This investigation delineates the application of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) for the elucidation of neurodynamics underpinning inhibitory control mechanisms, as operationalized within Go/NoGo paradigms, utilizing electroencephalographic (EEG) methodologies to quantify the integrated information (Φ) parameter across the brain's visual and frontoparietal networks. Inhibitory control, a...
Healthy ears are not only sensitive and selective detectors of sound, but also emit faint sounds at amplitudes typically below human hearing threshold. These sounds are known as otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) and are considered a byproduct of an active nonlinear amplification process, arising from collective dynamics of the sensory hair cells in the inner ear. OAEs can occur spontaneously in the...
Electrical stimulation around the ocular region of the head produces a phenomenon known as phosphenes. Phosphenes are the appearance of white flashes within the visual field when no light has entered the eye. This virtual light arises from the excitation of retinal neurons, triggering action potentials that travel through visual pathways to the visual cortex, leading to the perception of...
Tissue-tissue interface (compartment boundary) formation is an essential process during animal development and in disease. It has been shown that mechanical forces are important for both the establishment and maintenance of boundaries. For example, cables formed by actin and the molecular motor Myosin II are often found at compartment boundaries. However, how the boundaries are established or...
The aim of this study is to find a pathway to evaluate and predict the bioactivity of molecular chemicals using the first principles approaches. The main question is why molecules with similar structures demonstrate distinct bioactivity properties when interacting with bio-organisms? Addressing this question holds significance not only for applications to environmental safety of chemicals and...
We previously introduced an innovative method to convert the co-variability of a pair of species in biochemical networks into biochemical reaction rates without perturbation experiments or relying on time-related data. We demonstrated this method through numerical demonstrations in previous work. However, our previous examples only addressed fluctuations in stationary states of models that...
Background: Arterial occlusion is a ubiquitous medical procedure, which is used in many clinical scenarios. However, there is no standard protocol for the selection of the applied pressure. As various pressures may trigger different physiological responses, it is important to understand these peculiarities. Aim: The current work aims to investigate if there is any difference in skin tone with...
The way chromosomes are spatially organized influences their biological functions. Cells orchestrate the action of various molecules toward organizing their chromosomes: chromosome-associated proteins and the surrounding “free” molecules often referred to as crowders. Chain molecules like chromosomes can be entropically condensed in a crowded medium. A number of recent experiments showed that...
A Computational Study on the Structural Dependence of Cell Penetrating Peptide Pathways
Michael Thompson, Mikko Karttunen
Department of Chemistry, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
<div style="text-align: justify"> Cell penetrating peptides (CPPs) are group of short sequence peptides with the intrinsic ability to drive...In the early stages of cancer, malignant cells are confined within the boundaries of a tissue. With the rapid division of these cells, large pressure gradients form across the borders. When the force resulting from this pressure overpowers the intercellular adhesion, the cells gain the ability to invade and spread through the adjacent tissues [1]. Understanding the details behind this process...
In computational neuroscience, understanding the multifaceted dynamics within neural networks remains a pressing challenge, particularly in the context of the brain's staggering complexity, comprising approximately 100 billion neurons. While traditional models have focused on local coupling and function, there is a growing consensus that a network-centric approach is indispensable for a...
INTRODUCTION
MRI provides highly detailed images that enable healthcare professionals to assess the joints and surroundings in great detail. While commercial MRI scanners typically come equipped with basic receive coils, such as the head receive array, RF coils tailored for specialized applications like TMJ MRI must be obtained separately. Consequently, TMJ MRI scans often use suboptimal head...
INTRODUCTION
Inductive RF coils provide a cost-effective and simple approach for creating wireless RF coils in MRI1-5. They streamline MR scan setup and enhance patient comfort by eliminating the need for bulky components like cables, baluns, preamplifiers, and connectors. However, volume-type wireless coils are usually operated in transmit/receive mode due to their complex structure and...
Over the recent decades, molecular dynamics (MD) has emerged as a promising tool for investigating droplet interaction with surfaces and its local effects. We examine the classic problem of spreading liquid droplets on surfaces that govern myriad processes ranging from coating and printing to even biological systems. Spreading is usually studied using only the evolution of contact radius $r$...
Introduction
Understanding how the polarization states of light are affected by the optical components in a confocal scanning light ophthalmoscope (CSLO) is essential for the development of a novel retinal polarimetry imaging instrument, to be used in in vivo retinal imaging for the detection of protein biomarkers of brain diseases. We measured, modeled, and investigated compensation of...
Bacterial meningitis is a life threatening disease resulting from the bacterial infection of the meninges, which are the layers protecting the brain and spinal cord. The bacteria that cause this affliction can be diagnosed via a spinal tap where a sample of the patient’s cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is taken and tested for bacteria. Currently, it can take up to three days to receive positive test...
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the second most common infectious disease for which people seek treatment. The current gold standard for diagnosis requires the culturing of bacteria, a method that is time-consuming, costly, and can result in false-negatives. As an alternative diagnostic technique, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is being investigated for the rapid and accurate...
Rapid pathogen detection is essential for controlling infectious disease outbreaks and minimizing healthcare-associated costs worldwide. For example, delays in the diagnosis of a pathogen present in the blood (bacteremia) can contribute to increased patient mortality if the infection progresses to sepsis. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a relatively simple and versatile...
The discovery of the endothelial wall within human vasculature has significantly advanced our comprehension of cardiovascular physiology and pathology. Endothelial function, which governs vascular dilation and constriction in response to stimuli, is crucial for maintaining optimal blood flow dynamics. Any disruptions in endothelial function can lead to dysregulation of blood flow, ultimately...
Precise diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is crucial to ensure timely intervention and evaluate patient prognosis. Although integrating multi-modal neuroimaging such as MRI and PET has the potential, there are still challenges in effectively integrating multi-modal images. To this end, we propose a deep learning-based framework that uses Mutual Information Decomposition to obtain...
Biopolymers such as collagen and DNA play a fundamental role in cell dynamics, and many physiological functions rely on events that modify their structures. Understanding how mechanical force affects biopolymer structure and function at the molecular level could help elucidate how cellular and extracellular processes are regulated by external stimuli. Furthermore, single-molecule studies can...
Introduction: The rise of the COVID-19 pandemic brought to light a stark disparity in the reliability of tissue oximeters, as racialized groups saw increased mortality rates due to undetected hypoxic conditions. Commercial tissue oximeters are based on Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) techniques that use a limited number of wavelengths of light to determine tissue oxygenation. However, it...
Breast cancer is the most common cancer type in women accounting for ~25% of new cases of all cancers and 14% of cancer deaths in Canadian females. The metastatic spread of breast cancer cells from the primary tumour is the dominant contributor to mortality in these patients. The mechanisms by which cancer cells metastasize are diverse with suggestions that in vivo generated electric fields...
In lungs, a lipid-protein surfactant layer enables breathing by reducing surface tension at the air-water interface. Lung surfactant function requires cycling of material between bilayer reservoirs and an active surfactant layer, presumably involving transient formation of highly curved lipid structures. Surfactant protein SP-B, a 79-residue protein that forms homodimers, is essential for...
Introduction
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is the gold standard for imaging CMRO2, the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (Fan et al., NeuroImage, 2020). However, the procedure requires up to three radiotracers and invasive arterial sampling. Incorporating MRI techniques can simplify the procedure (Ssali et al.,JNM, 2018; Narciso et al., Phys Med Biol, 2021). PET/MR imaging of oxidative...
Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer in women worldwide and surgery to remove the tumour and stage the cancer is a crucial component of most treatment plans. Radioguided surgery using a hand-held gamma probe that counts gamma photons is a common technique that allows surgeons to locate non-palpable, radiolabeled lesions in the operating room. While gamma probes are effective for...
Clinicians typically rely on self-reporting outcomes to assess an arthritis treatment’s efficacy, leaving reported data subject to bias. Thus, there is need for devices that can measure and record patients’ daily activity to help assess patient recovery. Inertial measurement units (IMUs) combine an accelerometer and gyroscope to quantitatively measure physical motion; machine learning (ML)...
Detection of trace concentration of small molecules in various medias is highly necessary for many applications and uses, creating a need for the development of sensitive and reliable detection methods. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) offers a promising solution due to its ability to provide fingerprint-like spectra of molecules, enabling precise identification even at trace...
