Publications by authors named "A G Costigan"

Apoptosis is a mode of programmed cell death that plays important roles in tissue sculpting during development, in the maintenance of tissue homeostasis in the adult, and in the eradication of injured or infected cells during pathological processes. Numerous physiological as well as pathological stimuli trigger apoptosis, such as engagement of plasma-membrane-associated Fas, TRAIL, or TNF receptors, growth factor deprivation, hypoxia, radiation, and exposure to diverse cytotoxic drugs. Apoptosis is coordinated by members of the caspase family of cysteine proteases, which, upon activation, trigger a series of dramatic morphological and biochemical changes including retraction from the substratum, cell shrinkage, extensive and protracted plasma membrane blebbing, chromatin condensation, DNA hydrolysis, nuclear fragmentation, and proteolytic cleavage of numerous caspase substrates.

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Converging evidence from studies of human and nonhuman animals suggests that the hippocampus contributes to sequence learning by using temporal context to bind sequentially occurring items. The fornix is a white matter pathway containing the major input and output pathways of the hippocampus, including projections from medial septum and to diencephalon, striatum, lateral septum and prefrontal cortex. If the fornix meaningfully contributes to hippocampal function, then individual differences in fornix microstructure might predict sequence memory.

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A strategy to gain insight into early changes that may predispose people to Alzheimer's disease (AD) is to study the brains of younger cognitively healthy people that are at increased genetic risk of AD. The Apolipoprotein (APOE) E4 allele is the strongest genetic risk factor for AD, and several neuroimaging studies comparing APOE E4 carriers with non-carriers at age ∼20-30 years have detected hyperactivity (or reduced deactivation) in posteromedial cortex (PMC), a key hub of the default network (DN), which has a high susceptibility to early amyloid deposition in AD. Transgenic mouse models suggest such early network activity alterations may result from altered excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) balance, but this is yet to be examined in humans.

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Purpose: Awareness of Hirschsprung's-associated enterocolitis (HAEC) among patient's families and medical staff can lead to prompt recognition of symptoms and earlier implementation of management. We designed an HAEC medical alert card to raise awareness of HAEC among medical staff and carers of children with Hirschsprung's disease (HD). Our aim was to investigate parental opinion on the utility of this tool.

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We present a series of studies on the development and validation of the Self-Compassion Scale-Youth version (SCS-Y), which is intended for use with early adolescents in middle school. Study 1 ( = 279, = 12.17) describes the selection of 17 items out of a pool of 36 potential items, with three items each representing the subscales of self-kindness, mindfulness, common humanity, self-judgment, isolation, and two items representing over-identification.

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