Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering (Discontinued) - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2015

Our previous study have found that deficits in areas of spatial learning, memory, planning and problem solving lead to abnormal processing, which results in a decline of tactile angle discrimination in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, certain issues regarding the previous apparatus have been identified: 1) Angle stimuli need to be replaced rapidly, which leads to the experimental time being longer, and 2) The apparatus was not a portable and automated device. In the present, we developed a novel automated device to be used for clinical purposes that assesses cognitive function in regard to tactile senses. Then, a tactile angle discrimination experiment was conducted to investigate the cognitive characteristics of four groups: young subjects (n=20), normally aged elderly (NC) (n=16), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) patients (n=16) and AD patients (n=14). The results indicated that we decreased the examination time to more than half of what the examination time with the previous apparatus was. We found that AD patients’ ability to discriminate between tactile angles was significantly poorer than NC subjects. We expect the device to be one of the platforms that will be used for the early detection of AD, which was previously difficult to perform due to the lack of international standards.

Background: Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) such as Coursera, Moodle and edX have become increasingly popular. However, achieving self-regulated learning (SRL) remains an ongoing challenge in current VLEs. Diaries are instruments through which students can reflect on their learning experiences and the use of a diary is important for gathering various kinds of information. Also, diaries help to obtain valid data on daily learning experiences and progress. This paper explores the use of a diary to enhance student self-regulation while learning in a VLE. Methods: The experimental period lasted 4 weeks. Participants studied 10 lessons in a VLE with one e-quiz after each lesson. They also interacted with teachers and other students on the Facebook pages. A YouTube channel was used to help students upload their project progress reports (e.g., videos). Only the experimental group participants were using Google forms to write diaries. Every student in both groups answered the questionnaire (pre–test) to identify the (SRL) level of each student and every student answered a post–test questionnaire so we could measure and compare results and relative progress. Results: In almost all cases, participants from the experimental and the control groups improved their Self-Regulated Learning abilities in the VLE, however, there was more improvement in the experimental group than in the control group in almost all aspects of SRL. The study indicates that the use of a diary increases the number of correct answers in SRL questionnaires and develops self-regulation behaviour among students above and beyond the level attained when studying in a VLE without writing diary. After analysing 200 diary files from the experimental group students we found that their performances had improved significantly above and beyond the control group results which confirms that writing a diary while studying in a VLE has positive effects on student SRL. Conclusion: Writing diaries had a significantly positive effect on improving the students’ self-regulation compared with studying in a VLE without writing a diary. There are multiple benefits. Some of these are the sense of personal ownership of design objectives and thus greater motivation to be engaged, personal adjustments made to the study environment, personal planning, the establishment of personal priorities and self-reliance. Diary use also develops the students’ capacity for self-accounting. We expect that the use of diaries in virtual learning environments will open up an entirely new range of research issues for educational purposes and for human development.

Background: In daily life, visual information plays an important role to improve accuracy of auditory perception, and such phenomenon might be explained by audio-visual integration. However, audio-visual integration differs between genders, i.e., female tends to perceive voice with mouth movement more accurately. In this study, we examined gender differences of cerebral processing of audio-visual information. Methods: Cerebral processing was examined in male and female participants under different audio-visual conditions: 1) Auditory (A) condition: presentation of white-noise (noise) or a vowel (/a/ or /i/) pronounced by a male; 2) Visual (V) condition: presentation of a face image pronouncing a vowel ([a] or [i]), 3) Audio-Visual (AV) condition: simultaneous presentation of auditory (noise or vowel) and visual stimuli. Participants were asked to press a button when the vowel /a/ or noise was presented in the A or AV condition. Subtracted auditory ERPs in the AV condition (congruent: /a/ with [a]-[a] and incongruent: /a/ with [i]-[i]) were compared to ERPs in the A condition (auditory /a/). Results: In the AV condition, amplitude of auditory P2 in the male participants was smaller than that in the females, whether the stimulus set was congruent or incongruent. The lower P2 amplitude in males may have been caused by overlapping of negative components, which may be related to selective attention. Subtracted visual ERPs in the AV condition (congruent: [a] with /a/-/a/ and incongruent: [a] with /i/-/i/) were compared to ERPs in the V condition (visual [a]). Amplitude of visual N170 to congruent stimuli was smaller than that for alone visual stimuli only for the females. Conclusion: Lower amplitude of the N170 may reflect enhanced facial processing in females. Gender differences in audio-visual information processing were discussed.

Objectives: A new information medicine device (Vita Chip) was tested regarding its ability to alter pain dynamics and wellbeing. The Vita Chip is designed to store healing information and to resonate with cells. Methods: Two prospective documentation studies were carried out with individuals suffering from various forms of chronic pain. In both studies participants applied two Vita Chips on the pain sites for one hour on each day pain occurred. In study 1, the effects were tested against a natural control condition (crossover design). In study 2, a (pseudo) placebo device was employed in one condition to test for placebo effects. Main dependent variables were pain intensity, onset of pain relief, pain duration, and wellbeing. Results: In both studies, the Vita Chips produced large pain reduction effects (Cohen’s d). The changes in onset of pain relief, pain duration, and wellbeing indicated high practical relevance. The reduction of pain intensity was not due to placebo effects. Instead, the specific effect outperformed the unspecific effect by more than 150 percent. Discussion: The pattern of results suggests that the Vita Chip produces practically relevant pain alleviating effects. It constitutes a safe and effective alternative for pain management in subclinical individuals.

Background: Discovering mechanism of pathogenesis, growth or metastasis of triplenegative breast cancer (TNBC) is necessary to establish future therapy. An effective analysis is required for microarray information to identify genes highly involved to a disease phenotype from thousands of genes. Methods: We have applied self-organizing map, a clustering method that could simplify complex high-dimensional data as concise low-dimensional and graphical maps, for analysis of large amounts of microarray data. In this study, similarities of expression data of the genes expressing in breast cancer were visually represented by spherical self-organizing map (sSOM). Results: sSOM presented transcription factor MYBL1 as an inversely-related gene to estrogen receptor (ER) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) associating itself to subtypes of breast cancer. MYBL1 correlated to cell growth related genes including Wnt/β-catenin signal or cancer stem cell-associated gene CD44, implying its involvement in the growth of TNBC. Conclusion: sSOM showed transcription factor MYBL1 has negatively related to expression pattern to ER/HER2 and associates itself with other cell growth related genes in breast cancer.

Background: 3-Nitropropionic acid (3-NPA), a toxin of fungal origin irreversibly inhibits mitochondrial succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) causing selective degeneration of striatal neurons. There have been studies on the effects of 3-NPA and modulation using various phytochemicals and other molecules on striatum, but there is a lacunae of information regarding the response of other brain regions viz., cortex, cerebellum and hippocampus. Hence the current study is centered on the effect of 3-NPA exposure on the mitochondria of these brain regions. Methods: There were 4 groups: Group IControl; Group II- Bacopa monnieri alone (BM); Group III-3-NPA (ip 75mg/kg bw/ 2days) and sacrificed 24 hrs after the last injection; Group IV-pretreated with 3-NPA for 10 days and later injected with 3-NPA.Various biochemical parameters related to oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunctions were carried out. Results: We observed an increase in Oxidative stress (OS) markers in mitochondria of all regions studied in 3-NPA group, where as there was no appreciable damage in prophylaxis group. There was a decrease in reduced glutathione (GSH), total thiols and non-protein thiols in 3- NPA group which was not observed in prophylaxis group. The alterations in antioxidant enzymes observed in 3-NPA group were normalized in prophylaxis group. Further the alterations in mitochondrial functional enzymes, mitochondrial Electron Transport Chain enzymes, Thioredoxin reductase, Na+K+ ATP ase, mitochondrial swelling and mitochondrial reductase activity (MTT) were normalized to various degrees in the BM pretreated group. Conclusion: The study validates the potency of BM extract to mitigate oxidative stress related alterations and mitochondrial dysfunctions induced by 3-NPA.

Background: Bipolar disorder is often misdiagnosed as unipolar depression in clinical practice although both of them are thought to be associated with the dysfunction of glutamate/GABA transmission. Recent studies have detected the changes in glutamate and GABA levels by means of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in patients with bipolar disorder and unipolar depression, but these results are inconsistent. Methods: We have reviewed some of recent human studies measuring brain glutamate and GABA concentrations in patients with bipolar disorder and unipolar depression and summarized the differences between them. Results: BD and UD patients show contrasting directions in Glx changes and different changes in GABA levels. Conclusion: We proposed to distinguish bipolar from unipolar depression by comparing the profiles of glutamate and GABA concentrations in the two disorders.