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Michael McCloskey

Publications and source records attributed to Michael McCloskey.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Real-time dynamics of label-free single mast cell granules revealed by differential interference contrast microscopy.

We demonstrate the capability of differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy as a simple and useful tool for studying cellular events without fluorescence labeling. By coupling an advanced DIC microscope to a computer-controlled motorized vertical stage and a high-speed, high-resolution CCD camera, real-time three-dimensional monitoring is possible in a high-throughput manner. The performance among three modes of microscopy, bright-field, dark-field and DIC, in terms of horizontal resolving power and vertical sectioning was investigated. As a model, exocytosis of rat peritoneal mast cells was recorded on the subsecond time scale. Three-dimensional tracking of granules during degranulation was achieved and granule-granule fusion before plasma membrane fusion was recorded.

Animals↗

Norepinephrine function in personality disorder: plasma free MHPG correlates inversely with life history of aggression.

OBJECTIVE: Clinical and pre-clinical data suggest the possibility of a facilitory role for norepinephrine (NE) in impulsive-aggressive behavior. While clinical studies have focused on putative central measures of NE activity, few studies have been published using peripheral measures. In this study, the relationship between plasma free NE metabolite, plasma free 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol (pMHPG), and impulsive aggression was explored in subjects with personality disorder. METHODS: Subjects were 30 male subjects with personality disorder in whom basal plasma free MHPG concentrations were obtained. Aggression was assessed using the Life History of Aggression (LHA) assessment and the Buss-Durkee Aggression scales; impulsivity was assessed using the Barratt Impulsiveness and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Impulsivity scales. RESULTS: A significant inverse correlation was found between LHA-Aggression and pMHPG in these subjects. Correlations with other behavioral measures were not statistically significant. pMHPG was significantly lower among subjects with borderline personality disorder but not significantly lower after controlling for LHA-Aggression scores. CONCLUSION: These data suggest that pMHPG is inversely correlated with life history of aggression in subjects with personality disorder and that central and/or peripheral NE may play a role in modulating aggressive behavior in these subjects.

Adult↗

Spatial representations and multiple-visual-systems hypotheses: evidence from a developmental deficit in visual location and orientation processing.

AH, a young, well-educated woman, has a developmental deficit in processing visual location and orientation information. Her deficit manifests itself in a wide range of visual tasks, including visually-guided reaching, copying pictures and words, and responding verbally to the location or orientation of visual stimuli; however, her performance in non-visual localization tasks is intact. AH's visual location and orientation errors are systematic left-right or up-down reflections (e.g., reaching to the far right for an object on the far left). More specifically, the errors involve reflection across the point where AH's attention is focused, regardless of where her eyes are fixated. These results imply that at some level(s) of the visual system, locations and orientations of visual stimuli are represented in a spatial coordinate system with an origin defined by the focus of attention. In these attention-centered representations location is specified in terms of distance and direction of displacement from the attentional focus along horizontal and vertical reference axes. AH's errors, I argue, result from misrepresentation of displacement direction (e.g., left rather than right, down rather than up) along a reference axis. Several visual variables dramatically affected AH's performance in visual location and orientation tasks: She was much more accurate for stimuli that were brief, moving, flickering, low in contrast, or high in eccentricity, than for those that were long in duration, stationary, continuous, high in contrast, and low in eccentricity. These results suggest that location and orientation are computed in each of two visual subsystems, which I call transient and sustained, and that AH's deficit affects only the sustained subsystem. I argue that AH's performance poses challenges to multiple-visual-subsystems hypotheses proposed by Ungerleider and Mishkin (1982) and by Milner and Goodale (1995).

Adult↗