The findings are discussed in theoretical contexts of speech perception and the mirror system. We suggest that this technique may offer a cost-efficient, non-invasive technique for measuring motor activity during speech perception. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Infection with a wide variety of viruses often perturbs host cell signaling pathways including the Jun NH(2)-terminal kinase/stress-activated kinase (JNK/SAPK) and the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38/MAPK), which are important components of cellular signal transduction pathways. The present study

demonstrated for the first time that porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2), which is the Birinapant mw primary causative agent of an emerging swine disease, postweaning

multisystemic wasting syndrome, can activate JNK1/2 and p38 MAPK pathways in PCV2-infected PK15 cells. www.selleckchem.com/products/tpx-0005.html However, PCV2 at an early stage of infection, as well as UV-irradiated PCV2, failed to activate these two MAPK families, which demonstrated that PCV2 replication was necessary for their activation. We further found that PCV2 activated the phosphorylation of JNK1/2 and p38 MAPK downstream targets c-Jun and ATF-2 with virus replication in the cultured cells. The roles of these kinases in PCV2 infection were further evaluated using specific inhibitors: the JNK inhibitor 1 for JNK1/2 and SB202190 for p38. Inhibition of JNK1/2 and p38 kinases by these specific inhibitors did result in significant reduction of PCV2 viral mRNA transcription and protein synthesis, viral progeny release, and blockage of PCV2-induced apoptotic 2-hydroxyphytanoyl-CoA lyase caspase-3 activation in the infected cells. Taken together, these data suggest that JNK/SAPK and p38 MAPK pathways play important roles in the PCV2 replication and contribute to virus-mediated changes in host cells.”
“Implicit (unconscious/incidental) and explicit (conscious/intentional) learning are considered to have distinct neural

substrates. It is proposed that implicit learning is mediated by the basal ganglia (BG), while explicit learning has been linked to the medial temporal lobes (MTL). To test such a dissociation we investigated implicit and explicit sequence learning in Parkinson’s disease (PD), a disorder characterized by striatal dysfunction. We studied both implicit and explicit learning of a 12-item sequence of target locations in 13 PD patients and 15 age-matched controls. In the implicit sequence learning task all participants completed 10 blocks of a probabilistic serial reaction time (SRT) task in which they were exposed to the sequence without explicit knowledge of it. Participants also completed between I and 10 blocks of an explicit sequence learning task in which the sequence was learned deliberately by trial-and-error.