Mulberry crinkle leaf virus (MCLV) is a member of the genus Mulcrilevirus, family Geminiviridae. The expression and functions of the V4 and V5 genes encoded by the MCLV genome remain unknown. Here, we confirmed the expression of V4 and V5 by analyzing the V4 and V5 mRNAs and the promoter activity of individual ORFs upstream sequences. The functions of V4 and V5 were investigated by constructing Agrobacterium-mediated infectious clones of wild-type MCLV variant П (MCLV vII), MCLVwt and MCLV vП mutants, such as MCLVmV4 (start codon of V4 ORF mutated), MCLVdV4 (5\'-end partial deletion of V4 ORF sequence) and MCLVmV5 (V5 ORF start codon mutated). Although MCLVwt, MCLVmV4, and MCLVdV4 could infect natural host mulberry and experimental tomato plants systematically, the replication of the MCLVmV4 and MCLVdV4 genomes was obviously reduced compared to MCLVwt in both mulberry and tomato plants. MCLV vП expressing V5 could infect Nicotiana benthamiana plants systematically, but MCLVmV5 could not, implying that V5 is needed for MCLV vП to infect N. benthamiana plants. Taken together, V4 is involved in replication of the MCLV genome in host plants, and V5 potentially might extend the host range. Our findings lay a foundation for in-depth insight into the functions of MCLV-encoded proteins and provide a novel perspective for the subsequent study of MCLV-host plant interactions.

The Riddoch syndrome is one in which patients blinded by lesions to their primary visual cortex can consciously perceive visual motion in their blind field, an ability that correlates with activity in motion area V5. Our assessment of the characteristics of this syndrome in patient ST, using multimodal MRI, showed that: 1. ST\'s V5 is intact, receives direct subcortical input, and decodable neural patterns emerge in it only during the conscious perception of visual motion; 2. moving stimuli activate medial visual areas but, unless associated with decodable V5 activity, they remain unperceived; 3. ST\'s high confidence ratings when discriminating motion at chance levels, is associated with inferior frontal gyrus activity. Finally, we report that ST\'s Riddoch Syndrome results in hallucinatory motion with hippocampal activity as a correlate. Our results shed new light on perceptual experiences associated with this syndrome and on the neural determinants of conscious visual experience.

OBJECTIVE: The high sensitivity cardiac troponin T (Hs-cTnT) is a myocardial damage biomarker that could have a predictive value in patients who undergo radiotherapy for left sided breast cancer. The aim of this study was to evaluate the early effect of left whole breast radiotherapy (WB-RT) on serum Hs-cTnT levels and its correlation with pre-existing factors.
METHODS: The study was conducted from December 2017 to May 2018. Forty-five patients with early stage left-sided breast cancer who received adjuvant breast hypofractionated RT without prior chemotherapy were included. Serum levels of Hs-cTnT were obtained before, weekly during RT, and within one week after the end of treatment. Considering the physiological variations of serum levels, an increase in Hs-cTnT (∆Hs-cTnT) of more than 30% from the baseline value was chosen as a threshold. The main cardiovascular risk factors were recorded. Dose volume histograms (DVHs) were used to provide a quantitative analysis for the whole heart, left ventricle, and left anterior descending artery (LAD).
RESULTS: Twelve of 45 patients (26.6%) showed a ∆Hs-cTnT ≥30%. The maximum Hs-cTnT level was recorded in the last week of treatment. ∆Hs-cTnT was strongly associated with heart V5 (p=0.05) and hypertension (p=0.05). Multivariate analysis confirmed the importance of the heart V5 and correlated with ∆Hs-cTnT.
CONCLUSIONS: The increase in Hs-cTnT serum levels during adjuvant WB-RT suggested a correlation with the cardiac radiation dose in chemotherapy-naive breast cancer patients. A longer follow-up is needed to correlate Hs-cTnT values with cardiac events.

The contribution of brain regions to visuospatial abilities according to sex differences and gender identity is inconsistently described. One potential explaining factor may be the different tasks employed requiring a variable load of working memory and other cognitive resources. Here we asked to 20 cis and 20 transgender participants to undergo functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging during performance of a judgement line of orientation test that was adapted to explore the basic visuospatial processing while minimizing the working memory load. We show that V1 activation may be viewed as a brain area with enhanced activation in males, regardless of participants\' gender identity. On its turn, gender identity exclusively influences the visuospatial processing of extrastriate visual areas (V5) in women with gender dysphoria. They showed enhanced V5 activation and an increased functional connectivity between V5 and V1. Overall our neuroimaging results suggest that the basic visuospatial abilities are associated with different activations pattern of cortical visual areas depending on the sex assigned at birth and gender identity.

This study explores how the human brain solves the challenge of flicker noise in motion processing. Despite providing no useful directional motion information, flicker is common in the visual environment and exhibits omnidirectional motion energy which is processed by low-level motion detectors. Models of motion processing propose a mechanism called motion opponency that reduces flicker processing. Motion opponency involves the pooling of local motion signals to calculate an overall motion direction. A neural correlate of motion opponency has been observed in human area MT+/V5, whereby stimuli with perfectly balanced motion energy constructed from dots moving in counter-phase elicit a weaker response than nonbalanced (in-phase) motion stimuli. Building on this previous work, we used multivariate pattern analysis to examine whether the activation patterns elicited by motion opponent stimuli resemble that elicited by flicker noise across the human visual cortex. Robust multivariate signatures of opponency were observed in V5 and in V3A. Our results support the notion that V5 is centrally involved in motion opponency and in the reduction of flicker. Furthermore, these results demonstrate the utility of multivariate analysis methods in revealing the role of additional visual areas, such as V3A, in opponency and in motion processing more generally.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can improve visual perception. However, the effect of tDCS on visual perception is largely variable, possibly due to individual differences in initial performance. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the dependency of visual motion perception improvements on initial performance. Twenty-eight observers were randomly divided into two groups. Anodal tDCS and sham stimulation were separately applied to V5 (1.5 mA, 20 min), while observers performed a coherent motion direction identification task. The results showed that compared to sham stimulation, anodal tDCS induced a significant improvement in motion perception that lasted at least 20 min. In addition, the degree of improvement was dependent on initial performance, with a greater improvement magnitude observed for those with poorer initial performance. These results may have implications for understanding the nature of the stimulation rule and for the use of a customised stimulation protocol to enhance tDCS efficiency in practical applications.

The most electronegative constituents of human plasma LDL (i.e., L5) and VLDL (i.e., V5) are highly atherogenic. We determined whether the combined electronegativity of L5 and V5 (i.e., L5 + V5) plays a role in coronary heart disease (CHD). In 33 asymptomatic individuals (ages 32-64), 10-year hard CHD risk correlated with age (r = 0.42, p = 0.01). However, in age-adjusted analyses, 10-year hard CHD risk correlated with L5 + V5 plasma concentration (r = 0.43, p = 0.01) but not age (p = 0.74). L5 + V5 plasma concentration was significantly greater in the group with high CHD risk (39.4 ± 22.0 mg/dL; n = 17) than in the group with low CHD risk (16.9 ± 14.8 mg/dL; n = 16; p = 0.01). In cultured human aortic endothelial cells, L5 + V5 treatment induced significantly more senescence-associated-β-Gal activity than did equal concentrations of L1 + V1 (n = 4, p < 0.001). To evaluate the in vivo relevance of these findings, we fed ApoE-/- and wild-type mice with a high-fat diet and found that plasma LDL, VLDL, and LDL + VLDL from ApoE-/- mice exhibited significantly greater electrophoretic mobility than did wild-type counterparts (n = 6, p < 0.01). The increased electronegativity of LDL and VLDL in ApoE-/- mice was accompanied by increased aortic lipid accumulation and cellular senescence (n = 6, p < 0.05). Clinical trials are warranted to test the predictive value of L5 + V5 concentration in patients with CHD.

Although much research has been devoted to the neural correlates of motion perception, the processing of speed of motion is still a topic of discussion. Apart from patient LM, no in-depth clinical research has been done in the past 20 years on this topic. In the present study, we investigated patient TD, who suffered from the rare disorder akinetopsia due to bilateral lesions of V5 after stroke. By means of a Random-Dot-Kinematogram (RDK) in which speed was varied systematically, it was found that TD was impaired in perceiving the direction of movement at speeds exceeding 9 deg/s. Our study suggests that V5 plays an important role in processing high-speed visual motion and further implies that V5 does not play a crucial role in processing low-speed visual motion. A remarkable finding, which has not been shown before, was that TD always reported the opposite direction of the actual movement at a speed of 24 deg/s. This suggests a form of the continuous wagon wheel illusion, which might have been caused by intact brain areas operating at different sampling rates than area V5.

Locally paired dot stimuli that contain opposing motion signals at roughly the same spatial locations (counter-phase stimuli) have been reported to produce percepts devoid of global motion. Counter-phase stimuli are also thought to elicit a reduced neural response at motion processing brain area MT/V5, an effect known as motion opponency. The current study examines the effect of vertical counter-phase background motion on behavioral discrimination of horizontal target motion. We found that counter-phase backgrounds generally produced lower behavioral thresholds than locally unbalanced backgrounds, an effect consistent with the idea that counter-phase motion elicits opponency. However, this effect was apparent only if the paired dots were close enough in proximity that they crossed one another during their movement. Furthermore, we found that counter-phase stimuli containing within-pair dot crossing elicits similar behavioral thresholds to non-motion flicker stimuli. These results provide insight into the requirements for activating opponency in the brain and suggest that the brain processes counter-phase and flicker stimuli similarly due to opponency.

We make fast, \"saccadic\" eye movements to capture finely resolved foveal snapshots of the world but these saccades cause motion artefacts. The artefacts go unnoticed, perhaps because the brain suppresses them through subcortical oculomotor signals feeding back into visual cortex. Opposing views, however, claim that passive mechanisms suffice: saccadic shearing forces might render the retina insensitive to the artefacts or post-saccadic snapshots might mask them before they enter consciousness. Crucially, only active suppression could explain perceptual changes that precede saccades but existing evidence for presaccadic misperception are ill-suited for addressing this issue: Previous studies have found misperceptions of space for objects briefly flashed before saccades, but perhaps only because observers confused the timing of flashes and saccades before they could be tested (\"postdiction\"), and presaccadic motion perception might have appeared to decline because motion stimuli persisted past eye movement onset. Here we addressed these concerns using briefly flashed two-frame animations (50 ms) to probe people\'s motion sensitivity during and around saccades. We found that sensitivity declined before saccade onset, even when the probe appeared entirely outside the saccade, and this sensitivity decline was present for motion in every direction relative to saccade, ruling out problems with postdiction. Intriguingly, brief periods during the saccade produced negative sensitivity as if motion was reversed, arguably due to postsaccadic enhancement. These data suggest that motion perception is minimized during saccades through active suppression, complementing neurophysiological findings of colliculo-pulvinar projections that suppress the cortical middle temporal area around the time of the saccade.