EEG Activity during Pursuit and Saccade Visual Strategies to Predict the Arrival Position of a Target.

Background: In this study, we used electroencephalogram (EEG) to investigate the activity pattern of the cerebral cortex related to visual pursuit and saccade strategies to predict the arrival position of a visual target. In addition, we clarified the differences in the EEG of those who could predict the arrival position well using the saccade strategy compared to those who were not proficient.

Methods: Sixteen participants performed two tasks: the "Pursuit Strategy Task (PST)" and the "Saccade Strategy Task (SST)" while undergoing EEG.

The presence of occlusion affects electroencephalogram activity patterns when the target is occluded and immediately before occlusion.

Objective: The objective of this study was to clarify the differences in electroencephalogram (EEG) activity patterns during the eye movements required to trace visible and occluded moving targets with millisecond temporal resolution.

Methods: To achieve this objective, we simultaneously measured EEG and eye-tracking during a task that required tracking moving targets that were partially occluded. These EEG and eye tracker parameters were compared with those of a nonoccluded task, a control task in which the moving target was fully visible.

Effects of prefrontal activity during the preparatory period on success or failure of response inhibition in the stop-signal task.

We examined the mechanism by which contingent negative variation (CNV) amplitude in the prefrontal cortex during the preparatory period of a stop-signal task affected the accuracy of response inhibition in the task. The participants were required to press a button when a go signal was presented and withhold the response when the go signal was followed by a stop signal. Continuous electroencephalograms were recorded of the six electrodes (Fz, F3, F4, Cz, C3, and C4) in the regions of interest during the performance of the task.

Effects of training the coincidence-anticipation timing task on response time and activity in the cortical region.

We examined the effects of training the coincidence-anticipation timing task on response time and activity in the cortical region. The task, which used a partially masked stimulus runway, required 12 participants to press a button at the time that they anticipated a moving visual target would arrive at the end of the runway. Training involved practicing the task a total of 10 times (once per day) over a 3-week period.

Beta band patterns in the visible and masked sections of the coincidence-anticipation timing task.

In this study, we examined beta band patterns during the coincidence-anticipation timing task. The tasks were the coincidence-anticipation timing task using a partially masked stimulus runway and a control task using the stimulus runway with no masking. Both tasks were displayed on a computer screen placed 1.

Modulation of motor area activity during observation of unnatural body movements.

The mirror neuron system (MNS) is activated when observing the actions of others. However, it remains unclear whether the MNS responds more strongly to natural bodily actions in the observer's motor repertoire than to unnatural actions. We investigated whether MNS activity is modulated by the unnaturalness of an observed action by inserting short pauses in the middle of the action (0, 2, and 6 pauses; no-pause, pause-1, and pause-2 conditions, respectively).

Fluorogenic probe triggered by reduction for nucleic acids sensing.

A reduction-triggered fluorescence probe with a new fluorogenic compound derivatized from rhodamine 110 was developed for sensing oligonucleotides. The chemistry to activate the compound involves the reaction between the azide group of rhodamine derivatives and reducing reagents, with the fluorescence signal appearing after reduction of the azide group. The reaction proceeds under biological conditions to produce fluorescence signal within 10-20 min in the presence of target DNA or RNA.

A reduction-triggered fluorescence probe for sensing nucleic acids.

We have developed a reduction-triggered fluorescence probe with a new fluorogenic compound derivatized from Rhodamine for sensing oligonucleotides. The chemistry to activate the compound involves the reaction between the azide group of rhodamine derivatives and the reducing reagents, with the fluorescence signal appearing after reduction of the azide group. The signal/background ratio of this fluorogenic compound reached 2100-fold enhancement in fluorescence intensity.

Diversity of nitrite reductase genes in "Candidatus Accumulibacter phosphatis"-dominated cultures enriched by flow-cytometric sorting.

"Candidatus Accumulibacter phosphatis" is considered a polyphosphate-accumulating organism (PAO) though it has not been isolated yet. To reveal the denitrification ability of this organism, we first concentrated this organism by flow cytometric sorting following fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) using specific probes for this organism. The purity of the target cells was about 97% of total cell count in the sorted sample.

Effects of acetate and nitrite addition on fraction of denitrifying phosphate-accumulating organisms and nutrient removal efficiency in anaerobic/aerobic/anoxic process.

The effects of acetate and nitrite on the performance of sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) employing an anaerobic/aerobic/anoxic (AOA) process were investigated. Three types of SBR operations were used: sodium acetate addition at the start of anoxic condition for heterotrophic denitrification (Type 1); sodium acetate addition at the start of aerobic condition for anoxic phosphate removal by denitrifying phosphate-accumulating organisms (DNPAOs) (Type 2: conventional AOA process); and nitrite addition at the start of aerobic condition for inhibition of phosphate-accumulating organisms (PAOs) (Type 3). A track experiment shows that Type 2 led to the best performance of SBRs among the three types.