Dissociative convulsions, a prominent form of dissociative (conversion) disorder formerly known as hysteria, are a common and elusive differential diagnosis from epilepsy. However, the treatment of ...such patients is always challenging and frustrating due to poor response to the routinely used interventions in most situations. Here, we present a case with dissociative convulsions in order to catch the eye of the clinicians and researchers on the recognition of clinical manifestation and exploration of therapeutic strategies.
Ovarian insufficiency results from a number of disorders, and a certain causal relationship between psychological stress and ovarian insufficiency has been reported, but the underlying mechanism ...remains unclear. In our study, C57BL/6J female mice were subjected to chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS), and depression-like mice were selected and identified according to the behavioral tests. The defective ovarian follicle development, low 17 β-estradiol (E
2
), and anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) levels, which were consistent with the clinical characteristics of ovarian insufficiency, indicated that depression-like mice may be used to assess the effects of psychological stress on female reproductive function. To investigate a possible mechanism, lipid homeostasis of the ovary was detected by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis, and the decreased abundance of cholesteryl ester (CE 24:4) was supported to be associated with the downregulated E
2
. Moreover, granulosa cells did undergo more apoptosis in response to psychological stress, which was caused by downregulated
Bcl2
and
Bcl2/Bax
in granulosa cells. Additionally, the disorder of cell death and growth-related pathways in depression-like mouse ovaries was confirmed by RNA-seq analysis. Taken together, this study will provide a better understanding of the female reproductive problem under psychological stress.
Associative learning is a common way for information acquisition, and the integrative storage of multiple associated signals is essential for associative thinking and logical reasoning. In terms of ...the cellular mechanism for associative memory, our studies by behavioral task and cellular imaging demonstrate that paired whisker and odor stimulations lead to odorant-induced whisker motion and associative memory cell recruitment in the barrel cortex (BC), which is driven presumably by synapse innervation from co-activated sensory cortices. To confirm these associative memory cells and synapse innervations essential for associative memory and to examine their potential mechanisms, we studied a causal relationship between epigenetic process and memory cell/synapse recruitment by manipulating miRNAs and observing the changes from the recruitments of associative memory cells and synapse innervations to associative memory. Anti-miRNA-324 and anti-miRNA-133a in the BC significantly downregulate new synapse innervation, associative memory cell recruitment and odorant-induced whisker motion, where Tau-tubulin kinase-1 expression is increased. Therefore, the upregulated miRNA-324 in associative learning knocks down Ttbk1-mediated Tau phosphorylation and microtubule depolymerization, which drives the balance between polymerization and depolymerization toward the axon prolongation and spine stabilization to initiate new synapse innervations and to recruit associative memory cells.
Both vasculogenic mimicry (VM) and transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) are positively correlated with malignancy in glioma. Accordingly, we supposed that TGFβ might be related with VM, and aimed to ...detect whether TGFβ could influence VM formation in two glioma cell lines U251MG and SHG44, which were different in malignancy. We found that the VM-positive U251MG had a significantly higher TGFβ expression than the VM-negative SHG44. Downregulating TGFβ in U251MG by RNAi technology resulted in a significantly impaired VM formation, which could be rescued by rhTGFβ. However, adding rhTGFβ could not induce VM in SHG44. To investigate the possible mechanism, we detected the changes of some VM-related genes including EphA2, VE-cadherin, MMP-2, MMP-9, MT1-MMP and LAMC2 by RT-PCR and found that MT1-MMP transcript was affected by TGFβ expression. Gelatin zymography showed a declined MMP-2 activity in the TGFβ-inhibited cells. Further studies showed that MT1-MMP inhibition impaired VM formation in U251MG. Moreover, TGFβ induced MT1-MMP expression and VM formation in a dose-dependent manner. These findings indicated us that TGFβ was required for VM formation in U251MG. MT1-MMP was correlated with TGFβ-induced VM formation. Thus, TGFβ might be a potential target for VM inhibition in glioma.
Inhibition of return (IOR) is an attentional mechanism that previously has been reported to be either intact or blunted in subjects with schizophrenia (SCZ). In the present study, we explored the ...neural mechanism of IOR in SCZ by comparing the target-locked N1 and P1 activity evoked by valid-cued trials with that evoked by invalid-cued trials. Twenty-seven schizophrenia patients and nineteen healthy controls participated in a task involving covert orienting of attention with two stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs: 700 ms and 1200 ms) during which 64-channel EEG data were recorded. Behavioral reaction times (RTs) were longer in response to valid-cued trials than to invalid-cued ones, suggesting an intact IOR in SCZ. However, reduced N1 amplitude elicited by valid-cued trials suggested a stronger inhibition of attention from being oriented to a previously cued location, and therefore a relative inhibition of perceptual processing at that location in SCZ. These results indicate that altered N1 activity is associated with the preservation of IOR in SCZ and could be a sensitive marker to track the IOR effect.
Abstract Schizophrenia is associated with an impairment of prospective memory (PM) which refers to the ability to remember to carry out an intended action in the future. However, most of these ...studies were limited to chronic samples. The current study examined the event-based PM and time-based PM using a dual-task paradigm in 22 drug-naïve, first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients and 23 healthy controls. Results indicated that FEP patients performed significantly poorer than healthy controls in both event-based and time-based PM. However, the significant difference in time-based PM disappeared after controlling for working memory. Correlation analysis indicated that both types of PM did not correlate with positive symptoms or negative symptoms, duration of illness, or duration of untreated psychosis. However, time-based PM was correlated with the general psychopathology subscale of the PANSS. Taken together, these findings suggest that PM deficits are present in drug-naïve FEP patients; impairment of event-based PM appears to occur independently, whereas time-based PM impairment may be, in part, a secondary consequence of a working memory deficit.
In this paper, we introduce ControlVAE, a novel model-based framework for learning generative motion control policies based on variational autoencoders (VAE). Our framework can learn a rich and ...flexible latent representation of skills and a skill-conditioned generative control policy from a diverse set of unorganized motion sequences, which enables the generation of realistic human behaviors by sampling in the latent space and allows high-level control policies to reuse the learned skills to accomplish a variety of downstream tasks. In the training of ControlVAE, we employ a learnable world model to realize direct supervision of the latent space and the control policy. This world model effectively captures the unknown dynamics of the simulation system, enabling efficient model-based learning of high-level downstream tasks. We also learn a state-conditional prior distribution in the VAE-based generative control policy, which generates a skill embedding that outperforms the non-conditional priors in downstream tasks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of ControlVAE using a diverse set of tasks, which allows realistic and interactive control of the simulated characters.
•Multi-angle impact of hail ice on carbon/Nomex sandwich panel was tested.•The impact velocities and angles affect the failure modes of the sandwich panel.•A mesoscale numerical modeling method of ...the nomex honeycomb was proposed.•The relationship of impact kinetic energy vs. dent at multi-angle impact was studied.
The rudder of an airplane is fabricated as a sandwich panel and can potentially be damaged by hail ice. The dynamic responses of a CFRP/Nomex sandwich panel with barely any visible core damage under multi-angle impact of an ice sphere at various velocities are researched experimentally and by using numerical simulations at the mesoscale. The results show that the honeycomb core represents three types of failure modes: wrinkling, fracture of cell walls, and debonding of cell walls at the interface of two-glued-paper-walls (TGPW) due to resin failure. These failure modes exist at specific impact velocities and angles. This paper proposes a mesoscale numerical modeling method of a honeycomb structure to represent the debonding failure at the TGPW interface. In addition, the mechanical properties of these failures are revealed, as the wrinkling of the cell walls are caused by buckling and the fracture of the cell walls and debonding of the TGPW interface are caused by out-plane and in-plane shearing of cell walls. The results showed that the relationship between the denting and impact kinetic energy under multi-angle impact is linear with respect to the impact angle. The effects of impact angles on the contacting forces on a rigid wall and sandwich panel are presented as the amount of peak impact forces affected by the target material type. However, the intensity of the peak impact forces is rarely affected by the type of the target material. The peak impact force of nonvertical impact is greater than that of the normal impact when the normal components of the impact velocities are the same. This is because the impact angle affects the distribution of ice scatter fragments during the impact, and this generates different pressure distributions on the face sheet of the panel.
•Experiments on stringer-stiffened curved composite panels under impact of hail ice has been conducted.•The failure modes of the panel are varied when impact sites and impact velocities changed.•FEM ...analysis has been employed to reveal the failure mechanism of the composites panel.•The relationship between impact velocity and delamination area has been studied.
Large scale aircraft composite panels can be damaged by hail ice in high speed ductile impacts (without penetration by sharp shape) and predicting the damage modes and failure mechanisms under these complex boundaries and loading conditions poses a unique challenge. Thus, the dynamic behavior and failure of stringer-stiffened curved carbon/epoxy composite panels impacted by hail ice at two classic locations (mid-bay of impact type I and mid-flange of impact type II) with different velocities have been investigated in this research via experimental and numerical methods. The results show that panel damage from ice sphere impacts is a stress wave dominated dynamic response and the initial delamination of the panel always occurs at the skin-stringer interface when the ice sphere reaches a minimum threshold impact velocity irrespective of the loading site. The finite element methodology employing rate sensitive ice models and composite laminates with failure is capable of accurately predicting, the delamination site, the total delamination area versus impact velocity, and the separation of the skin-stringer bonded joints which may be located away from the impact site at areas not typically examined. The numerical simulation has been validated at two different impact sites and provides insight into stress wave propagation despite non-uniform thickness and stiffness variations of the stringer flange bonded to the composite skin. These experimental and finite element methodologies can be applied to improve the design of new airframes, composite joints, and improve the accuracy of residual strength evaluation of existing aircraft panels under hail ice impacts.
The dielectric breakdown voltage (BV) and time dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) are the most important concerns for device reliability. In this study, the silicon nitride (SiNx) used as ...metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor dielectric was successfully prepared by a dual-frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) absorption spectra and electrical characterization results suggest that the SiNx film possesses higher dielectric breakdown voltage performance by decreasing SiH4/NH3 gas flow ratio or optimizing the interface layer among multiple layers. Similarly, the TDDB reliability test based on Weibull distribution indicates an increase in failure lifetime of the MIM capacitors by adjusting RF power and NH3 gas flow.
•The MIM-SiNx films are deposited by optimizing PECVD process condition using SiH4, N2 and NH3 gas as reaction sources.•The MIM-SiNx dielectric films exhibit higher breakdown voltage and TDDB lifetime performance.•The superior BV performance results from the optimized film bonding configuration and interface effects among layers.•The enhanced TDDB performance is due to the reduction of trap density by NH3 plasma treatment and RF power bombardment.
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