Most neurons transmit information digitally using spikes that trigger the release of synaptic vesicles with low probability. The first stages of vision and hearing are distinct in that they operate with analog signals, but it is unclear how these are recoded for synaptic transmission. By imaging the release of glutamate in live zebrafish, we demonstrate that ribbon synapses of retinal bipolar cells encode contrast through changes in both the frequency and amplitude of release events. Higher contrasts caused multiple vesicles to be released within an event, and such coding by amplitude often continued after the rate code had reached a maximum frequency. Glutamate packets equivalent to five vesicles transmitted four times as many bits of information per vesicle compared with those released individually. By discretizing analog signals into sequences of numbers up to about 11, ribbon synapses can increase the dynamic range, temporal precision and efficiency with which visual information is transmitted.
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Front Biosci (Landmark Ed)
January 2025
Department of Cytobiology and Proteomics, Medical University of Lodz, 92-215 Lodz, Poland.
Background: Androgenic anabolic steroids (AASs) are synthetic drugs structurally related to testosterone, with the ability to bind to androgen receptors. Their uncontrolled use by professional and recreational sportspeople is a widespread problem. AAS abuse is correlated with severe damage to the cardiovascular system, including changes in homeostasis and coagulation disorders.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNutrients
January 2025
Instituto de Bioeletricidade Celular (IBIOCEL): Ciência & Saúde, Departamento de Bioquímica, Centro de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Rua João Pio Duarte Silva, 241, Sala G 301, Florianópolis 88038-000, SC, Brazil.
Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic syndrome that has grown globally to become a significant public health challenge. Hypothesizing that the plasma membrane protein, transient receptor potential ankyrin-1, is a pivotal target in insulin resistance, we investigated the mechanism of action of cinnamaldehyde (CIN), an electrophilic TRPA1 agonist, in skeletal muscle, a primary insulin target. Specifically, we evaluated the effect of CIN on insulin resistance, hepatic glycogen accumulation and muscle and adipose tissue glucose uptake.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNutrients
January 2025
School of Pharmacy, Shaoyang University, Shaoyang 422000, China.
Depression, a serious mental illness, is characterized by high risk, high incidence, persistence, and tendency to relapse, posing a significant burden on global health. The connection between depression and gut microbiota is an emerging field of study in psychiatry and neuroscience. Understanding the gut-brain axis is pivotal for understanding the pathogenesis and treatment of depression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSensors (Basel)
January 2025
School of Information Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, China.
Spectrum sensing is recognized as a viable strategy to alleviate the scarcity of spectrum resources and to optimize their usage. In this paper, considering the time-varying characteristics and the dependence on various timescales within a time series of samples composed of in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) component signals, we propose a multi-scale time-correlated perceptual attention model named MSTC-PANet. The model consists of multiple parallel temporal correlation perceptual attention (TCPA) modules, enabling us to extract features at different timescales and identify dependencies among features across various timescales.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSensors (Basel)
January 2025
Electrical Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia.
This paper presents a novel rail-to-rail Class-AB operational amplifier tailored for wake-up systems in motion sensor applications. By addressing limitations in free Class-AB designs, such as large inrush current, unstable bias conditions, and area ineffiiency, the proposed design achieves a gain of 59 dB and unity gain frequency of 550 kHz driving a 5 pF load. The inrush current is reduced from 1 mA to 7 µA, increasing the battery life.
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