Search results for "Functions"

Human-based evidence for the therapeutic potential of arginase inhibitors in cardiovascular diseases

2020

Arginase is a ubiquitous enzyme that regulates polyamine- and nitric-oxide-requiring vascular functions. It is well-established that, in mammals, arginase overactivation contributes to endothelial dysfunction, a hallmark of cardiovascular diseases. The pharmacological potential of arginase inhibition for improving vascular function is largely supported by a wide range of data from animal studies. However, caution is required before extrapolating animal data to humans because interspecies differences in arginase expression and localization have been observed. For this reason, this review presents the existing arguments from human data in favor of a role of arginase in cardiovascular diseases…

Hsp60 Post-translational Modifications: Functional and Pathological Consequences.

2020

Hsp60 is a chaperone belonging to the Chaperonins of Group I and typically functions inside mitochondria in which, together with the co-chaperonin Hsp10, maintains protein homeostasis. In addition to this canonical role, Hsp60 plays many others beyond the mitochondria, for instance in the cytosol, plasma-cell membrane, extracellular space, and body fluids. These non-canonical functions include participation in inflammation, autoimmunity, carcinogenesis, cell replication, and other cellular events in health and disease. Thus, Hsp60 is a multifaceted molecule with a wide range of cellular and tissue locations and functions, which is noteworthy because there is only one hsp60 gene. The questio…

Neither Cathodal nor Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on the Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex alone or Applied During Moderate Aerob…

2020

There is converging evidence that both aerobic exercise (AE) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can acutely modulate executive functions (EF). In addition, recent studies have proposed the beneficial effects of applying tDCS during AE on physical performance. This study aimed to investigate whether tDCS applied during an AE session additionally or differently effects EF. Therefore, five experiments were conducted in a counterbalanced pre-post-retention crossover design to explore the acute effects of tDCS and AE on EF (inhibition and updating) once in isolation (i.e., either cathodal, anodal tDCS or AE alone as controls) and once in a combined application (i.e., anodal and c…

Symptomatic accommodative and binocular dysfunctions from the use of flat-panel displays

2018

AIM: To determine the presence of symptomatic accommodative and non-strabismic binocular dysfunctions (ANSBD) in a non-presbyopic population of video display unit (VDU) users with flat-panel displays. METHODS: One hundred and one VDU users, aged between 20 to 34y, initially participated in the study. This study excluded contact-lens wearers and subjects who had undergone refractive surgery or had any systemic or ocular disease. First, subjects were asked about the type and nature of eye symptoms they experienced during VDU use. Then, a thorough eye examination excluded those subjects with a significant uncorrected refractive error or other problem, such as ocular motility disorders, vertica…

Gross motor proficiency and intellectual functioning

2018

This cross-sectional study examines differences in gross motor proficiency as a function of different intellectual functioning profiles. Two motor areas have been investigated as being equally essential to gross motor functions in every-day life: locomotion and object control. It aims to compare gross motor skills endorsed by children with Down syndrome (DS), children with borderline intellectual functioning (BIF), and typically developing children (TDC). Group 1 was composed of 18 children with DS (chronological age=8.22), group 2 was composed of 18 children with BIF (chronological age=9.32), and group 3 was composed of 18 children with typical development (TD) (chronological age=9.28). Gr…

2017

Children’s improved performance with age in analogy tasks has been explained by an increase in semantic knowledge of the items and the relations between them or by the development of an increased ability to inhibit irrelevant information. We tested the so-called "unbalanced attentional focus hypothesis" that claims that a failure to choose the "analogical" match can be the result of a difficulty to focus on all the relevant information available. Previous eye-tracking research has suggested, in analogies of the A:B::C:D format, that 5-6 year-olds organize their search around the C item. They focused significantly less than adults on the A:B pair, thereby hindering their discovering the rela…

A New Paradigm in Interactive Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization

2020

Over the years, scalarization functions have been used to solve multiobjective optimization problems by converting them to one or more single objective optimization problem(s). This study proposes a novel idea of solving multiobjective optimization problems in an interactive manner by using multiple scalarization functions to map vectors in the objective space to a new, so-called preference incorporated space (PIS). In this way, the original problem is converted into a new multiobjective optimization problem with typically fewer objectives in the PIS. This mapping enables a modular incorporation of decision maker’s preferences to convert any evolutionary algorithm to an interactive one, whe…

A computational approach for the assessment of executive functions in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

2019

Previous studies on obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) showed impairments in executive domains, particularly in cognitive inhibition. In this perspective, the use of virtual reality showed huge potential in the assessment of executive functions; however, unfortunately, to date, no study on the assessment of these patients took advantage of the use of virtual environments. One of the main problems faced within assessment protocols is the use of a limited number of variables and tools when tailoring a personalized program. The main aim of this study was to provide a heuristic decision tree for the future development of tailored assessment protocols. To this purpose, we conducted a study that…

2016

The negative interpretation of body sensations (e.g., as sign of a severe illness) is a crucial cognitive process in pathological health anxiety (HA). However, little is known about the nature and the degree of automaticity of this interpretation bias. We applied an implicit association test (IAT) in 20 subjects during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate behavioral and neural correlates of implicit attitudes towards symptom words. On the behavioral level, body symptom words elicited strong negative implicit association effects, as indexed by slowed reaction times when symptom words were paired with the attribute “harmless” (incongruent condition) relative to a contro…

Creación de un modelo estadístico predictivo para la determinación de las funciones de atenuación en español hablado

2018

Recientemente, algunos autores han definido distintas variables para caracterizar la atenuación lingüística en el marco de una base de datos multidimensional (Briz/Albelda; Albelda/otros). En este estudio se han seleccionado 982 elementos de atenuación de dieciocho entrevistas de español hablado; todos ellos han sido supervisados por hasta cuatro entrevistadores del proyecto Es.VaG.Atenuación. Finalmente, los datos se han evaluado mediante tres pruebas estadísticas para la clasificación y la reducción de variables: el análisis múltiple de correspondencias, el árbol de clasificaciones y el Random Forest. Las variables más determinantes en la discriminación de las funciones de atenuación han …