Identification of a New Theca/Interstitial Cell-Specific Gene and Its Biological Role in Growth of Mouse Ovarian Follicles at the Gonadotropin-Independent Stage.

Theca/interstitial cells are responsible for the growth and maturation of ovarian follicles. However, little is known about the theca/interstitial cell-specific genes and their functions. In this study, we explored transcriptomes of theca/interstitial cells by RNA-seq, and the novel biological roles of a theca cell marker, asporin (Aspn)/periodontal ligament-associated protein 1 (PLAP-1).

Adaptive ability to cope with atypical or novel situations involving tool use: an fMRI approach.

We investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the ability to cope in atypical or novel situations using tools. We hypothesized that two cognitive components support this ability: adaptive coordination (for adapting to situational demands) and cognitive inhibition (for inhibiting the incongruent actions afforded by tools). We had subjects choose novel tools for a given task or choose among familiar tools in an atypical situation, during which we examined cortical activation in their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Neural correlates of adaptive social responses to real-life frustrating situations: a functional MRI study.

Background: Frustrating situations are encountered daily, and it is necessary to respond in an adaptive fashion. A psychological definition states that adaptive social behaviors are "self-performing" and "contain a solution." The present study investigated the neural correlates of adaptive social responses to frustrating situations by assessing the dimension of causal attribution.

Neural bases of human mate choice: multiple value dimensions, sex difference, and self-assessment system.

Mate choice is an example of sophisticated daily decision making supported by multiple componential processes. In mate-choice literature, different characteristics of the value dimensions, including the sex difference in the value dimensions, and the involvement of self-assessment due to the mutual nature of the choice, have been suggested. We examined whether the brain-activation pattern during virtual mate choice would be congruent with these characteristics in terms of stimulus selectivity and activated brain regions.

Self-face recognition in social context.

The concept of "social self" is often described as a representation of the self-reflected in the eyes or minds of others. Although the appearance of one's own face has substantial social significance for humans, neuroimaging studies have failed to link self-face recognition and the likely neural substrate of the social self, the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). We assumed that the social self is recruited during self-face recognition under a rich social context where multiple other faces are available for comparison of social values.

Right frontopolar cortex activity correlates with reliability of retrospective rating of confidence in short-term recognition memory performance.

Human memory systems contain self-monitoring mechanisms for evaluating their progress. People can change their learning strategy on the basis of confidence in their performance at that time. However, it has not been fully understood how the brain is engaged in reliable rating of confidence in past recognition memory performance.

The neural basis of agency: an fMRI study.

Agency, a feeling that the self is the cause of action, has a strong relationship to the processing of discrepancies between the predicted multi-sensory feedback from one's intended action and its actual outcome (hereafter, agency error). Although previous studies have explored the neural basis of agency by assessing the brain's response to agency error, the effects found are confounded by two types of error irrelevant to agency: a mismatch between different sensory inputs in general (sensory mismatch, SM error) and a basic response to any type of prediction error (oddball error). In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we identified the neural response specific to agency error by dissociating it from responses to SM and oddball errors.

Learning second language vocabulary: neural dissociation of situation-based learning and text-based learning.

Second language (L2) acquisition necessitates learning and retrieving new words in different modes. In this study, we attempted to investigate the cortical representation of an L2 vocabulary acquired in different learning modes and in cross-modal transfer between learning and retrieval. Healthy participants learned new L2 words either by written translations (text-based learning) or in real-life situations (situation-based learning).

Effect of motion smoothness on brain activity while observing a dance: An fMRI study using a humanoid robot.

Motion smoothness is critical in transmitting implicit information of body action, such as aesthetic qualities in dance performances. We expected that the perception of motion smoothness would be characterized by great intersubject variability deriving from differences in personal backgrounds and attitudes toward expressive body actions. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a humanoid robot to investigate the effects of the motion smoothness of expressive body actions and the intersubject variability due to personal attitudes on perceptions during dance observation.

Neural activity in the human brain signals logical rule identification.

To select an appropriate action, we conform to a behavioral rule determined uniquely in each behavioral context. If the rule is not predetermined and must be discovered, we often test hypotheses concerning rules by applying one candidate rule after another. The neural mechanisms underlying such rule identification are still unknown.

Neural correlates of processing situational relationships between a part and the whole: an fMRI study.

Daily situations involve many objects and behaviors. To comprehend the meaning of situations, the relationships between objects, behaviors, and the situational context are important. To reveal the cortical networks involved in processing these relationships we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare brain activation during processing of behavior-situation and object-situation relationships.

Neural basis of sentence processing in which incoming words form a sentence.

This study examined the neural basis underlying the sequential involvement of sentence processing and determined the point at which the processing cost for an object-initial sentence was observed. We presented each phrase in a Japanese object-initial sentence to Japanese participants one by one using an event-related functional MRI technique and compared with our previous subject-initial experiment. We found that the left lingual gyrus was activated upon presentation of the first noun phrases, and the left inferior frontal gyrus upon presentation of the second noun phrases.

Extraction of situational meaning by integrating multiple meanings in a complex environment: a functional MRI study.

Humans extract behaviorally significant meaning from a situation by integrating meanings from multiple components of a complex daily environment. To determine the neural underpinnings of this ability, the authors performed functional magnetic resonance imaging of healthy subjects while the latter viewed naturalistic scenes of two people and an object, including a threatening situation of a person being attacked by an offender with an object. The authors used a two-factorial design: the object was either aversive or nonaversive, and the offender's action was either directed to the person or elsewhere.

Face-specific and domain-general characteristics of cortical responses during self-recognition.

The ability of visual self-recognition in animals and infants is considered a hallmark of the domain-general cognitive representation of the self, which also underpins higher social ability. Cortical regions activated during self-face recognition in human adults have been accordingly expected to play the domain-general role in self-processing. However, there is no evidence of the involvement of this network in non-face domains.

Comprehension of implicit meanings in social situations involving irony: a functional MRI study.

To understand implicit social meanings, the interaction of literal meanings and relevant information in a situational context is important. However, previous studies have not investigated such contextual interactions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated cortical mechanisms underlying the processing of implicit meanings, particularly irony, in realistic social situations, focusing on contextual interactions.

Cortical mechanism of communicative speech production.

Communicative speech requires conformity not only to linguistic rules but also to behavior that is appropriate for social interaction. The existence of a special brain mechanism for such behavioral aspects of communicative speech has been suggested by studies of social impairment in autism, and it may be related to communicative vocalization in animals. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure cortical activation while normal subjects casually talked to an actor (communication task) or verbally described a situation (description task) while observing video clips of an action performed by a familiar or an unfamiliar actor in a typical daily situation.

Decrease in glucose metabolism in frontal cortex associated with deterioration of microstructure of corpus callosum measured by diffusion tensor imaging in healthy elderly.

The neural functions of signaling are carried out by the interconnection of neurons via neuronal fibers. Diffusion tensor imaging has recently become an established technique that enables the in vivo visualization of white matter (WM) fibers. Studies of normal aging have suggested the disruption of WM fiber microstructures with anterior-posterior gradient.

Is Broca's area involved in the processing of passive sentences? An event-related fMRI study.

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether activation in Broca's area is greater during the processing of passive versus active sentences in the brains of healthy subjects. Twenty Japanese native speakers performed a visual sentence comprehension task in which they were asked to read a visually presented sentence and to identify the agent or the patient in the sentence by pressing a button. We found that the processing of passive sentences elicited no greater activation than that of active sentences in Broca's area.

Cortical mechanisms involved in the processing of verbs: an fMRI study.

In this study, we investigated two aspects of verb processing: first, whether verbs are processed differently from nouns; and second, how verbal morphology is processed. For this purpose, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare three types of lexical processing in Japanese: the processing of nouns, unmarked active verbs, and inflected passive verbs. Twenty-eight healthy subjects were shown a lexical item and asked to judge whether the presented item was a legal word.

Multiple brain networks for visual self-recognition with different sensitivity for motion and body part.

Multiple brain networks may support visual self-recognition. It has been hypothesized that the left ventral occipito-temporal cortex processes one's own face as a symbol, and the right parieto-frontal network processes self-image in association with motion-action contingency. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we first tested these hypotheses based on the prediction that these networks preferentially respond to a static self-face and to moving one's whole body, respectively.

Cortical activation in the processing of passive sentences in L1 and L2: an fMRI study.

The question of whether the bilingual brain processes a first and second language (L1 and L2, respectively) differently is a central issue in many psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether late bilinguals process structurally complex sentences in L1 and L2 in different cortical networks. For this purpose, we directly compared brain activity during the processing of active and passive sentences in both L1 and L2.

Brain activation during the course of sentence comprehension.

The purpose of this study is to determine, by functional magnetic resonance imaging, how the activated regions of the brain change as a Japanese sentence is presented in a grammatically correct order. In this study, we presented constituents of a sentence to Japanese participants one by one at regular intervals. The results showed that the left lingual gyrus was significantly activated at the beginning of the sentence, then the left inferior frontal gyrus and left supplementary motor area, in the middle of the sentence, and the left inferior temporal gyrus, at the end of the sentence.

Cortical activation during reading of ancient versus modern Japanese texts: fMRI study.

The purpose of this study was to investigate human brain activity during the reading of ancient Japanese texts using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Thirty right-handed normal Japanese subjects performed two reading tasks: covert reading of (1) ancient and (2) modern Japanese text. Common areas are activated during both tasks.