Heritability of Stroop and flanker performance in 12-year old children

Background  

There is great interest in appropriate phenotypes that serve as indicator of genetically transmitted frontal (dys)function, such as ADHD. Here we investigate the ability to deal with response conflict, and we ask to what extent performance variation on response interference tasks is caused by genetic variation. We tested a large sample of 12-year old monozygotic and dizygotic twins on two well-known and closely related response interference tasks; the color Stroop task and the Eriksen flanker task. Using structural equation modelling we assessed the heritability of several performance indices derived from those tasks.     

The contribution of high frequencies to human brain activity underlying horizontal localization of natural spatial sounds

Background  

In the field of auditory neuroscience, much research has focused on the neural processes underlying human sound localization. A recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) study investigated localization-related brain activity by measuring the N1m event-related response originating in the auditory cortex. It was found that the dynamic range of the right-hemispheric N1m response, defined as the mean difference in response magnitude between contralateral and ipsilateral stimulation, reflects cortical activity related to the discrimination of horizontal sound direction. Interestingly, the results also suggested that the presence of realistic spectral information within horizontally located spatial sounds resulted in a larger right-hemispheric N1m dynamic range. Spectral cues being predominant at high frequencies, the present study further investigated the issue by removing frequencies from the spatial stimuli with low-pass filtering. This resulted in a stepwise elimination of direction-specific spectral information. Interaural time and level differences were kept constant. The original, unfiltered stimuli were broadband noise signals presented from five frontal horizontal directions and binaurally recorded for eight human subjects with miniature microphones placed in each subject's ear canals. Stimuli were presented to the subjects during MEG registration and in a behavioral listening experiment.     

A Complex Reaction Network Model for Spontaneous Mirror Symmetry Breaking in Viedma Deracemizations

Attrition-enhanced chiral symmetry breaking in crystals, known as Viedma deracemization, is a promising method for converting racemic solid phases into enantiomerically pure ones under non-equilibrium conditions. However, many aspects of this process remain unclear. In this study, we present a new investigation into Viedma deracemization using a comprehensive kinetic rate equation continuous model based on classical primary nucleation theory, crystal growth, and Ostwald ripening. Our approach employs a fully microreversible kinetic scheme with a size-dependent solubility following the Gibbs–Thomson rule. To validate our model, we use data from a real NaClO₃ deracemization experiment. After parametrization, the model shows spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking (SMSB) under grinding. Additionally, we identify a bifurcation scenario with a lower and upper limit of the grinding intensity that leads to deracemization, including a minimum deracemization time within this window. Furthermore, this model uncovers that SMSB is caused by multiple instances of concealed high-order autocatalysis. Our findings provide new insights into attrition-enhanced deracemization and its potential applications in chiral molecule synthesis and understanding biological homochirality.     

Quantitative analysis of the dynamic behaviour of photochromic systems

The good understanding of a photochromic reaction mechanism requires the establishment of the list of all the transient species and the definition of their connecting processes. The purpose of kinetic studies is the determination of the main photochromic parameters, such as the quantum yields of photoisomerization, rate constants of thermal relaxation and spectra of transient species. These data allow the establishment of structure properties relationships in order to select the best substituents to improve photochromic performances within a given series. In this review, we describe the dynamic behaviour of various photochromic systems during thermal relaxation after irradiation, from the simplest mono-exponential decay to the more complicated multi-exponential dynamics. Then, we analyse the evolution of the long-lived isomers under continuous irradiation. Several pedagogical examples and tricks to perform easy kinetic analysis are given in the appendices.     

The bistable TPID/CHCl3 photoreaction: Numerical simulation and experimental results

Investigation of the photochromic system TPID/CHCl₃ (TPID = triphenylimidazolyl dimer) in a CSTR provided the first example of isothermal photochemical bistability. The reaction mechanism was established and the relevant kinetic and spectroscopic parameters were estimated experimentally. In order to predict the quantitative dynamic behavior of the TPID/CHCl₃ system these parameters were refined numerically using batch reactor data. The adjusted model simulates very accurately bistability either as a function of residence time τ, or as a function of incident photon flux I₀.