Search results for "STIMULATION"
showing 10 items of 2192 documents
Distinct effects of positive and negative music on older adults' auditory target identification performances.
2014
Older adults, compared to younger adults, are more likely to attend to pleasant situations and avoid unpleasant ones. Yet, it is unclear whether such a phenomenon may be generalized to musical emotions. In this study, we investigated whether there is an age-related difference in how musical emotions are experienced and how positive and negative music influences attention performances in a target identification task. Thirty-one young and twenty-eight older adults were presented with 40 musical excerpts conveying happiness, peacefulness, sadness, and threat. While listening to music, participants were asked to rate their feelings and monitor each excerpt for the occurrence of an auditory tar…
Serum prolactin and tumors of the prostate: unchanged basal levels and lack of correlation to serum testosterone
1980
To investigate the possible role of circulatory levels of prolactin on the development of prostatic tumors, and to gain insight into the prolactin-androgen relationship, serum prolactin and testosterone were determined in 73 patients with newly diagnosed prostatic adenocarcinoma. Controls consisted of 32 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia before treatment, 19 age-matched controls, and 21 young individuals. Hormones were measured under standardized conditions by highly specific and sensitive radioimmunoassays. There was no difference in prolactin in the elderly men regardless of prostate pathology, but a significant increment was found in young controls. Individual prolactin values d…
The development of involuntary and voluntary attention from childhood to adulthood: A combined behavioral and event-related potential study
2006
Abstract Objective This study investigated auditory involuntary and voluntary attention in children aged 6–8, 10–12 and young adults. The strength of distracting stimuli (20% and 5% pitch changes) and the amount of allocation of attention were varied. Methods In an auditory distraction paradigm event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral data were measured from subjects either performing a sound duration discrimination task or watching a silent video. Results Pitch changed sounds caused prolonged reaction times and decreased hit rates in all age groups. Larger distractors (20%) caused stronger distraction in children, but not in adults. The amplitudes of mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, a…
Age-related changes in amplitude, latency and specialization of ERP responses to faces and watches
2020
Healthy aging is associated with impairments in face recognition. While earlier research suggests that these impairments arise during memory retrieval, more recent findings suggest that earlier mechanisms, at the perceptual stage, may also be at play. However, results are often inconsistent and very few studies have included a non-face control stimulus to facilitate interpretation of results with respect to the implication of specialized face mechanisms vs. general cognitive factors. To address these issues, P100, N170 and P200 event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured during processing of faces and watches. For faces, age-related differences were found for P100, N170 and P200 ERPs. For…
Sex-specific phenotypical and functional differences in peripheral human Vγ9/Vδ2 T cells
2006
Abstract Vγ9/Vδ2 T cells constitute a minor proportion of human peripheral blood T cells that can expand rapidly upon infection with microbial pathogens. Vγ9/Vδ2 T cell numbers change characteristically with age, rising from birth to puberty and gradually decreasing again beyond 30 years of age. In adults, female blood donors have significantly higher levels than males, implying that circulating Vγ9/Vδ2 T cells in women remain elevated for a longer period in life and drop less strikingly than in men. This loss in men is accompanied by a substantial depletion of CD27−CD45RA− and CD27−CD45RA+ effector T cells and a parallel increase in CD27+CD45RA− central memory T cells while in women, the d…
Application of intermittent galvanic vestibular stimulation reveals age-related constraints in the multisensory reweighting of posture
2014
In this study we examined the effects of intermittent short-duration Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS) during a multisensory perturbation of posture in young and elderly adults. Twelve young (24.91 +/- 6.44 years) and eleven elderly (74.8 +/- 6.42 years) participants stood upright under two task conditions: (a) quiet standing and (b) standing while receiving pseudo-randomly presented bipolar 2 s GVS pulses. In both conditions, sensory reweighting was evoked by visual surround oscillations (20 cm, 0.3 Hz) and Achilles tendon vibration (3 mm, 80 Hz), concurrently delivered during the middle 60 s of standing. Intermittent GVS decreased the excessive postural sway induced by the concurrent …
The Endogenous Opioid System Is Not Involved in Modulation of Opioid-Induced Hyperalgesia
2009
Abstract Some recent studies suggested a role of the endogenous opioid system in modulating opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH). In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted a prospective randomized, placebo-controlled, 2-way crossover study in healthy human volunteers. We utilized a well-established model of inducing OIH after a brief exposure to the μ-opioid agonist remifentanil using intradermal electrical stimulation. Patients were exposed to a randomized 90-minute infusion of remifentanil or saline placebo during 2 separate occasions. Development of OIH was quantified using changes in the average radius of the area of secondary hyperalgesia generated by electrical pain stimulation. A 2…
Nasal tactile sensitivity in allergic rhinitis
2011
These preliminary data show a decrease in nasal tactile sensitivity and point out interesting aspects of the nasal chronic inflammatory condition in allergic rhinitis.The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of allergic rhinitis on nasal tactile sensitivity during the intercritical period.A total of 70 patients aged between 18 and 67 years (average 42 years), with a positive history of allergy caused by seasonal outdoor allergens, were included (group A). Patient outcome was assessed by the nasal monofilament test: a set of 20 Semmes-Weinstein monofilaments was used to detect nasal sensitivity for both nasal cavities. The sensitivity threshold was recorded as the minimum monofilame…
Affective modulation of conditioned eyeblinks
2009
Affective states are known to modulate reflexive actions. Aversive states potentiate defensive reflexes while appetitive states diminish them. The present study examined whether the same holds for associatively learned defensive eyeblinks to mild, initially neutral auditory stimuli. First, delay eyeblink conditioning was applied to human participants while they viewed emotionally neutral images. Next, the conditioned eyeblink responses (CRs) of the participants were tested during the viewing of unpleasant, neutral, or pleasant images. The most vigorous CRs were found during the unpleasant images, although they did not differ between neutral and pleasant images. The results add to the motiva…
Time course of human 40 Hz EEG activity accompanying P3 responses in an auditory oddball paradigm
1997
In order to quantify the time course of auditory P3-related gamma activity, root mean square (RMS) values were calculated from band-filtered (30-45 Hz) target and non-target responses in an auditory oddball experiment. Evoked (phase locked) gamma activity was evaluated from the time domain averages, whereas induced (not necessarily phase locked) activity was analyzed on the basis of single trials. Gamma RMS values were integrated across different time windows, namely the prestimulus, N50/P50, N100, pre P3, P3 and post P3 window. The single trial P3 window hereby was defined by a maximum amplitude criterion. In accordance with other studies, we found a pronounced increase of evoked gamma act…