Expert performance constitutes the endpoint of skill acquisition and is accompanied by widespread neuroplastic changes. To reveal common mechanisms of reorganization associated with long-term expertise in a cognitive domain (mental calculation, chess, language, memory, music without motor involvement), we used activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis and compared brain activation of exper...

Previous studies have linked the DNA damage response to mitotic progression machinery. Mitotic kinases, such as Aurora A kinase and Polo-like kinase, are involved in the phosphorylation of cell cycle regulators in response to DNA damage. Here, we investigated the potential involvement of Aurora A kinase in the activation of the Fanconi anemia (FA)/BRCA pathway, which participates in cellular re...

Fanconi anemia complementation group (FANC) proteins constitute the Fanconi Anemia (FA)/BRCA pathway that is activated in response to DNA interstrand crosslinks (ICLs). We previously performed yeast two-hybrid screening to identify novel FANC-interacting proteins and discovered that the alpha subunit of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPKα1) was a candidate binding partner of the FANCG protein, ...

Tachyarrhythmias are pathological fast heart rhythms often caused by abnormally conducting myocardial areas (foci). Treatment by radio-frequency (RF) ablation uses electrode-catheters to monitor and destroy foci. The procedure is normally guided with x-rays (2D), and thus prone to errors in location and excessive radiation exposure. Our main goal is to provide pre- and intra-operative 3D MR gui...

Central processing of visceral information in humans is incompletely understood. We aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and to quantitate the changes in regional cerebral blood flow during rectal distension. Ten healthy volunteers underwent randomized sham and active rectal distensions on separate days, during which cerebral blood flow was ...