Plasticity of body representations after surgical arm elongation in an achondroplasic patient.

Purpose: A realistic body representation needs to be constantly updated. In case of physiological modifications, body representations integrate information coming from different sensory sources, including the sense of touch. Previous studies described transient modifications of these representations following illusory distortions. In this single case study, we documented the changes occurred in lower-level, primary somatosensory, and higher-level representations, in a case of upper arms elongation. Method: We explored effects of arm lengthening on primary tactile perception (sensitivity and acuity), an implicit perceptual measure of body size (tactile distance judgement), body image (Daurat-Hmelijak test), and peri-personal space representation (audio-tactile interaction task). Results: We show that patient's arm representation was changed after surgery. Specifically, we observed significant changes on tactile distance judgments, body image test and audio-tactile interaction task; also even though no changes were found on primary tactile perception a significant modification emerged in tactile acuity. Conclusions: These findings are in line with evidence of cortical reorganization after arm elongation. They also support the view that the body representation of achondroplasics are modified after body-size reconstruction, and became similar to that of healthy controls

Right but not left angular gyrus modulates the metric component of the mental body representation: a tDCS study

The parietal lobes contribute to body-space representation. The present work aims at characterizing the functional role of the inferior parietal lobe in body-space representation and at studying the different roles of the angular gyrus in the right and left hemisphere. We conducted three separate transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) experiments using "tactile distance task" as an implicit measure of body representation. Whereas anodal tDCS on the right angular gyrus influences vocal reaction times (vRT) for stimuli delivered on the ipsilateral body parts without changes of accuracy, right tDCS improved both vRT and accuracy for tactile stimuli on the contralateral limbs. Sham or left parietal anodal tDCS had no effect. These evidences support the view that right parietal areas have a crucial role in the metric component of the body representation

Electrophysiological Correlates of Amplified Emotion-Related Cognitive Processing Evoked by Self-Administered Disgust Images

In the processing of emotions, the brain prepares and reacts in distinctive manners depending upon the negative or positive nuance of the emotion elicitors. Previous investigations showed that negative elicitors generally evoke more intense neural activities than positive and neutral ones, as reflected in the augmented amplitude of all sub-components of the event-related potentials (ERP) late posterior positivity (LPP) complex, while less is known about the emotion of disgust. The present study aimed to examine whether the LPP complex during the processing of disgust stimuli showed greater amplitude than other emotion elicitors with negative or positive valences, thus confirming it as a neural marker of disgust-related negativity bias at earlier or later stages. Thus, in the present study, we leveraged the ERP technique during the execution of an affective self-administered visual stimuli task to disentangle the neural contributions associated with images of positive, negative, disgust, or neutral emotions. Crucially, we showed that handling with disgust elicitors prompted the greatest neural activity and the highest delay during self-administration. Overall, we demonstrated progressive neural activities associated with the unpleasantness of the emotion elicitors and peculiar processing for disgust compared with all other emotions

The nuclear receptor ER beta engages AGO2 in regulation of gene transcription, RNA splicing and RISC loading

Background: The RNA-binding protein Argonaute 2 (AGO2) is a key effector of RNA-silencing pathways It exerts a pivotal role in microRNA maturation and activity and can modulate chromatin remodeling, transcriptional gene regulation and RNA splicing. Estrogen receptor beta (ER beta) is endowed with oncosuppressive activities, antagonizing hormone-induced carcinogenesis and inhibiting growth and oncogenic functions in luminal-like breast cancers (BCs), where its expression correlates with a better prognosis of the disease.Results: Applying interaction proteomics coupled to mass spectrometry to characterize nuclear factors cooperating with ER beta in gene regulation, we identify AGO2 as a novel partner of ER beta in human BC cells. ER beta-AGO2 association was confirmed in vitro and in vivo in both the nucleus and cytoplasm and is shown to be RNA-mediated. ChIP-Seq demonstrates AGO2 association with a large number of ER beta binding sites, and total and nascent RNA-Seq in ER beta + vs ER beta-cells, and before and after AGO2 knock-down in ER beta + cells, reveals a widespread involvement of this factor in ER beta-mediated regulation of gene transcription rate and RNA splicing. Moreover, isolation and sequencing by RIP-Seq of ER beta-associated long and small RNAs in the cytoplasm suggests involvement of the nuclear receptor in RISC loading, indicating that it may also be able to directly control mRNA translation efficiency and stability.Conclusions: These results demonstrate that AGO2 can act as a pleiotropic functional partner of ER beta, indicating that both factors are endowed with multiple roles in the control of key cellular functions

Additional file 10: Table S7. of The nuclear receptor ERβ engages AGO2 in regulation of gene transcription, RNA splicing and RISC loading

AGO2 binding matrices. Table S7a. Motifs discovered among AGO2 binding sites in ERβ-expressing cells. Table S7b. Motifs discovered among AGO2 binding sites in wild-type cells. Table S7c. Motifs discovered among AGO2–ERβ shared binding sites. (XLSX 16 kb

Additional file 12: Table S9. of The nuclear receptor ERβ engages AGO2 in regulation of gene transcription, RNA splicing and RISC loading

Genes whose transcription rate is modulated by ERβ and AGO2. Table S9a. Genes showing transcriptional regulation by ERβ (Ct-ERβ vs wild type). Table S9b. Genes responding to AGO2 silencing in ERβ + cells (shAGO2 vs Ct-ERβ). Table S9c. Genes showing transcriptional regulation by both ERβ (Ct-ERβ vs wild type) and AGO2 (shAGO2 vs Ct-ERβ). Table S9d. Genes differentially expressed in Ct-ERβ vs wild-type cells harboring both ERβ and AGO2 binding sites and showing an inversion of the ERβ-induced transcriptional trend after AGO2 silencing. (XLSX 1259 kb