Institute of Psychology,Chinese Academy Of Sciences
Not a member yet
6627 research outputs found
Sort by
Long-Term Temporal Imprecision of Information Coding in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex of Mice with Peripheral Inflammation or Nerve Injury
No full textTemporal properties of spike firing in the central nervous system (CNS) are critical for neuronal coding and the precision of information storage. Chronic pain has been reported to affect cognitive and emotional functions, in addition to trigger long-term plasticity in sensory synapses and behavioral sensitization. Less is known about the possible changes in temporal precision of cortical neurons in chronic pain conditions. In the present study, we investigated the temporal precision of action potential firing in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) by using both in vivo and in vitro electrophysiological approaches. We found that peripheral inflammation caused by complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) increased the standard deviation (SD) of spikes latency (also called jitter) of similar to 51% of recorded neurons in the ACC of adult rats in vivo. Similar increases in jitter were found in ACC neurons using in vitro brain slices from adult mice with peripheral inflammation or nerve injury. Bath application of glutamate receptor antagonists CNQX and AP5 abolished the enhancement of jitter induced by CFA injection or nerve injury, suggesting that the increased jitter depends on the glutamatergic synaptic transmission. Activation of adenylyl cyclases (ACs) by bath application of forskolin increased jitter, whereas genetic deletion of AC1 abolished the change of jitter caused by CFA inflammation. Our study provides strong evidence for long-term changes of temporal precision of information coding in cortical neurons after peripheral injuries and explains neuronal mechanism for chronic pain caused cognitive and emotional impairment
How the speed of working memory updating influences the on-line thematic processing of simple sentences in Mandarin Chinese
No full textThis ERP study used electrophysiological technique to examine how individual differences in the speed of working memory updating influence the use of syntactic and semantic information during on-line sentence argument interpretation, and the time course of that working memory updating effect. The basic structure of the experimental sentences was "Noun + Verb + adverb + 'le' + a two-character word", with the Noun being the sentence initial argument. This initial argument is animate or inanimate and the following verb disambiguates it as an agent or patient. The results at the initial argument revealed that, the quick-updating group elicited a larger positivity over the frontal cortex (within 500-800 ms post-noun onset) as compared with the slow-updating group. At the following disambiguating verb, the slow-updating group only showed a word order effect, indicating that the patient-first condition elicited a larger P600 (within 500-1,000 ms post-verb onset) than the agent-first one; for the quick-updating group, at the early stage of processing, the patient-first sentences elicited a larger N400 (within 300-500 ms post-verb onset) than the agent-first ones only when the initial argument was inanimate; however, at the late stage, the patient-first sentences elicited an enhanced P600 (within 800-1,000 ms post-verb onset) only when the initial argument was animate. These results suggested that the speed of working memory updating not only influences the maintenance of sentence argument when the contents of working memory change but also influences the efficiency of integrating that argument with the verb at a late time point. When integrating the argument with the disambiguating verb, individuals with quick-updating ability can combine multiple sources of information (both noun animacy and word order), and conduct rapid and fine-grained two-stage processing; individuals with slow-updating ability, however, only rely on one dominant source of information types (word order), and conducted slow and course-grained processing
DNA damage and S phase arrest induced by Ochratoxin A in human embryonic kidney cells (HEK 293)
No full textOchratoxin A (OTA) is a ubiquitous mycotoxin with potential nephrotoxic, hepatotoxic and immunotoxic effects. The mechanisms underlying the nephrotoxicity of OTA remain obscure. To investigate DNA damage and the changes of the cell cycle distribution induced by OTA, human embryonic kidney cells (HEK 293 cells) were incubated with various concentrations of OTA for 24 h in vitro. The results indicated that OTA treatment led to the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and to a decrease of the mitochondrial membrane potential (Delta psi(m).). OTA-induced DNA damage in HEK 293 cells was evidenced by DNA comet tails formation and increased expression of gamma-H2AX. In addition, OTA could induce cell cycle arrest at the S phase in HEK 293 cells. The expression of key cell cycle regulatory factors that were critical to the S phase, including cyclin A2, cyclin El, and CDK2, were further detected. The expression of cyclin A2, cyclin El, and CDK2 were significantly decreased by OTA treatment at both the mRNA and protein levels. The apoptosis of HEK 293 cells after OTA treatment was observed using Hoechst 33342 staining. The results confirmed that OTA did induce apoptosis in HEK 293 cells. In conclusion, our results provided new insights into the molecular mechanisms by which OTA might promote nephrotoxicity. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Neurological Soft Signs Are Not "Soft" in Brain Structure and Functional Networks: Evidence From ALE Meta-Analysis
No full textBackground: Neurological soft signs (NSS) are associated with schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders. NSS have been conventionally considered as clinical neurological signs without localized brain regions. However, recent brain imaging studies suggest that NSS are partly localizable and may be associated with deficits in specific brain areas. Method: We conducted an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis to quantitatively review structural and functional imaging studies that evaluated the brain correlates of NSS in patients with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Six structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) and 15 functional magnetic -resonance imaging (fMRI) studies were included. Results: The results from meta-analysis of the sMRI studies-indicated that NSS were associated with atrophy of the precentral gyrus, the cerebellum, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the thalamus. The results from meta-analysis of the fMRI studies demonstrated that the NSS-related task was significantly associated with altered brain activation in the inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral putamen, the cerebellum, and the superior temporal gyrus. Conclusions: Ourfindings from both sMRI and fMRI meta-analyses further support the conceptualization of NSS as a manifestation of the "cerebello-thalamo-prefrontal" brain network model of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders
Word Segmentation of Overlapping Ambiguous Strings During Chinese Reading
No full textIn 3 experiments, we tested 3 possible mechanisms for segmenting overlapping ambiguous strings in Chinese reading. The first 2 characters and the last 2 characters in a 3-character ambiguous string could both constitute a word in the reported studies. The left-priority hypothesis assumes that the word on the left has an advantage in the competition and the other word cannot be processed until the word on the left is recognized. The independent processing hypothesis assumes that words in different positions are processed simultaneously and independently, and the word segmentation ambiguity cannot be settled without the help of sentence context. The competition hypothesis assumes that all of the words compete for a single winner. The results support a competition account that the characters in the perceptual span activate all of the words they can constitute, and any word can win the competition if its activation is high enough
Distinct structural neural patterns of trait physical and social anhedonia: Evidence from cortical thickness, subcortical volumes and inter-regional correlations
No full textAnhedonia is an enduring trait accounting for the reduced capacity to experience pleasure. Few studies have investigated the brain structural features associated with trait anhedonia. In this study, the relationships between cortical thickness, volume of subcortical structures and scores on the Chapman physical and social anhedonia scales were examined in a non clinical sample (n=72, 35 males). FreeSurfer was used to examine the cortical thickness and the volume of six identified subcortical structures related to trait anhedonia. We found that the cortical thickness of the superior frontal gyrus and the volume of the pallidum in the left hemisphere were Correlated with anhedonia scores in both physical and social aspects. Specifically, positive correlations were found between levels of social anhedonia and the thickness of the postcentral and the inferior parietal gyri. Cortico-subcortical inter-correlations between these clusters were also observed. Our findings revealed distinct correlation patterns of neural substrates with trait physical and social anhedonia in a non-clinical sample. These findings contribute to the understanding of the pathologies underlying the anhedonia phenotype in schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved
Probability expression for changeable and changeless uncertainties: an implicit test
No full text"Everything changes and nothing remains still." We designed three implicit studies to understand how people react or adapt to a rapidly changing world by testing whether verbal probability is better in expressing changeable uncertainty while numerical probability is better in expressing unchangeable uncertainty. We found that the "verbal-changeable" combination in implicit tasks was more compatible than the "numerical-changeable" combination. Furthermore, the "numerical-changeless" combination was more compatible than the "verbal-changeless" combination. Thus, a novel feature called "changeability" was proposed to describe the changeable nature of verbal probability. However, numerical probability is a better carrier of changeless uncertainty than verbal probability. These results extend the domain of probability predictions and enrich our general understanding of communication with verbal and numerical probabilities. Given that the world around us is constantly changing, this "changeability" feature may play a major role in preparing for uncertainty
The Effects of the Relationships Between Object Features on Multiple-Identity Tracking
No full textSimultaneous tracking of multiple moving objects is essential in tasks such as traffic control, automobile driving, and scene surveillance. Recently, an increasing number of studies have focused on the roles of object identity and location binding in unique target tracking tasks, but contradictory results have been reported. In the present study, we introduced for the first time the Stroop stimuli of Chinese characters to the multiple-identity tracking paradigm, taking advantage of the ease to control the overall size, familiarity, and visual complexity of the Chinese characters. The results showed that when the observers were asked to track unique objects that bear two distinct features, the feature conflict disrupted the tracking performance, even when the given object has a distinctive identity. Our data revealed that the internal disaccord of semantic and physical features on an object can disturb the identity-location binding process in a multiple-identity tracking task, but does not affect the location information significantly
P300 Aberration in First-Episode Schizophrenia Patients: A Meta-Analysis
No full textBackground: Decreased P300 amplitude is one of the most consistent findings in patients with schizophrenia. However, whether prolonged P300 latency occurs in patients with schizophrenia, especially first-episode schizophrenia (FES) patients, remains controversial
The relationship between moral judgment and cooperation in children with high-functioning autism
No full textThis study investigated moral judgment in children with high-functioning autism and their cooperation in prisoner's dilemma game with partners of different moralities. Thirty-eight 6-to 12-year-old high-functioning autistic (HFA) children and 31 typically developing (TD) children were recruited. Children were asked to judge story protagonists' morality. After making this moral judgment correctly, they were asked to play with the morally nice and the morally naughty child in a repeated prisoner's dilemma game. Results showed that both HFA and TD children made correct moral judgments, and that HFA children might even have more rigid criteria for what constitutes morally naughty acts. HFA children's cooperation did not differ depending on the morality of the interaction partner, while TD children showed higher cooperation when interacting with the morally nice than the morally naughty child did. Thus, partner's morality did influence TD children's but not HFA children's subsequent cooperation
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Institute of Psychology,Chinese Academy Of Sciences? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!