The isoenzyme pattern of enolase was examined in the aqueous humour and serum of patients with retinoblastoma (10 aqueous, 8 sera), malignant melanoma (4 aqueous, 25 sera), and normal subjects undergoing cataract surgery (25 aqueous, 30 sera). The assay we used allowed assessment of all three major isoenzymes, including the gamma gamma isoenzyme (neurone-specific enolase). No enolase was detect...

There is growing recognition that neural oscillations are important in a wide range of perceptual and cognitive functions. One of the key issues in electrophysiological studies of schizophrenia is whether high or low frequency oscillations, or both, are related to schizophrenia because many brain functions are modulated with frequency specificities. Many recent electrophysiological studies of s...

Neural oscillatory synchrony could implement grouping processes, act as an attentional filter, or foster the storage of information in short-term memory. Do these findings indicate that oscillatory synchrony is an unspecific epiphenomenon occurring in any demanding task, or that oscillatory synchrony is a fundamental mechanism involved whenever neural cooperation is requested? If the latter hyp...

Oscillatory synchronization in the gamma frequency range has been proposed as a neuronal mechanism to prioritize processing of relevant stimuli over competing ones. Recent studies in animals found that selective spatial attention enhanced gamma-band synchronization in high-order visual areas (V4) and increased the gamma peak frequency in V1. The existence of such mechanisms in the human visual ...

Gamma band oscillatory neural activity, considered critical in synchronizing brain areas, appears abnormal in patients with schizophrenia. Stimulus evoked gamma band power is lower, compared with healthy subjects, but baseline gamma power is higher. Based on the observation that cholinergic modulation regulates interactions between primary auditory cortex (A1) and an association cortex in the g...

Tinnitus is the perception of a sound in the absence of any objective physical sound source. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) induces shifts in membrane resting potentials depending on the polarity of the stimulation: under the anode gamma band activity increases, whereas under the cathode the opposite occurs. Both single and multiple sessions of tDCS over the dorsolateral prefron...

The pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN) is a major component of the reticular activating system (RAS) that regulates waking and REM sleep, states of high-frequency EEG activity. Recently, we described the presence of high threshold, voltage-dependent N- and P/Q-type calcium channels in RAS nuclei that subserve gamma band oscillations in the mesopontine PPN, intralaminar parafascicular nucleus (Pf), ...

Kampis et al. [1] use gamma oscillations (here 25–35 Hz) in the scalprecorded electroencephalogram (EEG) of infants to investigate the neuronal signatures of objects representations. Oscillations in the gamma range have been used in several infant studies in the recent years [2–4] and are viewed as an important tool to investigate preverbal object representation processes [5,6]. However, Kampis...

It is becoming increasingly clear that attention-demanding tasks engage not only activation of specific cortical regions but also deactivation of other regions that could interfere with the task at hand. At the same time, electrophysiological studies in animals and humans have found that the participation of cortical regions to cognitive processes translates into local synchronization of rhythm...

BACKGROUND Non-pulsatile tinnitus is considered a subjective auditory phantom phenomenon present in 10 to 15% of the population. Tinnitus as a phantom phenomenon is related to hyperactivity and reorganization of the auditory cortex. Magnetoencephalography studies demonstrate a correlation between gamma band activity in the contralateral auditory cortex and the presence of tinnitus. The present ...