Explicit information reduces discounting behavior in monkeys.

Animals are notoriously impulsive in common laboratory experiments, preferring smaller, sooner rewards to larger, delayed rewards even when this reduces average reward rates. By contrast, the same animals often engage in natural behaviors that require extreme patience, such as food caching, stalking prey, and traveling long distances to high-quality food sites. One possible explanation for this discrepancy is that standard laboratory delay discounting tasks artificially inflate impulsivity by subverting animals' common learning strategies.

Analysis of aptamer sequence activity relationships.

DNA sequences that can bind selectively and specifically to target molecules are known as aptamers. Normally such binding analyses are performed using soluble aptamers. However, there is much to be gained by using an on-chip or microarray format, where a large number of aptameric DNA sequences can be interrogated simultaneously.

Advances and perspectives in aptamer arrays.

Aptamers are oligonucleotides (typically 10-60 bases in length) capable of binding target ligands with affinities similar to antibodies. The generation of high density multiplexed aptamer arrays for molecular diagnostics was first proposed nearly ten years ago for the quantification of the thousands of proteins within biological samples, including blood and urine. The tagless aptameric detection of small molecular compounds extends the application of such arrays to bioanalyses at the metabolite level.

Social attention and the brain.

Humans and other animals pay attention to other members of their groups to acquire valuable social information about them, including information about their identity, dominance, fertility, emotions, and likely intent. In primates, attention to other group members and the objects of their attention is mediated by neural circuits that transduce sensory information about others and translate that information into value signals that bias orienting. This process likely proceeds via two distinct but integrated pathways: an ancestral, subcortical route that mediates crude but fast orienting to animate objects and faces; and a more derived route involving cortical orienting circuits that mediate nuanced and context-dependent social attention.

Children with cerebral palsy: severity and trends over time.

Increasingly, more very-low-birthweight infants in the developed world are now expected to survive the neonatal period than was previously the case. There are concerns that there may be a related increase in the number of infants developing severe sensorimotor impairments. Pooled data from five registers contributing to the UK Network of Cerebral Palsy Registers, Surveys and Databases were used to identify patterns of motor impairment in relation to additional impairments and to birthweight, and to assess whether prevalence of cerebral palsy (CP) by birthweight and by severity of motor impairment had changed over time.

Confidence and corrections: how we make and un-make up our minds.

Single neurons in several brain areas intervening between sensation and action signal the accumulation of sensory evidence favoring a particular behavioral response. Two new studies show that these same neurons encode decision confidence and that decision makers continue to process relevant sensory information even after a choice has been made.

Multipathway kinase signatures of multipotent stromal cells are predictive for osteogenic differentiation: tissue-specific stem cells.

Bone marrow-derived multipotent stromal cells (MSCs) offer great promise for regenerating tissue. Although certain transcription factors have been identified in association with tendency toward particular MSC differentiation phenotypes, the regulatory network of key receptor-mediated signaling pathways activated by extracellular ligands that induce various differentiation responses remains poorly understood. Attempts to predict differentiation fate tendencies from individual pathways in isolation are problematic due to the complex pathway interactions inherent in signaling networks.

Neurons in posterior cingulate cortex signal exploratory decisions in a dynamic multioption choice task.

In dynamic environments, adaptive behavior requires striking a balance between harvesting currently available rewards (exploitation) and gathering information about alternative options (exploration). Such strategic decisions should incorporate not only recent reward history, but also opportunity costs and environmental statistics. Previous neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies have implicated orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and ventral striatum in distinguishing between bouts of exploration and exploitation.

Analysis of a complete DNA-protein affinity landscape.

Properties of biological fitness landscapes are of interest to a wide sector of the life sciences, from ecology to genetics to synthetic biology. For biomolecular fitness landscapes, the information we currently possess comes primarily from two sources: sparse samples obtained from directed evolution experiments; and more fine-grained but less authentic information from 'in silico' models (such as NK-landscapes). Here we present the entire protein-binding profile of all variants of a nucleic acid oligomer 10 bases in length, which we have obtained experimentally by a series of highly parallel on-chip assays.

Revision endoscopic orbital decompression in the management of Graves' orbitopathy.

Objective: Endoscopic orbital decompression has proved to be an effective treatment for Graves' orbitopathy. In select patients, however, persistent or recurrent orbital symptoms necessitate additional therapy. The objective of this study is to determine the safety and effectiveness of revision endoscopic orbital decompression in patients with refractory Graves' orbitopathy.

Serotonin shapes risky decision making in monkeys.

Some people love taking risks, while others avoid gambles at all costs. The neural mechanisms underlying individual variation in preference for risky or certain outcomes, however, remain poorly understood. Although behavioral pathologies associated with compulsive gambling, addiction and other psychiatric disorders implicate deficient serotonin signaling in pathological decision making, there is little experimental evidence demonstrating a link between serotonin and risky decision making, in part due to the lack of a good animal model.

Sustained epidermal growth factor receptor levels and activation by tethered ligand binding enhances osteogenic differentiation of multi-potent marrow stromal cells.

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mediated signaling helps regulate bone development and healing through its effects on osteogenic cells. Here, we show how EGFR activity and osteogenic differentiation responses in primary human bone marrow-derived multipotent stromal cells (MSCs) are influenced by presenting covalently tethered epidermal growth factor (tEGF) on the culture substratum, a presentation mode that reduces EGFR internalization and restricts signaling to the cell surface. In both absence and presence of tEGF, MSCs increase expression levels of EGFR and its heterodimerization partner HER2 during the course of osteogenic differentiation.

Gene-expression signatures of nasal polyps associated with chronic rhinosinusitis and aspirin-sensitive asthma.

Purpose Of Review: The purpose of this review is to highlight recent advances in gene-expression profiling of nasal polyps in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis and aspirin-sensitive asthma.

Recent Findings: Gene-expression profiling has allowed simultaneous interrogation of thousands of genes, including the entire genome, to better understand distinct biological and clinical phenotypes associated with nasal polyps. The genes with altered expression in nasal polyps are involved in many cellular processes, including growth and development, immune functions, and signal transduction.

The mean, the median, and the St. Petersburg paradox.

The St. Petersburg Paradox is a famous economic and philosophical puzzle that has generated numerous conflicting explanations. To shed empirical light on this phenomenon, we examined subjects' bids for one St.

Mirroring of attention by neurons in macaque parietal cortex.

Macaques, like humans, rapidly orient their attention in the direction other individuals are looking. Both cortical and subcortical pathways have been proposed as neural mediators of social gaze following, but neither pathway has been characterized electrophysiologically in behaving animals. To address this gap, we recorded the activity of single neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) of rhesus macaques to determine whether and how this area might contribute to gaze following.

Fictive reward signals in the anterior cingulate cortex.

The neural mechanisms supporting the ability to recognize and respond to fictive outcomes, outcomes of actions that one has not taken, remain obscure. We hypothesized that neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which monitors the consequences of actions and mediates subsequent changes in behavior, would respond to fictive reward information. We recorded responses of single neurons during performance of a choice task that provided information about the reward values of options that were not chosen.

Aptamer evolution for array-based diagnostics.

Closed loop aptameric directed evolution, (CLADE) is a technique enabling simultaneous discovery, evolution, and optimization of aptamers. It was previously demonstrated using a fluorescent protein, and here we extend its applicability with the generation of surface-bound aptamers for targets containing no natural fluorescence. Starting from a random population, in four generations CLADE produced a new aptamer to thrombin with high specificity and affinity.

A review of prenatally detected femoral abnormalities.

Antenatally detected femoral abnormalities are a rare finding, and form a heterogeneous group in terms of diagnosis and prognosis. The objective of this study is to evaluate the management and outcome of fetuses after prenatal detection of femoral abnormalities in a tertiary care Fetal Medicine Unit over a 5-year period, thus facilitating accurate diagnosis and appropriate counseling. Patients were identified through a Regional Fetal Anomaly Database or clinician recall.

Electrophysiological correlates of default-mode processing in macaque posterior cingulate cortex.

During the course of daily activity, our level of engagement with the world varies on a moment-to-moment basis. Although these fluctuations in vigilance have critical consequences for our thoughts and actions, almost nothing is known about the neuronal substrates governing such dynamic variations in task engagement. We investigated the hypothesis that the posterior cingulate cortex (CGp), a region linked to default-mode processing by hemodynamic and metabolic measures, controls such variations.

Women's perceptions of being pregnant and having pregestational diabetes.

Objective: to explore the experiences of White British and South East Asian women with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and the perceived impact of diabetes on their reproductive health.

Design: a hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to explore the perceptions of women with diabetes from two different cultural backgrounds with varied reproductive health experiences. Focus groups and one-to-one interviews were used to elicit women's experiences.

Management of unexpected cerebrospinal fluid leak during endoscopic sinus surgery.

Purpose Of Review: Cerebrospinal fluid leak during endoscopic sinus surgery is a potentially devastating complication; however, identification and appropriate management can prevent unfavorable outcomes. The purpose of this review is to outline the recent advances in the management of cerebrospinal fluid leaks that occur during endoscopic sinus surgery.

Recent Findings: The low incidence of this complication makes prospective and randomized study difficult.