Inaccessible time to visual awareness during attentional blinks in macaques and humans

知覚のコマ落ちから、意識の時間を可視化 --意識の進化的側面にもアプローチ--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2023-11-01.Even when we attend to successive visual events, we often cannot notice an event occurring during a certain temporal window. Such an inaccessible time for visual awareness is known as "attentional blink" (AB). Whether AB is a phenomenon unique to humans or exists also in other animals is unclear. Using a dual-task paradigm shared between macaques and humans, we here demonstrate a nonhuman primate model of AB. Although macaques also showed behavioral signatures of AB, their AB effect lasted longer than that of humans. To map the relation between macaque and human ABs, we introduced a time warping analysis. The analysis revealed a formal structure behind the interspecies difference of AB; the temporal window of macaque AB was scaled from that of human AB. The present study opens the door to combining the approaches of neuroscience, psychophysics, and theoretical models to further identify a scale-invariant biological substrate of visual awareness

Oblique coronal and oblique sagittal MRI for diagnosis of anterior cruciate ligament tears and evaluation of anterior cruciate ligament remnant tissue

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of additional oblique magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the diagnosis of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear and evaluation of ACL remnant tissue. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the records of 54 knees. Three independent readers evaluated the MR images by the use of three methods: orthogonal sagittal images only (method A); orthogonal sagittal and additional oblique sagittal images (method B); and orthogonal sagittal and oblique coronal images (method C). The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for the diagnosis of an ACL tear and the detection of the condition of the ACL remnant tissue by the use of each method were calculated in comparison with arthroscopic findings as the reference standard. Results: The arthroscopic records revealed 27 knees with intact ACLs and 27 with torn ACLs. Among the 27 knees with torn ACLs, 9 did not have continuous remnant tissue and 18 had certain remnant tissue attached to the femur or the posterior cruciate ligament. The specificities and accuracies of methods B and C for diagnosing an ACL tear were higher than those for method A. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of method C for the detection of ACL remnant tissue were higher than those for method A and B. Conclusions: Additional use of oblique MRI improved the accuracy of diagnosis of ACL tear and showed a reasonable level of efficacy in detecting ACL remnant tissue. Level of evidence: Level IV (case series). © 2013 Elsevier B.V

Localization of Xenobiotic Transporter OCTN1/SLC22A4 in Hepatic Stellate Cells and Its Protective Role in Liver Fibrosis

Xenobiotic transporters play key roles in disposition of certain therapeutic agents, although limited information is available on their roles other than pharmacokinetic issues. Here, suppressive effect of multispecific organic cation transporter OCTN1/SLC22A4 on liver fibrosis was proposed in liver injury models. After injection of hepatotoxins such as dimethylnitrosamine (DMN) or concanavalin A, hepatic fibrosis, and oxidative stress, evaluated in terms of Sirius red and 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal staining, respectively, were more severe in liver of octn1/slc22a4 gene knockout (octn1-/-) mice than that in wild-type mice. DMN treatment markedly increased α-smooth muscle actin and F4/80, markers of activated stellate and Kupffer cells, respectively, in liver of octn1-/-, but had less effect in wild-type mice. Thus, octn1/slc22a4 gene deletion results in more severe hepatic fibrosis, oxidative stress, and inflammation. DMN-treated wild-type mice showed increased Octn1 staining and hepatic concentration of its food-derived antioxidant ergothioneine (ERGO). The upregulated Octn1 was co-localized with α-smooth muscle actin. Functional expression of Octn1 was demonstrated in activated human hepatic stellate cell lines, LI90 and LX-2. Provision of ERGO-rich feed ameliorated DMN-induced liver fibrosis and oxidative stress. Overall, Octn1 is upregulated in activated stellate cells, resulting in increased delivery of its substrate antioxidant ERGO and a protective effect against liver fibrosis. © 2016 American Pharmacists Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Embargo Period 12 month

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Introgression of chromosomal segments conferring early heading date from wheat diploid progenitor, Aegilops tauschii Coss., into Japanese elite wheat cultivars

The breeding of agriculturally useful genes from wild crop relatives must take into account recent and future climate change. In Japan, the development of early heading wheat cultivars without the use of any major gene controlling the heading date is desired to avoid overlap of the harvesting time before the rainy season. Here, we backcrossed two early heading lines of a synthetic hexaploid wheat, derived from a crossing between durum wheat and the wild wheat progenitor Aegilops tauschii, with four Japanese elite cultivars to develop early heading lines of bread wheat. In total, nine early heading lines that showed a heading date two to eight days earlier than their parental cultivars in field conditions were selected and established from the selfed progenies of the two- or three-times backcrossed populations. The whole appearance and spike shape of the selected early heading lines looked like their parental wheat cultivars. The mature grains of the selected lines had the parental cultivars' characteristics, although the grains exhibited longer and narrower shapes. RNA sequencing-based genotyping was performed to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms between the selected lines and their parental wheat cultivars, which revealed the chromosomal regions transmitted from the parental synthetic wheat to the selected lines. The introgression regions could shorten wheat heading date, and their chromosomal positions were dependent on the backcrossed wheat cultivars. Therefore, early heading synthetic hexaploid wheat is useful for fine-tuning of the heading date through introgression of Ae. tauschii chromosomal regions