Selecting the Appropriate Speed for Rotational Elements in Human-Machine Interfaces: A Quantitative Study.

The motion of rotation, which served as a dynamic symbol within human-computer interfaces, has garnered extensive attention in interface and graphic design. This study aimed to establish speed benchmarks for interface design by exploring visual system preferences for the perception of both simple and complex rotating icons within the velocity range of 5-1800 degrees per second. The research conducted two experiments with 12 participants to examine the observers' just noticeable difference in speed (JNDS) and perceived speed for rotational icons. Experiment one measured the JNDS over eight-speed levels using a constant stimulus method, achieving a range of 14.9-29%. Building on this, experiment two proposed a sequence of speeds within the given range and used a rating scale method to assess observers ' subjective perception of the speed series' rapidity. The findings indicated that speed increases impacted the ability to differentiate between speeds; key points for categorizing low, medium, and high speeds were identified at 10, 180, and 720 degrees/s, respectively. Shape complexity was found to modulate the visual system's perception of actual speed, such that at rotation speeds above 180 degrees/s, complex icons appeared to rotate faster than simpler ones. Most importantly, the study applied quantitative methods and metrology to interface design, offering a more scientific approach to the design workflow.

Image Entropy-Based Interface Evaluation Method for Nuclear Power Plants.

The digital interface is crucial for nuclear plant operators, influencing their decision-making significantly. However, evaluations of these interfaces often overlook users' decision-making performance; lack established standards, typically occurring after the design phase; and are unsuitable for large-scale assessments. Recognizing the vital role of interface information, this paper built on our previous research and proposed a method tailored for nuclear power plant interfaces, utilizing image entropy to evaluate the impact of information on decision-making. A comparative analysis with an experimental evaluation method empirically validated the effectiveness of the proposed method. This research offers a unique decision-making-centric method to interface evaluation, providing a standardized, adaptable framework for various design phases and enabling extensive and rapid evaluations.

Fresh Gastrodia elata Blume alleviates simulated weightlessness-induced cognitive impairment by regulating inflammatory and apoptosis-related pathways.

In aerospace medicine, the influence of microgravity on cognition has always been a risk factor threatening astronauts' health. The traditional medicinal plant and food material Gastrodia elata Blume has been used as a therapeutic drug for neurological diseases for a long time due to its unique neuroprotective effect. To study the effect of fresh Gastrodia elata Blume (FG) on cognitive impairment caused by microgravity, hindlimb unloading (HU) was used to stimulate weightlessness in mice. The fresh Gastrodia elata Blume (0.5 g/kg or 1.0 g/kg) was intragastrically administered daily to mice exposed to HU and behavioral tests were conducted after four weeks to detect the cognitive status of animals. The behavioral tests results showed that fresh Gastrodia elata Blume therapy significantly improved the performance of mice in the object location recognition test, Step-Down test, and Morris Water Maze test, including short-term and long-term spatial memory. According to the biochemical test results, fresh Gastrodia elata Blume administration not only reduced serum factor levels of oxidative stress but also maintained the balance of pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory factors in the hippocampus, reversing the abnormal increase of NLRP3 and NF-κB. The apoptosis-related proteins were downregulated which may be related to the activation of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway by fresh Gastrodia elata Blume therapy, and the abnormal changes of synapse-related protein and glutamate neurotransmitter were corrected. These results identify the improvement effect of fresh Gastrodia elata Blume as a new application form of Gastrodia elata Blume on cognitive impairment caused by simulated weightlessness and advance our understanding of the mechanism of fresh Gastrodia elata Blume on the neuroprotective effect.

Influence of nuclear power plant interface complexity on user decision-making: an ERP study.

ABSTRACUser decision-making concerning critical operations is very important to nuclear power plant (NPP) safety. The NPP interface is the main information source that guides decision-making; thus, a good interface design is essential. Among the interface design factors such as interface complexity, layout and colour, interface complexity (the amount of information in the interface) has the greatest impact on NPP operator decision-making. This paper used the event-related potential (ERP) to evaluate the impact of interface complexity on user decision-making and found interface complexity has a specific range suitable for decision-making. Based on this important finding, a fast and economical method of evaluating NPP interfaces in all design phases was proposed. This method compensates for the shortcomings of traditional methods, such as heuristic evaluation and experimental evaluation, which are inconvenient for evaluating interfaces in initial design phase; it can also be applied to interfaces with similar features in other industrial fields. Practitioner summary: Evaluation of the impact of NPP interface complexity on user decision-making through an ERP experiment revealed a specific range of interface complexity that facilitates user decision-making. Based on this finding, a new, fast and inexpensive interface evaluation method was proposed. Abbreviations: NPP: nuclear power plant, it is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor; ERP: event-related potential, it is the measured brain response that is the direct result of a specific cognitive, or motor event.

Numerical Simulation Study of Firing Threshold of STN Neuron Stimulated by Focused Ultrasound.

OBJECTIVE: Electroencephalography (EEG) is one of the functional brain imaging techniques to effectively measure neuronal activity, but its low spatial resolution makes it difficult to localize evoked excitatory neurons or areas of abnormal firing. Multimodal imaging techniques are expected to combine the high spatial resolution (mm level) of focused ultrasound (FUS) with the high temporal resolution (ms level) of EEG. The technique must be performed under the premise that ultrasound stimulation does not affect neuronal firing, and there is an urgent need to determine the threshold of this ultrasound stimulation parameter. METHODS: In this paper, the subthalamic nucleus neuronal firing model and the bilayer sonophore model are combined to numerically simulate the neuronal firing rhythm under the conditions of different stimulation parameters. The correlation and frequency differences of neuronal firing rhythms with and without ultrasound stimulation were compared and used as an index to evaluate the degree of change, and the final range of effective threshold parameters for ultrasound stimulation of neurons but not inducing neuronal firing was obtained. RESULTS: The results showed that the correlation of neuronal firing rhythms in both conditions with and without stimulation decreased and the frequency difference increased with increasing ultrasound parameters such as duty cycle, intensity, center frequency and pulse repetition frequency. CONCLUSION: An effective range of stimulation threshold parameters can be obtained based on the correlation coefficients and frequency difference matrices under different parameter combinations. SIGNIFICANCE: The threshold can further promote the safe and effective application of FUS for multimodal electrophysiological imaging.

Robust muscle force prediction using NMFSEMD denoising and FOS identification.

In this paper, an aliasing noise restraint technique and a system identification-based surface electromyography (sEMG)-force prediction model are proposed to realize a type of robust sEMG and muscle force prediction. For signal denoising, a novel non-negative matrix factorization screening empirical mode decomposition (NMFSEMD) and a fast orthogonal search (FOS)-based muscle force prediction model are developed. First, the NMFSEMD model is used to screen the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) results into the noisy intrinsic mode functions (IMF). Then, the noise matrix is computed using IMF translation and superposition, and the matrix is used as the input of NMF to obtain the denoised IMF. Furthermore, the reconstruction outcome of the NMFSEMD method can be used to estimate the denoised sEMG. Finally, a new sEMG muscle force prediction model, which considers a kind of candidate function in derivative form, is constructed, and a data-training-based linear weighted model is obtained. Extensive experimental results validate the suggested method's correction: after the NMFSEMD denoising of raw sEMG signal, the signal-noise ratio (SNR) can be improved by about 15.0 dB, and the energy percentage (EP) can be greater than 90.0%. Comparing with the muscle force prediction models using the traditional pretreatment and LSSVM, and the NMFSEMD plus LSSVM-based method, the mean square error (MSE) of our approach can be reduced by at least 1.2%.

Biological current source imaging method based on acoustoelectric effect: A systematic review.

Neuroimaging can help reveal the spatial and temporal diversity of neural activity, which is of utmost importance for understanding the brain. However, conventional non-invasive neuroimaging methods do not have the advantage of high temporal and spatial resolution, which greatly hinders clinical and basic research. The acoustoelectric (AE) effect is a fundamental physical phenomenon based on the change of dielectric conductivity that has recently received much attention in the field of biomedical imaging. Based on the AE effect, a new imaging method for the biological current source has been proposed, combining the advantages of high temporal resolution of electrical measurements and high spatial resolution of focused ultrasound. This paper first describes the mechanism of the AE effect and the principle of the current source imaging method based on the AE effect. The second part summarizes the research progress of this current source imaging method in brain neurons, guided brain therapy, and heart. Finally, we discuss the problems and future directions of this biological current source imaging method. This review explores the relevant research literature and provides an informative reference for this potential non-invasive neuroimaging method.

Modulation of biological motion perception in humans by gravity.

The human visual perceptual system is highly sensitive to biological motion (BM) but less sensitive to its inverted counterpart. This perceptual inversion effect may stem from our selective sensitivity to gravity-constrained life motion signals and confer an adaptive advantage to creatures living on Earth. However, to what extent and how such selective sensitivity is shaped by the Earth's gravitational field is heretofore unexplored. Taking advantage of a spaceflight experiment and its ground-based analog via 6° head-down tilt bed rest (HDTBR), we show that prolonged microgravity/HDTBR reduces the inversion effect in BM perception. No such change occurs for face perception, highlighting the particular role of gravity in regulating kinematic motion analysis. Moreover, the reduced BM inversion effect is associated with attenuated orientation-dependent neural responses to BM rather than general motion cues and correlated with strengthened functional connectivity between cortical regions dedicated to visual BM processing (i.e., pSTS) and vestibular gravity estimation (i.e., insula). These findings suggest that the neural computation of gravity may act as an embodied constraint, presumably implemented through visuo-vestibular interaction, to sustain the human brain's selective tuning to life motion signals.

Experimental and simulation studies of localization and decoding of single and double dipoles.

Objective. Electroencephalography is a technique for measuring normal or abnormal neuronal activity in the human brain, but its low spatial resolution makes it difficult to locate the precise locations of neurons due to the volume conduction effect of brain tissue.Approach. The acoustoelectric (AE) effect has the advantage of detecting electrical signals with high temporal resolution and focused ultrasound with high spatial resolution. In this paper, we use dipoles to simulate real single and double neurons, and further investigate the localization and decoding of single and double dipoles based on AE effects from numerical simulations, brain tissue phantom experiments, and fresh porcine brain tissue experiments.Main results. The results show that the localization error of a single dipole is less than 0.3 mm, the decoding signal is highly correlated with the source signal, and the decoding accuracy is greater than 0.94; the location of double dipoles with an interval of 0.4 mm or more can be localized, the localization error tends to increase as the interval of dipoles decreases, and the decoding accuracy tends to decrease as the frequency of dipoles decreases.Significance. This study localizes and decodes dipole signals with high accuracy, and provides a technical method for the development of EEG.

Unsupervised cross-lingual model transfer for named entity recognition with contextualized word representations.

Named entity recognition (NER) is one fundamental task in the natural language processing (NLP) community. Supervised neural network models based on contextualized word representations can achieve highly-competitive performance, which requires a large-scale manually-annotated corpus for training. While for the resource-scarce languages, the construction of such as corpus is always expensive and time-consuming. Thus, unsupervised cross-lingual transfer is one good solution to address the problem. In this work, we investigate the unsupervised cross-lingual NER with model transfer based on contextualized word representations, which greatly advances the cross-lingual NER performance. We study several model transfer settings of the unsupervised cross-lingual NER, including (1) different types of the pretrained transformer-based language models as input, (2) the exploration strategies of the multilingual contextualized word representations, and (3) multi-source adaption. In particular, we propose an adapter-based word representation method combining with parameter generation network (PGN) better to capture the relationship between the source and target languages. We conduct experiments on a benchmark ConLL dataset involving four languages to simulate the cross-lingual setting. Results show that we can obtain highly-competitive performance by cross-lingual model transfer. In particular, our proposed adapter-based PGN model can lead to significant improvements for cross-lingual NER.

The Effects of the Structural and Acoustic Parameters of the Skull Model on Transcranial Focused Ultrasound.

Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) has great potential in brain imaging and therapy. However, the structural and acoustic differences of the skull will cause a large number of technical problems in the application of tFUS, such as low focus energy, focal shift, and defocusing. To have a comprehensive understanding of the skull effect on tFUS, this study investigated the effects of the structural parameters (thickness, radius of curvature, and distance from the transducer) and acoustic parameters (density, acoustic speed, and absorption coefficient) of the skull model on tFUS based on acrylic plates and two simulation methods (self-programming and COMSOL). For structural parameters, our research shows that as the three factors increase the unit distance, the attenuation caused from large to small is the thickness (0.357 dB/mm), the distance to transducer (0.048 dB/mm), and the radius of curvature (0.027 dB/mm). For acoustic parameters, the attenuation caused by density (0.024 dB/30 kg/m3) and acoustic speed (0.021 dB/30 m/s) are basically the same. Additionally, as the absorption coefficient increases, the focus acoustic pressure decays exponentially. The thickness of the structural parameters and the absorption coefficient of the acoustic parameters are the most important factors leading to the attenuation of tFUS. The experimental and simulation trends are highly consistent. This work contributes to the comprehensive and quantitative understanding of how the skull influences tFUS, which further enhances the application of tFUS in neuromodulation research and treatment.

Dammarane Sapogenins Improving Simulated Weightlessness-Induced Depressive-Like Behaviors and Cognitive Dysfunction in Rats.

Background: Our studies demonstrated that the space environment has an impact on the brain function of astronauts. Numerous ground-based microgravity and social isolation showed that the space environment can induce brain function damages in humans and animals. Dammarane sapogenins (DS), an active fraction from oriental ginseng, possesses neuropsychic protective effects and has been shown to improve depression and memory. This study aimed to explore the effects and mechanisms of DS in attenuating depressive-like behaviors and cognitive deficiency induced by simulated weightlessness and isolation [hindlimb suspension and isolation (HLSI)] in rats. Methods: Male rats were orally administered with two different doses of DS (37.5, 75 mg/kg) for 14 days, and huperzine-A (1 mg/kg) served as positive control. Rats were subjected to HLSI for 14 days except the control group during drug administration. The depressive-like behaviors were then evaluated by the open-field test, the novel object recognition test, and the forced swimming test. The spatial memory and working memory were evaluated by the Morris water maze (MWM) test, and the related mechanism was further explored by analyzing the activity of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), acetylcholinesterase (AChE), and superoxide dismutase (SOD) in the hippocampus of rats. Results: The results showed that DS treatment significantly reversed the HLSI-induced depressive-like behaviors in the open-field test, the novel object recognition test, and the forced swimming test and improved the HLSI-induced cognitive impairment in the MWM test. Furthermore, after DS treatment, the ChAT and SOD activities of HLSI rats were increased while AChE activity was significantly suppressed. Conclusions: These findings clearly demonstrated that DS might exert a significant neuropsychic protective effect induced by spaceflight environment, driven in part by the modulation of cholinergic system and anti-oxidation in the hippocampus.

Human torpor: translating insights from nature into manned deep space expedition.

During a long-duration manned spaceflight mission, such as flying to Mars and beyond, all crew members will spend a long period in an independent spacecraft with closed-loop bioregenerative life-support systems. Saving resources and reducing medical risks, particularly in mental heath, are key technology gaps hampering human expedition into deep space. In the 1960s, several scientists proposed that an induced state of suppressed metabolism in humans, which mimics 'hibernation', could be an ideal solution to cope with many issues during spaceflight. In recent years, with the introduction of specific methods, it is becoming more feasible to induce an artificial hibernation-like state (synthetic torpor) in non-hibernating species. Natural torpor is a fascinating, yet enigmatic, physiological process in which metabolic rate (MR), body core temperature (Tb ) and behavioural activity are reduced to save energy during harsh seasonal conditions. It employs a complex central neural network to orchestrate a homeostatic state of hypometabolism, hypothermia and hypoactivity in response to environmental challenges. The anatomical and functional connections within the central nervous system (CNS) lie at the heart of controlling synthetic torpor. Although progress has been made, the precise mechanisms underlying the active regulation of the torpor-arousal transition, and their profound influence on neural function and behaviour, which are critical concerns for safe and reversible human torpor, remain poorly understood. In this review, we place particular emphasis on elaborating the central nervous mechanism orchestrating the torpor-arousal transition in both non-flying hibernating mammals and non-hibernating species, and aim to provide translational insights into long-duration manned spaceflight. In addition, identifying difficulties and challenges ahead will underscore important concerns in engineering synthetic torpor in humans. We believe that synthetic torpor may not be the only option for manned long-duration spaceflight, but it is the most achievable solution in the foreseeable future. Translating the available knowledge from natural torpor research will not only benefit manned spaceflight, but also many clinical settings attempting to manipulate energy metabolism and neurobehavioural functions.

The Cognitive-Enhancing Effects of Dendrobium nobile Lindl Extract in Sleep Deprivation-Induced Amnesic Mice.

Chronic sleep deprivation (SD) causes neurological and neurodegenerative dysfunction including learning and memory deficit. The orchid Dendrobium nobile Lindl (DNL), is widely used as a Yin tonic and medicinal food throughout Asia, and has many reported pharmacological effects. This study focused on the cognitive-enhancing effects of DNL in sleep deprivation-induced amnesia in mice and its biochemical mechanisms. Our results showed that the mice displayed significant cognitive deficits after 2-week SD while treatment with the extract of DNL prevented these impairments. In the novel object recognition and object location recognition tasks, a significant increase in the discrimination index was observed in DNL-treated (200 and 400 mg/kg) mice. In the MWM test, DNL (200 and 400 mg/kg) treatment shorten the prolongation of latency and increased the crossing numbers compared with SD mice. The biochemical analysis of brain tissue showed a decrease in NE, dismutase (T-SOD) and catalase (CAT) activity and an increase in 5-HT and malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration after the treatment with DNL in mice. Our findings indicated that DNL exerted a positive effect in preventing and improving cognitive impairment induced by SD, which may be mediated via the regulation of neurotransmitters and alleviation of oxidative stress.

Optimizing SSVEP-Based BCI System towards Practical High-Speed Spelling.

The brain-computer interface (BCI) spellers based on steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) have recently been widely investigated for their high information transfer rates (ITRs). This paper aims to improve the practicability of the SSVEP-BCIs for high-speed spelling. The system acquired the electroencephalogram (EEG) data from a self-developed dedicated EEG device and the stimulation was arranged as a keyboard. The task-related component analysis (TRCA) spatial filter was modified (mTRCA) for target classification and showed significantly higher performance compared with the original TRCA in the offline analysis. In the online system, the dynamic stopping (DS) strategy based on Bayesian posterior probability was utilized to realize alterable stimulating time. In addition, the temporal filtering process and the programs were optimized to facilitate the online DS operation. Notably, the online ITR reached 330.4 ± 45.4 bits/min on average, which is significantly higher than that of fixed stopping (FS) strategy, and the peak value of 420.2 bits/min is the highest online spelling ITR with a SSVEP-BCI up to now. The proposed system with portable EEG acquisition, friendly interaction, and alterable time of command output provides more flexibility for SSVEP-based BCIs and is promising for practical high-speed spelling.

Comparison of the Protective Effects of Ginsenosides Rb1 and Rg1 on Improving Cognitive Deficits in SAMP8 Mice Based on Anti-Neuroinflammation Mechanism.

This present study was designed to investigate the different effects of ginsenosides Rb1 and Rg1 on improving cognitive deficits in 4-month-old SAMP8 mice. Mice were divided into six groups, including the SAMP8 group, the SAMP8 + Donepezil (1.6 mg/kg) group, the SAMP8 + Rb1 (30 and 60 µmol/kg), and SAMP8 + Rg1 (30 and 60 µmol/kg) groups. SAMR1 mice of the same age were used as the control group. Ginsenosides and donepezil were administrated orally to animals for 8 weeks, then the learning and memory ability of mice were measured by using Morris water maze (MWM) test, object recognition test and passive avoidance experiments. The possible mechanisms were studied including the anti-glial inflammation of Rb1 and Rg1 using HE staining, immunohistochemistry and western blot experiments. Results revealed that Rb1 and Rg1 treatment significantly improved the discrimination index of SAMP8 mice in the object recognition test. Rb1 (60 µmol/kg) and Rg1 (30, 60 µmol/kg) could significantly shorten the escape latency in the acquisition test of the MWM test in SAMP8 mice. Furthermore, Rb1 and Rg1 treatments effectively reduced the number of errors in the passive avoidance task in SAMP8 mice. Western blot experiments revealed that Rb1 showed higher effect than Rg1 in decreasing protein expression levels of ASC, caspase-1 and Aß in the hippocampus of SAMP8 mice, while Rg1 was more effective than Rb1 in decreasing the protein levels of iNOS. In addition, although Rb1 and Rg1 treatments showed significant protective effects in repairing neuronal cells loss and inhibiting the activation of astrocyte and microglia in hippocampus of SAMP8 mice, Rb1 was more effective than Rg1. These results suggest that Rb1 and Rg1 could improve the cognitive impairment in SAMP8 mice, and they have different mechanisms for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

Antidepressant-like effects of cajaninstilbene acid and its related mechanisms in mice.

Cajaninstilbene acid (CSA), a bioactive constituent isolated from pigeon pea leaves, exhibited neuroprotective activities in previous studies. The present study aims to evaluate the antidepressant effects of CSA by using behavioral despair models of tail suspension test (TST) and forced swimming test (FST), and a chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) model. CSA (30 or 60 mg/kg), intragastrically administrated for 7 days, could significantly reduce the immobility time of mice in TST and FST. CSA treatment (15 or 30 mg/kg) significantly reversed the depressive-like behavioral changes of mice induced by 3 or 6 weeks CUMS that caused the decrease of sucrose preference, the increase of latency to feed in the novelty-suppressed feeding test, and the increase of immobility time in TST of mice. Furthermore, the related mechanisms of the effect were explored by accessing the metabolite levels of kynurenine pathway of tryptophan metabolism and the expression of some related proteins in cerebral cortex of CUMS mice. Our results showed that the kynurenine pathway was upregulated after CUMS, while the alteration could be significantly reversed by CSA. CSA also reversed the CUMS-induced decrease in the levels of BDNF, PSD-95, p-Akt/Akt and p-mTOR/mTOR. Therefore, the antidepressant-like effects of CSA might be achieved through regulating tryptophan metabolism, promoting BDNF and PSD-95 expression, and activating Akt/mTOR pathway in the cerebral cortex.

Personalized Epigenome Remodeling Under Biochemical and Psychological Changes During Long-Term Isolation Environment.

It has been reported that several aspects of human health could be disturbed during a long-term isolated environment (for instance, the Mars-500 mission), including psychiatric disorders, circadian disruption, temporal dynamics of gut microbiota, immune responses, and physical-activity-related neuromuscular performance. Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying these disturbances and the interactions among different aspects of human adaptation to extreme environments remain to be elucidated. Epigenetic features, like DNA methylation, might be a linking mechanism that explains the involvement of environmental factors between the human genome and the outcome of health. We conducted an exploration of personalized longitudinal DNA methylation patterns of the peripheral whole blood cells, profiling six subjects across six sampling points in the Mars-500 mission. Specifically, we developed a Personalized Epigenetic-Phenotype Synchronization Analysis (PeSa) algorithm to explore glucose- and mood-state-synchronized DNA methylation sites, focusing on finding the dynamic associations between epigenetic patterns and phenotypes in each individual, and exploring the underling epigenetic connections between glucose and mood-state disturbance. Results showed that DMPs (differentially methylated-probes) were significantly enriched in pathways related to glucose metabolism (Type II diabetes mellitus pathway), mood state (Long-term depression) and circadian rhythm (Circadian entrainment pathway) during the mission. Furthermore, our data revealed individualized glucose-synchronized and mood-state-synchronized DNA methylation sites, and PTPRN2 was found to be associated with both glucose and mood state disturbances across all six subjects. Our findings suggest that personalized phenotype-synchronized epigenetic features could reflect the effects on the human body, including the disturbances of glucose and mood-states. The association analysis of DNA methylation and phenotypes, like the PeSa analysis, could provide new possibilities in understanding the intrinsic relationship between phenotypic changes of the human body adapting to long-term isolation environmental factors.

Urinary metabolic disturbance in the olfactory bulbectomized rats and the modulatory effects of fluoxetine.

AIMS: The present study aims to investigate the impacts of olfactory bulbectomy (OBX) on urinary metabolic profile and tryptophan metabolites in prefrontal cortex (PFC) of rats, and to explore the regulation effects of fluoxetine. MAIN METHODS: OBX model was developed by aspiration of olfactory bulbs. After fluoxetine treatment (10 mg/kg) for 14 days, urine samples were collected and behavior tests were applied. Tryptophan (TRP) metabolites and neurotransmitters in PFC were determined by prominence ultrafast liquid chromatography-QTRAP-mass spectrometry, and tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (TPH2) and indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) were evaluated by western blot. Urinary metabolites were analyzed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry-based metabonomics strategy. KEY FINDING: OBX rats showed hyperlocomotion in open field, hyperactivity in open arm and despair status, and fluoxetine reserved these behavioral abnormalities. The levels of TRP, 5-HIAA, 5-HIAA/5-HT ratio and DA increased, while kynurenine and 5-HT decreased in PFC of OBX rats. The activities of TPH2 and IDO1were inhibited after OBX. Twenty-six altered metabolites were identified as potential biomarkers in OBX rats involved in tryptophan metabolism, gut microbiota metabolism, energy metabolism, purine metabolism, ascorbate and aldarate metabolism, and tyrosine metabolism. Among them, 15 abnormal metabolites were corrected by fluoxetine to some extent. SIGNIFICANCE: Our results revealed that urinary metabolic profile changed greatly in OBX rats, and identified biomarkers might be helpful for the diagnosis of agitated depression. The regulation effects of fluoxetine on urinary metabolic profile and tryptophan metabolites in PFC might contribute to its antidepressant action in OBX rats.

Study on brain computer interface combined tactile enhancement and time-varying features.

Neuroplasticity plays an important role in the recovery of injured nervous system. Both motor imagery (MI) and functional electrical stimulation (FES) can promote plasticity by activating the sensorimotor cortex. Specifically, MI as control strategy to activate FES in a brain computer interface (BCI) is a promising approach for motor functions recovery. This study demonstrated the efficiency of somatosensory input provided by electrical stimulation (ES) on cortical activation during MI. And the performance of classifiers with time-varying electroencephalography (EEG) features also be probed. We inspected the cortical activation by EEG for three experiment conditions, i.e. ES during MI, MI and ES. And the classification accuracy of three conditions were discussed respectively. Results showed that the ES during MI could induce stronger cortical activation than the other two conditions, and the classifier with time-varying EEG features had a higher classification accuracy. The results demonstrated that MI-based BCI combined MI and ES which fulfills two properties of somatosensory input and time-varying features is an available approach for motor neural rehabilitation.