A cognitive neuroscience-based computerized battery for efficient measurement of individual differences: standardization and initial construct validation.

There is increased need for efficient computerized methods to collect reliable data on a range of cognitive domains that can be linked to specific brain systems. Such need arises in functional neuroimaging studies, where individual differences in cognitive performance are variables of interest or serve as confounds. In genetic studies of complex behavior, which require particularly large samples, such trait measures can serve as endophenotypes.

A method for obtaining 3-dimensional facial expressions and its standardization for use in neurocognitive studies.

Facial expressions of emotion are increasingly being used in neuroscience as probes for functional imaging and as stimuli for studying hemispheric specialization for face and emotion processing. Available facial stimuli are 2-dimensional and therefore, their orientation is fixed and poorly suited for examining asymmetries, they are often obtained under poorly specified conditions, usually posed, lack ethnic diversity, and are of restricted age range. We describe a method for accurately acquiring and reconstructing the geometry of the human face and for display of this reconstruction in a 3-dimensional format.

The regulation of plasminogen activators and plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1 in endothelial cells by sex hormones.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of 17 beta-estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone on secretion of plasminogen activators and plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1 by cultured endothelial cells.

Study Design: Bovine aortic endothelial cells were cultured in medium that contained 17 beta-estradiol, progesterone, or testosterone at various concentrations (10(-13) to 10(-6) mol/L). Plasminogen activator activity in culture medium in the presence of cells was assayed after a 36-hour incubation using chromogenic substrate and iodine 125-labeled fibrin plate assays.

Research note: the in vitro responses of vaginal tissue and chicken spermatozoa to glycerol.

The fertilizing ability of glycerolized spermatozoa is apparently lost due to reactions between glycerol, spermatozoa, and vaginal tissue. Two experiments were conducted to determine the feasibility of using in vitro cultures to quantitatively assess these reactions. In the first experiment, vaginal slices alone, unglycerolized semen, and vaginal slices plus semen, all in a phosphate-buffered saline were studied.

Contraceptive action of glycerol on chicken spermatozoa in oviducal organ-slice cultures.

Chicken spermatozoa in diluent with and without glycerol were evaluated after coculture with oviducal tissues. The motility of glycerolized (G) spermatozoa was lower in the cultures of vaginal tissue than in uterine tissue. The percentage of dead, G spermatozoa increased in cultures of the vagina and uterus but not in infundibulum cultures.