Search results for "visual"
showing 10 items of 7386 documents
Poor vision accompanied with other sensory impairments as a predictor of falls in older women
2008
Objectives:we studied visual acuity (VA) and co-existing hearing impairment and poor standing balance as predictors of falls. Design: prospective study with 1-year follow-up. Setting: research laboratory and residential environment. Participants: 428 women aged 63‐76 years from the Finnish Twin Study on Aging. Measurements: participants were followed up for incidence of falls over 1 year. VA, hearing ability and standing balance were assessed at the baseline. The incidence rate ratios (IRR) for falls were computed using the negative binomial regression model. Results: during the follow-up, 47% of participants experienced a fall. After adjusting for age and interdependence of twin sisters, p…
Modulation of visual cortex excitability in migraine with aura: effects of valproate therapy.
2009
We explored the effects of valproate treatment on visual cortex excitability changes in migraine with aura patients. Abnormal cortical excitability has been suggested to play an important role in the etiopathogenesis of migraine; in particular, it has been suggested a failure of inhibitory circuits in migraine with aura. Valproate acts as a central GABA agonist and it is reasonable suppose that VPA could modify cortical excitability state. Phosphene threshold (PT) was assessed at baseline and after 1 Hz rTMS before and after one month therapy. We found that low-frequency rTMS in drug-free migraineurs decreased PT, while the treatment with the GABA agonist valproate is able to revert the eff…
Modulatory effects of the novel TrkB receptor agonist 7,8-dihydroxyflavone on synaptic transmission and intrinsic neuronal excitability in mouse visu…
2013
7,8-Dihydroxyflavone (7,8 DHF) is a new recently identified TrkB receptor agonist, which possesses a potent neurotrophic activity and shares many physiological properties with the neurotrophin "Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor" (BDNF). However, its precise mechanism of action at the cellular level has not been clarified yet. In the present study we explored the effects of this agent on synaptic and intrinsic neuronal properties by performing whole-cell patch clamp recordings from layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons. Incubation of acute cortical slices with 7,8-DHF (20 µM) for 30 min caused a selective reduction in the strength of GABAergic inhibition. The amplitude of evoked inhibitory postsynapti…
Somatosensory event-related potentials in the rabbit cerebral and cerebellar cortices: a correspondence with mismatch responses in humans.
2001
Somatosensory event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the cerebellar (CerCx), somatosensory (SomCx) and visual (VCx) cortices in rabbits in two stimulus conditions. In the oddball condition, airpuffs to two different locations in the rabbit's muzzle corresponded to infrequently presented deviant stimuli (oddball-deviants) interspersed with frequently presented standard stimuli. In the deviant-alone condition, deviants (alone-deviants) were presented without standards. ERPs to oddball-deviants differed significantly from those to standards in CerCx and SomCx, but not in VCx. Furthermore, some of these differences were not found between ERPs to alone-deviants and those to standards…
Impact of histidine spacing on modified polyhistidine tag – Metal ion interactions
2018
Abstract Histidine rich sequences are chosen both by nature and by molecular biologists due to their high affinity towards metal ions. In this work, we examine the affinity and binding modes of Cu 2+ , Ni 2+ and Zn 2+ towards two histidine tags, the common His 6 -tag (Ac-HHHHHH-NH 2 ) and its modified sequence, which also contains six histidines, but separated with two alanine residues (Ac-HAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAA-NH 2 ). The spatial separation of histidines has an important impact on its coordination properties. Cu 2+ and Ni 2+ complexes with Ac-HHHHHH-NH 2 are more stable than those with Ac-HAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAA-NH 2 ; the contrary is observed for Zn 2+ . In a narrow range of pH, Cu 2+ -Ac-HHHHHH-…
Sometimes less is more—the impact of the number of His residues on the stability of Zn(ii)–SmtB and BigR4 α-5 domain complexes
2021
The increasing number of antibiotic-resistant pathogens has become one of the major health problems of modern times, including infections caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. One of the possible mammalian immune system responses to mycobacterial infection is the increase of the zinc(II) concentration in phagosomes to a toxic level. The mycobacterial SmtB protein belongs to the family of ArsR/SmtB transcription regulators. In the presence of high concentrations of metals, SmtB dissociates from DNA and activates the expression of metal efflux proteins. In this work, we focus on the α5 zinc(II) binding domains of SmtB/BigR4 proteins (the latter being the SmtB homolog from non-pathogenic M. sm…
Translation as alchemy: the aesthetics of multilingualism in film
2012
The aim of this paper is to explore the aesthetics of multilingualism in film. We start with a discussion of translation strategy in several films and continue with two case studies based on Azur et Asmar (2006) by Michel Ocelot, on the one hand, and Nostalghia (1983) and Offret (1986) by Andrei Tarkovsky, on the other. Our analysis does not involve a comparison between the original dialogues or monologues and their translations into one or several languages, but, rather, it focuses on the role of translation in film making, considering it independently from any pre-existing oral or written texts. This will lead us to a number of reflections about the possibility and the limits of communica…
Aroma release in the oral cavity after wine intake is influenced by wine matrix composition
2018
The aim of this study has been to investigate if wine matrix composition might influence the interaction between odorants and oral mucosa in the oral cavity during a “wine intake-like” situation. Aroma released after exposing the oral cavity of three individuals to different wines (n = 12) previously spiked with six target aromas was followed by an -in vivo intra-oral SPME approach. Results showed a significant effect of wine matrix composition on the intra-oral aroma release of certain odorants. Among the wine matrix parameters, phenolic compounds showed the largest impact. This effect was dependent on their chemical structure. Some phenolic acids (e.g. hippuric, caffeic) were associated t…
Retinal function assessment in alcohol use disorder patients
2019
Objective. Retinal injury induced by ethanol consumption has been previously reported in animal models, including biochemical, histological and functional alterations. These results need to be clinically tested in alcoholic patients which do not report several systemic or ophthalmic diseases. Methods. Six patients with alcohol use disorder were recruited from an ‘Alcoholism Treatment Unit’. All of them with active alcohol consumption when the study was conducted or that had stopped drinking six months prior to the study, with no ocular disease or visual acuity alterations. All patients underwent fundus photography, optical coherence tomography (OCT) as well as visual field test. Electrophys…
A Teaching proposal for the study of eigenvectors and eigenvalues
2017
[EN] In this work, we present a teaching proposal which emphasizes on visualization and physical applications in the study of eigenvectors and eigenvalues. These concepts are introduced using the notion of the moment of inertia of a rigid body and the GeoGebra software. The proposal was motivated after observing students¿ difficulties when treating eigenvectors and eigenvalues from a geometric point of view. It was designed following a particular sequence of activities with the schema: exploration, introduction of concepts, structuring of knowledge and application, and considering the three worlds of mathematical thinking provided by Tall: embodied, symbolic and formal.