Search results for "Ustic"
showing 10 items of 3236 documents
Medical exposure to ionising radiation and the risk of brain tumours: Interphone study group, Germany
2007
Abstract Background The role of exposure to low doses of ionising radiation in the aetiology of brain tumours has yet to be clarified. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between medically or occupationally related exposure to ionising radiation and brain tumours. Methods We used self-reported medical and occupational data collected during the German part of a multinational case–control study on mobile phone use and the risk of brain tumours (Interphone study) for the analyses. Results For any exposure to medical ionising radiation we found odds ratios (ORs) of 0.63 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.48–0.83), 1.08 (95% CI = 0.80–1.45) and 0.97 (95% CI = 0.54–1.75)…
Patterns of intense physical activity among 15- to 30-year-old Finns
1996
Previous studies have reported increasing trends in physical activity in the Finnish population. These reports have not, however, included the perspective of cardiorespiratory stress in adolescent and young adults. We examined the present patterns of physical activity among Finnish adolescents and young adults in 1992. We specifically assessed whether the young people experience the volume of physical activity that is believed to stress the cardiorespiratory system appropriately in order to increase the level of fitness. The subjects in the present study were participants of a large multicenter study of atherosclerosis precursors in children and young adults. Physical activity was measured …
Effects of whole-body vertical shock-type vibration on human ability for fine manual control
1991
The effects of vertical (z-axis) whole-body shock-type vibration on the ability for fine manual control were examined. The amplitudes and frequency of the shocks was varied, but a constant frequency-weighted acceleration of 1.25 m/s2 r.m.s. was maintained. The examination of the shock's effects was carried out using an experimental system that simulated the actual workplace of earth-moving machinery. Control was measured using a first-order pursuit tracking-test, in which a seated subject was asked to use both hands to direct a cursor on a monitor using a steering wheel. Although the magnitude of shocks (peak amplitude of 6-10 m/s2) and the number of shocks per unit time (shock cycle of 10-…
Transmission of Vertical Whole Body Vibration to the Human Body
2008
According to experimental studies, low-amplitude high-frequency vibration is anabolic to bone tissue, whereas in clinical trials, the bone effects have varied. Given the potential of whole body vibration in bone training, this study aimed at exploring the transmission of vertical sinusoidal vibration to the human body over a wide range of applicable amplitudes (from 0.05 to 3 mm) and frequencies (from 10 to 90 Hz). Vibration-induced accelerations were assessed with skin-mounted triaxial accelerometers at the ankle, knee, hip, and lumbar spine in four males standing on a high-performance vibration platform. Peak vertical accelerations of the platform covered a range from 0.04 to 19 in units …
Reduced oscillatory gamma-band responses in unmedicated schizophrenic patients indicate impaired frontal network processing
2004
Abstract Objective Integration of sensory information by cortical network binding appears to be crucially involved in target detection. Studies in schizophrenia using functional and diffusion tensor neuroimaging, event-related potentials and EEG coherence indicate an impairment of cortical network coupling in this disorder. Previous electrophysiological investigations in animals and humans suggested that gamma activity (oscillations at around 40 Hz) is essential for cortical network binding. Studies in medicated schizophrenia provide evidence for a reduced gamma activity in the context of auditory stimulus processing. This is the first investigation of oscillatory activations in the gamma-b…
The effects of a startle on awareness of action
2003
The execution of a ballistic movement within a reaction time task paradigm is significantly speeded up when an unexpected startling auditory stimulus (SAS) is delivered together with the imperative signal. Using Libet's clock, we investigated whether acceleration involves also the subjective appraisal of the time of task execution. In trials containing the SAS, reaction time shortened to 68.7% of control values. However, subjective judgment of task execution remained a similar time with respect to the imperative signal as in control trials. The dissociation between task execution and its subjective perception indicates the existence of separate circuits for action execution and action aware…
Genetic risk prediction and neurobiological understanding of alcoholism.
2014
We have used a translational Convergent Functional Genomics (CFG) approach to discover genes involved in alcoholism, by gene-level integration of genome-wide association study (GWAS) data from a German alcohol dependence cohort with other genetic and gene expression data, from human and animal model studies, similar to our previous work in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. A panel of all the nominally significant P-value SNPs in the top candidate genes discovered by CFG (n=135 genes, 713 SNPs) was used to generate a genetic risk prediction score (GRPS), which showed a trend towards significance (P=0.053) in separating alcohol dependent individuals from controls in an independent German…
Event-related potential (ERP) responses to violations of inflectional and derivational rules of Finnish
2007
Event-related potentials (ERP) were used to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of inflectional and derivational morphology. The participants were presented with visual sentences containing critical words in which either inflectional, derivational or both rules (combined violation) of Finnish were violated. Inflectional anomalies violated a number agreement of a noun with a previous auxiliary word. Derivational violations included a word-internal selectional restriction violation, i.e., a root and suffix category violation. Combined violations contained both a number and a category violation. The phonemic length of the critical words was controlled. Inflectional violations elici…
Factors limiting performance in a multitone intensity-discrimination task: disentangling non-optimal decision weights and increased internal noise.
2013
To identify factors limiting performance in multitone intensity discrimination, we presented sequences of five pure tones alternating in level between loud (85 dB SPL) and soft (30, 55, or 80 dB SPL). In the "overall-intensity task", listeners detected a level increment on all of the five tones. In the "masking task", the level increment was imposed only on the soft tones, rendering the soft tones targets and loud tones task-irrelevant maskers. Decision weights quantifying the importance of the five tone levels for the decision were estimated using methods of molecular psychophysics. Compatible with previous studies, listeners placed higher weights on the loud tones than on the soft tones i…
Temporal expectation and spectral expectation operate in distinct fashion on neuronal populations
2013
The formation of temporal expectation (i.e., the prediction of ‘when’) is of prime importance to sensory processing. It can modulate sensory processing at early processing stages probably via the entrainment of low-frequency neuronal oscillations in the brain. However, sensory predictions involve not only temporal expectation but also spectral expectation (i.e., the prediction of ‘what’). Here we investigated how temporal expectation may interrelate with spectral expectation by explicitly setting up temporal expectation and spectral expectation in a target detection task. We found that temporal expectation and spectral expectation interacted on reaction time (RT). RT was shorter when target…