These data indicate that orexin-A and orexin-B peptides are in a position to play a role in controlling the activity of nigral dopaminergic neurons. However, no loss of orexin-A or orexin-B neurons in the hypothalamus and no loss of orexin fibers in the substantia nigra pars compacta was found in MPTP-treated macaques when compared with control macaques. We

conclude that a relatively selective dopaminergic lesion, such as that performed in MPTP-treated macaques, is not sufficient to induce a loss of hypothalamic orexin neurons. “
“In Arabic, the language used for everyday conversation (‘spoken Arabic’ Bortezomib purchase – SA) differs markedly from literary Arabic (LA), which is used for written communication and formal functions. This fact raises questions regarding the cognitive status of the two varieties and their processing in the brain. Previous studies using auditory stimuli suggested that LA is processed by Arabic native speakers as a second language. The current

study examined this issue in the visual modality. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) responses were collected while Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals performed a semantic categorization task on visually presented words in LA, SA and Hebrew. Performance on LA was better than SA and Hebrew, which did not differ from each other. Activation in SA was stronger than in LA in left inferior frontal, precentral, parietal and occipito-temporal regions, and stronger than in Hebrew in left precentral and parietal regions. Activation in SA was also less lateralized than activation for LA and Hebrew, which did not differ from each other in terms of lateralization, though activation for Hebrew was more learn more GPX6 extensive in both hemispheres than activation

for LA. Altogether, these results indicate an advantage for LA in the current study, presumably due to participants’ proficiency in reading in this language. Stronger activation for SA appears to be due to the relative unfamiliarity of written word forms in SA, which could also explain differences in performance between the two languages. However, the stronger activation observed in the left parietal cortex may also reflect stronger associations among words in SA. “
“Vasomotion is important in the study of vascular disorders, including stroke. Spontaneous low and very low hemodynamic oscillations (3–150 mHz) measured with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) reflect the endothelial (3–20 mHz), neurogenic (20–40 mHz) and myogenic (40–150 mHz) components of vasomotion. We investigated sleep-specific patterns of vasomotion by characterizing hemodynamic oscillations with NIRS in healthy subjects, and tested the feasibility of NIRS as a bedside tool for monitoring vasomotion during whole-night sleep. To characterize local cerebral vasomotion, we compared cerebral NIRS measurements with muscular NIRS measurements and peripheral arterial oxygen saturation (SpO2) during different sleep stages in 14 healthy volunteers.