Zhurnal Vysshei Nervnoi Deyatelnosti Imeni I P Pavlova最新文献

According to psychological research erotic images are evaluated in the context of positive emotions as the most intense, most associated with emotional arousal, among the variety of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli. However it is difficult to separate areas of the brain that are related to the general emotional process from the activity of the brain areas involved in neuronal representations of reward system. The purpose of this study was to determine differences in the brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in male subjects in evaluating an intensity of pleasant images, including erotic, or unpleasant and neutral pictures. When comparing the condition with evaluation of the pleasant erotic images with conditions containing neutral or unpleasant stimuli, a significant activation was observed in the posterior cingulate cortex; the prefrontal cortex and the right globus pallidus. An increased activity of the right anterior central gyrus was observed in the conditions related to evaluation of pleasant and neutral stimuli. Thus, in the process of evaluating the intensity of emotional images of an erotic nature the active brain areas were related not only to neuronal representations of emotions, but also to motivations and control system of emotional arousal, which should be taken into account while using erotic pictures as intensive positive emotional stimuli.

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is one of the major protein regulators of diverse biological functions in the nervous system. It is synthesized as a precursor protein (proBDNF) that undergoes proteolytic cleavage in order to become a mature molecule. It was repeatedly shown that the proBDNF/ mBDNF ratio is determined by concomitant neuronal activity. A growing body of evidence argues that proBDNF has its own biological functions, oftentimes in opposition to functions of the mature molecule. Therefore, the balance of concentrations of proBDNF and mature neurotrophin is an important constituent of in any biological processes in nerve cells. Current review is dedicated to key aspects of proBDNF expression, its proteolysis to mBDNF, and its function in developing nervous system, long-term synaptic plasticity, memory consolidation and extinction and possible involvement in pathologies of nervous system.

We analyzed kinematics of stair ascent and descent in autistic children and adolescents in comparison with age-matched healthy children and adolescents. Eight healthy adolescents, 6 autistic adolescents, 7 healthy children and 6 autistic children participated in the study. We found that autistic subjects of both groups showed significantly more fluctuations of hip joint angular velocity than age-matched control subjects while preparing for stair ascent. During preparation for stair descent these velocity fluctuations appeared mainly in autistic adolescents, moreover, autistic children exhibited less velocity fluctuations than children in control group while preparing for stair descent. The kinematics of the movement itself demonstrated significantly less hip abduction in both autistic children and adolescents than in age-matched controls during stair ascent, and less ankle joint plantar extension in autistic adolescents than in healthy adolescents during stair descent. We suppose that age-related changes in kinematics of leg motion during stair ascent and descent in autistic patients indicate aggravated motor coordination in autistic adolescents as compared with both healthy adolescents and autistic children.

Preferred orientation of V1 neurons was changed during the respons time course. In order to reveal mechanisms of such changes, spike trains of single neurons to flashed bars of different orientations were studied by means of principal component and frequency-domain analysis of the spike density functions. There was found out that: 1. contribution of each of the components was dependent on the stimulus orientation. 2. the principal components of V1 neurons responses contain different kinds of transient and sustained parts and rhythmic oscillations in the theta/alpha and beta-bands. 3. There was no correlation between transient parts as well as between rhythmic oscillations within the same frequency band in different components. Taken together, the data obtained allow us to suggest that during generation of response there is a shift of dominance of the components with different orientations which determines the dynamics of the preferred orientations of V1 neurons.

Depression is the most commonly observed mood disorder, which is accompanied by changes in emotional processes and the default mode network (DMN) activity. In this study, we aimed to investigate how predisposition to depression shows up in the emotional coloring of spontaneous thoughts and the activity of oscillatory resting-state networks, as revealed by source localization and independent component analysis techniques. Depressive symptoms correlated positively with the prevalence of negative emotion during EEG registration and with delta and theta activity in the orbitofrontal cortex and negatively with theta activity in the DMN. Since an increase of low-frequency oscillations in the orbitofrontal cortex is observed in aversive states, whereas their decrease in the DMN reflects an activation of this network, which is related to self-referenced processing, our results are consistent with the notion that vulnerability to depression is associated with general negative emotional disposition and excessive focus on the self.

Extracellular activity of 34 primary visual cortex neurons of the rabbit was recorded in response to audiovisual stimulation with stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) in range from -750 to + 150 ms (15 ranges in total). Auditory stimulus: 2000 Hz, 70 dB, 40 ms. Visual stimuli: two weak intensities 0.3 and 1 cd/m2. Sound by itself did not elicit a neuronal response. Factor analysis ANOVA revealed that SOA significantly influence on neuronal responses. Neuronal reaction included responses to increase (on-response) and decrease (off-response) of light intensity. Earliest phase of response (40-100 ms from visual stimuli substitution) is most affected by sound. Neuronal reactions of the every interval of SOA comprised both increase and decrease of discharge in response to addition of a sound. We used a Wilcoxon signed-rank test to show the differences between reactions in response to visual and audio-visual stimuli. Audio-visual on-responses statistically exceeded the responses to visual stimuli at -150, -40 and 0 ms SOA for the all neurons. Two groups of neurons were revealed. The first group (n = 16) showed dependence of on-re- sponses on sound in a wide range of SOA: -150, -40, -20, 0, +20, +50 and +100 ms. Also the first group showed maximum increase of spike number (18-28%) in response to audio-visual stimulation. For the second group of neurons there were no significant SOA for on-responses. We haven't found a significant decrease of audio-visual response compared to a visual response. However, we found the tendency to reduction of audio-visual discharge at intervals SOA -750 and -80 ms (p < 0.07) for the first group and at SOA -500 and +20 ms (p < 0.1) for the second group of neurons. Also we revealed that on-responses are more influenced by sound than off-responses. We have researched the audio-visual interaction in the second phase of neuronal discharges (120-160 ms and later, n = 23). Sound influence on a second phase is weaker than on a first phase. Significant SOA for on-responses: 0 ms; for off-responses: +100 and +150 ms. This study has revealed similarities of audio-visual interaction range for animal and psychophysical researches. Our results allows. to research cross-modal integration in more detail.

For Sprague-Dawley rats by means of in vivo microdialysis combined with HPLC analysis it was shown that an acquisition of a conditioned fear response (paired presentation of an auditory conditioned stimulus (CS+) and unescapable footshock) caused the increase in extracellular levels of citrulline (an NO co-product) in the medial prefrontal cortex which was almost completely prevented by local infusions of 1 mM NΩ-propil-L-arginine, a neuronal NO synthase inhibitor and was not observed in control rats. The magnitude of this increase was high in rats showing later low freezing to conditioned stimulus previously not paired with footshock (CS-) and it was low in rats characterized by high freezing to CS-, but it did not interfere with freezing to the conditioned stimulus CS+ previously paired with footshock. The data obtained indicate for the first time that the conditioned fear acquisition is accompanied by nitrergic activation within the medial prefrontal cortex which is associated with conditioned fear generalization but not with conditioned fear expression.

The purpose of this article is to provide the overview of visual cognitive development in subjects with FMRP deficit. Description of fragile X mental retardation syndrome is presented in the article, that is the most common cause of inherited intellectual disability and one of the most prevalent genetic causes of autism spectrum disorder. The syndrome is associated with deficit of fragile X mental retardation protein following FMR1-gene mutation. Researches of static and dynamic object perception, face perception and oculomotor control are discussed in the article. The results obtained by subjects with FX syndrome are compared with ASD data, syndrome with closed behavioral phenotype. Several factors that underlie visual cognitive deficit are discussed in the article.