Getting muscles moving again after botulinum toxin: novel therapeutic challenges

The use of botulinum neurotoxins for the treatment of muscle hyperactivity and spasticity disorders has been remarkably successful, owing to the abilities of the toxins to elicit prolonged localized paralysis and the rarity of serious adverse effects. However, botulinum toxins are the most deadly protein toxins known, and existing antidotes possess limited effectiveness. Paradoxically, in situ, the intoxicated motoneuron does not die. It reacts by emanating a sprouting network known to implement new functional synapses, leading to resumption of neurotransmission. Recent studies have highlighted ways of accelerating this natural recovery process to overcome paralysis successfully. Developing new therapeutic strategies and treatments for botulism will require more research into the molecular understanding of this 'naturally occurring' recovery process.

The specification of vector autoregressive moving average models

In this paper we propose a new identification method based on the residual white noise autoregressive criterion (Pukkila et al. , 1990) to select the order of VARMA structures. Results from extensive simulation experiments based on different model structures with varying number of observations and number of component series are used to demonstrate the performance of this new procedure. We also use economic and business data to compare the model structures selected by this order selection method with those identified in other published studies.

Moving molecules: mRNA trafficking in mammalian oligodendrocytes and neurons

Numerous mRNA molecules are localized in regions of the dendrites of neurons, some moving along dendrites in response to synaptic activity. The proteins encoded by these RNAs have diverse functions, including participation in memory formation and long-term potentiation. Recent experiments have shown that a cytoplasmic RNA trafficking pathway described for oligodendrocytes also operates in neurons. Transported RNAs possess a cis-acting element that directs them to granules, which are transported along microtubules by the motor proteins kinesin and dynein. These RNA molecules are recruited to the cytoplasmic transport granules by cooperative interaction with a cognate trans-acting factor. mRNAs containing the 11-nucleotide A2RE11 or 21-nucleotide A2RE sequences bind heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins A2 and A3, which are abundant in the brain. Mutations in this cis-acting element that weaken its interaction with hnRNP A2 also interfere with RNA trafficking. Several dendritically localized mRNAs, including those encoding calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein kinase 11 a subunit and neurogranin, possess A2RE-like sequences, suggesting that they may be localized by interaction with these heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins. Calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein kinase 11 a subunit is of particular interest: Its RNA is transported in depolarized neurons, and the protein it encodes is essential for establishing long-term memory. Several other cis-acting sequences and trans-acting factors that participate in neuronal RNA localization have been discovered.

Origins and early development of human body knowledge

As a knowable object, the human body is highly complex. Evidence from several converging lines of research, including psychological studies, neuroimaging and clinical neuropsychology, indicates that human body knowledge is widely distributed in the adult brain, and is instantiated in at least three partially independent levels of representation. Sensori-motor body knowledge is responsible for on-line control and movement of one's own body and may also contribute to the perception of others' moving bodies; visuo-spatial body knowledge specifies detailed structural descriptions of the spatial attributes of the human body; and lexical-semantic body knowledge contains language-based knowledge about the human body. In the first chapter of this Monograph, we outline the evidence for these three hypothesized levels of human body knowledge, then review relevant literature on infants' and young children's human body knowledge in terms of the three-level framework. In Chapters II and III, we report two complimentary series of studies that specifically investigate the emergence of visuospatial body knowledge in infancy. Our technique is to compare infants' responses to typical and scrambled human bodies, in order to evaluate when and how infants acquire knowledge about the canonical spatial layout of the human body. Data from a series of visual habituation studies indicate that infants first discriminate scrambled from typical human body pictures at 15 to 18 months of age. Data from object examination studies similarly indicate that infants are sensitive to violations of three-dimensional human body stimuli starting at 15-18 months of age. The overall pattern of data supports several conclusions about the early development of human body knowledge: (a) detailed visuo-spatial knowledge about the human body is first evident in the second year of life, (b) visuo-spatial knowledge of human faces and human bodies are at least partially independent in infancy and (c) infants' initial visuo-spatial human body representations appear to be highly schematic, becoming more detailed and specific with development. In the final chapter, we explore these conclusions and discuss how levels of body knowledge may interact in early development.

Snakes and cats in the flower bed: Fast detection is not specific to pictures of fear-relevant animals

The observation that snakes and spiders are found faster among flowers and mushrooms than vice versa and that this search advantage is independent of set size supports the notion that fear-relevant stimuli are processed preferentially in a dedicated fear module. Experiment I replicated the faster identification of snakes and spiders but also found a set size effect in a blocked, but not in a mixed-trial, sequence. Experiment 2 failed to find faster identification of snake and spider deviants relative to other animals among flowers and mushrooms and provided evidence for a search advantage for pictures of animals, irrespective of their fear relevance. These findings suggest that results from the present visual search task cannot support the notion of preferential processing of fear relevance.

Moving and dancing towards decolonisation in education: An example from an Indigenous Australian performance classroom

This paper explores the special type of thinking, moving and dancing place which is opened up for decolonisaton when students engage in an embodied pedagogical practice in Indigenous education. The author examines what decolonisation means in this context by describing the ways in which the curriculum, the students and teacher, and more generally the discipline of ethnomusicology itself, undergo a process to question, critique, and move aside the pedagogical script of colonialism in order to allow Indigenous ways of understanding music and dance to be presented, privileged and empowered. Key questions are: What is the relationship between embodiment and disembodiment and decolonisation and colonisation? In what ways is embodiment more than, or other than, the presence of moving bodies? In what ways is performativity an aspect of power/knowledge/subject formations? How can it be theorised? What could the pedagogical scripts of decolonisation look like?

Attentional bias to pictures of fear-relevant animals in a dot probe task

Attentional bias to fear-relevant animals was assessed in 69 participants not preselected on self-reported anxiety with the use of a dot probe task showing pictures of snakes, spiders, mushrooms, and flowers. Probes that replaced the fear-relevant stimuli (snakes and spiders) were found faster than probes that replaced the non-fear-relevant stimuli, indicating an attentional bias in the entire sample. The bias was not correlated with self-reported state or trait anxiety or with general fearfulness. Participants reporting higher levels of spider fear showed an enhanced bias to spiders, but the bias remained significant in low scorers. The bias to snake pictures was not related to snake fear and was significant in high and low scorers. These results indicate preferential processing of fear-relevant stimuli in an unselected sample.

Of snakes and flowers: Does preferential detection of pictures of fear-relevant animals in visual search reflect on fear-relevance?

Previous research in visual search indicates that animal fear-relevant deviants, snakes/spiders, are found faster among non fear-relevant backgrounds, flowers/mushrooms, than vice versa. Moreover, deviant absence was indicated faster among snakes/spiders and detection time for flower/mushroom deviants, but not for snake/spider deviants, increased in larger arrays. The current research indicates that the latter 2 results do not reflect on fear-relevance, but are found only with flower/mushroom controls. These findings may reflect on factors such as background homogeneity, deviant homogeneity, or background-deviant similarity. The current research removes contradictions between previous studies that used animal and social fear-relevant stimuli and indicates that apparent search advantages for fear-relevant deviants seem likely to reflect on delayed attentional disengagement from fear-relevance on control trials.