Search results for "Rain"

Red Light Optogenetics in Neuroscience

2022

Optogenetics, a field concentrating on controlling cellular functions by means of light-activated proteins, has shown tremendous potential in neuroscience. It possesses superior spatiotemporal resolution compared to the surgical, electrical, and pharmacological methods traditionally used in studying brain function. A multitude of optogenetic tools for neuroscience have been created that, for example, enable the control of action potential generation via light-activated ion channels. Other optogenetic proteins have been used in the brain, for example, to control long-term potentiation or to ablate specific subtypes of neurons. In in vivo applications, however, the majority of optogenetic too…

Phenomenology of non-standard neutrino interactions

2016

Today neutrino physics is in a privileged position within the fascinating field of particle physics. From the discovery of neutrino oscillations by Super-Kamiokande in 1998, the door to physics beyond the Standard Model (SM in what follows) has been opened. This fact implies that neutrinos have to be massive in opposition to the Standard Model assumption. However, this is not a surprise completely, but it was already hinted from theoretical and experimental observations in the two decades prior to the discovery of the oscillatory phenomenon, as neutrino masses included in unification models or the observed deficit of the atmospheric and solar neutrino fluxes. As a consequence of this new pa…

Exploring Cell Biodiversity

2015

Brain tissue is a really complex system composed of different cell types that change in shape and size. A single neuron itself has a cell body, dendrites and an axon. About 80% of cerebral tissue consists of water molecules that are confined (intra and extra cellular) in its disordered biologic networks. Using neutron scattering on IN13 we are able to explore hydrogens (H) dynamics in time scale at about 40 ps and in size scale at about 1 Å. Such characteristic make it suitable to investigate brain tissue heterogeneity exploiting hydrogens as a probe since major constituent of macromolecules and water. Elastic neutron scattering (ENS) gives information about means square displacement (MSDs)…

Exploring cell biodiversity - Neutron scattering investigation of water diffusion in complex system

2015

Scientists from biophysics, biology and medicine fields are interested in exploring and characterizing topologically cerebral tissue in order to diagnostic different diseases which affect brain in many patients [1-3]. One of the most diffuse diagnostic techniques is dMRI (diffusion magnetic resonance imaging) which extracts information about heterogeneity and asymmetries in brain tissue studying water diffusion dynamics (~80% mass constituent of tissues). The experimental limit of this technique is related to the acquisition time, TA, of the order of milliseconds. Water molecules diffuse within micrometre distance using TA as diffuse time (Eistein equation D~2TA). Cells have micrometric siz…

Event-related potentials as a measure of speech cue processing in newborns with genetic risk for dyslexia

1999

Decreasing muscle performance associated with increasing disease activity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

2018

Objectives Increasing evidence suggests that inflammation has a detrimental effect on muscle strength. Our objective was to analyse the association between muscle performance and different disease activity levels in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Method A total of 199 consecutive outpatients were subject to cross-sectional assessment. Measurements of grip strength, endurance of the upper and lower limbs and trunk strength were combined as a muscle performance composite score (MPCS), using a standardised method. The disease activity for 28 joints (DAS28), radiographs of small joints (Larsen score), rheumatoid factor, body mass index (BMI), comorbidities and anti-rheumatic drugs wer…

Brain Modulation by Electric Currents in Fibromyalgia: A Structured Review on Non-invasive Approach With Transcranial Electrical Stimulation

2018

Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a complex disorder where widespread musculoskeletal pain is associated with many heterogenous symptoms ranging from affective disturbances to cognitive dysfunction and central fatigue. FMS is currently underdiagnosed and often very poorly responsive to pharmacological treatment. Pathophysiology of the disease remains still obscure even if in the last years fine structural and functional cerebral abnormalities have been identified, principally by neurophysiological and imaging studies delineating disfunctions in pain perception, processing and control systems. On such basis, recently, neurostimulation of brain areas involved in mechanism of pain processing and …

Effects of tDCS on Bimanual Motor Skills: A Brief Review.

2018

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that allows the modulation of cortical excitability as well as neuroplastic reorganization using a weak constant current applied through the skull on the cerebral cortex. TDCS has been found to improve motor performance in general and motor learning in particular. However, these effects have been reported almost exclusively for unimanual motor tasks such as serial reaction time tasks, adaptation tasks, or visuo-motor tracking. Despite the importance of bimanual actions in most activities of daily living, only few studies have investigated the effects of tDCS on bimanual motor skills. The objectives …

Modulation of Human Motor Cortical Excitability and Plasticity by Opuntia Ficus Indica Fruit Consumption: Evidence from a Preliminary Study through N…

2022

Indicaxanthin (IX) from Opuntia Ficus Indica (OFI) has been shown to exert numerous biological effects both in vitro and in vivo, such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, neuro-modulatory activity in rodent models. Our goal was to investigate the eventual neuro-active role of orally assumed fruits containing high levels of IX at nutritionally-relevant amounts in healthy subjects, exploring cortical excitability and plasticity in the human motor cortex (M1). To this purpose, we applied paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation and anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (a-tDCS) in basal conditions and followed the consumption of yellow cactus pear fruits containing IX or white ca…

Parietal Cortex Connectivity as a Marker of Shift in Spatial Attention Following Continuous Theta Burst Stimulation

2021

Non-invasive brain stimulation is a useful tool to probe brain function and provide therapeutic treatments in disease. When applied to the right posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of healthy participants, it is possible to temporarily shift spatial attention and mimic symptoms of spatial neglect. However, the field of brain stimulation is plagued by issues of high response variability. The aim of this study was to investigate baseline functional connectivity as a predictor of response to an inhibitory brain stimulation paradigm applied to the right PPC. In fourteen healthy adults (9 female, aged 24.8 ± 4.0 years) we applied continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) to suppress activity in the …