• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.249-261
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• 2019

Purpose: The neural processing of children with overweight/obesity (CWO), may affect their eating behavior. We investigated the visual information processing of CWO under response control condition, by event-related potential (ERP) study, an electrophysiologic study for cognitive mechanism. Methods: Seventeen CWO (mean age: $10.6{\pm}1.9$), and 17 age-matched non-obese children (NOC), participated in the study. Neurocognitive function tests and visual ERP under Go/NoGo conditions, were implemented. Area amplitudes of major ERP components (P1, N1, P2, N2, and P3) from four scalp locations (frontal, central, parietal, and occipital), were analyzed. Results: For Go and NoGo conditions, CWO had significantly greater occipital P1, frontocentral N1, and P2 amplitudes compared with NOC. P2 amplitude was significantly greater in CWO, than in NOC, at the frontal location. N2 amplitude was not significantly different, between CWO and NOC. For CWO and NOC, Go P3 amplitude was highest at the parietal location, and NoGo P3 amplitude was highest at the frontal location. In Go and NoGo conditions, P3 amplitude of CWO was significantly less than in NOC. Conclusion: The greater P1, N1, and P2 suggested hyper-vigilance to visual stimuli of CWO, but the smaller P3 suggested insufficient mental representation of them. Such altered visual processing, may affect the eating behavior of CWO.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.64 no.2
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• pp.105-112
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• 2021

Excessive accumulation of the amyloid beta (Aβ) peptide has been implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Paeonia lactiflora (PL) has been used in treatments of several conditions such as inflammation, arthritis, and cognitive impairment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the neuroprotective effect and mechanisms of PL and its active compound, paeoniflorin (PF), on Aβ_25-35-induced neurotoxicity in SH-SY5Y cells. We evaluated cell viability, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Furthermore, underlying mechanism of PL and PF on the regulation of amyloidogenic pathway was analyzed by Western blotting. In our results, Aβ_25-35-induced neuronal cell loss was observed, whereas treatment with PL (10, 50, and 100 ㎍/mL) and PF (1, 5, and 10 ㎍/mL) significantly elevated the cell viability, and decreased LDH release and ROS production. In addition, exposure of SH-SY5Y cells to Aβ_25-35 significantly increased the protein levels of amyloid precursor protein (APP)-C-terminal fragment β, β-site APP-cleaving enzyme, and presenilin-1 and -2. However, treatment with PL and PF inhibited the amyloidogenic pathway via the down-regulation of those protein expressions. Taken together, our results indicate that PL, and its active compound PF, could protect SH-SY5Y cells against Aβ_25-35-induced cell neurotoxicity by attenuating LDH release and ROS production, and these effects may be attributed to regulation of amyloidogenic pathway-related protein expression. In conclusion, PL and PF could be a potential to prevent neurodegenerative disorders such as AD.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.1067-1073
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• 2021

Participants in the virtual environment will have an immersive and memorable perceived experience through interacting with virtual objects. Recently, commercial virtual reality technologies have released simple and cost-effective smartphone-based head-mounted displays (HMD) and high-quality wide field-of-view (FOV) HMDs. However, due to the vergence-accommodation conflict structure of HMD and the learned cognition mechanism in real, side effects such as dizziness and nausea remain challenging to overcome. This study focuses on consistent size perception among various cognitive difference factors, which are essential for interaction with virtual objects. We verified whether the visual angle, which affects the size perception of an object in real, is also the main factor in the virtual environment. Our experiments derived the relation between the visual angle and the environmental components, shadow, and grid, which help perceive a virtual object. As a result of the regression analysis, we presented that in the small FOV HMD environment, the visual angle affects size perception, and the relation between the shadow and the grid is statistically significant.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.320-327
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• 2022

Neurodevelopmental disorders are complex conditions that pose difficulty in the modulation of proper motor, sensory and cognitive function due to dysregulated neuronal development. Previous studies have reported that an imbalance in the excitation/inhibition (E/I) in the brain regulated by glutamatergic and/or GABAergic neurotransmission can cause neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric behavioral deficits such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). NMDA acts as an agonist at the NMDA receptor and imitates the action of the glutamate on that receptor. NMDA however, unlike glutamate, only binds to and regulates the NMDA receptor subtypes and not the other glutamate receptors. This study seeks to determine whether NMDA administration in mice i.e., over-activation of the NMDA system would result in long-lasting behavioral deficits in the adolescent mice. Both gender mice were treated with NMDA or saline at early postnatal developmental period with significant synaptogenesis and synaptic maturation. On postnatal day 28, various behavioral experiments were conducted to assess and identify behavioral characteristics. NMDA-treated mice show social deficits, and repetitive behavior in both gender mice at adolescent periods. However, only the male mice but not female mice showed increased locomotor activity. This study implies that neonatal exposure to NMDA may illicit behavioral features similar to ASD. This study also confirms the validity of the E/I imbalance theory of ASD and that NMDA injection can be used as a pharmacologic model for ASD. Future studies may explore the mechanism behind the gender difference in locomotor activity as well as the human relevance and therapeutic significance of the present findings.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.27 no.8
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• pp.1-7
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• 2022

With the development of artificial intelligence, efforts to incorporate neuroscience mining with AI have increased. Neuroscience mining, also known as NSM, expands on this concept by combining computational neuroscience and business analytics. Using fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy)-based experiment dataset, we have investigated the potential of NSM in the context of the BPSC (business problem-solving creativity) prediction. Although BPSC is regarded as an essential business differentiator and a difficult cognitive resource to imitate, measuring it is a challenging task. In the context of NSM, appropriate methods for assessing and predicting BPSC are still in their infancy. In this sense, we propose a novel NSM method that systematically combines CNN, BiLSTM, and attention network for the sake of enhancing the BPSC prediction performance significantly. We utilized a dataset containing over 150 thousand fNIRS-measured data points to evaluate the validity of our proposed NSM method. Empirical evidence demonstrates that the proposed NSM method reveals the most robust performance when compared to benchmarking methods.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.253-260
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• 2022

Creativity, one of the core competencies of the 21st century, is required as an essential item for members of society. Emphasizes its ability in terms of personality that allows it to be used in the desired direction. However, creativity is considered to contribute to positive change in the organization, not only in creating new ideas or products, but also in adapting to a changing environment and solving problems. Accordingly, by reviewing previous studies, it was concluded that rewards can promote or hinder creativity, which may vary depending on the nature of rewards, the concept of creativity possessed by the researcher, individual differences, and external environment. We also proposed that rewards may influence creativity through motivational, cognitive, and synthetic functions. Based on the analysis, a specific model was proposed for the effect of reward on creativity. This study is based on existing research and analyzed various factors and mechanisms acting in the process of influencing creativity based on comparison of which extrinsic and intrinsic motivations have what kind of relationship. Next, it appears that rewards differ from person to person according to the way they are given in environmental circumstances. Finally, by rewarding various types of creative tasks, an active reward role can be secured.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.155-162
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• 2022

Even after testing negative for COVID-19, some patients continue to struggle with a variety of symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, gastrointestinal problems and neurological problems. The World Health Organization (WHO) defined long COVID (Post COVID-19 conditions) as "A disease occurs in individuals with a history of probable or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, usually 3 months from the onset of COVID-19 with symptoms that last for at least 2 months, that cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis." As a possible pathological mechanism of long COVID, three hypotheses are proposed: the persistence of the infectious state due to the residual virus, the persistent inflammatory response, and the autoimmune response. The main symptoms of long COVID are shortness of breath (dyspnea), abdominal pain and dyspepsia, fatigue, cognitive problems (brain fog), anosmia and dysgeusia, and chest pain, palpitations and tachycardia. In the Chinese guidelines, COVID-19 patients were divided into mild, moderate, severe, and recovery, and prescriptions with effective therapeutic effects were summarized to encourage combined treatment of chinese and western medicine. Globally, only symptomatic therapy is recommended for long COVID, but a specific treatment has not yet been proposed. Recently, morbidity code for post COVID-19 conditions was created, and it is planned to announce guidelines for long COVID treatment and management in the first half of 2023. In line with this trend, the Korean medical community needs to make efforts to prepare treatment guidelines for patients with long COVID.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.448-457
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• 2023

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common form of dementia, and impaired mitophagy is a hallmark of AD. Mitophagy is mitochondrial-specific autophagy. Ginsenosides from Ginseng involve in autophagy in cancer. Ginsenoside Rg1 (Rg1 hereafter), a single compound of Ginseng, has neuroprotective effects on AD. However, few studies have reported whether Rg1 can ameliorate AD pathology by regulating mitophagy. Methods: Human SH-SY5Y cell and a 5XFAD mouse model were used to investigate the effects of Rg1. Rg1 (1µM) was added to β-amyloid oligomer (AβO)-induced or APPswe-overexpressed cell models for 24 hours. 5XFAD mouse models were intraperitoneally injected with Rg1 (10 mg/kg/d) for 30 days. Expression levels of mitophagy-related markers were analyzed by western blot and immunofluorescent staining. Cognitive function was assessed by Morris water maze. Mitophagic events were observed using transmission electron microscopy, western blot, and immunofluorescent staining from mouse hippocampus. The activation of the PINK1/Parkin pathway was examined using an immunoprecipitation assay. Results: Rg1 could restore mitophagy and ameliorate memory deficits in the AD cellular and/or mouse model through the PINK1-Parkin pathway. Moreover, Rg1 might induce microglial phagocytosis to reduce β-amyloid (Aβ) deposits in the hippocampus of AD mice. Conclusion: Our studies demonstrate the neuroprotective mechanism of ginsenoside Rg1 in AD models. Rg1 induces PINK-Parkin mediated mitophagy and ameliorates memory deficits in 5XFAD mouse models.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Computer Information Conference
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• 2021.07a
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• pp.305-307
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• 2021

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a cognitive disorder characterized by memory impairment that can be assessed at early stages based on administering clinical tests. However, the AD pathophysiological mechanism is still poorly understood due to the difficulty of distinguishing different levels of AD severity, even using a variety of brain modalities. Therefore, in this study, we present a hybrid EEG-fNIRS modalities to compensate for each other's weaknesses with the help of Machine Learning (ML) techniques for classifying four subject groups, including healthy controls (HC) and three distinguishable groups of AD levels. A concurrent EEF-fNIRS setup was used to record the data from 41 subjects during Oddball and 1-back tasks. We employed both a traditional neural network (NN) and a CNN-LSTM hybrid model for fNIRS and EEG, respectively. The final prediction was then obtained by using majority voting of those models. Classification results indicated that the hybrid EEG-fNIRS feature set achieved a higher accuracy (71.4%) by combining their complementary properties, compared to using EEG (67.9%) or fNIRS alone (68.9%). These findings demonstrate the potential of an EEG-fNIRS hybridization technique coupled with ML-based approaches for further AD studies.

• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.552-560
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• 2023

Background: Ginseng Radix (Panax ginseng Meyer, Araliaceae) has been used medicinally to treat the brain and nervous system problems worldwide. Recent studies have revealed physiological effects that could potentially benefit cognitive performance or mood. The present study aimed to investigate the antidepressant effects of Korean red ginseng water extract (KGE) and its active component in an unpredictable chronic mild stress (UCMS)-induced animal model and elucidate the underlying mechanisms. Methods: The antidepressant potential of the UCMS model was evaluated using the sucrose preference test and open field tests. The behavioral findings were further corroborated by the assessment of neurotransmitters and their metabolites from the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus of rats. Three doses of KGE (50, 100, and 200 mg/kg) were orally administered during the experiment. Furthermore, the mechanism underlying the antidepressant-like action of KGE was examined by measuring the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)/CREB, nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), and Kelch-like ECH-associated protein 1 (Keap1) proteins in the prefrontal cortex of UCMS-exposed rats. Results: KGE treatment normalized UCMS-induced depression-related behaviors. Neurotransmitter studies conducted after completing behavioral experiments demonstrated that KGE caused a reduction in the ratio of serotonin and dopamine, indicating a decrease in serotonin and dopamine turnover. Moreover, the expression of BDNF, Nrf2, Keap1 and AKT were markedly increased by KGE in the prefrontal cortex of depressed rats. Conclusion: Our results provide evidence that KGE and its constituents exert antidepressant effects that mediate the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems and expression of BDNF protein in an animal model.