The self-face is processed differently than emotional faces. A question arises whether other highly familiar and subjectively significant non-self faces (e.g. partner's face) are also differentiated ...from emotional faces. The aim of this event-related potential (ERP) study was to investigate the neural correlates of personally-relevant faces (the self and a close-other's) as well as emotionally positive (happy) and neutral faces. Participants were tasked with the simple detection of faces. Amplitudes of N170 were more negative in the right than in the left hemisphere and were not modulated by type of face. A similar pattern of N2 and P3 results for the self-face and close-other's face was observed: they were associated with decreased N2 and increased P3 relative to happy and neutral faces. However, the self-face was preferentially processed also when compared to a close-other's face as revealed by lower N2 and higher P3 amplitudes. Nonparametric cluster-based permutation tests showed an analogous pattern of results: significant clusters for the self-face compared with all other faces (close-other's, happy, neutral) and for close-other's face compared to happy and neutral faces. In summary, the self-face prioritization was observed, as indicated by significant differences between one's own face and all other faces. Crucially, both types of personally-relevant faces differed from happy faces. These findings point to the pivotal role of subjective evaluation of the saliency factor.
Self-related information, due to its high social/adaptive value, seems to have a preferential access to our attentional resources (cf. the cocktail party effect). However, it remains uncertain ...whether this attention preference is the same for different kinds of self-related cues. In this ERP study we showed that self-name and self-face when compared with other names and faces, produced very similar patterns of behavioral and neural responses, i.e., shorter reaction times (RTs) and enhanced P300. The processing of the two self-related cues did not differ between each other, neither in RTs nor in P300 responses. In fact, the amplitudes of P300 to self-name and self-face were correlated. These results suggest that the adaptive value of different kinds of self-related cues tends to be equal and they engage attention resources to a similar extent.
The effective immobilization of the enzyme on the substrate surface plays a key role especially in biocatalysis, medicine or industry. Herein, we showed the influence of substrate hydrophilicity on ...the activity of the physically immobilized ceruloplasmin. To control the hydrophilicity of the substrate, thiols with various terminal groups were used. We have found that the effectiveness of the catalytic process of multimeric protein is the highest in the situation of application of the highly hydrophilic substrate. In the case of physical adsorption, the orientation of the enzyme is random, however the application of the appropriate modifying layer enforces the desired enzyme orientation. The quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D) results showed that the crucial parameter for the highest and most durable catalytic activity of the enzyme is the orientation, not the amount of the physically adsorbed enzyme.
Surface hydrophilicity - the way to control the activity of the immobilized enzyme.
Unconscious Detection of One’s Own Image Wójcik, Michał J.; Nowicka, Maria M.; Bola, Michał ...
Psychological science,
04/2019, Letnik:
30, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
A key mechanism behind preferential processing of self-related information might be an early and automatic capture of attention. Therefore, the present study tested a hypothesis that one’s own face ...will attract bottom-up attention even without conscious identification. To test this, we used a dot-probe paradigm with electrophysiological recordings, in which participants (N = 18) viewed masked and unmasked pairs of faces (other, self) presented laterally. Analysis of the sensitivity measure d ′ indicated that faces were not consciously identified in the masked condition. A clear N2 posterior-contralateral (N2pc) component (a neural marker of attention shifts) was found in both the masked and unmasked conditions, revealing that one’s own face automatically captures attention when processed unconsciously. Therefore, our study (a) demonstrates that self-related information is boosted at an early (preconscious) stage of processing, (b) identifies further features (beyond simple physical ones) that cause automatic attention capture, and (c) provides further evidence for the dissociative nature of attention and consciousness.
It is well established that stimuli representing or associated with ourselves, like our own name or an image of our own face, benefit from preferential processing. However, two key questions ...concerning the self‐prioritization mechanism remain to be addressed. First, does it operate in an automatic manner during the early processing, or rather in a more controlled fashion at later processing stages? Second, is it specific to the self‐related stimuli, or can it be activated also by other stimuli that are familiar or salient? We conducted a dot‐probe experiment to investigate the mechanism behind the attentional prioritization of the self‐face image and to tackle both questions. The former, by employing a backwards masking procedure to isolate the early and preconscious processing stages. The latter, by investigating whether a face that becomes visually familiar due to repeated presentations is able to capture attention in a similar manner as the self‐face. Analysis of the N2pc ERP component revealed that the self‐face image automatically captures attention, both when processed consciously and unconsciously. In contrast, the visually familiar face did not attract attention, neither in the conscious, nor in the unconscious condition. We conclude that the self‐prioritization mechanism is early and automatic, and is not triggered by mere visual familiarity. More generally, our results provide further evidence for efficient unconscious processing of faces, and for dissociation between attention and consciousness.
Stimuli representing or associated with “self” are processed preferentially by our perceptual system. In the present study, we show that an image of the participant's own face captures the attention even when processed outside of awareness. This indicates that the mechanism of self‐prioritization is very rapid, automatic, and occurs at the early stages of visual processing. More generally, our study provides evidence that attention can operate and select salient stimuli even in the absence of awareness.
The use of nanoparticles for the controlled drug delivery to cells has emerged as a good alternative to traditional systemic delivery. Quantum dots (QDs) offer potentially invaluable societal ...benefits such as drug targeting and
biomedical imaging. In contrast, QDs may also pose risks to human health and the environment under certain conditions. Here, we demonstrated that a unique combination of nanocrystals core components (Ag-In-Zn-S) would eliminate the toxicity problem and increase their biomedical applications. The alloyed quaternary nanocrystals Ag-In-Zn-S (QD
, Ag
In
Zn
S
; QD
, Ag
In
Zn
S
) were used to transport new unsymmetrical bisacridine derivatives (UAs, C-2028 and C-2045) into lung H460 and colon HCT116 cancer cells for improving the cytotoxic and antitumor action of these compounds. UAs were coupled with QD through physical adsorption. The obtained results clearly indicate that the synthesized nanoconjugates exhibited higher cytotoxic activity than unbound compounds, especially toward lung H460 cancer cells. Importantly, unsymmetrical bisacridines noncovalently attached to QD strongly protect normal cells from the drug action. It is worth pointing out that QD
or QD
without UAs did not influence the growth of cancer and normal cells, which is consistent with
results. In noncellular systems, at pH 5.5 and 4.0, which relates to the conditions of endosomes and lysosomes, the UAs were released from QD-UAs nanoconjugates. An increase of total lysosomes content was observed in H460 cells treated with QDs-UAs which can affect the release of the UAs from the conjugates. Moreover, confocal laser scanning microscopy analyses revealed that QD-UAs nanoconjugates enter H460 cells more efficiently than to HCT116 and normal cells, which may be the reason for their higher cytotoxicity against lung cancer. Summarizing, the noncovalent attachment of UAs to QDs increases the therapeutic efficiency of UAs by improving cytotoxicity toward lung H460 cancer cells and having protecting effects on normal cells.
Targeted drug delivery by nanocarriers molecules can increase the efficiency of cancer treatment. One of the targeting ligands is folic acid (FA), which has a high affinity for the folic acid ...receptors, which are overexpressed in many cancers. Herein, we describe the preparation of the nanoconjugates containing quantum dots (QDs) and
-cyclodextrin (
-CD) with foliate-targeting properties for the delivery of anticancer compound C-2028. C-2028 was bound to the nanoconjugate via an inclusion complex with
-CD. The effect of using FA in QDs-
-CD(C-2028)-FA nanoconjugates on cytotoxicity, cellular uptake, and the mechanism of internalization in cancer (H460, Du-145, and LNCaP) and normal (MRC-5 and PNT1A) cells was investigated. The QDs-
-CD(C-2028)-FA were characterized using DLS (dynamic light scattering), ZP (zeta potential), quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D), and UV-vis spectroscopy. The conjugation of C-2028 with non-toxic QDs or QDs-
-CD-FA did not change the cytotoxicity of this compound. Confocal microscopy studies proved that the use of FA in nanoconjugates significantly increased the amount of delivered compound, especially to cancer cells. QD
-
-CD(C-2028)-FA enters the cells through multiple endocytosis pathways in different levels, depending on the cell line. To conclude, the use of FA is a good self-navigating molecule in the QDs platform for drug delivery to cancer cells.
The ability of ferrocene-pyrene conjugates towards anion recognition still arouses great deal of interest. However, the reported ferrocene-pyrene compounds allow detection of just one anion. Here, ...for the first time we present new pyrenyl derivatives of ferrocene, which ensure simultaneous detection of various monovalent anions. The detection of few anions is possible due to the presence of several divergent structural motifs in the structures of the newly synthesized ferrocene-pyrene conjugates. The ferrocene-pyrene conjugates exhibited encouraging properties towards recognition of various monovalent anions. The anion binding properties were probed with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy and voltammetry. The high association constants (2–12·105 M−1) were found for all the conjugates, together with the low limits of detections (22–64 μM). The applicability of the studied compounds for the analysis of the real water samples was also presented.
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•Novel Fc-Pyr derivatives are used for simultaneous detection of various monovalent anions.•The sensitive strategy for chloride ions determination in mineral water is proposed.•Supporting electrolyte-free voltammetric detection of anions.•Simplicity, high sensitivity and selectivity of the proposed ways of monovalent ions detection.•No sample preparation needed for anion analysis.
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