Stereopsis and aging.

Three experiments investigated whether and to what extent increases in age affect the functionality of stereopsis. The observers' ages ranged from 18 to 83 years. The overall goal was to challenge the older stereoscopic visual system by utilizing high magnitudes of binocular disparity, ambiguous binocular disparity [cf.

The role of explicit and implicit standards in visual speed discrimination.

Five experiments were designed to investigate visual speed discrimination. Variations of the method of constant stimuli were used to obtain speed discrimination thresholds in experiments 1, 2, 4, and 5, while the method of single stimuli was used in experiment 3. The observers' thresholds were significantly influenced by the choice of psychophysical method and by changes in the standard speed.

Early identification of interferon-beta responders by ex vivo testing in patients with multiple sclerosis.

Interferon-beta (IFN-beta) is an effective treatment for a subgroup of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). The mechanism of action as well as the pathophysiological basis of responsiveness to IFN-beta is not well understood. To improve treatment considerations in MS patients predictive markers for response to IFN-beta therapy at early timepoints are needed.

Effects of interferon-beta on co-signaling molecules: upregulation of CD40, CD86 and PD-L2 on monocytes in relation to clinical response to interferon-beta treatment in patients with multiple sclerosis.

Interferon-beta (IFN-beta) reduces disease activity in a subgroup of patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (MS). The mechanism of action as well as the pathophysiological basis of responsiveness to IFN-beta is not well understood. Since T-cell activation plays an important part in the pathophysiology of MS, we here investigated the effect of IFN-beta on the expression of co-signaling pathways (CD28-CD80/CD86, CD154-CD40, ICOS-ICOSL, PD-1-PD-L1/2) in MS patients and correlated the results with the clinical response to IFN-beta in individual patients.

The visual discrimination of bending.

The sensitivity of observers to nonrigid bending was evaluated in two experiments. In both experiments, observers were required to discriminate on any given trial which of two bending rods was more elastic. In experiment 1, both rods bent within the same oriented plane, and bent either in a frontoparallel plane or bent in depth.