bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Toxicity of glutathione depletion in mesencephalic cultures: a role for arachidonic acid and its lipoxygenase metabolites
Authors: Kramer Brian C. , Yabut Jocelyn A. , Cheong Julie , Jnobaptiste Ruth , Robakis Thalia , Olanow C. Warren , Mytilineou Catherine 
Published: January 2004

AbstractThe contribution of arachidonic acid (AA) release and metabolism to the toxicity that results from glutathione (GSH) depletion was studied in rat mesencephalic cultures treated with the GSH synthesis inhibitor l‐buthionine sulfoximine. Our data show that GSH depletion is accompanied by increased release of AA, which is phosholipase A2 (PLA2) dependent. Exogenous AA is toxic to GSH‐depleted cells. This toxicity is prevented by inhibition of lipoxygenase activity, suggesting participation of toxic byproducts of AA metabolism. Hydroxyperoxyeicosatetraenoic acid (HPETE), one of the primary products of AA metabolism by lipoxygenase is also toxic to GSH‐depleted cells, whereas hydroeicosatetraenoic acid (HETE) is not. Cell death caused by GSH depletion is prevented by: (i) replenishment of GSH levels with GSH‐ethyl ester; (ii) inhibition of PLA2 activity; (iii) inhibition of lipoxygenase activity; and (iv), treatment with ascorbic acid. These data suggest that the following events likely contribute to cell death when GSH levels become depleted. Loss of GSH results in increased release of AA, which is PLA2 dependent. Metabolism of arachidonic acid via the lipoxygenase pathway results in generation of oxygen free radicals possibly produced during conversion of HPETE to HETE, which contribute to cellular damage and death. Our study suggests that limiting AA release and metabolism may provide benefit in conditions with an existing depletion of GSH, such as Parkinson's disease.
Magnetoencephalography indicates finger motor somatotopy
Authors: Beisteiner Roland , Gartus Andreas , Erdler Marcus , Mayer Dagmar , Lanzenberger Rupert , Deecke Lüder 
Published: January 2004

AbstractThe existence or non‐existence of fine‐scale motor somatotopy of the hand is a fundamental problem with regard to the functioning of the human brain. In contrast to seldom contradicted early twentieth century descriptions of activation overlap, descriptions of finger motor somatotopy faced disagreement. Recent blood‐flow‐related brain mapping data achieved with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) argue in favour of fine‐scale somatotopy. However, considerable discrepancies between blood oxygen‐level‐dependent fMRI activations and intracortically recorded neuronal activity have been reported and it is unclear whether the blood flow results truly reflect the neuronal situation. We have used recent advances in magnetoencephalography to detect signals deriving directly from neuronal tissue. Besides replication of the overlap aspect, we found statistically significant evidence for the existence of a somatotopic aspect of human hand motor representation when comparing the fifth and first finger motor dipoles along the superior–inferior axis. The average location of the fifth finger was found to be 2.31 mm superior to the first finger.
12‐ and 18‐month‐old infants follow gaze to spaces behind barriers
Authors: Moll Henrike , Tomasello Michael 
Published: January 2004

Abstract Infants follow the gaze direction of others from the middle of the first year of life. In attempting to determine how infants understand the looking behavior of adults, a number of recent studies have blocked the adult's line of sight in some way (e.g. with a blindfold or with a barrier). In contrast, in the current studies an adult looked behind a barrier which blocked the child's line of sight. Using two different control conditions and several different barrier types, 12‐ and 18‐month‐old infants locomoted a short distance in order to gain the proper viewing angle to follow an experimenter's gaze to locations behind barriers. These results demonstrate that, contra Butterworth, even 12‐month‐old infants can follow gaze to locations outside of their current field of view. They also add to growing evidence that 12‐month‐olds have some understanding of the looking behaviors of others as an act of seeing.
Hemispheric asymmetries in children's perception of nonlinguistic human affective sounds
Authors: Pollak Seth D. , Holt Lori L. , Wismer Fries Alison B. 
Published: January 2004

AbstractIn the present work, we developed a database of nonlinguistic sounds that mirror prosodic characteristics typical of language and thus carry affective information, but do not convey linguistic information. In a dichotic‐listening task, we used these novel stimuli as a means of disambiguating the relative contributions of linguistic and affective processing across the hemispheres. This method was applied to both children and adults with the goal of investigating the role of developing cognitive resource capacity on affective processing. Results suggest that children's limited computational resources influence how they process affective information and rule out attentional biases as a factor in children's perceptual asymmetries for nonlinguistic affective sounds. These data further suggest that investigation of perception of nonlinguistic affective sounds is a valuable tool in assessing interhemispheric asymmetries in affective processing, especially in parceling out linguistic contributions to hemispheric differences.
When left means right: an explanation of the left cradling bias in terms of right hemisphere specializations
Authors: Bourne Victoria J. , Todd Brenda K. 
Published: January 2004

Abstract Previous research has indicated that 70–85% of women and girls show a bias to hold infants, or dolls, to the left side of their body. This bias is not matched in males (e.g. deChateau, Holmberg & Winberg, 1978; Todd, 1995). This study tests an explanation of cradling preferences in terms of hemispheric specialization for the perception of facial emotional expression. Thirty‐two right‐handed participants were given a behavioural test of lateralization and a cradling task. Females, but not males, who cradled a doll on the left side were found to have significantly higher laterality quotients than right cradlers. Results indicate that women cradle on the side of the body that is contralateral to the hemisphere dominant for face and emotion processing and suggest a possible explanation of gender differences in the incidence of cradling.
Two‐year‐olds’ sensitivity to speakers’ intent: an alternative account of Samuelson and Smith
Authors: Diesendruck Gil , Markson Lori , Akhtar Nameera , Reudor Ayelet 
Published: January 2004

Abstract Seventy‐two 2‐year‐olds participated in a study designed to test two competing accounts of the effect of contextual change on children's ability to learn a word for an object. The mechanistic account hypothesizes that any change in context that highlights a target object will lead to word learning; the social‐pragmatic account maintains that a change in context must be perceived as relevant to the speaker's communicative intentions. Consistent with the latter account, we found that children learned the word when a change in context was intentional but not when it was accidental, and children failed to learn the word for the highlighted object when a speaker naive to the preceding context named the object.
Auditory–oral matching behavior in newborns
Authors: Chen Xin , Striano Tricia , Rakoczy Hannes 
Published: January 2004

Abstract Twenty‐five newborn infants were tested for auditory–oral matching behavior when presented with the consonant sound /m/ and the vowel sound /a/ – a precursor behavior to vocal imitation. Auditory–oral matching behavior by the infant was operationally defined as showing the mouth movement appropriate for producing the model sound just heard (mouth opening for /a/ and mouth clutching for /m/), even when the infant produced no sound herself. With this new dependent measure, the current study is the first to show matching behavior to consonant sounds in newborns: infants showed significantly more instances of mouth opening after /a/ models than after /m/ models, and more instances of mouth clutching after /m/ models than after /a/ models. The results are discussed in the context of theories of active intermodal mapping and innate releasing mechanisms.
Training 2;6‐year‐olds to produce the transitive construction: the role of frequency, semantic similarity and shared syntactic distribution
Authors: Abbot‐Smith Kirsten , Lieven Elena , Tomasello Michael 
Published: January 2004

Abstract Childers and Tomasello (2001) found that training 21/2‐year‐olds on the English transitive construction greatly improves their performance on a post‐test in which they must use novel verbs in that construction. In the current study, we replicated Childers and Tomasello's finding, but using a much lower frequency of transitive verbs and models in training. We also used novel verbs that were of a different semantic class to our training verbs, demonstrating that semantic homogeneity is not crucial for generalization. We also replicated the finding that 4‐year‐olds are significantly more productive than 21/2‐year‐olds with the transitive construction, with the new finding that this is also true for verbs of emission. In addition, ‘shared syntactic distribution’ of novel verb and training verbs was found to have no observable effect on the number of 21/2‐year‐olds who were productive in the post‐test.
Effect of visual experience on face processing: a developmental study of inversion and non‐native effects
Authors: Sangrigoli Sandy , De Schonen Scania 
Published: January 2004

Abstract In adults, three phenomena are taken to demonstrate an experience effect on face recognition: an inversion effect, a non‐native face effect (so‐called ‘other‐race’ effect) and their interaction. It is crucial for our understanding of the developmental perception mechanisms of object processing to discover when these effects are present in childhood. Three‐ to 5‐year‐old Caucasian children (N = 64) were asked to recognize upright and inverted Caucasian and Asian faces. Recognition was tested with a forced‐choice procedure. Overall performance improved with age. However, there was an interaction between the inversion and non‐native effects that did not change with age between ages 3 and 5: (a) the inversion effect with native (Caucasian) faces was larger than with non‐native (Asian) faces, and (b) upright native faces were recognized better than upright non‐native faces. These results show that face orientation and morphology constrain face processing in 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds. The first 3 years of life during which the brain and the environment interact are sufficient to build a face‐processing system that constrains recognition.
The impact of child maltreatment on expressive syntax at 60 months
Authors: Eigsti Inge‐Marie , Cicchetti Dante 
Published: January 2004

AbstractAlthough child maltreatment has often been described as leading to language deficits, the few well‐controlled investigations of language acquisition in maltreated children have focused on language content rather than form, or have used qualitative rather than quantitative measures. This study examines syntactic complexity in 19 maltreated and 14 nonmaltreated preschool‐aged children. Mother–child dyads participated in play sessions that were transcribed and scored for the presence of morphosyntactic forms in child speech and for specific sentence constructions in maternal speech. Findings indicated that child maltreatment was associated with language delay in both vocabulary and production of syntactic structures. There were also qualitative differences in characteristics of maternal utterances between maltreating and comparison groups. Because maltreatment initially occurred before age 2, this study highlights the long‐lasting negative influence of maltreatment on language development and also provides the first demonstration of child language delays and differences in maternal speech within a single maltreatment sample.
A longitudinal, microgenetic study of the emergence of false belief understanding and inhibition skills
Authors: Flynn Emma , O'Malley Claire , Wood David 
Published: January 2004

AbstractTwo theories that attempt to explain the relationship between false belief understanding and inhibition skills were investigated: (1) theory of mind development improves self‐control, and (2) executive control is necessary for developing a theory of mind. A microgenetic approach was adopted, with a group of 21 children completing a battery of inhibition and false belief understanding tasks every four weeks for six phases of testing. The results showed that the majority of children were able to perform well on a test of executive inhibition before having a good understanding of false beliefs, thus supporting theory (2). The results also illustrated that while the children's inhibition skills developed relatively gradually, their understanding of false beliefs progressed from a consistent lack of understanding through a period of unstable performance, during which some children failed tests that they had previously passed.
Visual search in typically developing toddlers and toddlers with Fragile X or Williams syndrome
Authors: Scerif Gaia , Cornish Kim , Wilding John , Driver Jon , Karmiloff‐Smith Annette 
Published: January 2004

Abstract Visual selective attention is the ability to attend to relevant visual information and ignore irrelevant stimuli. Little is known about its typical and atypical development in early childhood. Experiment 1 investigates typically developing toddlers’ visual search for multiple targets on a touch‐screen. Time to hit a target, distance between successively touched items, accuracy and error types revealed changes in 2‐ and 3‐year‐olds’ vulnerability to manipulations of the search display. Experiment 2 examined search performance by toddlers with Fragile X syndrome (FXS) or Williams syndrome (WS). Both of these groups produced equivalent mean time and distance per touch as typically developing toddlers matched by chronological or mental age; but both produced a larger number of errors. Toddlers with WS confused distractors with targets more than the other groups; while toddlers with FXS perseverated on previously found targets. These findings provide information on how visual search typically develops in toddlers, and reveal distinct search deficits for atypically developing toddlers.
Increasing the impact of European obesity research in preparation for the European research area: a report on the 2003 European Commission obesity workshop*
Authors: Mercer J. G. , O'Reilly L. M. , Morgan P. J. 
Published: January 2004

SummaryLeading obesity researchers from across Europe assembled in Aberdeen, Scotland, in January 2003 to consider how to increase the impact of European obesity research. The workshop was funded by the European Commission and hosted by the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen. The delegates identified the need to (i) develop a portfolio of studies that integrate genetics and mechanisms through parallel study of humans and animal models and (ii) establish major intervention studies in weight management and early life nutrition. It was recommended that these goals would be best achieved under the umbrella of a virtual European Obesity Research Institute, or Network of Excellence in Obesity Research under Framework Programme 6, that would facilitate harmonization of methodology, manage centralized standardized resources, coordinate training initiatives, workshops and working groups, and increase focus.
Caloric restriction, body fat and ageing in experimental models
Authors: Das M. , Gabriely I. , Barzilai N. 
Published: January 2004

SummaryCaloric restriction in animal models delays many age‐related pathological conditions. Ageing rats have characteristically increased body weight, fat mass and a specific body fat distribution. This report will focus on the potential cause–effect relationship between increased fat mass and accelerated ageing. In humans, increased fat mass (obesity), and in particular increases in abdominal obesity as a result of deposition of visceral fat, are associated with the metabolic syndrome of ageing. This syndrome is associated with hyperinsulinaemia, dyslipidaemia, type 2 diabetes mellitus, atherosclerosis, hypercoagulability and hypertension. Fat tissue, however, plays a major role by secreting multiple metabolically active factors, which are potentially responsible for the development of insulin resistance. This article will review various experimental models (in animals) used to prevent insulin resistance of ageing by decreasing fat mass, and in particular, decreasing visceral fat. We suggest that this decrease in fat mass and its beneficial repercussions observed in ageing animal models may apply also to human ageing and its related pathology.
Role of candidate genes in the responses to long‐term overfeeding: review of findings
Authors: Ukkola O. , Bouchard C. 
Published: January 2004

SummaryAn overfeeding experiment conducted with 12 pairs of young male identical twins revealed that genetic factors were likely to play an important role in the response to caloric affluence. Significant intrapair resemblance was observed for the overfeeding‐induced changes in body weight, fat mass, abdominal fat, fasting insulin, fasting cholesterol and triglycerides. In an attempt to define the molecular basis of these genotype–energy balance interaction effects, a panel of candidate genes has been investigated. Among the most significant findings, an adipsin polymorphism was associated with increases in body weight, total fat mass and subcutaneous fat in response to overfeeding. In addition, the beta2 adrenergic receptor gene Gln27Glu polymorphism showed a strong association with the gains in body weight and subcutaneous fat. Only a few markers were related to abdominal fat changes and, among them, the adipsin Hinc II polymorphism was associated with both computed tomography (CT)‐measured abdominal visceral and total fat. The changes in insulin parameters brought about by long‐term overfeeding were influenced most consistently by leptin receptor (LEPR) Gln223Arg and insulin‐like growth factor‐II Apa I polymorphisms. The LEPR Gln223Arg variant was also associated with the changes in plasma total triglycerides and high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations. Further research with larger sample sizes should make it possible to identify the specific contributions of DNA sequence variations at multiple candidate gene loci in the complex response to chronic positive energy balance.
Current status of bariatric surgery in the treatment of type 2 diabetes
Authors: Pinkney J. , Kerrigan D. 
Published: January 2004

SummaryBariatric surgery (from the Greek words baros meaning ‘weight’ and iatrikos‘the art of healing’) is a rapidly evolving branch of surgical science. The aim is to induce major weight loss in those whose obesity places them at high risk of serious health problems. In an attempt to balance the risks of surgery against the benefits of weight loss, bariatric operations are currently performed only in the morbidly obese, or those with a body mass index (BMI) > 35 kgm−2 who already have developed comorbidity such as type 2 diabetes. Although weight loss is beneficial for obese patients with diabetes, current medical treatment for obesity is difficult. In contrast, observational studies show a major impact of bariatric surgery on diabetes, raising the question whether this approach should be used more widely to treat diabetes in obese patients? If bariatric surgery were shown to be the best way to treat diabetes in obese subjects the implications for health services would be wide‐ranging. Bariatric surgery leads to withdrawal of diabetic treatment in about 60% or more of patients, and reductions of therapy for many others. Although data on bariatric surgery in subjects with diabetes are provocative, most studies have been uncontrolled or flawed in other ways. Most importantly, bariatric surgery has not yet been compared against standard medical treatment for diabetes in randomized controlled trials with diabetes‐specific endpoints in all relevant patient groups. Potential indications for bariatric surgery are discussed, and the unanswered questions that need to be addressed by clinical trials are summarized. Although small numbers of patients may be interested in bariatric surgery for type 2 diabetes, current data are insufficient to endorse its wide scale use for this indication. Until essential studies are undertaken the role and economics of bariatric surgery in the diabetic clinic will remain uncertain.
Fatty acid composition of fats is an early determinant of childhood obesity: a short review and an opinion
Authors: Ailhaud G. , Guesnet P. 
Published: January 2004

SummaryThe importance of dietary fat in human obesity remains a controversial issue as the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased despite no dramatic change in the amount of ingested fats over the past few decades. However, qualitative changes (i.e. the fatty acid composition of fats) have been largely disregarded. In this review, we summarize experimental evidence which supports polyunsaturated fatty acids of the ω6 series as being potent promoters of both adipogenesis in vitro and adipose tissue development in vivo during the gestation/lactation period. This conclusion is also supported by epidemiological data from infant studies as well as by the assessment of the fatty acid composition of mature breast milk and formula milk. It is proposed that unnoticed changes in fatty acid composition of ingested fats over the last decades have been important determinants in the increasing prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity.
A systematic review of the clinical effectiveness of orlistat used for the management of obesity
Authors: O'Meara S. , Riemsma R. , Shirran L. , Mather L. , Ter Riet G. 
Published: January 2004

SummaryThe aim of this paper is to assess the clinical effectiveness of orlistat used for the management of obesity. Nineteen electronic databases were searched for randomized controlled trials evaluating the effectiveness of orlistat for weight loss or maintenance of weight loss in overweight or obese patients. Each included trial was assessed for methodological quality. Statistical pooling was performed when trials were considered to be sufficiently similar. Twenty‐three trials were eligible for inclusion. Placebo‐controlled trials recruiting patients with uncomplicated obesity reported statistically significant differences in favour of orlistat for weight loss and changes in obesity‐related risk factors at all time points. Trials in obese patients with defined risk factors at baseline showed similar results, however, smaller effect sizes were observed in patients with type 2 diabetes. The effectiveness of orlistat relative to other anti‐obesity drugs is currently unclear. When orlistat was added to simvastatin, this proved to be more effective for weight loss than either drug used individually. Orlistat use is associated with a higher incidence of gastrointestinal adverse events compared with placebo. In conclusion, orlistat is more effective than placebo in promoting weight loss, maintenance of weight loss, and improving cardiovascular risk factor profiles. Baseline parameters of patients seen in clinical practice should be taken into account when considering treatment.