[The progress and prospect of prepulse inhibition in autism].

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is suppression of the startle reflex when an intense startling stimulus is preceded by a weaker sensory stimulus (the prepulse). It is an operational measurement of sensorimotor gating mechanism to help human adapt to complex environment. This weak prepulse protect central cognitive processing by damping the effect of intense stimuli. Autistics cannot select out behaviorally important information from a lot of irrelevant resources and reflect abnormal gating mechanism and attentional abnormalities. Previous studies have not made agreement on whether autistic patients demonstrated deficits in PPI, because the results depend on age, sex, severity of the disease as well as the experimental parameters used. Moreover, these studies have not covered whether autistics have suffered deficits in higher-order processing. In this review, the "top-down" modulation of selective attention and subjective emotion are introduced into the PPI experiment. We also introduce fear conditioning and perceived spatial separation paradigm to further explore the interaction between autistic cognitive process and gating mechanism.

[Behavioral and neurobiological abnormalities induced by social isolation as a useful animal model of schizophrenia].

Social isolation influences the development of the brain, causing dysfunctions at behavioral, cellular and molecular levels. The present paper summarizes the abnormalities induced by social isolation in behaviors, neurotransmitters and cell apoptosis. At the behavioral level, social isolation induces hyperlocomotion, abnormalities in startle reflex and prepulse inhibition (PPI), and dysfunctions in conditioned learning, reversal learning and memory. Moreover, social isolation causes changes of neurotransmitters, such as the increase of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, the amygdala and other brain regions in the limbic system, the decrease of dopamine in medial prefrontal cortex, the decrease of 5-HT in the nucleus accumbens and the hippocampus, and changes of glutamine in the prefrontal cortex. Finally, social isolation affects cell apoptosis in different brain areas, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, nucleus accumbens, and hippocampus. Both the changes in neurotransmitters and cell apoptosis may contribute to the behavioral dysfunctions in social isolated rats. Since schizophrenic patients have similar abnormalities in behaviors and neurotransmitters, isolation rearing can be used as a useful animal model of schizophrenia.

UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase gene affects mycelia growth and polysaccharide synthesis of Grifola frondosa.

To elucidate potential roles of UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (UGP) in mycelial growth and polysaccharide synthesis of Grifola frondosa, a putative 2036-bp UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase gene gfugp encoding a 53.17-kDa protein was cloned and re-annotated. Two dual promoter RNA silencing vectors of pAN7-iUGP-P-dual and pAN7-iUGP-C-dual were constructed to down-regulate gfugp expression by targeting its promoter or conserved functional sequences, respectively. Results showed that silence of gfugp promoter sequence had a higher down-regulating efficiency with slower mycelial growth and polysaccharide production than those of conserved sequence. The monosaccharide compositions/percentages of mycelial and exo-polysaccharides significantly changed with the increase of galactose and arabinose contents possibly due to block of UDP-glucose supply by gfugp silence and alteration of sugar metabolism via up-regulation of UDP-glucose-4-epimerase (gfuge) and UDP-xylose-4-epimerase (gfuxe) transcription. Our findings would provide a reference to know the biosynthesis pathway of mushroom polysaccharides and improve their production by metabolic regulation.

Functions of a Glucan Synthase Gene GFGLS in Mycelial Growth and Polysaccharide Production of Grifola frondosa.

Glucan synthase (GLS) gene is known to be involved in the fungal biosynthesis of cell wall, differentiation, and growth. In the present study, a glucan synthase gene (GFGLS) in the edible mushroom Grifola frondosa with a full sequence of 5927 bp encoding a total of 1781 amino acids was cloned and characterized for the first time. GFGLSp is a membrane protein containing two large transmembrane domains connected with a hydrophilic cytoplasmic domain. With a constructed dual promoter RNA silencing vector pAN7-gfgls-dual, a GFGLS-silencing transformant iGFGLS-3 had the lowest GFGLS transcriptional expression level (26.1%) with a shorter length and thinner appearance of the mycelia, as well as decreased mycelial biomass and exo-polysaccharide production of 5.02 and 0.38 g/L, respectively. Further analysis indicated that GFGLS silence influenced slightly the monosaccharide compositions and ratios of mycelial and exo-polysaccharide. These findings suggest that GFGLS could affect mycelial growth and polysaccharide production by downregulating the glucan synthesis.

[Speciation of 9 trace elements in a traditional Chinese medicine long dan cao by flow injection-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry with a focused microwave assisted extraction system].

A method based on focused microwave extraction for leaching 9 trace elements in traditional Chinese medicine Long Dan Cao was introduced. An online C18 enrichment-separation system and an HP4500 ICP mass spectrometer with a flow injection system was established for the separation and determination of inorganic speciation and organic speciation of the selected elements. Orthogonal design was applied for the optimization of microwave leaching conditions. The results showed that the temperature was the major factor for the leaching recoveries.

Interaction between auditory and motor systems in speech perception.

Based on the Motor Theory of speech perception, the interaction between the auditory and motor systems plays an essential role in speech perception. Since the Motor Theory was proposed, it has received remarkable attention in the field. However, each of the three hypotheses of the theory still needs further verification. In this review, we focus on how the auditory-motor anatomical and functional associations play a role in speech perception and discuss why previous studies could not reach an agreement and particularly whether the motor system involvement in speech perception is task-load dependent. Finally, we suggest that the function of the auditory-motor link is particularly useful for speech perception under adverse listening conditions and the further revised Motor Theory is a potential solution to the "cocktail-party" problem.

The dual-pathway model of auditory signal processing.

Similar to the visual dual-pathway model, neurophysiological studies in non-human primates have suggested that the dual-pathway model is also applicable for explaining auditory cortical processing, including the ventral "what" pathway for object identification and the dorsal "where" pathway for spatial localization. This review summarizes evidence from human neuroimaging studies supporting the dual-pathway model for auditory cortical processing in humans.