Search results for "physiologic"

Music as a mnemonic to learn gesture sequences in normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease

2014

Strong links between music and motor functions suggest that music could represent an interesting aid for motor learning. The present study aims for the first time to test the potential of music to assist in the learning of sequences of gestures in normal and pathological aging. Participants with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) and healthy older adults (Controls) learned sequences of meaningless gestures that were either accompanied by music or a metronome. We also manipulated the learning procedure such that participants had to imitate the gestures to-be-memorized in synchrony with the experimenter or after the experimenter during encoding. Results show different patterns of performance for t…

2021

In vowel discrimination, commonly found discrimination patterns are directional asymmetries where discrimination is faster (or easier) if differing vowels are presented in a certain sequence compared to the reversed sequence. Different models of speech sound processing try to account for these asymmetries based on either phonetic or phonological properties. In this study, we tested and compared two of those often-discussed models, namely the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon (FUL) model (Lahiri and Reetz, 2002) and the Natural Referent Vowel (NRV) framework (Polka and Bohn, 2011). While most studies presented isolated vowels, we investigated a large stimulus set of German vowels in a more n…

A role for backward transitional probabilities in word segmentation?

2008

A number of studies have shown that people exploit transitional probabilities between successive syllables to segment a stream of artificial continuous speech into words. It is often assumed that what is actually exploited are the forward transitional probabilities (given XY, the probability that X will be followed by Y ), even though the backward transitional probabilities (the probability that Y has been preceded by X) were equally informative about word structure in the languages involved in those studies. In two experiments, we showed that participants were able to learn the words from an artificial speech stream when the only available cues were the backward transitional probabilities.…

Graphemic complexity and multiple print-to-sound associations in visual word recognition

2005

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands It has recently been reported that words containing a multiletter grapheme are processed slower than are words composed of single-letter graphemes (Rastle & Coltheart, 1998; Rey, Jacobs, Schmidt-Weigand, & Ziegler, 1998). In the present study, using a perceptual identification task, we found in Experiment 1 that this graphemic complexity effect can be observed while controlling for multiple print-to-sound associations, indexed by regularity or consistency. In Experiment 2, we obtained cumulative effects of graphemic complexity and regularity. These effects were replicated in Experiment 3 in a naming task. Overall, these r…

Reading Skills, Social Competence, and Physiological Stress in the First Grade

2021

AbstractAn awareness of school-related antecedents of children’s physiological stress at the beginning of school helps educators to prevent and mitigate children’s stress, the one of the major obstacles to their well-being and academic progress. We aimed to study the effect of reading skills and social competence on first-grade students’ salivary cortisol levels in natural settings. Based on previous results of the effects of everyday situations on children’s stress according to gender, we expected that both academic and social skills would affect girls’ physiological stress more, compared to boys. Our sample consisted of 277 students (7–8 years old, 50.2% girls). We used the highest saliva…

Data from: How do cuticular hydrocarbons evolve? Physiological constraints and climatic and biotic selection pressures act on a complex functional tr…

2016

Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) cover the cuticles of virtually all insects, serving as a waterproofing agent and as a communication signal. The causes for the high CHC variation between species, and the factors influencing CHC profiles, are scarcely understood. Here, we compare CHC profiles of ant species from seven biogeographic regions, searching for physiological constraints and for climatic and biotic selection pressures. Molecule length constrained CHC composition: long-chain profiles contained fewer linear alkanes, but more hydrocarbons with disruptive features in the molecule. This is probably owing to selection on the physiology to build a semi-fluid cuticular layer, which is necessa…

2020

Regular physical activity (PA) offers positive effects on the human body. However, the effects of PA on cognition and in the brain are less clear. In this paper, we narratively review the relationship of PA with cognition and dementia, first from general perspective and then through genetically informed studies on the topic. Then we move on to imaging studies on exercise and brain anatomy first by presenting an overall picture of the topic and then discussing brain imaging studies addressing PA and brain structure in twins in more detailed way. Regarding PA and cognition or dementia, genetically informed studies are uncommon, even though the relationship between PA and cognitive ageing has …

Mesoporous Silica-Based Materials with Bactericidal Properties

2019

[EN] Bacterial infections are the main cause of chronic infections and even mortality. In fact, due to extensive use of antibiotics and, then, emergence of antibiotic resistance, treatment of such infections by conventional antibiotics has become a major concern worldwide. One of the promising strategies to treat infection diseases is the use of nanomaterials. Among them, mesoporous silica materials (MSMs) have attracted burgeoning attention due to high surface area, tunable pore/particle size, and easy surface functionalization. This review discusses how one can exploit capacities of MSMs to design and fabricate multifunctional/controllable drug delivery systems (DDSs) to combat bacterial …

Validation of ATP bioluminescence as a tool to assess antimicrobial effects of mouthrinses in an in vitro subgingival-biofilm model

2012

Objectives. The aim of this investigation was to evaluate whether the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) bioluminescence method is an appropriate tool to assess the efficacy of antiseptic mouthrinses in terms of quantitative reductions of total viable microbial counts in mixed biofilm populations in vitro. Study Design. Three mouthrinses, containing respectively, chlorhexidine and cetylpyridinium chloride (CHX/CPC), essential oils (EO) and amine fluoride/stannous fluoride (AFSF), as well as Phosphate Buffered Saline (PBS) used as control, were tested in an in vitro static biofilm model by ATP bioluminescence and compared to culture method. Biofilms were grown on saliva-coated hydroxyapatite disks…

Prediction of quinolone activity against Mycobacterium avium by molecular topology and virtual computational screening.

2000

ABSTRACT We conducted a quantitative structure-activity relationship study using a database of 158 quinolones previously tested against Mycobacterium avium-M. intracellulare complex in order to develop a model capable of predicting the activity of new quinolones against the M. avium-M. intracellulare complex in vitro. Topological indices were used as structural descriptors and were related to anti- M. avium-M. intracellulare complex activity by using the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) statistical technique. The discriminant equation thus obtained correctly classified 137 of the 158 quinolones, including 37 of a test group of 44 randomly chosen compounds. This model was then applied to 2…