Search results for "Retinal"
showing 10 items of 631 documents
Inflammatory cytokines decrease viability and alter ganglioside profile in retinal pigment epithelium cells
2013
Purpose Early stages of Age related Macular Degeneration (AMD) are characterized by dysfunction and degeneration of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells, which participate in the death of the overlying photoreceptors ultimately leading to loss of vision. Gangliosides (GG) make a wide and heterogeneous family of sialic-acid-containing glycosphingolipids, composed of a sugar chain branched on a ceramide. They are major components of cellular membranes, particularly abundant in the brain and nervous tissue, including retina. While their developmental and neuroprotective actions have been demonstrated, their precise role in retina’s function and its pathologies is still poorly understood.…
Electrophysiological Investigations of Retinogeniculate and Corticogeniculate Synapse Function
2019
The lateral geniculate nucleus is the first relay station for the visual information. Relay neurons of this thalamic nucleus integrate input from retinal ganglion cells and project it to the visual cortex. In addition, relay neurons receive top-down excitation from the cortex. The two main excitatory inputs to the relay neurons differ in several aspects. Each relay neuron receives input from only a few retinogeniculate synapses, which are large terminals with many release sites. This is reflected by the comparably strong excitation, the relay neurons receive, from retinal ganglion cells. Corticogeniculate synapses, in contrast, are simpler with few release sites and weaker synaptic strength…
Assessment of the Potential Energy Hypersurfaces in Thymine within Multiconfigurational Theory: CASSCF vs. CASPT2
2016
The present study provides new insights into the topography of the potential energy hypersurfaces (PEHs) of the thymine nucleobase in order to rationalize its main ultrafast photochemical decay paths by employing two methodologies based on the complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) and the complete active space second-order perturbation theory (CASPT2) methods: (i) CASSCF optimized structures and energies corrected with the CASPT2 method at the CASSCF geometries and (ii) CASPT2 optimized geometries and energies. A direct comparison between these strategies is drawn, yielding qualitatively similar results within a static framework. A number of analyses are performed to assess t…
Retinol encapsulated into amorphous Ca2+ polyphosphate nanospheres acts synergistically in MC3T3-E1 cells
2015
Both the quality and quantity of collagen, the major structural component of the skin, decrease in aging skin. We succeeded to encapsulate retinol into amorphous inorganic polyphosphate (polyP) nanoparticles together with calcium ions ("aCa-polyP-NP"), under formation of amorphous Ca-polyP/retinol nanospheres ("retinol/aCa-polyP-NS"). The globular nanospheres are not cytotoxic, show an almost uniform size of ≈ 45 nm and have a retinol content of around 25%. Both components of those nanospheres, retinol and the aCa-polyP-NP, if administered together, caused a strong increase in proliferation of mouse calvaria MC3T3 cells. The expressions of collagen types I, II and III genes, but not the exp…
Light-Dependent Translocation of Arrestin in Rod Photoreceptors is Signaled through a Phospholipase C Cascade and Requires ATP
2009
Light adaptation of rod photoreceptors induces translocation of arrestin from inner segments (IS) to outer segments (OS). Our study suggests that components of the G-protein linked phosphoinositide pathway play a role in signaling the initiating events of arrestin translocation. We show that arrestin translocation can be stimulated by activators of phospholipase C (PLC) and protein kinase C (PKC) in the absence of light. Conversely, arrestin translocation to the OS is significantly slowed by inhibitors of PLC and PKC.In the second part of this study, we investigated the mechanism by which arrestin translocates in response to light. Other investigators have suggested that arrestin translocat…
EphrinB2 controls vessel pruning through STAT1-JNK3 signalling
2014
Angiogenesis produces primitive vascular networks that need pruning to yield hierarchically organized and functional vessels. Despite the critical importance of vessel pruning to vessel patterning and function, the mechanisms regulating this process are not clear. Here we show that EphrinB2, a well-known player in angiogenesis, is an essential regulator of endothelial cell death and vessel pruning. This regulation depends upon phosphotyrosine-EphrinB2 signalling repressing c-jun N-terminal kinase 3 activity via STAT1. JNK3 activation causes endothelial cell death. In the absence of JNK3, hyaloid vessel physiological pruning is impaired, associated with abnormal persistence of hyaloid vessel…
The goldfish--a colour-constant animal.
1996
A series of either thirteen or fifteen coloured test fields with hues from blue through grey to yellow were presented on a black background. Goldfish were trained on a bluish-grey test field by food reward. In the training situation, the setup with the coloured papers was illuminated with white light. In the test situation, the colour of the illumination was changed to blue or yellow. In both test illuminations the goldfish preferred the training field in the same way as under white illumination despite the fact that this test field stimulated the cone types very differently from the training situation. As test fields were present that excited the cones in exactly the same way as under whi…
Validating retinal fundus image analysis algorithms: issues and a proposal.
2013
This paper concerns the validation of automatic retinal image analysis (ARIA) algorithms. For reasons of space and consistency, we concentrate on the validation of algorithms processing color fundus camera images, currently the largest section of the ARIA literature. We sketch the context (imaging instruments and target tasks) of ARIA validation, summarizing the main image analysis and validation techniques. We then present a list of recommendations focusing on the creation of large repositories of test data created by international consortia, easily accessible via moderated Web sites, including multicenter annotations by multiple experts, specific to clinical tasks, and capable of running …
Exudates as Landmarks Identified through FCM Clustering in Retinal Images
2020
The aim of this work was to develop a method for the automatic identification of exudates, using an unsupervised clustering approach. The ability to classify each pixel as belonging to an eventual exudate, as a warning of disease, allows for the tracking of a patient&rsquo
Filter Bank: a Directional Approach for Retinal Vessel Segmentation
2017
It is well known that retinal diseases are sometimes identified by tortuosity of the vessels, presence of exudates and hemorrhages while lesions of tissues are associated to diabetic retinopathy, retinopathy of prematurity and more general cerebrovascular problems. One of the main issues in this research field is detecting small curvilinear structures, thus the aim of this contribution is to introduce a non-supervised and automated methodology to detect features such as curvilinear structures in retinal images. The core of the proposed methodology consists in using an approach that resembles the “a trous” wavelet algorithm. With respect to the standard Gabor analysis our methodology is base…