Spectral-Spatial Differentiation of Brain Activity During Mental Imagery of Improvisational Music Performance Using MEG.

Group musical improvisation is thought to be akin to conversation, and therapeutically has been shown to be effective at improving communicativeness, sociability, creative expression, and overall psychological health. To understand these therapeutic effects, clarifying the nature of brain activity during improvisational cognition is important. Some insight regarding brain activity during improvisational music cognition has been gained via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG).

Acoustic pressure reduction at rhythm deviants causes magnetoencephalographic response.

Rhythm is an element of music and is important for determining the impression of the music. To investigate the mechanism by which musical rhythmic changes are perceived, magnetoencephalographic responses to rhythm deviants were recorded from 11 healthy volunteers. Auditory stimuli consisting of physically controlled tones were adapted from a song.

Muscleblind protein, MBNL1/EXP, binds specifically to CHHG repeats.

Myotonic dystrophy (DM) type 1 is caused by an expansion of a CTG repeat in the DMPK gene and type 2 by a CCTG repeat in the ZNF9 gene. Previous reports have suggested that transcripts containing expanded CUG/CCUG repeats might have toxic gain-of-function effects, probably affecting the function of RNA-binding proteins in the pathogenesis of DM. Here, it was attempted to compare the RNA-binding properties of three proteins, CUG-BP, MBNL1/EXP and PKR, which have previously been suggested to interact with CUG repeats.

Overexpression of human myotonic dystrophy protein kinase in Schizosaccharomyces pombe induces an abnormal polarized and swollen cell morphology.

We expressed human myotonic dystrophy protein kinase (DMPK) in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, in which the overexpression of human DMPK affects cell growth and cell shape. The human DMPK protein has a leucine-rich domain at the N-terminus, a serine/threonine kinase domain in the middle, and a hydrophobic region at the C-terminus. C-Terminus-deleted DMPK produced a middle-swollen phenotype (lemon-like shape), indicating an abnormality in cell division.