Self-Modulation of Gamma-Band Synchronization through EEG-Neurofeedback Training in the Elderly.

Background: Electroencephalography (EEG) stands as a pivotal non-invasive tool, capturing brain signals with millisecond precision and enabling real-time monitoring of individuals' mental states. Using appropriate biomarkers extracted from these EEG signals and presenting them back in a neurofeedback loop offers a unique avenue for promoting neural compensation mechanisms. This approach empowers individuals to skillfully modulate their brain activity.

Detecting Anosognosia from the Prodromal Stage of Alzheimer's Disease.

Background: Though not originally developed for this purpose, the Healthy Aging Brain Care Monitor (HABC-M) seems a valuable instrument for assessing anosognosia in Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Objectives: Our study aimed at 1) investigating the validity of the HABC-M (31 items), and its cognitive, psychological, and functional subscales, in discriminating AD patients from controls; 2) exploring whether the HABC-M discrepancy scores between the self-reports of patients/controls in these different domains and the respective ratings provided by their caregivers/informants correlate with an online measure of self-awareness; 3) determining whether the caregiver burden level, also derived from the HABC-M, could add additional support for detecting anosognosia.

Methods: The HABC-M was administered to 30 AD patients and 30 healthy controls, and to their caregivers/informants.

Can a failure in the error-monitoring system explain unawareness of memory deficits in Alzheimer's disease?

Unawareness of memory deficits is an early manifestation in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), which often delays diagnosis. This intriguing behavior constitutes a form of anosognosia, whose neural mechanisms remain largely unknown. We hypothesized that anosognosia may depend on a critical synaptic failure in the error-monitoring system, which would prevent AD patients from being aware of their own memory impairment.

Sensitive Timing: A Reappraisal of Chronobiology's Foundational Texts.

The origin of experimental chronobiology can be traced to observations made in the 18 and 19 centuries on the sensitive plant , which were described in two seminal reports: Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan's "" (A ) and Augustin Pyramus de Candolle's "" (). Both report observations of the striking daily closing and opening of leaves in controlled environments. This review presents translations of both texts with the aim of staying as faithful as possible to the original French texts.

The Blursday database as a resource to study subjective temporalities during COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns triggered worldwide changes in the daily routines of human experience. The Blursday database provides repeated measures of subjective time and related processes from participants in nine countries tested on 14 questionnaires and 15 behavioural tasks during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 2,840 participants completed at least one task, and 439 participants completed all tasks in the first session.

Low-intensity electromagnetic fields induce human cryptochrome to modulate intracellular reactive oxygen species.

Exposure to man-made electromagnetic fields (EMFs), which increasingly pollute our environment, have consequences for human health about which there is continuing ignorance and debate. Whereas there is considerable ongoing concern about their harmful effects, magnetic fields are at the same time being applied as therapeutic tools in regenerative medicine, oncology, orthopedics, and neurology. This paradox cannot be resolved until the cellular mechanisms underlying such effects are identified.

Blue-light induced accumulation of reactive oxygen species is a consequence of the Drosophila cryptochrome photocycle.

Cryptochromes are evolutionarily conserved blue-light absorbing flavoproteins which participate in many important cellular processes including in entrainment of the circadian clock in plants, Drosophila and humans. Drosophila melanogaster cryptochrome (DmCry) absorbs light through a flavin (FAD) cofactor that undergoes photoreduction to the anionic radical (FAD•-) redox state both in vitro and in vivo. However, recent efforts to link this photoconversion to the initiation of a biological response have remained controversial.

Drosophila Clock Is Required in Brain Pacemaker Neurons to Prevent Premature Locomotor Aging Independently of Its Circadian Function.

Circadian clocks control many self-sustained rhythms in physiology and behavior with approximately 24-hour periodicity. In many organisms, oxidative stress and aging negatively impact the circadian system and sleep. Conversely, loss of the clock decreases resistance to oxidative stress, and may reduce lifespan and speed up brain aging and neurodegeneration.

Chronic jet lag impairs startle-induced locomotion in Drosophila.

Endogenous circadian clocks with ~24-h periodicity are found in most organisms from cyanobacteria to humans. Daylight synchronizes these clocks to solar time. In humans, shift-work and jet lag perturb clock synchronization, and such perturbations, when repeated or chronic, are strongly suspected to be detrimental to healthspan.

Human cryptochrome-1 confers light independent biological activity in transgenic Drosophila correlated with flavin radical stability.

Cryptochromes are conserved flavoprotein receptors found throughout the biological kingdom with diversified roles in plant development and entrainment of the circadian clock in animals. Light perception is proposed to occur through flavin radical formation that correlates with biological activity in vivo in both plants and Drosophila. By contrast, mammalian (Type II) cryptochromes regulate the circadian clock independently of light, raising the fundamental question of whether mammalian cryptochromes have evolved entirely distinct signaling mechanisms.

Identifying specific light inputs for each subgroup of brain clock neurons in Drosophila larvae.

In Drosophila, opsin visual photopigments as well as blue-light-sensitive cryptochrome (CRY) contribute to the synchronization of circadian clocks. We focused on the relatively simple larval brain, with nine clock neurons per hemisphere: five lateral neurons (LNs), four of which express the pigment-dispersing factor (PDF) neuropeptide, and two pairs of dorsal neurons (DN1s and DN2s). CRY is present only in the PDF-expressing LNs and the DN1s.

PDF-modulated visual inputs and cryptochrome define diurnal behavior in Drosophila.

Morning and evening circadian oscillators control the bimodal activity of Drosophila in light-dark cycles. The lateral neurons evening oscillator (LN-EO) is important for promoting diurnal activity at dusk. We found that the LN-EO autonomously synchronized to light-dark cycles through either the cryptochrome (CRY) that it expressed or the visual system.

A role for blind DN2 clock neurons in temperature entrainment of the Drosophila larval brain.

Circadian clocks synchronize to the solar day by sensing the diurnal changes in light and temperature. In adult Drosophila, the brain clock that controls rest-activity rhythms relies on neurons showing Period oscillations. Nine of these neurons are present in each larval brain hemisphere.

Light activates output from evening neurons and inhibits output from morning neurons in the Drosophila circadian clock.

Animal circadian clocks are based on multiple oscillators whose interactions allow the daily control of complex behaviors. The Drosophila brain contains a circadian clock that controls rest-activity rhythms and relies upon different groups of PERIOD (PER)-expressing neurons. Two distinct oscillators have been functionally characterized under light-dark cycles.

Circadian synchronization and rhythmicity in larval photoperception-defective mutants of Drosophila.

A single light episode during the first larval stage can set the phase of adult Drosophila activity rhythms, showing that a light-sensitive circadian clock is functional in larvae and is capable of keeping time throughout development. These behavioral data are supported by the finding that neurons expressing clock proteins already exist in the larval brain and appear to be connected to the larval visual system. To define the photoreceptive pathways of the larval clock, the authors investigated circadian synchronization during larval stages in various visual systems and/or cryptochrome-defective strains.

Novel features of cryptochrome-mediated photoreception in the brain circadian clock of Drosophila.

In Drosophila, light affects circadian behavioral rhythms via at least two distinct mechanisms. One of them relies on the visual phototransduction cascade. The other involves a presumptive photopigment, cryptochrome (cry), expressed in lateral brain neurons that control behavioral rhythms.

Circadian rhythms of locomotor activity in Drosophila.

Drosophila is by far the most advanced model to understand the complex biochemical interactions upon which circadian clocks rely. Most of the genes that have been characterized so far were isolated through genetic screens using the locomotor activity rhythms of the adults as a circadian output. In addition, new techniques are available to deregulate gene expression in specific cells, allowing to analyze the growing number of developmental genes that also play a role as clock genes.

Larval optic nerve and adult extra-retinal photoreceptors sequentially associate with clock neurons during Drosophila brain development.

The visual system is one of the input pathways for light into the circadian clock of the Drosophila brain. In particular, extra-retinal visual structures have been proposed to play a role in both larval and adult circadian photoreception. We have analyzed the interactions between extra-retinal structures of the visual system and the clock neurons during brain development.

Defining the role of Drosophila lateral neurons in the control of circadian rhythms in motor activity and eclosion by targeted genetic ablation and PERIOD protein overexpression.

The ventral lateral neurons (LNvs) of the Drosophila brain that express the period (per) and pigment dispersing factor (pdf) genes play a major role in the control of circadian activity rhythms. A new P-gal4 enhancer trap line is described that is mostly expressed in the LNvs This P-gal4 line was used to ablate the LNvs by using the pro-apoptosis gene bax, to stop PER protein oscillations by overexpressing per and to block synaptic transmission with the tetanus toxin light chain (TeTxLC). Genetic ablation of these clock cells leads to the loss of robust 24-h activity rhythms and reveals a phase advance in light-dark conditions as well as a weak short-period rhythm in constant darkness.

Effects of circadian mutations and LD periodicity on the life span of Drosophila melanogaster.

The pervasive occurrence of circadian clocks throughout the living world underlines their adaptive value. Nonetheless, there is surprisingly little evidence for a negative impact, on any animal species, of a constant discrepancy between the environmental and endogenous periods. Male Drosophila melanogaster per mutants with altered circadian periods were compared to the wild type in two different LD schedules.

Evidence that PrfA, the pleiotropic activator of virulence genes in Listeria monocytogenes, can be present but inactive.

All virulence genes of Listeria monocytogenes identified to date are positively regulated by PrfA, a transcriptional activator belonging to the Crp-Fnr family. Low temperature and cellobiose are two environmental signals known to repress expression of virulence genes in L. monocytogenes.

A single substitution in the putative helix-turn-helix motif of the pleiotropic activator PrfA attenuates Listeria monocytogenes virulence.

PrfA, the regulator of virulence-gene expression in the pathogenic bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, displays sequence similarity to members of the CAP-FNR family of transcriptional regulators. To test the functional significance of this similarity, we constructed and analysed substitutions of two amino acids of PrfA predicted to contact DNA, i.e.

Differential activation of virulence gene expression by PrfA, the Listeria monocytogenes virulence regulator.

PrfA is a pleiotropic activator of virulence gene expression in the pathogenic bacterium Listeria monocytogenes. Several lines of evidence have suggested that a hierarchy of virulence gene activation by PrfA exists. This hypothesis was investigated by assessing the ability of PrfA to activate the expression of virulence gene fusions to lacZ in Bacillus subtilis.

Five Listeria monocytogenes genes preferentially expressed in infected mammalian cells: plcA, purH, purD, pyrE and an arginine ABC transporter gene, arpJ.

Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterial pathogen that multiplies within the cytosol of eukaryotic cells. To identify Listeria genes with preferentially intracellular expression (pic genes), a library of Tn917-lac insertion mutants was screened for transcriptional fusions to lacZ with higher expression inside a macrophage-like cell line than in a rich broth medium. Five pic genes with up to 100-fold induction inside cells were identified.