Experience-Dependent Color Constancy in Guppies (Poecilia reticulata)

We investigated the ability to recognize the color of surfaces in fish (Poecilia reticulata), bred from birth in conditions of artificial light with constant spectral content. The capacity for color constancy significantly deteriorated when compared that to the control group. Further alteration of lighting conditions and transfer into natural daylight conditions restored the suppressed function to its normal level. We suggest that the color constancy function belongs in the visual system-response functions, the full development of which requires the accumulation of individual visual experience

Perceptual learning of bisection stimuli under roving: Slow and largely specific

In perceptual learning, performance often improves within a short time if only one stimulus variant is presented, such as a line bisection stimulus with one outer-line-distance. However, performance stagnates if two bisection stimuli with two outerline-distances are presented randomly interleaved. Recently, S. G. Kuai, J. Y. Zhang, S. A. Klein, D. M. Levi, and C. Yu, (2005) proposed that learning under roving conditions is impossible in general. Contrary to this proposition, we show here that perceptual learning with bisection stimuli under roving is possible with extensive training of 18000 trials. Despite this extensive training, the improvement of performance is still largely specific. Furthermore, this improvement of performance cannot be explained by an accommodation to stimulus uncertainty caused by roving

Efficacy cardiotonic medicines on the bioenergetic processes and endothelial dysfunction under coupled of heart failure and systemic inflammatory syndroms in

The efficacy of cardiotonic drugs on the energy supply system and bioenergetic processes in failing myocardium under severe form heart failure (HF) coupled with systemic inflammatory response syndrom, has been studied in the randomized, controlled trial. It has been shown, that treatment with cardioprotector (NAD- and cardiac glycoside-containing) drug Adenocin® unlike inhibitors of phosphodiesterase, amrinone and levosimendan, abolished the progression of bioenergetics failure and mitochondrial remodeling. Adenocin® occurs restoration of level of redox-potential NAD/NADH and cessates the release of cytochrome C from the mitochondries of cardiomyocyte. HF increased the content of ATP and creatinphosphate in left and right ventricle of myocardium, and restored the level of redox-potential NAD/NADH and cytochrome in mitochondria of cardiomyocytes, that leads in the basis of sharply decrease of ATP and creatinphosphate in myocardium, switch the lactate/pyruvate ratio to the increase of pyruvate (aerobic glycolysis). The linear positive correlation between redox-potential NAD/NADH in ventricular myocardium and blood and negative between level of cytochrome C in myocardium and blood has been shown