The responses of visual cortical neurons to natural stimuli are both reliable and sparse. These properties require inhibition, yet the contribution of specific types of inhibitory neurons is not well understood. Here we demonstrate that optogenetic suppression of parvalbumin (PV)- but not somatostatin (SOM)-expressing interneurons reduces response reliability in the primary visual cortex of ana...

BACKGROUND Practical hormonal male contraceptive regimens are likely to have delayed onset and offset of reliable contraception dictated by the length of the spermatogenic cycle and clearance rate of pre-formed sperm from the ductular system. While delayed onset of contraceptive efficacy is an accepted feature of vasectomy, reliable time estimates for a hormonal male contraceptive of time to on...

The tendency for emotions to be predictable over time, labelled emotional inertia, has been linked to low well-being and is thought to reflect impaired emotion regulation. However, almost no studies have examined how emotion regulation relates to emotional inertia. We examined the effects of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression on the inertia of behavioural, subjective and physiolog...

BACKGROUND The paper presents a method of linear time-varying filtering, with extremely low computational costs, for the suppression of baseline drift in electrocardiographic (ECG) signals. An ECG signal is not periodic as the length of its heart cycles vary. In order to optimally suppress baseline drift by the use of a linear filter, we need a high-pass filter with time-varying cut-off frequen...

Quantifying the effect of vital resources on transcription (TX) and translation (TL) helps to understand the degree to which the concentration of each resource must be regulated for achieving homeostasis. Utilizing the synthetic TX-TL system, we study the impact of nucleotide triphosphates (NTPs) and magnesium (Mg2þ) on gene expression. Recent observations of the counter-intuitive phenomenon of...

| The wideband code-division multiple access (CDMA) concept (FMA2) developed in the European FRAMES AC090 project supports variable data rate transmission. The data rate can be altered by changing either the spreading factor or by using multiple spreading codes in parallel. In order to facilitate exible changing of data rate, orthogonal Walsh codes are used for channel separation, followed by s...

We present systematic evidence for the origins of 1/f -type temporal scaling in human heart rate. The heart rate is regulated by the activity of two branches of the autonomic nervous system: the parasympathetic (PNS) and the sympathetic (SNS) nervous systems. We examine alterations in the scaling property when the balance between PNS and SNS activity is modified, and find that the relative PNS ...

Burst suppression is an electroencepholagram (EEG) pattern in which high-voltage activity alternates with isoelectric quiescence. It is characteristic of an inactivated brain and is commonly observed at deep levels of general anesthesia, hypothermia, and in pathological conditions such as coma and early infantile encephalopathy. We propose a unifying mechanism for burst suppression that account...

PURPOSE To improve 3D volume-selective turbo spin echo (TSE) carotid artery wall imaging by incorporating navigators to reduce artifacts caused by swallowing. MATERIALS AND METHODS Images were acquired on a Siemens Magnetom Sonata 1.5T scanner. 3D volume-selective TSE scans of the carotid arteries were acquired in six healthy volunteers. A cross-pair navigator placed on the back of the tongue...

When feeding from tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), the generalist spider mite Tetranychus urticae induces jasmonate (JA)- and salicylate (SA)-regulated defense responses that hamper its performance. The related T. evansi, a Solanaceae-specialist, suppresses these defenses, thereby upholding a high performance. On a shared leaf, T. urticae can be facilitated by T. evansi, likely via suppression of...