Search results for "lcsh:Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry"
showing 10 items of 504 documents
Bypassing hazard of housekeeping genes: their evaluation in rat granule neurons treated with cerebrospinal fluid of multiple sclerosis subjects
2015
Gene expression studies employing real-time PCR has become an intrinsic part of biomedical research. Appropriate normalization of target gene transcript(s) based on stably expressed housekeeping genes is crucial in individual experimental conditions to obtain accurate results. In multiple sclerosis (MS), several gene expression studies have been undertaken, however, the suitability of housekeeping genes to express stably in this disease is not yet explored. Recent research suggests that their expression level may vary under different experimental conditions. Hence it is indispensible to evaluate their expression stability to accurately normalize target gene transcripts. The present study ai…
Age-Related Changes in Predictive Capacity Versus Internal Model Adaptability: Electrophysiological Evidence that Individual Differences Outweigh Eff…
2015
Hierarchical predictive coding has been identified as a possible unifying principle of brain function, and recent work in cognitive neuroscience has examined how it may be affected by age related changes. Using language comprehension as a test case, the present study aimed to dissociate age-related changes in prediction generation versus internal model adaptation following a prediction error. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) were measured in a group of older adults (60-81 years; n = 40) as they read sentences of the form "The opposite of black is white/yellow/nice." Replicating previous work in young adults, results showed a target related P300 for the expected antonym ("white"; an eff…
Improvement of gross motor and cognitive abilities by an exercise training program: three case reports
2014
Marianna Alesi,1 Giuseppe Battaglia,2 Michele Roccella,1 Davide Testa,1 Antonio Palma,2 Annamaria Pepi1 1Department of Psychology, 2Department of Law, Social and Sport Science, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy Background: This work examined the efficacy of an integrated exercise training program (coach and family) in three children with Down syndrome to improve their motor and cognitive abilities, in particular reaction time and working memory. Methods: The integrated exercise training program was used in three children with Down syndrome, comprising two boys (M1, with a chronological age of 10.3 years and a mental age of 4.7 years; M2, with a chronological age of 14.6 years and a ment…
New Molecular Targets and Lifestyle Interventions to Delay Aging Sarcopenia
2014
The term sarcopenia was originally created to refer age-related loss of muscle mass with consequent loss of strength (Morley et al., 2001). There are now four international definitions of sarcopenia (Cruz-Jentoft et al., 2010; Muscaritoli et al., 2010; Morley et al., 2011). In essence they all agree, requiring a measure of walking capability [either low gait speed or a limited endurance (distance) in a 6-min walk], together with an appendicular lean mass of <2 SDs of a sex and ethnically corrected normal level for individuals 20–30 years old. Sarcopenia is a prevalent health problem among the elderly. On average, 5–13 and 11–50% of people aged 60−70 years and ≥80 years, respectively suffer …
LRP1 modulates APP trafficking along early compartments of the secretory pathway
2008
The amyloid beta peptide (A beta) is a central player in Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. A beta liberation depends on APP cleavage by beta- and gamma-secretases. The low density lipoprotein receptor related protein 1 (LRP1) was shown to mediate APP processing at multiple steps. Newly synthesized LRP1 can interact with APP, implying an interaction between these two proteins early in the secretory pathway. We wanted to investigate whether LRP1 mediates APP trafficking along the secretory pathway, and, if so, whether it affects APP processing. Indeed, the early trafficking of APP within the secretory pathway is strongly influenced by its interaction with the C-terminal domain of LRP1. The …
Expression of genes encoding the calcium signalosome in cellular and transgenic models of Huntington's disease
2013
Huntington's disease (HD) is a hereditary neurodegenerative disease caused by the expansion of a polyglutamine stretch in the huntingtin (HTT) protein and characterized by dysregulated calcium homeostasis. We investigated whether these disturbances are correlated with changes in the mRNA level of the genes that encode proteins involved in calcium homeostasis and signaling (i.e., the calciosome). Using custom-made TaqMan low-density arrays containing probes for 96 genes, we quantified mRNA in the striatum in YAC128 mice, a model of HD, and wildtype mice. HTT mutation caused the increased expression of some components of the calcium signalosome, including calretinin, presenilin 2, and calmyri…
Lateralized periodic discharges in insular status epilepticus: A case report of a periodic EEG pattern associated with ictal manifestation
2019
Highlights • Focal status epilepticus has to be considered in the differential diagnosis of patients presenting with aphasia, even in the absence of previous history of epilepsy. • Aphasia can be a rare presenting sign of insular lobe epilepsy. • Lateralized periodic discharges could represent an EEG ictal pattern.
Neuronal activity and secreted amyloid β lead to altered amyloid β precursor protein and presenilin 1 interactions.
2013
Deposition of amyloid β (Aβ) containing plaques in the brain is one of the neuropathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD). It has been suggested that modulation of neuronal activity may alter Aβ production in the brain. We postulate that these changes in Aβ production are due to changes in the rate-limiting step of Aβ generation, APP cleavage by γ-secretase. By combining biochemical approaches with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy, we found that neuronal inhibition decreases endogenous APP and PS1 interactions, which correlates with reduced Aβ production. By contrast, neuronal activation had a two-phase effect: it initially enhanced APP-PS1 interaction leading to increased …
Neurochemical correlates of brain atrophy in fibromyalgia syndrome: a magnetic resonance spectroscopy and cortical thickness study
2020
(1) Background: Recently, a series of clinical neuroimaging studies on fibromyalgia (FM) have shown a reduction in cortical volume and abnormally high glutamate (Glu) and glutamate + glutamine (Glx) levels in regions associated with pain modulation. However, it remains unclear whether the volumetric decreases and increased Glu levels in FM are related each other. We hypothesized that higher Glu levels are related to decreases in cortical thickness (CT) and volume in FM patients. (2) Methods: Twelve females with FM and 12 matched healthy controls participated in a session of combined 3.0 Tesla structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and single-voxel MR spectroscopy focused on the thalami…
A Framework to Assess the Information Dynamics of Source EEG Activity and Its Application to Epileptic Brain Networks
2020
This study introduces a framework for the information-theoretic analysis of brain functional connectivity performed at the level of electroencephalogram (EEG) sources. The framework combines the use of common spatial patterns to select the EEG components which maximize the variance between two experimental conditions, simultaneous implementation of vector autoregressive modeling (VAR) with independent component analysis to describe the joint source dynamics and their projection to the scalp, and computation of information dynamics measures (information storage, information transfer, statistically significant network links) from the source VAR parameters. The proposed framework was tested on…