OXTR Gene DNA Methylation Levels Are Associated with Discounting Behavior with Untrustworthy Proposers

Individual differences in temporal and probabilistic discounting are associated with a wide range of life outcomes in literature. Traditional approaches have focused on impulsiveness and cognitive control skills, on goal-oriented personality traits as well as on the psychological perception of time. More recently, literature started to consider the role of social and contextual factors in discounting behavior. Between others, higher generalized trust in human beings and specific trust in people who will deliver the future/probabilistic rewards have been related to a stronger willingness to wait and to assume risk. Moreover, the tendency to trust others has been associated with the oxytocin receptor gene regulation that can be modified by life experiences. In this perspective, we hypothesized that differences in the tendency to wait and to take risks for a more desirable reward according to the proposer’s trustworthiness could be related to a different level of DNA methylation at the oxytocin receptor gene. Findings confirmed that participants are less willing to wait and to risk when the proposer is considered highly untrustworthy and revealed how higher oxytocin receptor gene DNA methylation is associated with a stronger effect due to the presence of an untrustworthy proposer. Limits and future directions are outlined

Sentence Comprehension in Context: Influence of Prior Visual Stimulation?

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Contextualized Sentence Comprehension in Nonfluent Aphasia: Predictiveness and Severity of Comprehension Impairment

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Hypoxia up-regulates SERPINB3 through HIF-2\u3b1 in human liver cancer cells.

SERPINB3 is a cysteine-proteases inhibitor up-regulated in a significant number of cirrhotic patients carrying hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and recently proposed as a prognostic marker for HCC early recurrence. SERPINB3 has been reported to stimulate proliferation, inhibit apoptosis and, similar to what reported for hypoxia, to trigger epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and increased invasiveness in liver cancer cells. This study has investigated whether SERPINB3 expression is regulated by hypoxia-related mechanisms in liver cancer cells. Exposure of HepG2 and Huh7 cells to hypoxia up-regulated SERPINB3 transcription, protein synthesis and release in the extracellular medium. Hypoxia-dependent SERPINB3 up-regulation was selective (no change detected for SERPINB4) and operated through hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)-2\u3b1 (not HIF-1\u3b1) binding to SERPINB3 promoter, as confirmed by chromatin immuno-precipitation assay and silencing experiments employing specific siRNAs. HIF-2\u3b1-mediated SERPINB3 up-regulation under hypoxic conditions required intracellular generation of ROS. Immuno-histochemistry (IHC) and transcript analysis, performed in human HCC specimens, revealed co-localization of the two proteins in liver cancer cells and the existence of a positive correlation between HIF-2\u3b1 and SERPINB3 transcript levels, respectively. Hypoxia, through HIF-2\u3b1-dependent and redox-sensitive mechanisms, up-regulates the transcription, synthesis and release of SERPINB3, a molecule with a high oncogenic potential

Time Post Onset and Contextualized Sentence Comprehension in Nonfluent Aphasia

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