Intracortical Directed Connectivity for Information Retention in Visual-Spatial Working Memory.

A group of 27 healthy young adults solved a task involving the working memory (WM) activation, consisting of the comparison between the spatial orientations of two sequentially presented square-wave luminance gratings. We investigated the effective (directed) connectivity patterns between the frontal and postcentral cortical regions related to the visual system. The connectivity was assessed using vector autoregression modeling of EEG. It was shown that the strength of the top-down right-hemispheric connectivity patterns directed from the frontal cortex to the visual areas in θ frequency was significantly lower at the stage of stimulus retention in the WM than at the stage of stimulus anticipation. On the contrary, in the α band the descending influences were slightly more intense. The results of the study showed the frequency-dependent dynamics of the descending influences of the frontal cortex on visual areas and confirm that the frontal cortex plays the role of a controlling and modulating center in the brain system underlying WM.

[Proteins and immunohistochemical markers of breast diseases]. / Belkovye i immunogistokhimicheskie markery zabolevanii molochnoi zhelezy.

In this work, we have compared malignant and non-malignant diseases of the mammary gland using 8 proteins: HRG, MUC1, PAI-1, HSP90αA1, CDH1, ERα, PGR and IL-12. Their concentrations in the supernatants of blood cells and breast biopsies were compared in terms of spontaneous production, induced by a polyclonal activator and after exposure to biopsy samples of the HLDF differentiation factor, as well as the indices of the effect of the polyclonal activator and HLDF on the protein production. In addition, the correlation relationships of the above indicators with the expression of markers of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition: collagen type II (CII), ß-1 integrin (CD29) and cadherin-E (CDH1) were studied. The study revealed statistically significant differences in the concentration of HRG in the supernatant of blood cells, IL-12 during spontaneous production by biopsy specimens, PGR production of biopsy specimens induced by the polyclonal activator, CDH1 and IL-12 production biopsy specimens exposed to HLDF. According to the influence index of the polyclonal activator and HLDF, statistically significant differences were found for CDH1production. Comparison of non-specific invasive carcinoma biopsy specimens and non-malignant breast diseases by means of the markers of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition revealed statistically significant differences in CD29 expression and the lack of differences in the expression of CDH1 and CII. This indicates the presence of cell atypia in samples of non-malignant breast diseases; it is confirmed by the recognized correlation between the production of certain proteins and the expression of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers.

[Assessment of the cytokine-producing resource of tumor biopsy samples from patients with invasive carcinoma of no special type and with non-malignant breast diseases]. / Otsenka tsitokinprodutsiruiushchego resursa bioptatov opukholei patsientov s invazivnoi kartsinomoi nespetsificheskogo tipa i s nezlokachestvennymi zabolevaniiami molochnoi zhelezy.

Breast cancer, in most cases, is a malignant neoplasm associated with infiltration of a tumor with the cells that form its microenvironment and produce various cytokines. The aim of the study was to evaluate the cytokine-producing function of tumor cells and their microenvironment in biopsy specimen of patients with invasive carcinoma of no special type and in patients with benign breast diseases. To assess the cytokine-producing activity of the tumor and its microenvironment, the index of polyclonal activators influence on cytokine production by biopsy specimens of patients with invasive carcinoma of no special type (group I) and in patients with benign breast tumors (group II) was calculated. Group II was further subdivided into group IIa, which included only patients with fibroadenoma, and group IIb, which included the patients with leaf-shaped fibroadenoma, fibroadenomatosis, fibrocystic mastopathy, intraductal papillomatosis, sclerosing adenosis and fibrocystic mastopathy with microcalcifications. The concentrations of IL-2, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-17, IL-18, IL-1ß, IL-1Ra, TNF-α, IFN-γ, G-CSF, GM-CSF, VEGF, and MCP-1 were measured in tumor biopsy supernatants. When comparing groups I and II, higher indices of the polyclonal activators influence on the production of IL-17, IL-18 and TNF-α were observed in patients with benign diseases. Higher indices of the polyclonal activators influence on the production of IL-18, TNF-α, and IL-1ß and the ratio of IL1ß/IL1Ra were observed in patients with fibroadenoma as compared to those with invasive carcinoma of no special type. There were no significant differences in the indices of the polyclonal activators influence between groups I and IIb. This suggests the existence of changes in the mammary gland in patients of group IIb similar to those present in patients with invasive carcinoma of no special type. Higher indices of polyclonal activators influence on the production of IL-1ß, as well as the ratio of IL1ß/IL1Ra were observed in the patients of group IIa compared to the patients of group IIb. The results of the study identify the features of the cytokine-producing resource of tumor biopsy specimens in patients with invasive carcinoma of no special type and with benign breast tumors.

Working Memory for Low-Level Visual Features: Sensory Mechanisms for Detecting the Mismatch between the Current Orientations and Those Stored in Memory.

The amplitudes of the P100 and N150 early components of evoked potentials in the visual cortex have been analyzed on 33 volunteers with normal vision during matching between the current orientation and that stored in memory. An increase in the P100 response in the occipital and parietal cortical areas was identified as an informative indicator of mismatch between the current and stored-in-memory orientations. This effect was not found for more complex stimuli, namely, spatial patterns. The N150 component demonstrated a similar effect, but in contrast to P100 it was not stimulus specific. Thus, in the first 100 ms, a signal of mismatch between the current and stored-in-memory orientations arises in the early visual areas that represents a mechanism for early implicit response to changes in the basic characteristics of the visual space.

[Variations of oral fluid microbiota in healthy children and adolescents]. / Varianty mikroflory rotovoi zhidkosti u prakticheski zdorovykh detei i podrostkov.

The aim of the study was to establish the bacterial and viral associations of saliva and the immune resistance in 127 healthy people of different ages. The analysis sorted out three variants of oral fluid microbiota differing by certain combination of indigenous and facultative microflora. It was found that with age there is a significant increase in the number of adolescents with the third variant of the microbiota, characterized by a decrease in the number of indigenous microflora and increase in opportunistic microorganisms and viruses. With an increase in microecological shifts a tendency to decrease the level of lysozyme, an increase in the number of secretory IgA, accompanied by a decrease in antibody was revealed. It has been shown that bacterial and viral component of the microbiota of the oral fluid are in a dynamic relationship with each other, as well as immune resistance and can serve as an indicator of the health level and the selection criteria at the stages of clinical examination of children and adolescents, with the risk of dental disease.

[The characteristics of microbiota of periodontal recesses in smoking patients with chronic generalized periodontitis].

The clinical examination of 36 tobacco smokers with chronic generalized periodontitis of light, average and severe degree was carried out. The examination established poor hygienic condition of oral cavity, less expressed inflammatory reaction of tissues of periodont and predominance of occurrences of destruction of alveolar portion of bone as compared with the group of 59 non-smoking patients with chronic generalized periodontitis of light, average and severe degree. The study demonstrated higher rate of detection of T. forsythia in smokers as compared with non-smoking patients at all stages of of development of chronic generalized periodontitis. Under light stage of chronic generalized periodontitis increasing of rate of detection of T. forsythia more than twice was registered. P.gigngivalis and P.intermedia were detected in smoking patients with light stage of chronic generalized periodontitis either in the same values or more rarely as compared with non-smokers. In the group of smokers with average stage of chronic generalized periodontitis increasing of rate of occurrence of association of T. forsythia-P. gigngivalis-P. intermedia occurred more than five times in comparison with non-smokers. The obtained results indicate on relationship between alterations of microbiota and aggressive development of chronic generalized periodontitis in smoking patients and on development in periodontal recesses of smokers of favorable conditions for growth of T. forsythia. The presence of T. forsythia is a significant factor of development of destructive processes in tissues of periodont.

Cytokine-producing function of human blood cells in chronic atrophic gastritis and gastric adenomas and adenocarcinomas.

The cytokine-producing potential of blood cells has been studied in the atrophic gastritis-adenoma-adenocarcinoma progression of pathological states of the stomach. It has been revealed that, at the initial stage of carcinogenesis, namely adenoma, immunocompetent cells have the highest cytokine-producing proto-oncogenic potential as compared to both atrophic gastritis, which presents a precancerous condition, and completely formed malignant tumor (gastric adenocarcinoma).

Orosensory Food Testing in Fish: Chronology of Behavior.

The orosensory food testing behavior in fish was studied using the nine-spined stickleback Pungitiuspungitius as an example. The patterns of the chronology of manipulations performed by fish in testing food objects were identified. The existence of two stereotypical patterns of feeding behavior was confirmed, and their new characteristics were obtained. The relationship between the responsiveness to food and the predisposition of fish to feeding was revealed.

[Latency of Evoked Potentials in the Tasks Involving Classification of Images after Wavelet Filtration.]

We studied the characteristics of evoked potentials recorded during the recognition test based on four types of series of images subjected to the wavelet filtration: images of living objects containing either low frequency or high frequency portion of the spatial frequency spectrum, and imaging of non-living objects in the same two spatial frequency bands. Each subject had to classify the image either by its semantic feature (live-not live), or by its physical feature (low-high frequency). The purpose of this study was to compare the time characteristics of evoked potentials in these two types of tasks, which provides information on the time characteristics of categorization mechanisms of visual images. Analysis of the latent periods and amplitudes of the components of evoked potentials enabled to detect the occipital areas of the leads where the early components (up to 170 ms) are associated with spatial and frequency characteristics of the image, the frontal and temporal areas where the components of 170-200 ms correspond with the process of categorization, and the later frontal, central and parietal areas (300-500 ms) correspond with the process of error detection and the organization of motor response.

[THE MICRO-ECOLOGY OF DIGESTIVE TRACT AS AN INDICATOR OF HUMAN HEALTH CONDITIONS].

The study was carried out to analyze qualitative and quantitative parameters of oral fluid and feces in 74 healthy individuals of different age groups. In most of the cases, alterations of micro-ecology are established characterizing by decreasing of amount of indigenous micro-flora and increasing of number of opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms of genera of Staphylococcus, Bacillus, Candida. The degree of evidence of these alterations reliably increases with age. It is established that microbiota, initial and terminal biotopes of digestive tract are closely interrelated and have number of common characteristics depending on age, hormonal and immune status and reflect conditions of micro-biocenosis of digestive tract in general. The character and degree of evidence of alterations of micro-biocenosis can be an effective diagnostic criterion for complex evaluation of human health conditions with following formation of risk groups in need of particular volume of correction activities.

[The Mechanisms of Orientation Sensitivity of Human Vision System. Part II: Neural Patterns of Early Processing of Information about Line Orientation].

The high density EEG was registered in 41 healthy subjects (20 males, 21 females) in the cardinal (horizontal and vertical) and oblique (45 and 135 deg) line orientation identification task. The analysis of the adaptive amplitude maximum (4 ms averaging) of P1 and N1 evoked potentials in the symmetrical occipital, parietal and inferior temporal areas and dipole source modelling showed the anisotropy of cortical responses in the 80-150 ms interval. The amplitude is higher on the oblique orientations as comparison with cardinal ones. The temporal and regional features of cortical answers were discovered. The earlier selective response (~90 ms latency) is registered.in the parietal areas, while the later (~145 ms latency) is found in the occipital ones. We discovered a number of sex-related differences in the early stages of line orientation detection. In males, the amplitude of components is higher; they have broader area of localisation of their dipole sources: in addition to the occipital and parietal regions, cortex of the temporal regions is involved. Theobtained data are discussed in the context of the idea of effective neural coding (Barlow, 1959) and the features of spatial information processing in the visual system of males and females.

[Microbiological monitoring of oral fluid of clinically healthy children].

The article presents qualitative and quantitative parameters of microbiocenosis of oral fluid and feces of clinically healthy children in different age groups. In most of the cases compensated disbiotic changes were found, which were characterized by reduction in the number of indigenous microflora (lactobacilli and bifidobacteria) and increase of representatives of opportunistic pathogens (Staphylococcus, Bacillus and Candida). Microecological changes in different gastrointestinal biotopes are closely interrelated. Saliva may be considered as a specimen of integral fluid of human environment and can be used for complex assessment of the state of gastrointestinal tract microflora.

[The Modeling of Human Visual ERPs Sources in the Task of Line Orientation Identification].

The high-resolution EEG was taken from 35 healthy subjects (16 males, 19 females) in the task of identification of cardinal (horizontal, vertical) and oblique (45°, 135°) orientations. The integrated approach was developed and used for the ERPs analysis. It includes the modeling of the distributed intracranial dipole sources of the ERPs' components by the weighted Minimum Norm Estimates (wMNE) method, the combination of distributed intracranial dipole sources with the M RI data and the statistical analysis of the current density. It was shown that a multiple network of brain structures was active during the early stage of analysis of line orientation. It includes not only primary striate visual area, but also the parietal, temporal and prefrontal corticies. The new data was obtained about the participation of structures, responsible for navigation (parahippocampal gyrus and entorhinal area) in the line orientation detection. For the first time the gender-related differences in the organization ofthe line detection network were described. The obtained data provides a significant supplement to the knowledge of the mechanisms of the orientation sensitivity and assumes that orientation sensitivity plays an important role in the navigation.

[Gastroesophageal reflux disease associated with duodenogastroesophageal reflux in patients with biliary pathology: the specific features of the course and esophagogastroduodenal microbial biocenosis].

AIM: To study the specific features of the clinical course of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) associated with duodenogastroesophageal reflux (DGER) in patients with chronic acalculous cholecystitis (CAC) and cholelithiasis (CL), as well as qualitative and quantitative characteristics. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The clinical, morphological, motor tonic characteristics of the esophagogastroduodenal area, mucosal microbial biocenosis in the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum were studied in detail in 83 patients with GERD that was associated with DGER and ran concurrently with CAC or CL. RESULTS: Impaired duodenal propulsive activity as a concomitance of the signs of gastrostasis and duodenal dyskinesia with dyscoordination of both anthroduodenal and duodenojejunal propulsion and with the development of duodenogastric reflux and DGER, which in turn determine esophageal and gastric pH values is shown to be of importance in CAC and CL, which match GERD. Abnormal microbiocenosis in the upper digestive tract is characterized by the higher quantitative and qualitative content of the mucous microflora. Opportunistic microorganisms exhibit cytotoxic, hemolytic, lecithinase, caseinolytic, urease, and RNAase activities. CONCLUSION: The found specific features of the course of GERD associated with DGER in patients with biliary tract abnormalities lead us to search for novel therapeutic approaches based on the correction of digestive motor tonic disorders and abnormal microbiocenoses of the mucous flora in the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum.

[Mechanisms of human orientation sensitivity of the vision system. Part I. Behavioral characteristics of human orientation sensitivity. Influence of task type, experimental conditions and gender].

Orientation sensitivity in human visual system was investigated in three experiments. In the first experiment 134 subjects were to determine the orientation of the segments of short lines, by "selecting" it from a set of reference orientations (Benton's test). In the second experiment 41 subject, which was chosen from participants of the first experiment, were to estimate the proximity of oblique lines to the vertical, horizontal, and 45° axis. In the third experiment participants were to identify the orientation of cardinal (0° and 90°) and oblique (45° and 135°) lines. It was shown that the cardinal orientations were defined more accurately and faster than the oblique ones. Error type depended on experimental conditions: participant answers tilted to horizontal under normal illumination in the presence of peripheral visual information, but they tilted to vertical under low illumination (3 lux.). Women performed worse only those tasks which require precise determination of the line orientation. It was assumed that the metric spatial characteristics determined better by males then females. The oblique effect was more pronounced in females, presumably due to gender differences in brain organization of the multimodal reference frame.

[The microbiocenosis of intestine and immune status of children of primary school age].

The article deals with the study of species and quantitative structure of microbiocenosis of intestine and characteristics of immune status in children aged 8-10 years. In children with chronic tonsillitis pharyngitis and bronchitis and with diseases of gastro-intestinal tract (biliary dysfunction, chronic gastroduodenitis and gastritis) the microbe imbalance of various degree of manifestation was established which was prevailing in cases of children with pathology of gastrointestinal tract. The increase of quantity of opportunistic microflora induces the production of both immunoglobulins and cytotoxic lymphocytes and cells-natural killers.

[The disbiotic changes of intestines microflora in healthy people].

The article presents the results of study of species and quantitative composition of intestinal flora in volunteer students aged 18-21 years. The disbiotic abnormality of different degrees was diagnosed in 75% of students. The associations of microorganisms, in case of normobiosis and disbacteriosis degree I included predominantly representatives of normoflora, in case of disbiotic abnormality II and III degrees included both representatives of normoflora and opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms.

[Non-conscious perception of emotional faces affects the visual objects recognition].

In 34 healthy subjects we have analyzed accuracy and reaction time (RT) during the recognition of complex visual images: pictures of animals and non-living objects. The target stimuli were preceded by brief presentation of masking non-target ones, which represented drawings of emotional (angry, fearful, happy) or neutral faces. We have revealed that in contrast to accuracy the RT depended on the emotional expression of the preceding faces. RT was significantly shorter if the target objects were paired with the angry and fearful faces as compared with the happy and neutral ones. These effects depended on the category of the target stimulus and were more prominent for objects than for animals. Further, the emotional faces' effects were determined by emotional and communication personality traits (defined by Cattell's Questionnaire) and were clearer defined in more sensitive, anxious and pessimistic introverts. The data are important for understanding the mechanisms of human visual behavior determination by non-consciously processing of emotional information.

[Recognition of visual objects under forward masking. Effects of cathegorial similarity of test and masking stimuli].

In 38 healthy subjects accuracy and response time were examined during recognition of two categories of images--animals andnonliving objects--under forward masking. We revealed new data that masking effects depended of categorical similarity of target and masking stimuli. The recognition accuracy was the lowest and the response time was the most slow, when the target and masking stimuli belongs to the same category, that was combined with high dispersion of response times. The revealed effects were more clear in the task of animal recognition in comparison with the recognition of nonliving objects. We supposed that the revealed effects connected with interference between cortical representations of the target and masking stimuli and discussed our results in context of cortical interference and negative priming.