A lifetime aging study of human CD19 transgenic mice.

Mice transgenic for human CD19 have been an important animal model to help understand the role of this molecule in B lymphocyte function. Previously, no lifetime studies had been performed to understand the effects of this CD19 over expression on the survival or spontaneous pathology within the C57BL/6J background strain. We conducted a lifetime study with interim sacrifices to understand the transgenic effects on clinical signs, body weight, survival, and spontaneous pathology.

Why won't they sit with me? An exploratory investigation of stereotyped cues, social exclusion, and the P3b.

The importance of understanding how we anticipate and prepare for being socially excluded is underscored by the numerous adverse mental and physical consequences of social rejection. In this study, we adapted a social exclusion paradigm, the Lunchroom task, to investigate the use of social context cues in the formation of social outcome expectations as indexed by the P3b, an ERP component associated with attention orientation and context updating. In this task, Black and White participants were presented with either neutral or stereotyped cues prior to being exposed to simulated inclusion versus exclusion outcome scenarios.

Escalating risk and the moderating effect of resistance to peer influence on the P200 and feedback-related negativity.

Young people frequently socialize together in contexts that encourage risky decision making, pointing to a need for research into how susceptibility to peer influence is related to individual differences in the neural processing of decisions during sequentially escalating risk. We applied a novel analytic approach to analyze EEG activity from college-going students while they completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), a well-established risk-taking propensity assessment. By modeling outcome-processing-related changes in the P200 and feedback-related negativity (FRN) sequentially within each BART trial as a function of pump order as an index of increasing risk, our results suggest that analyzing the BART in a progressive fashion may provide valuable new insights into the temporal neurophysiological dynamics of risk taking.

Immunotherapy of established tumors using bone marrow transplantation with antigen gene--modified hematopoietic stem cells.

A major focus of cancer immunotherapy is to develop strategies to induce T-cell responses through presentation of tumor antigens by dendritic cells (DCs). Current vaccines are limited in their ability to efficiently transfer antigens to DCs in vivo. Ex vivo-generated DCs can be efficiently loaded with antigen but after reinjection, few DCs traffic to secondary lymphoid organs, the critical sites for antigen presentation.