58,626 research outputs found
Abnormal temporal coupling of tactile perception and motor action in Parkinson's disease
Evidence shows altered somatosensory temporal discrimination threshold (STDT) in Parkinson's disease in comparison to normal subjects. In healthy subjects, movement execution modulates STDT values through mechanisms of sensory gating. We investigated whether STDT modulation during movement execution in patients with Parkinson's disease differs from that in healthy subjects. In 24 patients with Parkinson's disease and 20 healthy subjects, we tested STDT at baseline and during index finger abductions (at movement onset "0", 100, and 200 ms thereafter). We also recorded kinematic features of index finger abductions. Fifteen out of the 24 patients were also tested ON medication. In healthy subjects, STDT increased significantly at 0, 100, and 200 ms after movement onset, whereas in patients with Parkinson's disease in OFF therapy, it increased significantly at 0 and 100 ms but returned to baseline values at 200 ms. When patients were tested ON therapy, STDT during index finger abductions increased significantly, with a time course similar to that of healthy subjects. Differently from healthy subjects, in patients with Parkinson's disease, the mean velocity of the finger abductions decreased according to the time lapse between movement onset and the delivery of the paired electrical stimuli for testing somatosensory temporal discrimination. In conclusion, patients with Parkinson's disease show abnormalities in the temporal coupling between tactile information and motor outflow. Our study provides first evidence that altered temporal processing of sensory information play a role in the pathophysiology of motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease
Visuomotor delays when hitting running spiders.
In general, information about the environment (for instance a target) is not instantaneously available for the nervous system. A minimal delay for visual information to affect the movement of the hand is about 110 ms. However, if the movement of a target is predictable, humans can pursue it with zero delay. To make this prediction, information about the speed of the target is necessary. Our results show that this information is used with a delay of about 200 ms. We discuss that oculomotor efference is a likely source of information for this prediction
Event-related brain potentials in the study of inhibition: cognitive control, source localization and age-related modulations
In the previous 15 years, a variety of experimental paradigms and methods have been employed to study inhibition. In the current review, we analyze studies that have used the high temporal resolution of the event-related potential (ERP) technique to identify the temporal course of inhibition to understand the various processes that contribute to inhibition. ERP studies with a focus on normal aging are specifically analyzed because they contribute to a deeper understanding of inhibition. Three time windows are proposed to organize the ERP data collected using inhibition paradigms: the 200 ms period following stimulus onset; the period between 200 and 400 ms after stimulus onset; and the period between 400 and 800 ms after stimulus onset. In the first 200 ms, ERP inhibition research has primarily focused on N1 and P1 as the ERP components associated with inhibition. The inhibitory processing in the second time window has been associated with the N2 and P3 ERP components. Finally, in the third time window, inhibition has primarily been associated with the N400 and N450 ERP components. Source localization studies are analyzed to examine the association between the inhibition processes that are indexed by the ERP components and their functional brain areas. Inhibition can be organized in a complex functional structure that is not constrained to a specific time point but, rather, extends its activity through different time windows. This review characterizes inhibition as a set of processes rather than a unitary process
Shortening of the Short Refractory Periods in Short QT Syndrome.
BACKGROUND: Diagnosis of short QT syndrome (SQTS) remains difficult in case of borderline QT values as often found in normal populations. Whether some shortening of refractory periods (RP) may help in differentiating SQTS from normal subjects is unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS: Atrial and right ventricular RP at the apex and right ventricular outflow tract as determined during standard electrophysiological study were compared between 16 SQTS patients (QTc 324±24 ms) and 15 controls with similar clinical characteristics (QTc 417±32 ms). Atrial RP were significantly shorter in SQTS compared with controls at 600- and 500-ms basic cycle lengths. Baseline ventricular RP were significantly shorter in SQTS patients than in controls, both at the apex and right ventricular outflow tract and for any cycle length. Differences remained significant for RP of any subsequent extrastimulus at any cycle length and any pacing site. A cut-off value of baseline RP <200 ms at the right ventricular outflow tract either at 600- or 500-ms cycle length had a sensitivity of 86% and a specificity of 100% for the diagnosis of SQTS. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with SQTS have shorter ventricular RP than controls, both at baseline during various cycle lengths and after premature extrastimuli. A cut-off value of 200 ms at the right ventricular outflow tract during 600- and 500-ms basic cycle length may help in detecting true SQTS from normal subjects with borderline QT values
Long Phase Coherence Time and Number Squeezing of two Bose-Einstein Condensates on an Atom Chip
We measured the relative phase of two Bose-Einstein condensates confined in
an radio frequency induced double well potential on an atom chip. We observed
phase coherence between the separated condensates for times up to 200 ms after
splitting, a factor of 10 beyond the phase diffusion limit expected for a
coherent state in our experimental conditions (20 ms). The enhanced coherence
time is attributed to number squeezing of the initial state by a factor of 10.
In addition, we demonstrated a rotationally sensitive (Sagnac) geometry for a
guided atom interferometer by propagating the split condensates.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Sex-Related Differences in Vocal Responses to Pitch Feedback Perturbations During Sustained Vocalization
The present study assessed the effect of sex on voice fundamental frequency (F0) responses to pitch feedback perturbations during sustained vocalization. Sixty-four native-Mandarin speakers heard their voice pitch feedback shifted at ±50, ±100, or ±200 cents for 200 ms, five times during each vocalization. The results showed that, as compared to female speakers, male speakers produced significantly larger but slower vocal responses to the pitch-shifted stimuli. These findings reveal a modulation of vocal response as a function of sex, and suggest that there may be a differential processing of vocal pitch feedback perturbations between men and wome
Neutrino Signal of Electron-Capture Supernovae from Core Collapse to Cooling
An 8.8 solar mass electron-capture supernova (SN) was simulated in spherical
symmetry consistently from collapse through explosion to nearly complete
deleptonization of the forming neutron star. The evolution time of about 9 s is
short because of nucleon-nucleon correlations in the neutrino opacities. After
a brief phase of accretion-enhanced luminosities (~200 ms), luminosity
equipartition among all species becomes almost perfect and the spectra of
electron antineutrinos and muon/tau antineutrinos very similar. We discuss
consequences for the neutrino-driven wind as a nucleosynthesis site and for
flavor oscillations of SN neutrinos.Comment: 4 pages, 4 eps figures; published as Physical Review Letters, vol.
104, Issue 25, id. 25110
Generation of a decoherence-free entangled state using a radio frequency dressed state
We propose the generation of entangled states with trapped calcium ions using
a combination of an rf dressed state and a spin dependent force. Using this
method, a decoherence-free entangled state of rf qubits can be directly
generated and ideally its fidelity is close to unity. We demonstrate an rf
entangled state with a fidelity of 0.68, which has a coherence time of more
than 200 ms by virtue of the fact that it is an eigenstate with energy gaps
between adjacent levels.Using the same technique, we also produce a
qutrit-qutrit entangled state with a fidelity of 0.77, which exceeds the
threshold value for separability of 2/3.Comment: 4 figure
Discovery and Follow-up of Rotating Radio Transients with the Green Bank and LOFAR Telescopes
We have discovered 21 Rotating Radio Transients (RRATs) in data from the
Green Bank Telescope (GBT) 350-MHz Drift-scan and the Green Bank North
Celestial Cap pulsar surveys using a new candidate sifting algorithm. RRATs are
pulsars with sporadic emission that are detected through their bright single
pulses rather than Fourier domain searches. We have developed {\tt RRATtrap}, a
single-pulse sifting algorithm that can be integrated into pulsar survey data
analysis pipelines in order to find RRATs and Fast Radio Bursts. We have
conducted follow-up observations of our newly discovered sources at several
radio frequencies using the GBT and Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), yielding
improved positions and measurements of their periods, dispersion measures, and
burst rates, as well as phase-coherent timing solutions for four of them. The
new RRATs have dispersion measures (DMs) ranging from 15 to 97 pc cm,
periods of 240 ms to 3.4 s, and estimated burst rates of 20 to 400 pulses
hr at 350 MHz. We use this new sample of RRATs to perform statistical
comparisons between RRATs and canonical pulsars in order to shed light on the
relationship between the two populations. We find that the DM and spatial
distributions of the RRATs agree with those of the pulsars found in the same
survey. We find evidence that slower pulsars (i.e. ms) are
preferentially more likely to emit bright single pulses than are faster pulsars
( ms), although this conclusion is tentative. Our results are consistent
with the proposed link between RRATs, transient pulsars, and canonical pulsars
as sources in various parts of the pulse activity spectrum.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables, published in Ap
- …