Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1.

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field

Development of body knowledge as measured by arm differentiation in infants: from global to local?

The ability to perceive and use the body parts in an organised and differentiated manner is a precursor of body knowledge in infancy. To acquire this ability, the infant’s brain might explore the perceptual consequences of its bodily actions. Undifferentiated body movements would gradually be replaced by more precise actions. Only a very few papers have tested this “global-to-local” hypothesis and none of them have so far been replicated. In this study, we assessed arm differentiation in 4-, 6- and 8-month-old infants using a new contingency detection task in which infants have to detect a contingency between one of their arms’ activity and an audiovisual stimulus on a screen. We found that 4- to 8-month-old infants seem able to differentiate their arms. However, surprisingly, we were not able to show a developmental trend in arm differentiation between 4 and 8 months of age

Asymmetry in visual information processing depends on the strength of eye dominance

International audienceElectrophysiological studies have shown that task-relevantsomatosensory information leads to selective facilitationwithin the primary somatosensory cortex (SI).The purpose of the present study was (1) to further explorethe relationship between the relevancy of stimuliand activation within the contralateral and ipsilateralSI and (2) to provide further insight into the specificsensory gating network responsible for modulating neuralactivity within SI. Functional MRI of 12 normal subjectswas performed with vibrotactile stimuli presentedto the pad of the index finger. In experiment 1, the stimuluswas presented to either the left or the right hand.Subjects were required to detect transient changes instimulus frequency. In experiment 2, stimuli were presentedto either the right hand alone or both handssimultaneously. Stimuli were applied either (A) passivelyor (B) when subjects were asked to detect frequencychanges that occurred to the right hand only. Inexperiment 1, task-relevant somatosensory stimulationled not only to enhanced contralateral SI activity, butalso to a suppression of activity in the ipsilateral SI. Inexperiment 2, SI activation was enhanced when stimuliwere task-relevant, compared to that observed with passiveinput. When stimuli were presented simultaneouslyto both hands, only those that were task-relevant increasedSI activation. This was associated with recruitmentof a network of cortical regions, including the rightprefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 9). We conclude thatSI modulation is dependent on task relevancy and thatthis modulation may be regulated, at least in part, by theprefrontal cortex