Visual Upward/Downward Motion Elicits Fast and Fluent High-/Low-Pitched Speech Production.

Participants tend to produce a higher or lower vocal pitch in response to upward or downward visual motion, suggesting a pitch-motion correspondence between the visual and speech production processes. However, previous studies were contaminated by factors such as the meaning of vocalized words and the intrinsic pitch or tongue movements associated with the vowels. To address these issues, we examined the pitch-motion correspondence between simple visual motion and pitched speech production.

Crossmodal correspondences between visual and speech angularity and tactile jaggedness of response key.

Several studies reported various crossmodal correspondences related to tactile features. These previous studies have investigated tactile-related correspondences through explicit matching or subjective evaluation tasks, which required participants to recognize relationships between tactile and other sensory features or rate tactile materials on scales with adjective labels related to visual or auditory features. However, these tasks are prone to occur the experimenter-expectancy effects and arbitrary categorization of tactile materials by the labels, making it difficult to assess implicit and non-arbitrary aspects of crossmodal correspondences.

Emotion-gaze interaction affects time-to-collision estimates, but not preferred interpersonal distance towards looming faces.

Estimating the time until impending collision (time-to-collision, TTC) of approaching or looming individuals and maintaining a comfortable distance from others (interpersonal distance, IPD) are commonly required in daily life and contribute to survival and social goals. Despite accumulating evidence that facial expressions and gaze direction interactively influence face processing, it remains unclear how these facial features affect the spatiotemporal processing of looming faces. We examined whether facial expressions (fearful vs.

Asynchronous microexon splicing of and during neurodevelopment.

LSD1 histone H3K4 demethylase and its binding partner PHF21A, a reader protein for unmethylated H3K4, both undergo neuron-specific microexon splicing. The LSD1 neuronal microexon weakens H3K4 demethylation activity and can alter the substrate specificity to H3K9 or H4K20. Meanwhile, the PHF21A neuronal microexon interferes with nucleosome binding.

A neuron-specific microexon ablates the novel DNA-binding function of a histone H3K4me0 reader PHF21A.

How cell-type-specific chromatin landscapes emerge and progress during metazoan ontogenesis remains an important question. Transcription factors are expressed in a cell-type-specific manner and recruit chromatin-regulatory machinery to specific genomic loci. In contrast, chromatin-regulatory proteins are expressed broadly and are assumed to exert the same intrinsic function across cell types.

Deficiency of , a gene related to intellectual disability, causes impaired neuronal development and a mild behavioural phenotype.

is a gene associated with intellectual disability, which was originally identified as being involved in the maintenance of kinetochore-microtubule attachment. To explore the neuronal defects caused by deficiency, we established mice that lack . Mice that are homozygous knockout for were slightly smaller than wild-type mice and died soon after birth on pure C57BL/6J background.

TORC1 inactivation promotes APC/C-dependent mitotic slippage in yeast and human cells.

Unsatisfied kinetochore-microtubule attachment activates the spindle assembly checkpoint to inhibit the metaphase-anaphase transition. However, some cells eventually override mitotic arrest by mitotic slippage. Here, we show that inactivation of TORC1 kinase elicits mitotic slippage in budding yeast and human cells.

Growth Suppression of Cancer Spheroids With Mutated KRAS by Low-toxicity Compounds from Natural Products.

Background/aim: Among compounds from natural products selectively suppressing the growth of cancer spheroids, which have mutant (mt) KRAS, NP910 was selected and its derivatives explored.

Materials And Methods: The area of HKe3 spheroids expressing wild type (wt) KRAS (HKe3-wtKRAS) and mtKRAS (HKe3-mtKRAS) were measured in three-dimensional floating (3DF) cultures treated with 18 NP910 derivatives. The 50% cell growth inhibition (GI50) was determined by long-term 3DF (LT3DF) culture and nude mice assay.

ZFAT binds to centromeres to control noncoding RNA transcription through the KAT2B-H4K8ac-BRD4 axis.

Centromeres are genomic regions essential for faithful chromosome segregation. Transcription of noncoding RNA (ncRNA) at centromeres is important for their formation and functions. Here, we report the molecular mechanism by which the transcriptional regulator ZFAT controls the centromeric ncRNA transcription in human and mouse cells.

Cdh1 degradation is mediated by APC/C-Cdh1 and SCF-Cdc4 in budding yeast.

Cdh1, a substrate-recognition subunit of anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C), is a tumor suppressor, and it is downregulated in various tumor cells in humans. APC/C-Cdh1 is activated from late M phase to G1 phase by antagonizing Cdk1-mediated inhibitory phosphorylation. However, how Cdh1 protein levels are properly regulated is ill-defined.

CDK phosphorylation regulates Mcm3 degradation in budding yeast.

Accurate regulation of activity and level of the MCM complex is critical for precise DNA replication and genome transmission. Cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) negatively regulates nuclear localization of the MCM complex via phosphorylation of the Mcm3 subunit. More recently, we found that Mcm3 is degraded via the Skp1-Cullin-F-box (SCF)-proteasome axis in budding yeast.

TORC1 signaling regulates DNA replication via DNA replication protein levels.

Accurate DNA replication is at the heart of faithful genome transmission in dividing cells. DNA replication is strictly controlled by various factors. However, how environmental stresses such as nutrient starvation impact on these factors and DNA replication is largely unknown.

When You Become a Superman: Subliminal Exposure to Death-Related Stimuli Enhances Men's Physical Force.

Research based on terror management theory (TMT) has consistently found that reminders to individuals about their mortality engender responses aimed at shoring up faith in their cultural belief system. Previous studies have focused on the critical role that the accessibility of death-related thought plays in these effects. Moreover, it has been shown that these effects occur even when death-related stimuli are presented without awareness, suggesting the unconscious effects of mortality salience.

Elucidation of novel budding yeast separase mutants.

The mitotic separase cleaves Scc1 in cohesin to allow sister chromatids to separate from each other upon anaphase onset. Separase is also required for DNA damage repair. Here, we isolated and characterized 10 temperature-sensitive (ts) mutants of separase ESP1 in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Cdh1 is an antagonist of the spindle assembly checkpoint.

The spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) monitors unsatisfied connections of microtubules to kinetochores and prevents anaphase onset by inhibition of the ubiquitin ligase E3 anaphase-promoting complex or cyclosome (APC/C) in association with the activator Cdc20. Another APC/C activator, Cdh1, exists permanently throughout the cell cycle but it becomes active from telophase to G1. Here, we show that Cdh1 is partially active and mediates securin degradation even in SAC-active metaphase cells.

Illusory motion and mislocalization of temporally offset target in apparent motion display.

When a visual target briefly appears in a display containing visual motion information, the perceived position of the target is mislocalized forward along its direction of motion. This phenomenon is assumed to be caused by the interaction between the transient onset signal of the target and motion information. However, while transient onset and offset signals are important for the establishment of our perceptual awareness, it has not been examined whether transient offset signals could be also effective for target mislocalization.

Comparing face processing strategies between typically-developed observers and observers with autism using sub-sampled-pixels presentation in response classification technique.

In the present study we modified the standard classification image method by subsampling visual stimuli to provide us with a technique capable of examining an individual's face-processing strategy in detail with fewer trials. Experiment 1 confirmed that one testing session (1450 trials) was sufficient to produce classification images that were qualitatively similar to those obtained previously with 10,000 trials (Sekuler et al., 2004).

Sound can enhance the suppression of visual target detection in apparent motion trajectory.

Detection performance is impaired for a visual target presented in an apparent motion (AM) trajectory, and this AM interference weakens when orientation information is inconsistent between the target and AM stimuli. These indicate that the target is perceptually suppressed by internal object representations of AM stimuli established along the AM trajectory. Here, we showed that transient sounds presented together with AM stimuli could enhance the magnitude of AM interference.

Inhibition of target detection in apparent motion trajectory.

Letter discrimination performance is degraded when a letter is presented within an apparent motion (AM) trajectory of a spot. This finding suggests that the internal representation of AM stimuli can perceptually interact with other stimuli. In this study, we demonstrated that AM interference could also occur for pattern detection.

Spatiotemporally coherent motion direction perception occurs even for spatiotemporal reversal of motion sequence.

Thus far, it has been pointed out that motion representation is completed in motion trajectory, and that motion representation interferes with a single physical input at a specific time and space in the motion trajectory. However, it has not been fully investigated whether the internal motion representation could interact with multiple physical inputs across time and space in motion trajectory. Thus, the current research investigated whether spatiotemporally coherent motion perception could be established in a situation involving the spatiotemporal reversal of motion sequences.

Saccadic compression of rectangle and Kanizsa figures: now you see it, now you don't.

Background: Observers misperceive the location of points within a scene as compressed towards the goal of a saccade. However, recent studies suggest that saccadic compression does not occur for discrete elements such as dots when they are perceived as unified objects like a rectangle.

Methodology/principal Findings: We investigated the magnitude of horizontal vs.

Exploration of vertical bias in perceptual completion of illusory contours: Threshold measures and response classification.

We investigated whether the perceptual completion of illusory contours exhibits a vertical bias (J. Pillow & N. Rubin, 2002).

Spatiotemporal templates for detecting orientation-defined targets.

Using the classification image technique, the present experiments revealed several characteristics of human observers' spatiotemporal templates for the detection of orientation-defined targets. The stimulus consisted of a spatial 5 x 5 array of elements displayed in 5 (Experiments 1 and 2) or 15 (Experiment 3) temporal frames. A target was defined by the first- or the second-order characteristics of the textures.