Semantic activation of target congruence contingently captures attention

Contingent attentional capture occurs when a stimulus property captures an observer's attention, usually related to the observer's top-down attentional set for target-defining properties. This study examined whether contingent attentional capture occurs for a stimulus property that does not define the target by itself, but is congruent with the target-defining property. In an RSVP stream, we defined the target by a color (e.g., a green-colored Japanese Kanji character). Before the target onset we presented a distractor that referred to the target-defining color (e.g., a white-colored Kanji character with the meaning "green"). We observed that the distractor produced contingent attentional capture which was revealed by a deficit in identifying the subsequent target. This result suggested that the attentional set included congruency between the activated meaning and the target-defining color to detect the target.Summary of Awarded Presentation at the 25th Annual Meetin

Developmental Changes in Number Personification by Elementary School Children

Children often personify non-living objects, such as puppets and stars. This attribution is considered a healthy phenomenon, which can simulate social exchange and enhance children's understanding of social relationships. In this study, we considered that the tendency of children to engage in personification could potentially be observed in abstract entities, such as numbers. We hypothesized that children tend to attribute personalities to numbers, which diminishes during the course of development. By consulting the methodology to measure ordinal linguistic personification (OLP), which is a type of synesthesia, we quantified the frequency with which child and adult populations engage in number personification. Questionnaires were completed by 151 non-synesthetic children (9–12 years old) and 55 non-synesthetic adults. Children showed a higher tendency than adults to engage in number personification, with respect to temporal consistency and the frequency of choosing meaningful answers. Additionally, children tended to assign unique and exclusive descriptions to each number from zero to nine. By synthesizing the series of analyses, we revealed the process in which number personification diminishes throughout development. In the discussion, we examined the possibility that number personification serves as a discrimination clue to aid children's comprehension of the relationships between numbers

Essential role of gastric gland mucin in preventing gastric cancer in mice

信州大学博士（医学）・学位論文・平成24年3月31日授与（甲第916号）・唐澤文寿Gastric gland mucin secreted from the lower portion of the gastric mucosa contains unique O-linked oligosaccharides (O-glycans) having terminal alpha 1,4-linked N-acetylglucosamine residues (alpha GlcNAc). Previously, we identified human alpha 1,4-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase (alpha 4GnT), which is responsible for the O-glycan biosynthesis and characterized alpha GlcNAc function in suppressing Helicobacter pylori in vitro. In the present study, we engineered A4gnt(-/-) mice to better understand its role in vivo. A4gnt(-/-) mice showed complete lack of alpha GlcNAc expression in gastric gland mucin. Surprisingly, all the mutant mice developed gastric adenocarcinoma through a hyperplasia-dysplasia-carcinoma sequence in the absence of H. pylori infection. Microarray and quantitative RT-PCR analysis revealed upregulation of genes encoding inflammatory chemokine ligands, proinflammatory cytokines, and growth factors, such as Ccl2, Il-11, and Hgf in the gastric mucosa of A4gnt(-/-) mice. Further supporting an important role for this O-glycan in cancer progression, we also observed significantly reduced alpha GlcNAc in human gastric adenocarcinoma and adenoma. Our results demonstrate that the absence of alpha GlcNAc triggers gastric tumorigenesis through inflammation-associated pathways in vivo. Thus, alpha GlcNAc-terminated gastric mucin plays dual roles in preventing gastric cancer by inhibiting H. pylori infection and also suppressing tumor-promoting inflammation.ArticleJOURNAL OF CLINICAL INVESTIGATION. 122(3):923-934 (2012)journal articl

Remote hand: Hand-centered peripersonal space transfers to a disconnected hand avatar

The space surrounding our body is called peripersonal space (PPS). It has been reported that visuo-tactile facilitation occurs more strongly within PPS than outside PPS. Furthermore, previous research has revealed several methods by which PPS can be extended. The present study provides the first behavioral evidence of the transfer of PPS in a virtual environment by a novel technique. PPS representation was investigated using a remote-controlled hand avatar presented far from their body in a virtual environment. Participants showed strongest visuo-tactile facilitation at the far space around the remote hand and no facilitation at the near space around the real hand, suggesting that PPS transfers from near the body to the space around the hand avatar. The present results extend previous findings of the plasticity of PPS and demonstrate flexibility of PPS representation beyond the physical and anatomical limits of body representation

Syllable Congruency of Audio-Visual Speech Stimuli Facilitates the Spatial Ventriloquism Only with Bilateral Visual Presentations

Spatial ventriloquism refers to a shift of perceptual location of a sound toward a synchronized visual stimulus. It has been assumed to reflect early processes uninfluenced by cognitive factors such as syllable congruency between audio-visual speech stimuli. Conventional experiments have examined compelling situations which typically entail pairs of single audio and visual stimuli to be bound. However, for natural environments our multisensory system is designed to select relevant sensory signals to be bound among adjacent stimuli. This selection process may depend upon higher (cognitive) mechanisms. We investigated whether a cognitive factor affects the size of the ventriloquism when an additional visual stimulus is presented with a conventional audio-visual pair. Participants were presented with a set of audio-visual speech stimuli, comprising one or two bilateral movies of a person uttering single syllables together with recordings of this person speaking the same syllables. One of movies and the speech sound were combined in either congruent or incongruent ways. Participants had to identify sound locations. Results show that syllable congruency affected the size of the ventriloquism only when two movies were presented simultaneously. The selection of a relevant stimulus pair among two or more candidates can be regulated by some higher processes

Synesthetic Colors for Japanese Scripts in Japanese Synesthetes

The determinants of synesthetic colors for Japanese scripts were studied in six Japanese grapheme-color synesthetes. We investigated the influence of linguistic properties such as phonology, orthography, and meaning on synesthetic colors for logographic characters (Kanji), phonetic characters (hiragana and katakana), and digits. From a palette of 138 colors, the synesthetes selected colors for 79 Kanji, 71 hiragana, and 71 katakana characters, and 9 digits. The results revealed that the color choices for hiragana and katakana characters representing the same sound were remarkably consistent, indicating that color selection depended on phonology and not visual form. On the other hand, synesthetic colors for Kanji characters, which are usually learned later, depended on meaning and phonology. Kanji characters representing concepts that are highly related to colors (eg, names of objects with typical colors) were associated with those colors. Digits and corresponding Kanji numerals elicited strikingly similar colors. Colors for Kanji and hiragana characters sharing the same sound were likely to be similar. These results suggest that synesthetic colors are generalized from digits and phonetic scripts to Kanji characters via meaning and phonology. This study provides insights into the generalization of synesthetic colors to later acquired sets of graphemes within a language