Search results for "Photic Stimulation"
showing 7 items of 307 documents
On the flexibility of letter position coding during lexical processing: the case of Thai.
2012
In Indo-European languages, letter position coding is particularly noisy in middle positions (e.g., judge and jugde look very similar), but not in the initial letter position (e.g., judge vs. ujdge). Here we focus on a language (Thai) which, potentially, may be more flexible with respect to letter position coding than Indo-European languages: (i) Thai is an alphabetic language which is written without spaces between words (i.e., there is a degree of ambiguity in relation to which word a given letter belongs to) and (ii) some of the vowels are misaligned (e.g., [Formula: see text]/ε:bn/ is pronounced as /bε:n/), whereas others are not (e.g., [Formula: see text]/a:p/ is pronounced as /a:p/).…
Psychophysical and electrofunctional contrast sensitivity in cataractous patients treated with bendazac-lysine salt
1990
The clinical progression of the cataract may be influenced by drugs which reduce the denaturation of lens proteins. One of the most promising drugs is the bendazac-lysine salt. The drug was used in a double-blind study of a group of patients with initial cortical cataract in order to evaluate the changes in visual acuity and contrast sensitivity by means of a psychophysical and an electrophysiological method. After 6 months of treatment with bendazac the mean values of visual acuity showed a statistically significant increase in respect to baseline values, as well as an improvement of the threshold of contrast for most spatial frequencies. In the eyes treated with placebo there was no stati…
The phototransduction cascade in the isolated chick pineal gland revisited.
2003
It is well established that the isolated chick pineal gland is directly light sensitive and that melatonin synthesis of the gland can be inhibited by exposing the gland to light during scotophase. Since not all the steps of the phototransduction cascade have been clarified to the same extent as in the retina, we have treated isolated chick pineal glands with 90 min of light during scotophase and with drugs that affect key-components of vertebrate phototransduction, i.e., cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) phosphodiesterase 6 (PDE6), cGMP levels and cGMP-gated calcium channels. The endpoint measured was the activity of the rate-limiting enzyme of melatonin synthesis, arylalkylamine N-acet…
Contribution of area 19 to the foreground-background-interaction of the cat: an analysis based on single cell recordings and behavioural experiments.
1990
The contribution of area 19 to pattern discrimination in the cat was studied by single cell recordings in this area and by behavioural experiments before and after bilateral lesions. In order to make quantitative comparisons between behavioural performance and that of cell systems, we introduced a new parameter that characterizes visual neurons by their signal-to-noise (S/N) thresholds. A structured visual background made up of Gaussian visual broadband noise which could be moved was superimposed on the signal (moving bars or outline patterns) and the S/N characteristics of the response were determined by varying the signal intensity. The detection performance of cats after bilateral lesion…
Modulatory effects of low- and high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on visual cortex of healthy subjects undergoing light depr…
2005
The aim of the present study was to explore further the effects of light deprivation (LD) on visual cortex excitability. Healthy subjects reporting reliable induction of phosphenes by occipital transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) underwent 60 min of complete LD. Phosphene threshold (PT) was measured before (T0), after 45 min (T1) and 60 min (T2) of LD, and then every 10 min after light re-exposure until recovery to T0 values. Repetitive TMS (rTMS) (at 1 or 10 Hz) was applied in separate sessions during the last 15 min of LD. PTs significantly decreased after 45 min of LD. rTMS differentially modified the effects of 60 min LD on PTs depending on stimulation frequency. One hertz rTMS did …
Electrophysiology of the Guinea-pig Pineal Organ: Sympathetic Influence and Different Reactions to Light and Darkness
1979
Publisher Summary Recent electrophysiological studies have shown that the guinea-pig pineal organ comprises two main categories of intrinsic cells, which are (a) pinealocytes which are predominantly influenced by central commissural fibers and (b) pinealocytes which are exclusively influenced by peripheral sympathetic fibers. The first group comprises spontaneously active cells which respond to olfactory, acoustic and short-term optic stimuli respectively. After sympathectomy their spontaneous activity is diminished but not suppressed. The second group comprises spontaneously active cells, which do not respond to short-term sensory stimulation and whose activity depends on the environmental…
Cortical and subcortical visual event-related potentials to oddball stimuli in rabbits
2000
We applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in order to induce interference on visuo-spatial perception in 11 healthy subjects. Subjects performed a visuo-spatial task requiring judgements about the symmetry of prebisected lines. Visual stimuli consisted of symmetrically or asymmetrically transected lines, tachystoscopically presented for 50 ms on a computer-monitor. Performance was examined in basal condition and during rTMS trains of 10 stimuli at 25 Hz, delivered through a focal coil over right or left posterior parietal cortex (P5 and P6 sites) and triggered synchronously with visual stimulus. Randomly intermixed sham rTMS trains were employed to control for non-speci…