Izumizaki’s supporters for being disrespectful to the supposed victims Charlip described the discussion surrounding the events as “a natural way [for students] to make sense of their lives.” The virtual reaction to Izumizaki’s arrest and death demonstrated the overpowering influence of the media that has only recently existed become prominent in society Events and media have become increasingly dependent on each other as those who chose to participate in the discussion each contribute to the original story “We live in an age where we make the news ourselves Charlip expressed belief that the media itself bears no responsibility for any individual’s actions and is simply a modern-day “den” for discussion The freedom and availability of the media entrusts a level of responsibility in the hands of its users Surowitz explained that a tangled situation like the one that Albany faced requires students “The media is just a piece of a really complicated story,” Surowitz concluded Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. 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Metrics details Electronic devices have become an indispensable part of our daily lives while their negative aspects have been reported One disadvantage is that reading comprehension is reduced when reading from an electronic device; the cause of this deficit in performance is unclear we investigated the cause for comprehension decline when reading on a smartphone by simultaneously measuring respiration and brain activity during reading in 34 healthy individuals reading on a smartphone elicits fewer sighs promotes brain overactivity in the prefrontal cortex reading on a smartphone affected sigh frequency but not normal breathing suggesting that normal breathing and sigh generation are mediated by pathways differentially influenced by the visual environment A path analysis suggests that the interactive relationship between sigh inhibition and overactivity in the prefrontal cortex causes comprehension decline These findings provide new insight into the respiration-mediated mechanisms of cognitive function visual input might also affect brain state and physiological condition brain activity and physiological changes likely exist as mediating variables in the relationship between the visual environment and cognitive performance These findings indicate that vision is dominant over other senses and it is quite possible that visual environments influence various functions including that of the respiratory system it is unclear how the visual environment affects respiration and brain function this study investigated the involved mechanism in an exploratory manner we aimed to explore and demonstrate the relationship between the visual environment and respiration and that between the visual environment and brain function to elucidate the phenomenon postulating that the use of digital devices lowers cognitive performance If a particular visual environment negatively affects respiratory function and/or brain function, coupled with the interactive relationship between brain and respiratory activity, it is possible that the said process negatively influences cognitive performance (Supplementary Fig. 1) This exploratory study examined the effects of electronic device use on reading comprehension by measuring brain and respiratory activity simultaneously in 34 healthy individuals Reading score is decreased by using smartphone compared to paper medium (a) Each trial consisted of four sessions: resting state before reading and two min were spent in the resting state before/after reading while the main effects in novel and the interaction were not Scores with the smartphone medium were lower than those with the paper medium in sentences from both novel A and B (*P < 0.05) d) No main or interaction effect was observed for medium or novel in either the duration of reading session or the viewing distance between participants’ eyes and the device Error bars show standard error of the mean Sighs are inhibited during reading with smartphone compared to paper (a) A typical example of a raw respiration signal from a single participant (b) A representative pattern of the tidal volume and sighs before and after the reading sessions using a smartphone and paper media from a single participant and expiratory time reduced during the reading sessions compared to those before and after sessions (f) The respiratory frequency increased during the reading session compared to that before and after sessions (*P < 0.05) (g) The number of sighs increased during the reading session with the paper medium compared to when using a smartphone and increased in the after reading session with both media (*P < 0.05) Brain activity around the forehead is increased during reading with a smartphone (a) A representative pattern of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) activity on the left probe before c) RM-ANOVA showed that activity recorded with NIRS increased during the reading sessions with a smartphone medium from the left and right probes compared to that before and after reading sessions The difference between the media was clearly visible in the left probe (*P < 0.05) Six respiratory indexes (minute ventilation two metabolic patterns (O2 consumption and End tidal CO2) two NIRS indexes (right/left) in the reading sessions and reading score were set as the observed variables In the most suitable model (the goodness of fit index = 0.881) there is a covariate relationship between left NIRS channel activity and the number of sighs (P = 0.021) and a direct relationship between the right NIRS channel activity and its impact on reading score (P = 0.003) Numbers mean standardized path coefficients the number of sighs increased during cognitive reading activity on a paper medium and decreased when reading on a smartphone This finding suggests that reading on a smartphone may have caused inhibition of sighs compared to reading on a paper medium a path analysis suggests that the interactive relationship between sigh inhibition and overactivity in the prefrontal cortex causes the comprehension decline Sighing may be associated with improved executive functions These results suggest that a decline in reading comprehension on a smartphone may be caused by reduced sighing and increased prefrontal activity compared to that on a paper medium and activation of the preBötC receptor increases sighing by approximately 10 times whereas inhibition of the receptor abolishes sighing manipulation of the receptors had no effect on normal breathing confirming that normal breathing and sighing are mediated by different pathways our findings suggest that visual environment of reading affects sigh generation but not normal breathing The decreased sighing and brain overactivity in smartphone use may be caused by sustained cognitive load in ipRGC activity due to blue light exposure Further research is needed to examine the effect of blue light on respiration and brain activity our experiment did not entail any measurement of subjective cognitive load Based on the differences in the number of sighs and brain activity between reading on smartphones and paper media it is highly likely that there might have been a difference in cognitive load as well it is necessary to assess cognitive load indices and examine the relationship between breathing and brain activity we did not control the movements when turning pages or pointing movements to maintain the focus of attention on the text These bodily movements may have had some influence on the present index such physical limitations should be taken into consideration This study was approved by the ethics committee of Showa University School of Medicine and conducted according to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (trial identifier number: 2179) Thirty-four Japanese university students provided written informed consent prior to the experiments All participants were right-hand dominant and had no history of neurological or psychiatric disease (20 females; mean age = 20.4 Participants had normal vision with/without correction based on the condition that medium type and novel type did not overlap A trial consisted of four sessions: resting state before reading Participants were instructed to sit and their torso and arms were secured They were asked to read the allocated novel on the allocated medium during the reading session participants were asked to open their eyes and look at a wall they took a reading test consisting of ten questions related to the contents of the novels They were also asked to breathe through their nose during all sessions and two min was spent in the resting state before/after reading participants were asked whether they had previously read the novels used in the experiment All participants responded that they had never read the novels The observation distance was determined by the convenience of the participants and the experimenter measured the distance between the device and the participants’ eyes The factors of medium and novel had no influence on reading time or viewing distance Each novel originated from a passage of one of two novels written by the same author 3060 Japanese characters; or novel B: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage The panel size of the smartphone was 5.0 inches (resolution pixel: height: 1920 The text size on the paper medium was identical to that on the smartphone the weight (148 g) and outer frame (height: 144 mm thickness: 8.6 mm) of the paper medium were also identical to those of the smartphone The NIRS calculated oxygenated hemoglobin concentration [mM] on the forehead The probe consisted of an LED that emits light and a photodiode that receives the light transmitted through the body The amount of oxidized and deoxidized hemoglobin was estimated by quantifying the spatial slope of light scattering and transmission in body tissues The interval duration between sighs was analyzed and the analysis was limited to cases in which two or more sighs during reading occurred within a single trial RM-ANOVA and post-hoc t-tests were performed to test the main effects and interactions of medium (smartphone and paper) and novel sentence (novels A and B) on the scores for the reading test They were also performed for medium (smartphone and paper) and session conditions (before and after reading) on respiration (tidal volume and number of sighs) and brain function (right and left activities of the prefrontal cortex) Results are presented as mean ± standard error of the mean The statistical significance criterion was defined as adjusted P < 0.05 with Bonferroni correction Relationships among the 6 respiration indexes and the comprehension score were calculated by path analysis The goodness of fit of models was determined with the root-mean square of approximation Supplementary information is provided with the paper to support the current results Analyses used in this study are largely standard approaches for this type of data Other data that support the 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Psychophysiology 55, e12979. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12979 (2018) Download references This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP18K03185 conceptualized the experiment and wrote the original manuscript All the authors participated in editing the manuscript The authors declare no competing interests Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-05605-0 Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article The Journal of Physiological Sciences (2022) Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science Seeking a familiar flavor of my time years ago in Tokyo I visited Chinmaya Izumizaki Icchoume-ten in Naha for spicy mapo tofu over rice The restaurant is the only Okinawa location of the 23-branch Chinmaya chain I was a regular at Chinmaya’s original location in Gotanda District Chinmaya Gotanda Higashiguchi Ekimae-ten unfortunately closed but I still have fond memories of this spot and their signature mapo tofu over rice I can still taste the burn the dish left on my taste buds The first branch was popular and mapo tofu over rice is considered the “taste of Gotanda,” so two other branches remain in the area Missing the days when this spicy food helped me rejuvenate after a long day at the office The Chinmaya location here is called Izumizaki Icchoume-ten and you’ll find it near the south end of Kokusai Street nestled among business and government office buildings in Naha Izumizaki Ichhoumen-ten is a small restaurant with a striking resemblance to the one I frequented in Gotanda Over the entrance I could see the letters “陳麻家” (Chinmaya) there were also letters “担々麺” (dandan noodles) along with the letters “陳麻飯” for mapo tofu over rice The unexpected additional menu item made me a little anxious for what was in store There was no counter with seats; seats were available at tables I took one of the seats for single diners and ordered chinmahan (650 yen I still remembered that the joint in Gotanda served up orders at a surprising pace It probably took less than a minute to get an order out but I was happy to see my chinmahan arriving within a few minutes The chinmahan looked exactly like the one I remember from Gotanda it even left the same spice and fire in my mouth I knew and loved the spiciness almost felt like it might go over my tolerance The flavor and fire of the dish lured me to continue and in five minutes my plate was cleared Chinmaya Izumizaki Icchoume-ten’s spicy mapo tofu was a much-needed refresh and walk down memory lane for me Though I’m sad that the restaurant I frequented in Tokyo is now gone I’m relieved to know that I can head to the Naha location for a familiar taste and burn you’ll definitely enjoy Chinmaya Izumizaki Icchoume-ten’s fiery offering Read now > Sign up for our weekly newsletter of articles from Japan, Korea, Guam, and Okinawa with travel tips, restaurant reviews, recipes, community and event news, and more. Volume 14 - 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.556519 The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between olfactory recognition and morphological changes in olfactory brain regions including the amygdala and medial frontal cortex in 27 elderly subjects and 27 younger healthy controls The specific aim of the study was to determine which brain areas are associated with the initial decline of olfaction in elderly subjects All subjects underwent magnetic resonance imaging to measure anatomical brain volume and cortical thickness and subjects were assessed using tests of olfactory acuity and cognitive function measured with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Overall brain volume reductions were observed in elderly subjects compared with young healthy controls but only reduction in the volume of the left hippocampus was associated with decreased olfactory ability The parahippocampus of elderly subjects was not different from that of controls; the extent of the reduction of parahippocampus volume varied among individuals and reduction in this region was associated with olfactory decline parahippocampus thinning was associated with decreased olfactory function The path analysis showed direct and indirect effects of hippocampus and parahippocampus volume on olfactory ability and that volume reductions in these areas were not associated with cognitive function Parahippocampus volume reduction and thinning exhibited individual variation; this may be the first appearance of pathological changes and may lead to dysfunction in the connection of olfactory memory to the neocortex Parahippocampus change may reflect the first sign of olfactory impairment prior to pathological changes in the hippocampus It is possible that loss of olfactory recognition might be caused by a decrease in frontal cortex function Exploratory analysis was performed for cortical thickness measurements of the para-HI and we determined whether cortical thinning contributes to volume changes as well as olfactory ability The study was approved by the Ethical Committees of Showa University School of Medicine and all participants provided written informed consent prior to participation Demographic data of young healthy controls and elderly subjects Odor detection acuity and odor recognition acuity were evaluated in all subjects using the T&T olfaction test (Takasuna Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan). The T&T test is well correlated with the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (Kondo et al., 1988). Details of the olfaction test have been described elsewhere (Masaoka et al., 2005) the test is conducted with five odors (odor A each 10 times more concentrated than the last; concentrations are labeled from −2 to + 5 The five odors are presented randomly but at the same concentration in each trial The trials begin with the lowest concentration and are repeated with progressively higher concentrations the subject is asked whether an odor was perceived The concentration at which the odor is perceived but not identified is considered the “detection level.” As the concentration increases The subject is required to identify each odor and describe the kind of odor The concentration at which an odor is first identified is considered the “recognition level.” Each subject’s odor detection threshold is expressed as the average of all odor threshold scores (A + B + C + D + E/5) The recognition threshold is expressed in the same manner Higher scores indicate lower olfactory detection and recognition abilities All subjects were instructed to complete the Japanese version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-J) (Nasreddine et al., 2005) under the supervision of neurologists. The MoCA can detect MCI with greater sensitivity than the Japanese version of the Mini Mental State Examination (Folstein et al., 1975) the MoCA was adapted for measurement of cognitive function Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed at Ebara Hospital using a 3 Tesla MAGNETOM A Trio Tim Scanner (Siemens Germany) with a 32-channel phased-array coil The anatomical scan was acquired with a T1-weighted 3D MPRAGE sequence with the following parameters: 9 degree flip angle field of view 256 mm and 176 slices with a voxel size of 1 mm3 T1-weighted images of all subjects were acquired with the same scanner at Ebara Hospital olfactory detection and olfactory recognition levels were examined using the non-parametric Mann-Whitney test Group comparisons for ICV and whole brain volume (WBV) were conducted using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with sex and years of education as covariates Between-group differences in the left and right HI and MFC volumes were assessed using ANCOVA years of education and ICV according to FreeSurfer (FreeSurfer ICV) included as covariates To determine whether a differential relationship existed between olfactory recognition ability and volume of ROIs between groups Each model included the main effects of group and volume and group × volume interactions with FreeSurfer ICV and years of education as covariates The main effects of group × volume interactions were the outcomes of interest the FreeSurfer ICV and the ICV measured with SPM (SPM ICV) were compared using a non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test Regression analysis was performed to determine the correlation coefficient Reanalysis using the SPM ICV was performed for all comparisons Comparison of the SPM ICV between elderly subjects and young HCs was conducted by ANCOVA with sex and years of education as covariates years of education and SPM ICV as covariates General linear model was conducted with SPM ICV and years of education as covariates A group comparison of cortical thickness was performed with ANCOVA with sex and years of education as covariates The ICV was not included in the thickness analysis as a covariate Elderly subjects had a lower ICV (F = 8.53 0.45) and lower volumes of the left HI (F = 15.01 There were no significant differences in the left para-HI (F = 0.02 0.06) between the elderly subjects and young HCs Table 2 shows comparisons of the OFC, para-HI, rectus and MFC thickness between the two groups. No correlation was observed between thickness of an ROI and ICV (FreeSurfer and SPM) (Supplementary Table 1); therefore ICV was not used as covariate for analysis of cortical thickness comparisons Similar results to the volume comparison were observed for cortical thickness There was no significant difference in the left para-HI (F = 1.23 Significant decreases in the left OFC (F = 17.5 0.09) were observed in elderly subjects compared with young HCs Comparison of cortical thickness between young HC and elderly subjects Figure 1. Relationships between volumes of the hippocampus (HI) and amygdala (AMG) and olfactory test scores in elderly and young subjects (elderly subjects, closed circles with solid line; young subjects, open circles with dotted line). A significant group × volume interaction was observed for the left HI. There were no group × volume interactions for any other brain regions (statistical details are included in Supplementary Table 2) Relationships between volumes of the parahippocampus (para-HI) and rectus and olfactory test scores in elderly and young subjects A significant group × volume interaction was observed for the left para-HI Relationships between volumes of the olfactory cortex (OFC) and medial prefrontal cortex (MFC) and olfactory test scores in elderly and young subjects A general linear model was used to examine the effect of thickness and the group × cortical thickness interaction on olfactory recognition in elderly subjects and young HCs. A significant group × volume interaction was found for the left para-HI (P = 0.001) and right para-HI (P = 0.02) (Supplementary Figure 1, statistical details in Supplementary Table 3) This small bias need to concern when the ICV is used as a covariate for ANCOVA and analysis with linear models Because the path analysis included the HI and AMG volume we considered that the same unit (mm3) could be used to help to understand the comparison We focused on volume changes in the following analysis Path diagram and standardized path coefficients for elderly subjects The solid lines indicate a significant direct effect The dotted line indicates a significant indirect effect Gray solid lines indicate a non-significant direct path and the gray dotted line indicates a non-significant indirect path Our specific interest was to determine which olfactory areas were related to the decline of olfactory ability in elderly subjects who self-reported no cognitive impairment Our aim was to test whether morphological changes might be related to the changes in olfactory ability that occur before cognitive decline The most interesting findings in this study were observed in path analysis indicating that direct and indirect effects of HI and para-HI volume on olfactory ability Volume reductions in these areas were not associated with cognitive function measured by the MoCA This means that subjects with smaller HI and para-HI volumes presented with impaired olfactory abilities prior to the decline of cognitive function Overall brain volume reductions were observed in elderly subjects compared with young HCs but only reduction in the volume of the left HI was associated with decreased olfactory ability it was interesting to observe that the volume of the para-HI in elderly subjects was not different from that of young HCs; on the other hand the extent of the reduction of para-HI volume varied among individuals and this reduction was associated with olfactory decline these findings suggest that the association between left HI and left para-HI volume changes might play a key role in olfactory recognition The para-HI may have important roles in relaying memory retrieval and emotional reaction to conscious awareness of the context organized in the OFC It is possible that volume changes of the HI and para-HI caused by pathological changes might contribute to the decline of olfactory recognition where they play important roles in the relay areas projecting to the OFC Olfactory decline was associated with HI and para-HI volume changes in this study, especially in the left hemisphere. Left HI volume reduction associated with memory and cognitive function has been reported at the onset of AD (Peng et al., 2015) and psychiatric disorders (Velakoulis et al., 1999; Wannan et al., 2019) It is unknown why the left medial temporal regions are damaged prior to the onset of typical disease symptoms Further research in a longitudinal study could help to determine whether current findings are relevant to MCI and AD patients In our study, similar results to the volume comparison were observed for cortical thickness. However, the right rectus thinning was observed in elderly subjects. Volume reduction of the right rectus did not reach significant although having trends (P = 0.06 and 0.07, FreeSurfer ICV and SPM ICV, respectively). Additionally, significant group × thickness interaction was found for right para-HI (general linear model, Supplementary Table 3) as well as the left para-HI It could be possible to assume that cortical thinning might be more sensitive to detect brain change than the volume reduction The right rectus and right para-HI were not survived for the results of the path analysis a relation between cortical thinning and volume reduction was interesting theme for understanding brain pathology Storsve et al. (2014) reported the importance of longitudinal studies for determining changes in cortical thickness, surface area and volume with aging. They reported that volume changes were closely related to thickness changes and found that area and thickness changes appeared to have both overlapping and different effects on volume across the adult life span (Storsve et al., 2014) The areas that first show cortical thinning or volume reductions with age are worth investigating In addition, in our study smaller ICV was observed in elderly subjects. Regarding ICV reduction in elderly subjects, age-related volumetric decline progresses by the age of 75 years (Barnes et al., 2010). It is unknown how the amount that cortical thinning or volume reduction may primarily contribute to ICV volume changes. Storsve et al. (2014) reported a mixture of accelerating or decelerating brain changes with age although brain volume reductions and cortical thinning were observed in most regions there was no link to cognitive function and olfactory ability para-HI volume reduction and thinning varied among individuals and this small amount of individuality was reflected in olfactory impairment It is not known how elderly subjects with olfactory decline progress to cognitive impairment and whether the para-HI accelerate to reduce volume in the further stage A longitudinal study is required to answer these questions The relationships between olfactory ability and medial temporal sub-regions and hippocampal subfields also worthy of further investigation The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethical Committees of Showa University School of Medicine The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study and MH conducted and analyzed olfactory testing and the MoCA This study was supported by a JSPS KAKENHI Grant (Number 15K00210) and Kao Corporation The authors declare that this study received funding from Kao Corporation The funder had the following involvement with the study: HS was employed by Kao Corporation and was involved in collection and analysis of olfaction and MoCA data We thank Katsutoshi Murata (Siemens Healthcare, Japan) for providing the MRI sequence prototype used in this study and also thank Terumi Tabei, Ken Yashiro, and Toshiyuki Onodera (Department of Radiology, Ebara Tokyo Hospital, Japan) for assistance with scanning. 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