BACKGROUND Freezing of gait (FOG) remains one of the most common debilitating aspects of Parkinson's disease and has been linked to injuries, falls and reduced quality of life. Although commercially available portable cueing devices exist claiming to assist with overcoming freezing; their immediate effectiveness in overcoming gait initiation failure is currently unknown. This study investigated...

Cryopreservation of tissue slices greatly facilitates their use in drug metabolism research, leading to efficient use of human organ material and a decrease of laboratory animal use. In the present review, various mechanisms of cryopreservation such as equilibrium slow freezing, rapid freezing and vitrification, and their application to cryopreservation of tissue slices are discussed as well as...

BACKGROUND Freezing of gait is a debilitating and common gait disturbance observed in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Although the underlying mechanisms of freezing remain unclear, bilateral coordination of steps, measured as a phase coordination index, has been suggested to be related to freezing. Phase coordination index has not, however, been measured during tasks associated with ...

Introduction Since plants are immobile, they have to survive the various stresses that they encounter. Freezing is one of the severest stresses as it causes ice formation, dehydration and cell deformation. As plant tissues contain a large amount of water, the behaviour of cell water at subfreezing temperatures is a key to tissue survival. To withstand freezing, cold-hardy plants have developed ...

This study aimed to investigate the optimal freezing and thawing procedures for the survival of peripheral nerves in severed rabbit limbs. Twenty New Zealand White rabbits were randomized into four groups: normal control, slow-freezing fast-thawing, slow-freezing slow-thawing, fast-freezing fast-thawing, with five animals in each group. The hind limbs of the rabbits were severed at 1 cm above t...

Mice display an unconditioned freezing response to TMT, a predator odor isolated from fox feces. Here we found that in addition to freezing, TMT caused mice to decrease breathing rate, perhaps because of the aversive smell. Consistent with this possibility, olfactory bulb lesions attenuated this effect of TMT, as well as freezing. Interestingly, butyric acid, another foul odor, also caused mice...

Assessing freezing community response and whether freezing resistance is related to other functional traits is essential for understanding alpine community assemblages, particularly in Mediterranean environments where plants are exposed to freezing temperatures and summer droughts. Thus, we characterized the leaf freezing resistance of 42 plant species in 38 plots at Sierra de Guadarrama (Spain...