Interaction between influences of functionally different cortical areas on caudate neurons in cats

Unit activity in the caudate nucleus evoked by paired stimulation of the anterior sigmoid and middle suprasylvian gyri was studied in acute experiments on cats. Responses in most neurons to testing stimulation of the anterior sigmoid gyrus during the period of inhibition of spontaneous activity evoked by conditioning stimulation of the suprasylvian gyrus were preserved, but in isolated cases they were actually facilitated. Meanwhile conditioning stimulation of the anterior sigmoid gyrus in the period of inhibition depressed responses to testing stimulation of the suprasylvian gyrus. Similar results were obtained in experiments on animals with deep transcortical sections between the sensomotor and parietal regions, ruling out the possibility of interaction between the stimulated zones at the cortical level.A. A. Bogomolets Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Kiev. Translated from Neirofiziologiya, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 142–148, March–April, 1981.     

Principles of the maximum development of the reserve potentialities of the bone marrow CFUf system following exposure to ionizing radiation

In this work, the regularities in the occurrence of a highly pronounced postirradiation increase in CFUf of bone marrow (CFUf "peak") were investigated and quantitative approaches permitting to predict absolute CFUf "peak" values at various radiation doses developed.     

Neurophysiological and Psychophysiological Effects of Sulpiride in the Norm and in Patients with Opiate Addiction

We studied characteristics of the EEG activity and psychophysiological indices in healthy persons and patients with opiate addiction (in the states of abstinence and remission) before and after peroral introduction of 200 mg sulpiride. In the initial state, spectral characteristics of EEG in patients with opiate addiction differed from those in the control (in healthy tested subjects) by higher relative powers of low- and high-frequency components (delta and beta waves) and a considerable depression of the alpha rhythm. Treatment with sulpiride evoked changes in the spectral characteristics of EEG, which showed a significant intergroup specificity; intensification of alpha oscillations was a general effect in all groups. We conclude that the effects of sulpiride on the EEG activity comprised components typical of both neuroleptics and antidepressants; in the group of patients in the abstinence state, the pattern of effects of sulpiride was close in its profile to the effect of anxiolytics. Dynamics of the indices of psychophysiological testing after sulpiride treatment demonstrated that the drug exerts mostly positive regulating effects on the state of higher nervous functions in patients with opiate addiction.     

Regulation of the commitment processes in the hematopoiesis

Various methods of commitment regulation have been analysed on the basis of the mathematical model of the haemopoietic stem cell number dynamics. The starting point is the requirement on the system stability. The basic hypothesis is that of the intrinsic nature of the population commitment regulation. The analysis states that the commitment specific velocity increases with stem cell number. This way of regulation may be performed in the case the commitment takes place at Go phase of the cell cycle. The role of the committed precursor pool in providing the haemopoietic system reliability is discussed.     

Some like it cold: summer torpor by freetail bats in the Australian arid zone

Bats are among the most successful groups of Australian arid-zone mammals and, therefore, must cope with pronounced seasonal fluctuations in ambient temperature (T _a), food availability and unpredictable weather patterns. As knowledge about the energy conserving strategies in desert bats is scant, we used temperature-telemetry to quantify the thermal physiology of tree-roosting inland freetail bats (Mormopterus species 3, 8.5 g, n = 8) at Sturt National Park over two summers (2010–2012), when T _a was high and insects were relatively abundant. Torpor use and activity were affected by T _a. Bats remained normothermic on the warmest days; they employed one “morning” torpor bout on most days and typically exhibited two torpor bouts on the coolest days. Overall, animals employed torpor on 67.9 % of bat-days and torpor bout duration ranged from 0.5 to 39.3 h. At any given T _a, torpor bouts were longer in Mormopterus than in bats from temperate and subtropical habitats. Furthermore, unlike bats from other climatic regions that used only partial passive rewarming, Mormopterus aroused from torpor using either almost entirely passive (68.9 % of all arousals) or active rewarming (31.1 %). We provide the first quantitative data on torpor in a free-ranging arid-zone molossid during summer. They demonstrate that this desert bat uses torpor extensively in summer and often rewarms passively from torpor to maximise energy and water conservation.