Exercise alters and β-alanine combined with exercise augments histidyl dipeptide levels and scavenges lipid peroxidation products in human skeletal muscle.

Carnosine and anserine are dipeptides synthesized from histidine and β-alanine by carnosine synthase (ATPGD1). These dipeptides, present in high concentration in the skeletal muscle, form conjugates with lipid peroxidation products such as 4-hydroxy -2-nonenal (HNE). Although skeletal muscle levels of these dipeptides could be elevated by feeding β-alanine, it is unclear how these dipeptides and their conjugates are affected by exercise training with or without β-alanine supplementation.

Deficiency of aldose reductase exacerbates early pressure overload-induced cardiac dysfunction and autophagy in mice.

Pathological cardiac hypertrophy is associated with the accumulation of lipid peroxidation-derived aldehydes such as 4-hydroxy-trans-2-nonenal (HNE) and acrolein in the heart. These aldehydes are metabolized via several pathways, of which aldose reductase (AR) represents a broad-specificity route for their elimination. We tested the hypothesis that by preventing aldehyde removal, AR deficiency accentuates the pathological effects of transverse aortic constriction (TAC).

Assembling a task space: global determination of local shift costs.

Most theorizing on the origin of the costs that are associated with task shifts focuses on local transitions between individual trials. In the present article we argue that this emphasis has resulted in a neglect of more global representational structures, which also determinate shift costs. To substantiate this claim, we employed a set of four tasks that results from a factorial combination of two types of judgment and two judgment-to-response mappings.

Processes of task-set reconfiguration: switching operations and implementation operations.

When participants are asked to shift between four dimensionally organized tasks which differ in the type of judgment (numerical vs. spatial) and/or the judgment-to-response mapping (compatible vs. incompatible), a characteristic profile of shift costs can be observed.