Cardiac fibroblast-derived 3D extracellular matrix seeded with mesenchymal stem cells as a novel device to transfer cells to the ischemic myocardium.

Purpose: Demonstrate a novel manufacturing method to generate extracellular matrix scaffolds from cardiac fibroblasts (CF-ECM) as a therapeutic mesenchymal stem cell-transfer device.

Materials And Methods: Rat CF were cultured at high-density (~1.6×10/cm) for 10-14 days.

Pathophysiological defects and transcriptional profiling in the RBM20-/- rat model.

Our recent study indicated that RNA binding motif 20 (Rbm20) alters splicing of titin and other genes. The current goals were to understand how the Rbm20(-/-) rat is related to physiological, structural, and molecular changes leading to heart failure. We quantitatively and qualitatively compared the expression of titin isoforms between Rbm20(-/-) and wild type rats by real time RT-PCR and SDS agarose electrophoresis.

Sensorial suppression of self-generated sounds and its dependence on attention.

The auditory processing of self-generated sounds is characterized by an attenuated vertex N1-component of the event-related potential (ERP) compared to the responses elicited by externally generated sounds. Typically, a motor condition where sounds are actively produced by button presses is compared with a passive listening condition. While this effect is usually interpreted as reflection of an internal forward model system, the impact of attention and arousal on the so called self-generation effect has not been systematically controlled in these studies: Is the auditory stimulation more attended during the active task compared to passive listening, e.

I know what is missing here: electrophysiological prediction error signals elicited by omissions of predicted "what" but not "when".

In the present study we investigated the neural code of sensory predictions. Grounded on a variety of empirical findings, we set out from the proposal that sensory predictions are coded via the top-down modulation of the sensory units whose response properties match the specific characteristics of the predicted stimulus (Albright, 2012; Arnal and Giraud, 2012). From this proposal, we derive the hypothesis that when the specific physical characteristics of the predicted stimulus cannot be advanced, the sensory system should not be able to formulate such predictions, as it would lack the means to represent them.

High-content adhesion assay to address limited cell samples.

Cell adhesion is a broad topic in cell biology that involves physical interactions between cells and other cells or the surrounding extracellular matrix, and is implicated in major research areas including cancer, development, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. While current methods have contributed significantly to our understanding of cell adhesion, these methods are unsuitable for tackling many biological questions requiring intermediate numbers of cells (10(2)-10(5)), including small animal biopsies, clinical samples, and rare cell isolates. To overcome this fundamental limitation, we developed a new assay to quantify the adhesion of ~10(2)-10(3) cells at a time on engineered substrates, and examined the adhesion strength and population heterogeneity via distribution-based modeling.