Amygdala and fusiform gyrus temporal dynamics: Responses to negative facial expressions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The amygdala habituates in response to repeated human facial expressions; however, it is unclear whether this brain region habituates to schematic faces (i.e., simple line drawings or caricatures of faces). Using an fMRI block design, 16 healthy participants passively viewed repeated presentations of schematic and human neutral and negative facial expressions. Percent signal changes within anatomic regions-of-interest (amygdala and fusiform gyrus) were calculated to examine the temporal dynamics of neural response and any response differences based on face type.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The amygdala and fusiform gyrus had a within-run "U" response pattern of activity to facial expression blocks. The initial block within each run elicited the greatest activation (relative to baseline) and the final block elicited greater activation than the preceding block. No significant differences between schematic and human faces were detected in the amygdala or fusiform gyrus.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The "U" pattern of response in the amygdala and fusiform gyrus to facial expressions suggests an initial orienting, habituation, and activation recovery in these regions. Furthermore, this study is the first to directly compare brain responses to schematic and human facial expressions, and the similarity in brain responses suggest that schematic faces may be useful in studying amygdala activation.</p

Starspot-induced optical and infrared radial velocity variability in T Tauri star Hubble 4

We report optical (6150 Ang) and K-band (2.3 micron) radial velocities obtained over two years for the pre-main sequence weak-lined T Tauri star Hubble I 4. We detect periodic and near-sinusoidal radial velocity variations at both wavelengths, with a semi-amplitude of 1395\pm94 m/s in the optical and 365\pm80 m/s in the infrared. The lower velocity amplitude at the longer wavelength, combined with bisector analysis and spot modeling, indicates that there are large, cool spots on the stellar surface that are causing the radial velocity modulation. The radial velocities maintain phase coherence over hundreds of days suggesting that the starspots are long-lived. This is one of the first active stars where the spot-induced velocity modulation has been resolved in the infrared.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Impact of Sleep and Circadian Disruption on Energy Balance and Diabetes: A Summary of Workshop Discussions

A workshop was held at the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases with a focus on the impact of sleep and circadian disruption on energy balance and diabetes. The workshop identified a number of key principles for research in this area and a number of specific opportunities. Studies in this area would be facilitated by active collaboration between investigators in sleep/circadian research and investigators in metabolism/diabetes. There is a need to translate the elegant findings from basic research into improving the metabolic health of the American public. There is also a need for investigators studying the impact of sleep/circadian disruption in humans to move beyond measurements of insulin and glucose and conduct more in-depth phenotyping. There is also a need for the assessments of sleep and circadian rhythms as well as assessments for sleep-disordered breathing to be incorporated into all ongoing cohort studies related to diabetes risk. Studies in humans need to complement the elegant short-term laboratory-based human studies of simulated short sleep and shift work etc. with studies in subjects in the general population with these disorders. It is conceivable that chronic adaptations occur, and if so, the mechanisms by which they occur needs to be identified and understood. Particular areas of opportunity that are ready for translation are studies to address whether CPAP treatment of patients with pre-diabetes and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) prevents or delays the onset of diabetes and whether temporal restricted feeding has the same impact on obesity rates in humans as it does in mice

Acetaminophen Protects Against Iron-Induced Cardiac Damage in Gerbils

There are few effective agents that safely remove excess iron from iron-overloaded individuals. Our goal was to evaluate the iron-removing effectiveness of acetaminophen given ip or orally in the gerbil iron-overload model. Male gerbils were divided into 5 groups: saline controls, iron-overloaded controls, iron-overloaded treated with ip acetaminophen, iron-overloaded treated with oral acetaminophen, and iron-overloaded treated with ipdeferoxamine. Iron dextran was injected iptwice/wk for 8 wk. Acetaminophen and deferoxamine treatments were given on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays during the same 8 wk and continued for 4 wk after completion of iron-overloading. Echocardiograms were performed after completion of the iron-overloading and drug treatments. Liver and cardiac iron contents were determined by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). Iron-overloaded controls had 232-fold and 16-fold increases in liver and cardiac iron content, respectively, compared to saline controls. In iron-overloaded controls, echocardiography showed cardiac hypertrophy, right and left ventricular distension, significant reduction in left ventricular ejection fraction (−22%), and fractional shortening (−31%) during systole. Treatments with acetaminophen (ip or oral) or deferoxamine (ip) were equally effective in reducing cardiac iron content and in preventing cardiac structural and functional changes. Both agents also significantly reduced excess hepatic iron content, although acetaminophen was less effective than deferoxamine. The results suggest that acetaminophen may be useful for treatment of iron-induced pathology

Observations of Non-radial Pulsations in Radio Pulsars

We introduce a model for pulsars in which non-radial oscillations of high spherical degree (l) aligned to the magnetic axis of a spinning neutron star reproduce the morphological features of pulsar beams. In our model, rotation of the pulsar carries a pattern of pulsation nodes underneath our sightline, reproducing the longitude stationary structure seen in average pulse profiles, while the associated time-like oscillations reproduce "drifting subpulses"--features that change their longitude between successive pulsar spins. We will show that the presence of nodal lines can account for observed 180 degree phase jumps in drifting subpulses and their otherwise poor phase stability, even if the time-like oscillations are strictly periodic. Our model can also account for the "mode changes" and "nulls" observed in some pulsars as quasiperiodic changes between pulsation modes of different l or radial overtone n, analogous to pulsation mode changes observed in oscillating white dwarf stars. We will discuss other definitive and testable requirements of our model and show that they are qualitatively supported by existing data. While reserving judgment until the completion of quantitative tests, we are inspired enough by the existing observational support for our model to speculate about the excitation mechanism of the non-radial pulsations, the physics we can learn from them, and their relationship to the period evolution of pulsars.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures (as separate png files), Astrophysical Journal, in pres

Upward convergence in working conditions

Social convergence has gained an equal footing alongside economic convergence as an EU goal in the wake of the economic crisis. This report presents the results of a study into convergence in working conditions, a major component of social policymaking. It examines whether working conditions have improved over the past two decades in the EU as a whole and whether dissimilarities between Member States in this area have narrowed

The First ALLWISE Proper Motion Discovery: WISEA J070720.50+170532.7

While quality checking a new motion-aware co-addition of all 12.5 months of Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) data, we found that the source WISE J070720.48+170533.0 moved 0".9 in six months. Backtracking this motion allowed us to identify this source as 2MASS J07071961+1705464, with several entries in the USNO B catalog. An astrometric fit to these archival data gives a proper motion of μ = 1793 ± 2 mas yr^(–1) and a parallax of ω = 35 ± 42 mas. Photometry from WISE, 2MASS, and the POSS can be fit reasonably well by a blackbody with T = 3658 K and an angular radius of 4.36 × 10^(–11) radians. No clear evidence of H_2 collision-induced absorption is seen in the near-infrared. An optical spectrum shows broad deep CaH bands at 638 and 690 nm, broad deep Na D at 598.2 nm, and weak or absent TiO, indicating that this source is an ultra-subdwarf M star with a radial velocity v_(rad) ≈ –21 ± 18 km s^(–1) relative to the Sun. Given its apparent magnitude, the distance is about 39 ± 9 pc and the tangential velocity is probably ≈330 km s^(–1), but a more precise parallax is needed to be certain