Recent origin of a hominoid-specific splice form of neuropsin, a gene involved in learning and memory

Neuropsin is a secreted-type serine protease involved in learning and memory. The type II splice form of neuropsin is abundantly expressed in the human brain but not in the mouse brain. We sequenced the type II-spliced region of neuropsin gene in humans and representative nonhuman primate species. Our comparative sequence analysis showed that only the hominoid species (humans and apes) have the intact open reading frame of the type II splice form, indicating that the type II neuropsin originated recently in the primate lineage about 18 MYA. Expression analysis using RT-PCR detected abundant expression of the type II form in the frontal lobe of the adult human brain, but no expression was detected in the brains of lesser apes and Old World monkeys, indicating that the type II form of neuropsin only became functional in recent time, and it might contribute to the progressive change of cognitive abilities during primate evolution.

不同智力水平儿童的自我调控特点

Self-regulation has recently become an important topic in cognitive and developmental domain. According to previous theories and experimental studies, it is shown that self-regulation consist of both a personality (or social) aspect and a behavioral cognitive aspect of psychology. Self-regulation can be divided into self-regulation personality and self-regulation ability. In the present study researches have been carried out from two perspectives: child development and individual differences. We are eager to explore the characteristics of self-regulation in terms of human cognitive development. In the present study, we chose two groups of early adolescences one with high intelligence and the other with normal intelligence. In Study One Questionnaires were used to compare whether the highly intelligent group had had better self-regulation personality than the normal group. In Study Two experimental psychology tasks were used to compare whether highly intelligent children had had better self-regulation cognitive abilities than their normal peers. Finally, in Study Three we combined the results of Study One and Study Two to further explore the neural mechanisms for highly intelligent children with respect to their good self-regulation abilities. Some main results and conclusions are as follows: (1) Questionnaire results showed that highly intelligent children had better self-regulation personalities, and they got higher scores on the personalities related to self-regulation such as, self-reliance, stability, rule-consciousness. They also got higher scores on self-consciousness which meant that they could know their own self better than the normal children. (2) Among the three levels of cognitive difficulties in self-regulation abilities, the highly intelligent children had faster reaction speed than normal children in the primary self-regulation tasks. In the intermediate self-regulation tasks, highly intelligent children’s inhibition processing and executive processing were both better than their normal peers. In the advanced self-regulation tasks, highly intelligent children again had faster reaction speed and more reaction accuracy than their normal peers when facing with conflict and inconsistency experimental conditions,. Regression model’s results showed that primary and advanced self-regulation abilites had larger predictive power than intermediate self-regualation ability. (3) Our neural experiments showed that highly intelligent children had more efficient neural automatic processing ability than normal children. They also had better, faster and larger neural reaction to novel stimuli under pre-attentional condition which made good and firm neural basis for self-regualation. Highly intelligent children had more mature frontal lobe and pariental functions for inhibition processing and executive processing. P3 component in ERP was closely related to executive processing which mainly activated pariental function. There were two time-periods for inhibition processing—first it was the pariental function and later it was the coordination function of frontal and pariental lobes. While conflict control task had pariental N2 and frontal-pariental P3 neural sources, highly intelligent children had much smaller N2 and shorter P3 latency than normal children. Inconsistency conditions induced larger N2 than conditions without inconsistency, and conditions without inconsistency (or Conflict) induced higher P3 amplitudes than with Inconsistency (or Conflict) conditions. In conclusion, the healthy development of self-regulation was very important for children’s personality and cognition maturity, and self-regulation had its own specific characteristics in ways of presentation and ways of development. Better understanding of self-regulation can further help the exploration of the nature of human intelligence and consciousness.

联想启动效应及其脑机制研究

By now, there are still many unsolved questions about associative priming. This study used process dissociation paradigm, perceptual identification task and speeded naming task,together with near infrared spectroscopy, to investigate priming for new associations and its brain mechanisms systematically. The results showed there was interaction between level of processing and unitization in affecting associative priming. When comparing with shallow encoding unrelated word pairs, the activation of both sides of prefrontal lobe was stronger, which suggested prefrontal lobe had relations with memory for new associations. Medial temporal lobe and frontal lobe lesioned patients were tested respectively using methods of perceptual identification task and speeded naming task. Both brain regions participated in associative priming. Medial temporal lobe mediated unitization between unrelated items. Frontal lobe contributed to priming for new associations by elaborative processing, inhibiting irrelevant information, selective attending to tasks, and establishing some effective strategies. In addition, normal subjects needed to aware the relationship between study and test to form associative priming and densely memory deficit patients could not form memory for new associations. In conclusion, the results further demonstrated that perceptual representation system could not support priming for new associations alone. Medial temporal lobe and frontal lobe played roles in priming for new associations, and there was some relation between associative priming and conscious retrieval processing.

Age-related effects of bilateral frontal eye fields lesions on rapid eye movements during REM sleep in rhesus monkeys

Rapid eye movement (REM) is one of the most characteristic features of REM sleep, but the mechanisms underlying its regulation remain unclear. The present study aims to investigate whether the frontal eye field (FEF) is involved in the regulation of the r

Neuronal activity in dorsomedial frontal cortex and prefrontal cortex reflecting irrelevant stimulus dimensions

Previous studies of the dorsomedial frontal cortex (DMF) and the prefrontal cortex (PF) have shown that, when monkeys respond to nonspatial features of a discriminative stimulus (e.g., color) and the stimulus appears at a place unrelated to the movement t

Frontal and cingulate gray matter volume reduction in heroin dependence: Optimized voxel-based morphometry

Aims: Repeated exposure to heroin, a typical opiate, causes neuronal adaptation and may result in anatomical changes in specific brain regions, particularly the frontal and limbic cortices. The volume changes of gray matter (GM) of these brain regions, ho

Design of surface emitting distributed feedback quantum cascade laser with single-lobe far-field pattern and high outcoupling efficiency

A 7.8-mu m surface emitting second-order distributed feedback quantum cascade laser (DFB QCL) structure with metallized surface grating is studied. The modal property of this structure is described by utilizing coupled-mode theory where the coupling coefficients are derived from exact Floquet-Bloch solutions of infinite periodic structure. Based on this theory, the influence of waveguide structure and grating topography as well as device length on the laser performance is numerically investigated. The optimized surface emitting second-order DFB QCL structure design exhibits a high surface outcoupling efficiency of 22% and a low threshold gain of 10 cm(-1). Using a pi phase-shift in the centre of the grating, a high-quality single-lobe far-field radiation pattern is obtained.

Study on the interaction between strychnine and bovine serum albumin by capillary electrophoretic frontal analysis

The protein binding constant, binding sites of the Strychnos alkaloid-strychnine and bovine serum albumin (BSA) was determined by capillary electrophoretic frontal analysis (CE-FA) for the first time. The experiment was carried out in a polyacrylamide-coated fused silica capillary (48.4 cmx50 mu m i.d., 38.1 cm effective length) with 20 mmol/L citrate/MES buffer (pH 6.0, ionic strength 0.17). The applied voltage was 12 kV and detection wavelength was set at 257 nm. The plateau height of the peak was employed to determine the unbound concentration of drug in BSA equilibrated sample solution based on the external drug standard in the absence of protein. The present method provides a convenient, accurate technique for the early stage of drug screening.

Evaluation of nonlinear chromatographic performance by frontal analysis using a simple multi-plate mathematical model

A multi-plate (NIP) mathematical model was proposed by frontal analysis to evaluate nonlinear chromatographic performance. One of its advantages is that the parameters may be easily calculated from experimental data. Moreover, there is a good correlation between it and the equilibrium-dispersive (E-D) or Thomas models. This shows that it can well accommodate both types of band broadening that is comprised of either diffusion-dominated processes or kinetic sorption processes. The MP model can well describe experimental breakthrough curves that were obtained from membrane affinity chromatography and column reversed-phase liquid chromatography. Furthermore, the coefficients of mass transfer may be calculated according to the relationship between the MP model and the E-D or Thomas models. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

太阳风动量涨落激发磁层亚暴的机制

本文将太阳风涨落传输能量产生磁层亚暴的机制推广到无碰撞等离子体过程。太阳风的涨落在磁层顶激发压缩阿尔文波,并在磁尾的无碰撞等离子体中传播。尾瓣中满足条件β<<1,而等离子体片中β≥1,其中β为等离子体压力与磁压之比。这样,快磁声波在尾瓣中几乎不衰减,而在等离子体片中很快衰减,将波动能量耗散在等离子体片中使等离子体加热或者粒子加速。这种机制还表明,磁尾等离子体片中的高能粒子可以由太阳风涨落动能耗散而被加速,不一定是直接源于太阳。

Angular distribution and conversion of multi-keV L-shell X-ray sources produced from nanosecond laser irradiated thick-foil targets

An experimental study on the angular distribution and conversion of multi-keV X-ray sources produced from 2 ns-duration 527nm laser irradiated thick-foil targets on Shenguang II laser facility (SG-II) is reported. The angular distributions measured in front of the targets can be fitted with the function of f(theta) = alpha+ (1- alpha)cos(beta) theta (theta is the viewing angle relative to the target normal), where alpha = 0.41 +/- 0.014, beta = 0.77 +/- 0.04 for Ti K-shell X-ray Sources (similar to 4.75 keV for Ti K-shell), and alpha = 0.085 +/- 0.06, beta = 0.59 +/- 0.07 for Ag/Pd/Mo L-shell X-ray Sources (2-2.8 keV for Mo L-shell, 2.8-3.5 keV for Pd L-shell, and 3-3.8 keV for Ag L-shell). The isotropy of the angular-distribution of L-shell emission is worse than that of the K-shell emission at larger viewing angle (>70 degrees), due to its larger optical depth (stronger self-absorption) in the cold plasma side lobe Surrounding the central emission region, and in the central hot plasma region (emission region). There is no observable difference in the angular distributions of the L-shell X-ray emission among Ag, Pd, and Mo. The conversion efficiency of Ag/Pd/Mo L-shell X-ray sources is higher than that of the Ti K-shell X-ray sources, but the gain relative to the K-shell emission is not as high as that by using short pulse lasers. The conversion efficiency of the L-shell X-ray sources decrease, with increasing atomic numbers (or X-ray photon energy), similar to the behavior of the K-shell X-ray Source.

Continuous radial superresolution filters with large focal depth

A new set of continuous superresolution filters is proposed which exhibits a radial superresolution performance with an extended depth of focus in an optical system by properly choosing the design parameters. Numerical simulation results of the performance parameters of the superresolution gain, the radial central core size, the Strehl ratio, the side-lobe factor and the depth of focus with different design parameters for the optimized patterns are displayed. We also give a design example for this kind of filter characterized by a birefringent element inserted between two parallel polarizers. This kind of filter would be useful in fields such as optical data storage systems.

Parasitic lasing suppression in high gain femtosecond petawatt Ti: sapphire amplifier

New parasitic lasing suppression techniques are developed and high gain amplification is demonstrated in a petawatt level Ti:sapphire amplifier based on the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) scheme. Cladding the large aperture Ti: sapphire with refractive-index matched liquid doped with absorber suppresses the transverse lasing. The acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (AOPDF) is used to realize side-lobe suppression in the temporal profile of the compressed pulse. The 800 nm laser output with peak power of 0.89 PW and pulse width of 29.0 fs is demonstrated. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.