Immunohistochemical studies on brain nitric oxide synthase (bNOS) in the male genital accessory glands of the rat during postnatal development

The aim of the study was to investigate the presence, localisation and function of brain nitric oxide synthase (bNOS) in the male genital accessory glands of rats in the course of their postnatal development. Localisation of the bNOS was immunocytochemically investigated in the epididymis, seminal vesicle and ventral prostate of male Wistar strain rats at 1, 5, 10, 20, 28, 35, 45 and 59 days of age. The method employed involved mouse monoclonal antibodies against rat bNOS in combination with tyramide signal amplification (CSA). The intensity of the reaction in the organs studied was determined using computer software to demonstrate the optical density of the reaction product obtained. In the epididymis a weak reaction was observed in the connective tissue/muscular sublayer on the 28th and 45th days of life. In the seminal vesicle and ventral prostate a positive reaction appeared in the epinuclear portions of glandular epithelial cells on the 20th day of life, reaching a maximum intensity on the 28th day and thus before the rats reached maturity. The results obtained allow the conclusion to be drawn that nitric oxide resulting from bNOS-activity participates in the processes of differentiation and of function in the epididymis, seminal vesicle and ventral prostate

I overthink—Therefore I am not: An active inference account of altered sense of self and agency in depersonalisation disorder

This paper considers the phenomenology of depersonalisation disorder, in relation to predictive processing and its associated pathophysiology. To do this, we first establish a few mechanistic tenets of predictive processing that are necessary to talk about phenomenal transparency, mental action, and self as subject. We briefly review the important role of 'predicting precision' and how this affords mental action and the loss of phenomenal transparency. We then turn to sensory attenuation and the phenomenal consequences of (pathophysiological) failures to attenuate or modulate sensory precision. We then consider this failure in the context of depersonalisation disorder. The key idea here is that depersonalisation disorder reflects the remarkable capacity to explain perceptual engagement with the world via the hypothesis that "I am an embodied perceiver, but I am not in control of my perception". We suggest that individuals with depersonalisation may believe that 'another agent' is controlling their thoughts, perceptions or actions, while maintaining full insight that the 'other agent' is 'me' (the self). Finally, we rehearse the predictions of this formal analysis, with a special focus on the psychophysical and physiological abnormalities that may underwrite the phenomenology of depersonalisation

The role of the cerebellum in adaptation: ALE meta‐analyses on sensory feedback error

It is widely accepted that unexpected sensory consequences of self‐action engage the cerebellum. However, we currently lack consensus on where in the cerebellum, we find fine‐grained differentiation to unexpected sensory feedback. This may result from methodological diversity in task‐based human neuroimaging studies that experimentally alter the quality of self‐generated sensory feedback. We gathered existing studies that manipulated sensory feedback using a variety of methodological approaches and performed activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta‐analyses. Only half of these studies reported cerebellar activation with considerable variation in spatial location. Consequently, ALE analyses did not reveal significantly increased likelihood of activation in the cerebellum despite the broad scientific consensus of the cerebellum's involvement. In light of the high degree of methodological variability in published studies, we tested for statistical dependence between methodological factors that varied across the published studies. Experiments that elicited an adaptive response to continuously altered sensory feedback more frequently reported activation in the cerebellum than those experiments that did not induce adaptation. These findings may explain the surprisingly low rate of significant cerebellar activation across brain imaging studies investigating unexpected sensory feedback. Furthermore, limitations of functional magnetic resonance imaging to probe the cerebellum could play a role as climbing fiber activity associated with feedback error processing may not be captured by it. We provide methodological recommendations that may guide future studies

Putting ourselves in another’s skin: using the plasticity of self-perception to enhance empathy and decrease prejudice

The self is one the most important concepts in social cognition and plays a crucial role in determining questions such as which social groups we view ourselves as belonging to and how we relate to others. In the past decade, the self has also become an important topic within cognitive neuroscience with an explosion in the number of studies seeking to understand how different aspects of the self are represented within the brain. In this paper, we first outline the recent research on the neurocognitive basis of the self and highlight a key distinction between two forms of self-representation. The first is the “bodily” self, which is thought to be the basis of subjective experience and is grounded in the processing of sensorimotor signals. The second is the “conceptual” self, which develops through our interactions of other and is formed of a rich network of associative and semantic information. We then investigate how both the bodily and conceptual self are related to social cognition with an emphasis on how self-representations are involved in the processing and creation of prejudice. We then highlight new research demonstrating that the bodily and conceptual self are both malleable and that this malleability can be harnessed in order to achieve a reduction in social prejudice. In particular, we will outline strong evidence that modulating people’s perceptions of the bodily self can lead to changes in attitudes at the conceptual level. We will highlight a series of studies demonstrating that social attitudes towards various social out-groups (e.g. racial groups) can lead to a reduction in prejudice towards that group. Finally, we seek to place these findings in a broader social context by considering how innovations in virtual reality technology can allow experiences of taking on another’s identity are likely to become both more commonplace and more convincing in the future and the various opportunities and risks associated with using such technology to reduce prejudice

Evaluation of the mixing effect of solid materials by means of computer image analysis

Ocenę efektu mieszania plastikowych kuł w mieszalniku statycznym wykonano na podstawie analizy obrazu mieszaniny i parametrów charakteryzujących jego teksturę. Stwierdzono, że znajomość wartości parametrów jednolitość, entropia, homogeniczność i bezwładność może być pomocna w doborze długości drogi mieszania pozwalającej uzyskać zakładany efekt mieszania.Evaluation of the effect of plastic balls mixing in a static mixer was performed on basis of mixture image analysis and using texture characterizing parameters. It was found that the knowledge of such parameters as uniformity, entropy, homogeneity and inertia, can he useful in the determination of a proper mixing length allowing one to obtain the assumed mixing effect

Hygienic aspects of mixing station construction used in blending fruit concentrate with yoghurt and homogenised cheese

Przedstawiono rozwiązania konstrukcyjne elementów stacji dozowania i mieszania jogurtu i serka homogenizowanego z koncentratem owocowym firmy Zcnlis Polaka Sp. z o.n. mające wpływ na higienę procesu i produktu. Opisano szczegóły budowy zbiorników do przechowywania koncentratu, sposób ich podłączenia do instalacji, higieniczne aspekty budowy pompy, przepływomierza masowego i mieszadła statycznego.Construction of a station used for ingredients' dosing and their mixing with yoghurt and cream cheese was presented. Construction details of tanks for concentrate storage, a method of fitting them in the installation, hygienic aspects of a pump, static mixer and mass flowmeter were described

Effects of melatonin, testosterone and the two hormones administered in parallel on ventral prostate of the rat treated with stilbestrol in the first day of life

Effects of melatonin, testosterone and the two hormones administered in parallel on ventral prostate were examined in the rats treated with estrogens in the first day of life. Thirty-nine-day long hormonal stimulation with melatonin, testosterone or the two hormones in parallel was started in rats aged 20, 28, 35 or 45 days. A single dose of estrogens led to atrophy of ventral prostate when the animals reached maturity, which was associated with high LH levels and low testosterone levels in the serum. Melatonin accentuated estrogen-induced changes in prostate morphology of ventral prostate while initemporal administration of melatonin and testosterone led to a resultant effect of testosterone-induced stimulation and melatonin-induced inhibition