Give CRISPR a chance : the GeneSprout Initiative

Did you know that a group of early-career researchers launched an initiative enabling open dialog on new plant breeding techniques, such as genome editing? We developed a wide-ranging initiative that aims to facilitate public engagement and provide a platform for young plant scientists to encourage participation in science communication

Temporal effects of lexical alignment: Evidence from task-oriented discourse

Foltz A, Gaspers J, Meyer C, Thiele K, Cimiano P, Stenneken P. Temporal effects of lexical alignment: Evidence from task-oriented discourse. Presented at the 11th International Symposium of Psycholinguistics, Tenerife, Spain.Alignment in communication, the adaptation to one’s communication partner, is a pervasive phenomenon in everyday life, which occurs at various linguistic levels (Pickering & Garrod, 2004). Numerous studies have shown reliable lexical and syntactic alignment in a dialog context (e.g. Branigan et al., 2000; 2011). Many of these studies have focused on alignment at one linguistic level, in a rather short time frame, and in a controlled experimental setting. This study focuses on how lexical and syntactic alignment evolves over time, that is, over a longer stretch of discourse. Pairs of participants played a game together in which they matched each other’s array of objects in a grid. During each round of the game, one participant (the instructor) described the position of five geometric shapes in different colors to his or her interlocutor (the slider). Instructors could see the slider’s array and thus monitor successful placement of the shapes. Once all shapes were placed correctly, participants switched roles until a total of eight rounds were completed. All pairs of participants moved the same shapes to the same locations in the same order. To test whether participants showed alignment in a setting where neither syntax nor lexical items were experimentally manipulated, we created a baseline by comparing the utterances of instructors and sliders who did not actually play together. The results showed reliable lexical and syntactic alignment compared to the baseline. In addition, we found that lexical alignment, but not syntactic alignment, increased over the course of the game. Furthermore, lexical alignment, but not syntactic alignment, contributed to task success: the higher lexical alignment, the faster participants completed the task. We discuss the results in relation to current models of alignment

Temporal Effects of Alignment in Text-Based, Task-Oriented Discourse

Foltz A, Gaspers J, Meyer C, Thiele K, Cimiano P, Stenneken P. Temporal Effects of Alignment in Text-Based, Task-Oriented Discourse. Discourse Processes. 2015;52(8):609-641.Communicative alignment refers to adaptation to one's communication partner. Temporal aspects of such alignment have been little explored. This paper examines temporal aspects of lexical and syntactic alignment (i.e. tendencies to use the interlocutor's lexical items and syntactic structures) in task-oriented discourse. In particular, we investigate whether lexical and syntactic alignment increases throughout the discourse, and whether alignment contributes to speedy task completion. We present data from a text-based chat game, where participants instructed each other on where to place objects in a grid. Our methodological approach allows calculating a robust baseline and revealed reliable lexical and syntactic alignment. However, only lexical alignment, but not syntactic alignment, was sensitive to temporal aspects in that only lexical alignment increased throughout the discourse and positively affected task completion time. We discuss how these results relate to the communicative task and mention implications for models of alignment

Relation of heart rate and its variability during sleep with age, physical activity, and body composition in young children

Background: Recent studies have claimed a positive effect of physical activity and body composition on vagal tone. In pediatric populations, there is a pronounced decrease in heart rate with age. While this decrease is often interpreted as an age-related increase in vagal tone, there is some evidence that it may be related to a decrease in intrinsic heart rate. This factor has not been taken into account in most previous studies. The aim of the present study was to assess the association between physical activity and/or body composition and heart rate variability (HRV) independently of the decline in heart rate in young children. Methods: Anthropometric measurements were taken in 309 children aged 2-6 years. Ambulatory electrocardiograms were collected over 14-18 h comprising a full night and accelerometry over 7 days. HRV was determined of three different night segments: (1) over 5 min during deep sleep identified automatically based on HRV characteristics; (2) during a 20 min segment starting 15 min after sleep onset; (3) over a 4-h segment between midnight and 4 a.m. Linear models were computed for HRV parameters with anthropometric and physical activity variables adjusted for heart rate and other confounding variables (e.g., age for physical activity models). Results: We found a decline in heart rate with increasing physical activity and decreasing skinfold thickness. HRV parameters decreased with increasing age, height, and weight in HR-adjusted regression models. These relationships were only found in segments of deep sleep detected automatically based on HRV or manually 15 min after sleep onset, but not in the 4-h segment with random sleep phases. Conclusions: Contrary to most previous studies, we found no increase of standard HRV parameters with age, however, when adjusted for heart rate, there was a significant decrease of HRV parameters with increasing age. Without knowing intrinsic heart rate correct interpretation of HRV in growing children is impossible

Systemic immune challenges trigger and drive Alzheimer-like neuropathology in mice

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most prevalent form of age-related dementia, and its effect on society increases exponentially as the population ages. Accumulating evidence suggests that neuroinflammation, mediated by the brain's innate immune system, contributes to AD neuropathology and exacerbates the course of the disease. However, there is no experimental evidence for a causal link between systemic inflammation or neuroinflammation and the onset of the disease. METHODS: The viral mimic, polyriboinosinic-polyribocytidilic acid (PolyI:C) was used to stimulate the immune system of experimental animals. Wild-type (WT) and transgenic mice were exposed to this cytokine inducer prenatally (gestation day (GD)17) and/or in adulthood. Behavioral, immunological, immunohistochemical, and biochemical analyses of AD-associated neuropathologic changes were performed during aging. RESULTS: We found that a systemic immune challenge during late gestation predisposes WT mice to develop AD-like neuropathology during the course of aging. They display chronic elevation of inflammatory cytokines, an increase in the levels of hippocampal amyloid precursor protein (APP) and its proteolytic fragments, altered Tau phosphorylation, and mis-sorting to somatodendritic compartments, and significant impairments in working memory in old age. If this prenatal infection is followed by a second immune challenge in adulthood, the phenotype is strongly exacerbated, and mimics AD-like neuropathologic changes. These include deposition of APP and its proteolytic fragments, along with Tau aggregation, microglia activation and reactive gliosis. Whereas Aβ peptides were not significantly enriched in extracellular deposits of double immune-challenged WT mice at 15 months, they dramatically increased in age-matched immune-challenged transgenic AD mice, precisely around the inflammation-induced accumulations of APP and its proteolytic fragments, in striking similarity to the post-mortem findings in human patients with AD. CONCLUSION: Chronic inflammatory conditions induce age-associated development of an AD-like phenotype in WT mice, including the induction of APP accumulations, which represent a seed for deposition of aggregation-prone peptides. The PolyI:C mouse model therefore provides a unique tool to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the earliest pathophysiological changes preceding fibrillary Aβ plaque deposition and neurofibrillary tangle formations in a physiological context of aging. Based on the similarity between the changes in immune-challenged mice and the development of AD in humans, we suggest that systemic infections represent a major risk factor for the development of AD

Impact of prenatal immune system disturbances on brain development

As research into various aging-associated neurodegenerative disorders reveals their immense pathophysiological complexity, the focus is currently shifting from studying changes in an advanced disease state to investigations involving pre-symptomatic periods, possible aberrations in early life, and even abnormalities in brain development. Recent studies on the etiology of schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders revealed a profound impact of neurodevelopmental disturbances on disease predisposition, onset and progression. Here, we discuss how a prenatal immune challenge can affect the developing brain-with a selective focus on the impact on microglia, the brain's immune cells-and the implications for brain aging and its associated risk of developing Alzheimer's disease