Dynamic electrical stimulation enhances the recruitment of spinal interneurons by corticospinal input.

Highly varying patterns of electrostimulation (Dynamic Stimulation, DS) delivered to the dorsal cord through an epidural array with 18 independent electrodes transiently facilitate corticospinal motor responses, even after spinal injury. To partly unravel how corticospinal input are affected by DS, we introduced a corticospinal platform that allows selective cortical stimulation during the multisite acquisition of cord dorsum potentials (CDPs) and the simultaneous supply of DS. Firstly, the epidural interface was validated by the acquisition of the classical multisite distribution of CDPs and their input-output profile elicited by pulses delivered to peripheral nerves.

Cavity-mediated thermal control of metal-to-insulator transition in 1T-TaS.

Placing quantum materials into optical cavities provides a unique platform for controlling quantum cooperative properties of matter, by both weak and strong light-matter coupling. Here we report experimental evidence of reversible cavity control of a metal-to-insulator phase transition in a correlated solid-state material. We embed the charge density wave material 1T-TaS into cryogenic tunable terahertz cavities and show that a switch between conductive and insulating behaviours, associated with a large change in the sample temperature, is obtained by mechanically tuning the distance between the cavity mirrors and their alignment.

Increasing associative plasticity in temporo-occipital back-projections improves visual perception of emotions.

The posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is a critical node in a network specialized for perceiving emotional facial expressions that is reciprocally connected with early visual cortices (V1/V2). Current models of perceptual decision-making increasingly assign relevance to recursive processing for visual recognition. However, it is unknown whether inducing plasticity into reentrant connections from pSTS to V1/V2 impacts emotion perception.

BRAF-mutated serrated colorectal neoplasia drives transcriptional activation of cholesterol metabolism.

BRAF mutations occur early in serrated colorectal cancers, but their long-term influence on tissue homeostasis is poorly characterized. We investigated the impact of short-term (3 days) and long-term (6 months) expression of Braf in the intestinal tissue of an inducible mouse model. We show that Braf perturbs the homeostasis of intestinal epithelial cells, with impaired differentiation of enterocytes emerging after prolonged expression of the oncogene.

Graphene Oxide Nanosheets Hamper Glutamate Mediated Excitotoxicity and Protect Neuronal Survival In An In vitro Stroke Model.

Small graphene oxide (s-GO) nanosheets reversibly downregulate central nervous system (CNS) excitatory synapses, with potential developments as future therapeutic tools to treat neuro-disorders characterized by altered glutamatergic transmission. Excitotoxicity, namely cell death triggered by exceeding ambient glutamate fueling over-activation of excitatory synapses, is a pathogenic mechanism shared by several neural diseases, from ischemic stroke to neurodegenerative disorders. In this work, CNS cultures were exposed to oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) to mimic ischemic stroke in vitro, and it is show that the delivery of s-GO following OGD, during the endogenous build-up of secondary damage and excitotoxicity, improved neuronal survival.

Topological Entanglement of Linear Catenanes: Knots and Threadings.

We used molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the self-entanglements of the collapsed linear catenanes. We found two different types of topologically complex states. First, we observed numerous long-lived knotting events of the catenane backbone.

LINE-1 regulates cortical development by acting as long non-coding RNAs.

Long Interspersed Nuclear Elements-1s (L1s) are transposable elements that constitute most of the genome's transcriptional output yet have still largely unknown functions. Here we show that L1s are required for proper mouse brain corticogenesis operating as regulatory long non-coding RNAs. They contribute to the regulation of the balance between neuronal progenitors and differentiation, the migration of post-mitotic neurons and the proportions of different cell types.

Stable cooperation emerges in stochastic multiplicative growth.

Understanding the evolutionary stability of cooperation is a central problem in biology, sociology, and economics. There exist only a few known mechanisms that guarantee the existence of cooperation and its robustness to cheating. Here, we introduce a mechanism for the emergence of cooperation in the presence of fluctuations.

Dynamics of cortical contrast adaptation predict perception of signals in noise.

Neurons throughout the sensory pathway adapt their responses depending on the statistical structure of the sensory environment. Contrast gain control is a form of adaptation in the auditory cortex, but it is unclear whether the dynamics of gain control reflect efficient adaptation, and whether they shape behavioral perception. Here, we trained mice to detect a target presented in background noise shortly after a change in the contrast of the background.

Transcription, structure, and organoids translate time across the lifespan of humans and great apes.

How the neural structures supporting human cognition developed and arose in evolution is an enduring question of interest. Yet, we still lack appropriate procedures to align ages across primates, and this lacuna has hindered progress in understanding the evolution of biological programs. We generated a dataset of unprecedented size consisting of 573 time points from abrupt and gradual changes in behavior, anatomy, and transcription across human and 8 nonhuman primate species.

Deep Levels and Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Parameters of Substitutional Nitrogen in Silicon from First Principles.

Nitrogen is commonly implanted in silicon to suppress the diffusion of self-interstitials and the formation of voids through the creation of nitrogen-vacancy complexes and nitrogen-nitrogen pairs. Yet, identifying a specific N-related defect via spectroscopic means has proven to be non-trivial. Activation energies obtained from deep-level transient spectroscopy are often assigned to a subset of possible defects that include non-equivalent atomic structures, such as the substitutional nitrogen and the nitrogen-vacancy complex.

Considering the Value of 3D Cultures for Enhancing the Understanding of Adhesion, Proliferation, and Osteogenesis on Titanium Dental Implants.

Background: Individuals with pathologic conditions and restorative deficiencies might benefit from a combinatorial approach encompassing stem cells and dental implants; however, due to the various surface textures and coatings, the influence of titanium dental implants on cells exhibits extensive, wide variations. Three-dimensional (3D) cultures of stem cells on whole dental implants are superior in testing implant properties and were used to examine their capabilities thoroughly.

Materials And Methods: The surface micro-topography of five titanium dental implants manufactured by sandblasting with titanium, aluminum, corundum, or laser sintered and laser machined was compared in this study.

Similar object shape representation encoded in the inferolateral occipitotemporal cortex of sighted and early blind people.

We can sense an object's shape by vision or touch. Previous studies suggested that the inferolateral occipitotemporal cortex (ILOTC) implements supramodal shape representations as it responds more to seeing or touching objects than shapeless textures. However, such activation in the anterior portion of the ventral visual pathway could be due to the conceptual representation of an object or visual imagery triggered by touching an object.

Dissipation Mechanisms and Superlubricity in Solid Lubrication by Wet-Transferred Solution-Processed Graphene Flakes: Implications for Micro Electromechanical Devices.

Solution-processed few-layer graphene flakes, dispensed to rotating and sliding contacts via liquid dispersions, are gaining increasing attention as friction modifiers to achieve low friction and wear at technologically relevant interfaces. Vanishing friction states, i.e.

Spinal facilitation of descending motor input.

Highly varying patterns of electrostimulation (Dynamic Stimulation, DS) delivered to the dorsal cord through an epidural array with 18 independent electrodes transiently facilitate corticospinal motor responses, even after spinal injury. To partly unravel how corticospinal input are affected by DS, we introduced a corticospinal platform that allows selective cortical stimulation during the multisite acquisition of cord dorsum potentials (CDPs) and the simultaneous supply of DS. Firstly, the epidural interface was validated by the acquisition of the classical multisite distribution of CDPs on the dorsal cord and their input-output profile elicited by pulses delivered to peripheral nerves.

The influence of sac centreline on saccular aneurysm rupture: computational study.

The geometric characteristics of a saccular aneurysm play a crucial role in its rupturing. This article thoroughly investigates the impact of the sac centerline on aneurysm rupture, with a focus on identifying significant factors related to rupture at different time intervals. The study employs comprehensive computational simulations of six models of the ICA with varying coiling porosities and blood HCTs, using CFD analysis to examine WSS, OSI, pressure, and velocity within the saccular aneurysm for different sac centerlines.

Electric-field frictional effects in confined zwitterionic molecules.

We theoretically explore the effect of a transverse electric field on the frictional response of a bi-layer of packed zwitterionic molecules. The dipole-moment reorientation promoted by the electric field can lead to either stick-slip or smooth sliding dynamics, with average shear stress values varying over a wide range. A structure-property relation is revealed by investigating the array of molecules and their mutual orientation and interlocking.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of abstract and concrete semantic representations.

Dual Coding Theories (DCT) suggest that meaning is represented in the brain by a double code: a language-derived code in the Anterior Temporal Lobe (ATL) and a sensory-derived code in perceptual and motor regions. Concrete concepts should activate both codes, while abstract ones rely solely on the linguistic code. To test these hypotheses, the present magnetoencephalography (MEG) experiment had participants judge whether visually presented words relate to the senses while we recorded brain responses to abstract and concrete semantic components obtained from 65 independently rated semantic features.

Molecular Dynamics Simulations Elucidate the Molecular Basis of Pre-mRNA Translocation by the Prp2 Spliceosomal Helicase.

The spliceosome machinery catalyzes precursor-messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) splicing by undergoing at each splicing cycle assembly, activation, catalysis, and disassembly processes, thanks to the concerted action of specific RNA-dependent ATPases/helicases. Prp2, a member of the DExH-box ATPase/helicase family, harnesses the energy of ATP hydrolysis to translocate a single pre-mRNA strand in the 5' to 3' direction, thus promoting spliceosome remodeling to its catalytic-competent state. Here, we established the functional coupling between ATPase and helicase activities of Prp2.

Transformer Variational Wave Functions for Frustrated Quantum Spin Systems.

The transformer architecture has become the state-of-art model for natural language processing tasks and, more recently, also for computer vision tasks, thus defining the vision transformer (ViT) architecture. The key feature is the ability to describe long-range correlations among the elements of the input sequences, through the so-called self-attention mechanism. Here, we propose an adaptation of the ViT architecture with complex parameters to define a new class of variational neural-network states for quantum many-body systems, the ViT wave function.

Complement protein C1q stimulates hyaluronic acid degradation gC1qR/HABP1/p32 in malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Complement component C1q can act as a pro-tumorigenic factor in the tumor microenvironment (TME). The TME in malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is rich in C1q and hyaluronic acid (HA), whose interaction enhances adhesion, migration and proliferation of malignant cells. HA-bound C1q is also capable of modulating HA synthesis.

SINEUP non-coding RNA activity depends on specific N6-methyladenosine nucleotides.

SINEUPs are natural and synthetic antisense long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) selectively enhancing target mRNAs translation by increasing their association with polysomes. This activity requires two RNA domains: an embedded inverted SINEB2 element acting as effector domain, and an antisense region, the binding domain, conferring target selectivity. SINEUP technology presents several advantages to treat genetic (haploinsufficiencies) and complex diseases restoring the physiological activity of diseased genes and of compensatory pathways.

Barcode demultiplexing of nanopore sequencing raw signals by unsupervised machine learning.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) is a third generation sequencing approach that allows the analysis of individual, full-length nucleic acids. ONT records the alterations of an ionic current flowing across a nano-scaled pore while a DNA or RNA strand is threading through the pore. Basecalling methods are then leveraged to translate the recorded signal back to the nucleic acid sequence.

Lattice Polarons across the Superfluid to Mott Insulator Transition.

We study the physics of a mobile impurity confined in a two-dimensional lattice, moving within a Bose-Hubbard bath at zero temperature. Exploiting the quantum Gutzwiller formalism, we develop a beyond-Fröhlich model of the bath-impurity interaction to describe the properties of the polaronic quasiparticle formed by the dressing of the impurity by quantum fluctuations of the bath. We find a stable and well-defined polaron throughout the entire phase diagram of the bath, except for the very low tunneling limit of the hard-core superfluid.