Ultraschallkommunikation bei Ratten: Soziale Isolation als Risikofaktor für neuropsychiatrische Erkrankungen mit defizitärem Sozialverhalten im Tiermodell

Ratten zeichnen sich durch ein stark ausgeprägtes Sozialverhalten aus, wovon das Kommunikationsverhalten ein elementarer Bestandteil ist. Sie emittieren Rufe im Ultraschallbereich, sogenannte Ultraschallvokalisationen (USV), die als situationsabhängige,affektive Signale fungieren. Bei juvenilen und adulten Ratten unterscheidet man zwischen zwei verschiedenen Hauptruftypen. Niederfrequente 22-kHz USV treten typischerweise in aversiven Situationen auf, wie sozialer Unterlegenheit, während hochfrequente 50-kHz USV in appetitiven Situationen beobachten werden können, wie soziales Spielverhalten bei juvenilen oder Paarungsverhalten bei adulten Ratten. Beide Ruftypen besitzen distinkte kommunikative Funktionen und lösen Ruftyp-spezifisches Verhalten beim Empfänger aus. So dienen 22-kHz USV vermutlich als Alarmrufe, die beim Empfänger zu Verhaltensstarre führen. Im Gegensatz dazu scheinen 50-kHz USV eine prosoziale Funktion zu besitzen. Männliche 50-kHz USV spielen offenbar eine wichtige Rolle zur Herstellung sozialer Nähe und sind vermutlich auch an der Regulation von Sexualverhalten beteiligt (Studie I: Willadsen et al., 2014). Auch im nichtsexuellen Kontext gibt es starke Evidenz für eine Funktion der 50-kHz USV als soziale Kontaktrufe. Eine Übersichtsarbeit zu den Studien, die das etablierte Playback-Paradigma verwendeten, konnte zeigen, dass Playback von 50-kHz USV konsistent Annäherungsverhalten beim Empfänger auslöste und somit eine reliable und hoch standardisierte Untersuchung von prosozialem Ultraschallkommunikationsverhalten von Ratten ermöglicht (Studie II: Seffer et al., 2014). Dieses Paradigma erscheint aus diesem Grund besonders nützlich für den Einsatz in Verbindung mit Tiermodellen zu sein, die sich durch ein defizitäres Sozialverhalten auszeichnen. Juvenile soziale Isolation wird häufig bei Ratten als Tiermodell eingesetzt, um Phänotypen mit klinischer Relevanz für neuropsychiatrische Erkrankungen zu induzieren, wie beispielsweise die Schizophrenie, welche sich durch ein Defizit in der sozio-affektiven Informationsverarbeitung auszeichnet. Aus diesem Grund wurde der Einfluss von sozialer Isolation auf die prosoziale Ultraschallkommunikation unter Verwendung des 50-kHz USV Playback-Paradigmas bei Ratten untersucht (Studie III: Seffer et al., 2015). Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass juvenile soziale Isolation spezifisch die Reaktion auf 50-kHz USV beeinträchtigte und kein Annäherungsverhalten beim Empfänger auslöste. Beachtenswerterweise konnten diese Defizite durch eine Resozialisierungsphase aufgehoben werden und wurden nicht durch post-adoleszente soziale Isolation induziert. Diese Ergebnisse sprechen für eine kritische Periode in der sozialen Entwicklung während der Adoleszenz und heben die Notwendigkeit sozialer Erfahrungen während dieser sensitiven Phase hervor

Identity on the Threshold: The Myth of Persephone in Italian American Women’s Memoirs

This dissertation analyses the recurrent theme of the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone in third-generation Italian American women’s memoirs. I argue that these women appropriate their Italian ethnic roots through a creative and compelling rereading and reworking of the myth of Demeter and Persephone. To develop my argument, I explore the interlacing of myth and memory in three contemporary Italian American memoirs: No Pictures in my Grave: A Spiritual Journey in Sicily (1992), The Skin between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty, and Belonging (2006), and The Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian in America (2011), respectively written by Susan Caperna Lloyd, Kym Ragusa, and Joanna Clapps Herman. These texts belong to the hybrid genre of memoir; a genre that combines imagination with individual and collective memory. Through the genre of memoir and the practice of self-writing, these authors turn to the myth as a source for female empowerment and ethnic assertion. The myth of Persephone in these Italian American women’s memoirs epitomizes the archetype of origin so it becomes a treasure to be sought and rediscovered. These texts offer insightful perspective on myth while also posing questions of difference, gender, race, ethnicity, self-representation, and post-modern identity. Through an eclectic approach, including literary criticism, cultural studies, and anthropology, I argue that these three memoirs show how the authors’ physical and/or psychological journeys between Italy and America have helped them to overcome the anxieties experienced in relation to their Italian American hybrid identity. This thesis explores the themes of liminality, ethnicity, race, and hybridity to understand how the Persephone myth is used by the authors to articulate their condition as dwellers of the limen, and to help them come to terms with the trauma of loss, separation, and reunion

Sharing Songs

The open live music session is the essense of Dalriada. Aiming to explore and analyse how a niche societal group (or groups, as will be shown) has been formed and evolved throughout the years in this specific locality, this essay investigates how communities emerge and relationships flourish within wider urban landscapes, as a result of cultural exchange and symbolic rituals within intimate shared spaces. This examination emphasises on the commonalities, contradictions and conflicts that are inherent in the process of community-building, evolution and preservation, based on the authors' perspectives illuminated by the lived experiences and testimonies of interlocutors

Towards an ecological network for the Carpathians

The Carpathian Biodiversity Information System (CBIS) and the proposal for an ecological network for the eastern part of the Carpathians are the two main outcomes of the project funded by the BBI Matra program of the Dutch government. This brochure presents information on how the CBIS was designed, and how the data stored can be retrieved and used. It also clarifies how the CBIS data were used to design the ecological network and, last but not least, it offers recommendations for the use of the proposed ecological network in supporting sustainable developmentin the Carpathians. Due to funding restrictions, the project focused on three east Carpathian countries: Romania, Serbia and Ukraine, which together host the largest area of the Carpathians (Fig. 2). Geographically, the Eastern Carpathians also include parts of the Carpathians located in Poland and Slovakia. Data collection in the Western Carpathians (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary) will be completed by 2010 and is funded by a parallel project

Sharing Songs

The open live music session is the essense of Dalriada. Aiming to explore and analyse how a niche societal group (or groups, as will be shown) has been formed and evolved throughout the years in this specific locality, this essay investigates how communities emerge and relationships flourish within wider urban landscapes, as a result of cultural exchange and symbolic rituals within intimate shared spaces. This examination emphasises on the commonalities, contradictions and conflicts that are inherent in the process of community-building, evolution and preservation, based on the authors' perspectives illuminated by the lived experiences and testimonies of interlocutors

Suppression by thimerosal of ex-vivo CD4+ T cell response to influenza vaccine and induction of apoptosis in primary memory T cells.

International audienceThimerosal is a preservative used widely in vaccine formulations to prevent bacterial and fungal contamination in multidose vials of vaccine. Thimerosal was included in the multidose non-adjuvanted pandemic 2009 H1N1 vaccine Panenza. In the context of the analysis of the ex-vivo T cell responses directed against influenza vaccine, we discovered the in vitro toxicity Panenza, due to its content in thimerosal. Because thimerosal may skew the immune response to vaccines, we investigated in detail the ex-vivo effects of thimerosal on the fate and functions of T cells in response to TCR ligation. We report that ex-vivo exposure of quiescent or TCR-activated primary human T cells to thimerosal induced a dose-dependent apoptotic cell death associated with depolarization of mitochondrial membrane, generation of reactive oxygen species, cytochrome c release from the mitochondria and caspase-3 activation. Moreover, exposure to non-toxic concentrations of thimerosal induced cell cycle arrest in G0/G1 phase of TCR-activated T cells, and inhibition of the release of proinflammatory cytokines such as IFN gamma, IL-1 beta, TNF alpha, IL-2, as well as the chemokine MCP1. No shift towards Th2 or Th17 cells was detected. Overall these results underline the proapoptotic effect of thimerosal on primary human lymphocytes at concentrations 100 times less to those contained in the multidose vaccine, and they reveal the inhibitory effect of this preservative on T-cell proliferation and functions at nanomolar concentrations