Conventional views of visual perception propose a colour-blind pathway conveying motion information and a motion-blind pathway carrying colour information. Recent studies show that motion perception is not always colour blind, is partially dependent on attention, can show considerable perceptual slowing around isoluminance and is contrast-dependent. If there is a single motion pathway, receiving luminance and chromatic input, then the dependence of relative perceived velocity on relative stimulus contrast should be the same for both luminance and chromatic targets. Here we provide a distinctive characterization of the motion mechanisms using a robust velocity-matching task. A relative contrast scale allows direct comparison of the performance with luminance and chromatic targets. The results show that the perceived speed of slowly moving coloured targets at isoluminance has a steep contrast dependence. The perceived speed of slowly moving luminance targets shows a much lower contrast dependence. At high speeds the contrast dependence is low for both luminance and isoluminant stimuli, although the behaviour is unlike either of the slow mechanisms. The results suggest two independent pathways that perceive slowly moving targets: one is luminance-sensitive and the other is colour-sensitive. Fast movement is signalled via a single motion pathway that is contrast-invariant and not colour blind.

Intravenous electrocardiography guidance to position catheters obtains a satisfactory catheter tip placement that is in accordance with transesophageal echocardiography views. The surface landmark technique does not result in reliable placement at the superior vena cava-right atrium junction.

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) modification is the most prevalent modification in eukaryotic RNAs while accumulating studies suggest that m6A aberrant expression plays an important role in cancer. HNRNPA2B1 is a m6A reader which binds to nascent RNA and thus affects a perplexing array of RNA metabolism exquisitely. Despite unveiled facets that HNRNPA2B1 is deregulated in several tumors and facilitates tumor growth, a clear role of HNRNPA2B1 in multiple myeloma (MM) remains elusive. Herein, we analyzed the function and the regulatory mechanism of HNRNPA2B1 in MM. We found that HNRNPA2B1 was elevated in MM patients and negatively correlated with favorable prognosis. The depletion of HNRNPA2B1 in MM cells inhibited cell proliferation and induced apoptosis. On the contrary, the overexpression of HNRNPA2B1 promoted cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistic studies revealed that HNRNPA2B1 recognized the m6A sites of ILF3 and enhanced the stability of ILF3 mRNA transcripts, while AKT3 downregulation by siRNA abrogated the cellular proliferation induced by HNRNPA2B1 overexpression. Additionally, the expression of HNRNPA2B1, ILF3 and AKT3 was positively associated with each other in MM tissues tested by immunohistochemistry. In summary, our study highlights that HNRNPA2B1 potentially acts as a therapeutic target of MM through regulating AKT3 expression mediated by ILF3-dependent pattern.

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Amblyopia is usually considered to be a deficit in spatial vision. But there is evidence that amblyopes may also suffer specific deficits in motion sensitivity as opposed to losses that can be explained by the known deficits in spatial vision. We measured sensitivity to visual motion in random dot displays for strabismic and anisometropic amblyopic monkeys. We used a wide range of spatial and temporal offsets and compared the performance of the fellow and amblyopic eye for each monkey. The amblyopes were severely impaired at detecting motion at fine spatial and long temporal offsets, corresponding to fine spatial scale and slow speeds. This impairment was also evident for the untreated fellow eyes of strabismic but not anisometropic amblyopes. Motion sensitivity functions for amblyopic eyes were shifted toward large spatial scales for amblyopic compared to fellow eyes, to a degree that was correlated with the shift in scale of the spatial contrast sensitivity function. Amblyopic losses in motion sensitivity, however, were not correlated with losses in spatial contrast sensitivity. This, combined with the specific impairment for detecting long temporal offsets, reveals a deficit in spatiotemporal integration in amblyopia which cannot be explained by the lower spatial resolution of amblyopic vision.

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Pro-inflammatory cytokine-mediated expression of cell surface adhesion molecules plays a key role in endothelial cell injury, leading to vascular inflammation and the development of many cerebrovascular diseases. Thus, antiinflammatory agents targeting these adhesion molecules may represent potential drugs for the prevention and treatment of cerebrovascular diseases. The present study explored the effects of tanshinone IIA (Tan IIA), an active ingredient present in the Salvia miltiorrhiza root, on the expression of cellular adhesion molecules in TNF-α-stimulated brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMVECs). Treatment with Tan IIA was found to suppress the expression of vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), resulting in inhibition of TNF-α-induced adhesion of neutrophils to BMVECs in a dose-dependent manner. In addition, Tan IIA significantly inhibited TNF-α-induced production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which was accompanied by decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) levels. Treatment with Tan IIA also inhibited nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) activation. Together, these results suggest that Tan IIA regulates TNF-α-induced expression of VCAM-1 and ICAM-1 through inhibition of NF-κB activation and ROS generation in BMVECs.

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