Processing of emotional faces in congenital amusia: An emotional music priming event-related potential study.

Congenital amusia is characterized by lifelong impairments in music perception and processing. It is unclear whether pitch detection deficits impact amusic individuals' perception of musical emotion. In the current work, 19 amusics and 21 healthy controls were subjected to electroencephalography (EEG) while being exposed to music excerpts and emotional faces. We assessed each individual's ability to discriminate positive- and negative-valenced emotional faces and analyzed electrophysiological indices, in the form of event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded at 32 sites, following exposure to emotionally positive or negative music excerpts. We observed smaller N2 amplitudes in response to facial expressions in the amusia group than in the control group, suggesting that amusics were less affected by the musical stimuli. The late-positive component (LPC) in amusics was similar to that in controls. Our results suggest that the neurocognitive deficit characteristic of congenital amusia is fundamentally an impairment in musical information processing rather than an impairment in emotional processing.

Effects of retinal ganglion cell apoptosis on delayed rectifier K+currents / 中国病理生理杂志

AIM: To investigate the effects of rat retinal ganglion cell (RGC) apoptosis on delayed rectifier K+currents (IK).METHODS:The retinas of 2~3 d newborn Sprague-Dawley rats were dissociated into cell suspension by trypsin digestion .The RGCs were cultured and divided into control group , pressure 0.5 h group, pressure 1 h group, pressure 1.5 h group and pressure 2 h group.The cells were cultured regularly for 6 d in control group , and the cells in other groups were cultured regularly for 6 d and gave pressure of 80 mmHg for 0.5 h, 1 h, 1.5 h and 2 h, respectively. The rhodamine 123 fluorescence from labeled RGC mitochondrion was detected by continuous wavelength multifunctional microplate detection instrument.The membrane capacitance (Cm) in different groups and IK in the pressure 1 h group were recorded from the RGCs by whole-cell patch-clamp technique .RESULTS:No difference of rhodamine 123 fluorescence in the RGC mitochondria between control group and pressure 0.5 h group was observed .Rhodamine 123 fluorescence in the other 3 groups was significantly lower than that in control group (P<0.05).No difference of the Cm between control group and pressure 0.5 h group was found, and the Cm in the other 3 groups was significantly lower than that in control group (P<0.05).The amplitudes of IK were higher than that in control group .At the test potential from -10 mV to 60 mV, the current density in pressure 1 h group was significantly higher than that in control group (P<0.05).The maximal conduc-tion ( Gmax ) in pressure 1 h group was significantly higher than that in control group .The voltage for IK channel half-activa-tion ( V1/2 ) in pressure 1 h group declined comparison with control group ( P<0.01 ) , and the k value had no significant difference between the 2 groups.CONCLUSION:Retinal ganglion cell apoptosis accompanies with delayed rectifier K +current enhancement .

Effect of Qi-ming granule on multifocal ERG(mfERG) of patients with mild, moderate non-prolif-erative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR) / 中国医师杂志

Objective To evaluate effect of Qi-ming granule on vision function of patients with mild, moderate non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy ( NPDR ) .Methods Using the randomized double blind and placebo-controlled clinical trial method.From Oct.2012 to Jun.2014, 36 patients with 68 eyes who included in the standard were randomly divided into treatment group,control group,given Qi-ming gran-ule and placebo respectively for 6 months, exam with mfERG before treatment and after treatment, evaluate the curative effect.Results After 6 months treatment of Qi-ming granule, the implicit time of the 4th ring of the N1 wave about the mfERG was shorter than that of preoperative( P <0.05), the amplitude density was more than both that of preoperative and control group( P <0.01), the amplitude density of the 5th ring increased compared to that of control group;The peak latency of 3 rd ring of P1 wave was shorter than that of control group( P <0.01), the amplitude density of 1st,3rd,5th ring restored compared with that of preopera-tive and control group( P <0.01), the amplitude density of 4th ring improve than that of control group( P<0.01).Conclusions Qi-ming granule can improve the multifocal ERG of patients with mild, moderate non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy, restore the vision function.

An optimal electroporation system for Dunaliella salina / 生物工程学报

To optimize the electroporation system in Dunaliella salina (D. salina), we studied the effects of growth phase of cells, electric parameters, electroporation buffer and concentration of plasmid on transformation efficiency. The results showed that a transformation efficiency of 1.81 per thousand was achieved in D. salina cells at mid-log growth phase electroporated with plasmid (DCA-bar) 10 microg/mL, voltage 0.8 kV and capacitance 25 microF. However, when glycerol was added to electroporation buffer at a final concentration of 0.4 mol/L, the transformation efficiency was increased up to 2.03 per thousand. Additionally, transformation was done with plasmids DCA-bar, NR-bar, pUomega-bar respectively, under above optimum conditions, and similar transformation efficiencies were obtained. The findings indicate that an efficient and stable system of electroporation in D. salina has been developed, providing a powerful tool for the transgenic research of D. salina.