Search results for " memory"

2014

Genetic factors underlie a substantial proportion of individual differences in cognitive functions in humans, including processes related to episodic and working memory. While genetic association studies have proposed several candidate "memory genes", these currently explain only a minor fraction of the phenotypic variance. Here, we performed genome-wide screening on 13 episodic and working memory phenotypes in 1,318 participants of the Berlin Aging Study II aged 60 years or older. The analyses highlight a number of novel single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with memory performance, including one located in a putative regulatory region of microRNA (miRNA) hsa-mir-138-5p (rs9882…

Comparing DNA sequence collections by direct comparison of compressed text indexes

2012

Popular sequence alignment tools such as BWA convert a reference genome to an indexing data structure based on the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT), from which matches to individual query sequences can be rapidly determined. However the utility of also indexing the query sequences themselves remains relatively unexplored. Here we show that an all-against-all comparison of two sequence collections can be computed from the BWT of each collection with the BWTs held entirely in external memory, i.e. on disk and not in RAM. As an application of this technique, we show that BWTs of transcriptomic and genomic reads can be compared to obtain reference-free predictions of splice junctions that have h…

Kotona asuvan muistisairaan henkilön ja hänen läheistensä teknologiaan liittyvät tarpeet ja toiveet

2018

Tutkimuksessa selvitettiin millaisia tarpeita ja toiveita kotona asuvilla muistisairailla ja heidän läheisillään on kotona asumista tukevaan teknologiaan liittyen. Tutkimukseen osallistui 25 kotona asuvaa muistisairasta henkilöä ja 25 heidän läheistään. Metodina käytettiin etnografista tutkimusotetta. Aineistonkeruumenetelminäolivat avoin haastattelua ja havainnointi. Analyysimenetelmänä käytettiin sisällön analyysiä. Tarpeet ja toiveet voitiin luokitella kolmeen pääluokkaan, jotka olivat itsemääräämisoikeuden säilyminen, sosiaalisten suhteiden säilyminen ja liikkumisen oikeus ja turvallisuus. Haasteita olivat yksinäisyyden kokemus, muistin ja toimintakyvyn heikkenemiseen liittyvät ongelmat…

Visual memory in Alzheimer patients: effects of practice, retention interval and severity of cognitive decline.

1995

The study was aimed at estimating the effect size of practice, retention interval and dementia severity on free recall performance in Alzheimer patients. Patients met DSM-III-R criteria for dementia of Alzheimer type. Different picture sets were presented on 4 days. The forgetting curves on different days were compared using ANOVA for repeated measurements. Practice had a minor, but significant negative effect on recall performance explaining 1% of the variance in recall performance. The retention interval varied between zero and 24 h explaining 23% of the total variance. Dementia severity explained 52% of the variance. For the development of memory improvement strategies in Alzheimer patie…

Centenarian offspring: A model for understanding longevity

2013

Abstract: A main objective of current medical research is to improve the life quality of elderly people as priority of the continuous increase of ageing population. This phenomenon implies several medical, economic and social problems because of dramatic increase in number of non autonomous individuals affected by various pathologies. Accordingly, the research interest is focused on understanding the biological mechanisms involved in determining the positive ageing phenotype, i.e. the centenarian phenotype. In achieving this goal the choice of an appropriate study models is fundamental. Centenarians have been used as an optimal model for successful ageing. However, this model shows several …

Sedentary behaviours and cognitive function among community dwelling adults aged 50+ years: Results from the Irish longitudinal study of ageing

2020

Background:\ud \ud Sedentary behaviours (SB) are risk factors for poor cardiovascular health and all-cause mortality. However, their role in cognitive health in older adults is unclear. A few studies have examined associations between sedentary behaviours and cognition, but are limited by heterogeneity and insufficient longitudinal analyses. Therefore more robust studies, which would address identified limitations, are needed to accurately determine associations.\ud \ud Method:\ud \ud This study analysed data collected from participants aged 50+ years of The Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (TILDA). We conducted cross-sectional linear regression with multivariate imputation analyses of ba…

Un’antologia “sommersa”: "Il libro della memoria" di Gesualdo Bufalino

2018

The paper publishes and analyses as-yet-unpublished documents concerning an anthology on memory in literature, assembled by Gesualdo Bufalino and held in the archive of the Comiso Foundation. The unpublished anthology is accompanied by a letter to Elvira Sellerio, in which Bufalino explains its structure and choices, and by a series of eccentric texts that all revolve around the theme of memory. The drafts and the preparatory cartoons for the anthology in fieri alternate with textual fragments later included into the works of invention, lists of words, aphorisms, autonomous and complete texts (and among these a review as-yet-unpublished of the novel La palazzina di villeggiatura of Enrico J…

Implicit learning and implicit memory in moderate to severe memory disorders

2010

Numerous experimental psychology studies have established firmly that important parts of the human cognitive process operate automatically without the conscious or explicit control of the subjects (9). Such processes can concern memorization of episodes from life in a way that will subsequently have an implicit influence on our behavior (such as decision-making or reaction time). They can equally assist acquisition of more complex knowledge from our surroundings, by the automatic capture of the statistical regularities found in them (see Chapter “Introducing implicit learning: from the laboratory to the real life”, E. Bigand and C. Delbe). This is the way, for example, that a baby learns to…

Grip Force Adjustments Reflect Prediction of Dynamic Consequences in Varying Gravitoinertial Fields

2018

International audience; Humans have a remarkable ability to adjust the way they manipulate tools through a genuine regulation of grip force according to the task. However, rapid changes in the dynamical context may challenge this skill, as shown in many experimental approaches. Most experiments adopt perturbation paradigms that affect only one sensory modality. We hypothesize that very fast adaptation can occur if coherent information from multiple sensory modalities is provided to the central nervous system. Here, we test whether participants can switch between different and never experienced dynamical environments induced by centrifugation of the body. Seven participants lifted an object …

Parallel Algorithms for Listing Well-Formed Parentheses Strings

1998

We present two cost-optimal parallel algorithms generating the set of all well-formed parentheses strings of length 2n with constant delay for each generated string. In our first algorithm we generate in lexicographic order well-formed parentheses strings represented by bitstrings, and in the second one we use the representation by weight sequences. In both cases the computational model is based on an architecture CREW PRAM, where each processor performs the same algorithm simultaneously on a different set of data. Different processors can access the shared memory at the same time to read different data in the same or different memory locations, but no two processors are allowed to write i…