University of Hamburg

About: University of Hamburg is a education organization based out in Hamburg, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Laser. The organization has 45564 authors who have published 89286 publications receiving 2850161 citations. The organization is also known as: Hamburg University.

Different amygdala subregions mediate valence-related and attentional effects of oxytocin in humans.

Abstract: The neuropeptide oxytocin enhances the processing of positive social stimuli and improves the capacity to effectively attend the eye region of conspecifics. To investigate the neural basis of these effects, we combined intranasal oxytocin administration with high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging in a unique emotion classification task. Emotional faces were briefly presented while controlling for the initial fixation, and measuring subsequent eye movements. Oxytocin had differential effects on the activity of specific amygdala subregions. On the one hand, it attenuated activation in lateral and dorsal regions of the anterior amygdala for fearful faces but enhanced activity for happy expressions, thus indicating a shift of the processing focus toward positive social stimuli. On the other hand, oxytocin increased the likelihood of reflexive gaze shifts toward the eye region irrespective of the depicted emotional expression. This gazing pattern was related to an increase of activity in the posterior amygdala and an enhanced functional coupling of this region to the superior colliculi. Thus, different behavioral effects of oxytocin seem to be closely related its specific modulatory influence on subregions within the human amygdala.

Venetoclax Combined With Low-Dose Cytarabine for Previously Untreated Patients With Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Results From a Phase Ib/II Study.

Abstract: PURPOSEEffective treatment options are limited for patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who cannot tolerate intensive chemotherapy. An international phase Ib/II study evaluated the safety and...

Guidelines for the management of neovascular age-related macular degeneration by the European Society of Retina Specialists (EURETINA)

Abstract: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is still referred to as the leading cause of severe and irreversible visual loss world-wide. The disease has a profound effect on quality of life of affected individuals and represents a major socioeconomic challenge for societies due to the exponential increase in life expectancy and environmental risks. Advances in medical research have identified vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) as an important pathophysiological player in neovascular AMD and intraocular inhibition of VEGF as one of the most efficient therapies in medicine. The wide introduction of anti-VEGF therapy has led to an overwhelming improvement in the prognosis of patients affected by neovascular AMD, allowing recovery and maintenance of visual function in the vast majority of patients. However, the therapeutic benefit is accompanied by significant economic investments, unresolved medicolegal debates about the use of off-label substances and overwhelming problems in large population management. The burden of disease has turned into a burden of care with a dissociation of scientific advances and real-world clinical performance. Simultaneously, ground-breaking innovations in diagnostic technologies, such as optical coherence tomography, allows unprecedented high-resolution visualisation of disease morphology and provides a promising horizon for early disease detection and efficient therapeutic follow-up. However, definite conclusions from morphologic parameters are still lacking, and valid biomarkers have yet to be identified to provide a practical base for disease management. The European Society of Retina Specialists offers expert guidance for diagnostic and therapeutic management of neovascular AMD supporting healthcare givers and doctors in providing the best state-of-the-art care to their patients. Trial registration number NCT01318941.

Crosslinguistic Influence in Bilingual Language Acquisition: Italian and French as Recipient Languages.

Abstract: In this paper we want to compare the results from monolingual children with object omissions in bilingual children who have acquired two languages simultaneously. Our longitudinal studies of bilingual Dutch–French, German–French, and German–Italian children show that the bilingual children behave like monolingual children regarding the type of object omissions in the Romance languages. They differ from monolingual children with respect to the extent to which object drop is used. At the same time, the children differentiate the two systems they are using. We want to claim that the difference between monolingual and bilingual children concerning object omissions in the Romance languages is due to crosslinguistic influence in bilingual children: the Germanic language influences the Romance language. Crosslinguistic influence occurs once a syntactic construction in language A allows for more than one grammatical analysis from the perspective of child grammar and language B contains positive evidence for one of these possible analyses. The bilingual child is not able to map the universal strategies onto language-specific rules as quickly as the monolinguals, since s/he is confronted with a much wider range of language-specific syntactic possibilities. One of the possibilities seems to be compatible with a universal strategy. We would like to argue for the existence of crosslinguistic influence, induced by the mapping of universal principles onto language-specific principles – in particular, pragmatic onto syntactic principles. This influence will be defined as mapping induced influence. We will account for the object omissions by postulating an empty discourse-connected PRO in pre-S position (Muller, Crysmann, and Kaiser, 1996; Hulk, 1997). Like monolingual children, bilingual children use this possibility until they show evidence of the C-system (the full clause) in its target form.