Two Tracks of Thought: A Structural Model of the Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP)

The Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP, Urban & Jellen, 1986) is one of the most used instruments for the assessment of creative potential. Few studies exist regarding its factorial structure, and all of them were limited to using an exploratory approach. The aim of this research was to assess the factorial structure of the TCT-DP (Form A) for undergraduate and postgraduate Portuguese students. Two studies were performed, where Study 1 (967 participants) consisted of an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) that yielded a 2-factor solution and Study 2 (920 participants) consisted of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) used to test the fit and compare the suitability of the 2 factorial solutions with alternative models. The 2-factor model exhibited good and acceptable indices of fit. The factors represented Innovativeness and Adaptiveness. This model was called Two Tracks of Thought (TTT). Its structure suggests the importance of both non-conventional and conventional thinking for the creative process.     

Single-Joint Movements in Parkinson's Disease: A Pulse-Width and Pulse-Height Theory Review

The process by which the brain controls single-joint movements (SJM) is still not well understood. Some studies have defined rules describing the duration and magnitude of the agonist and antagonist muscles. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze scientific publications about the electromyographic characteristics of SJM performed by patients with Parkinson's disease. A bibliographical review of the years 1989–2015 was performed using keywords such as electromyography, upper limb, and Parkinson's disease. After applying the inclusion criteria, 8 articles were included for analysis. The literature indicates that despite the lack of studies, it is possible to assume that considering the SJM, those with Parkinson's disease only control the magnitude of electromyography activation, being consistent only with the pulse-height theory control.     

Motor Cortex Plasticity in Children With Spastic Cerebral Palsy: A Systematic Review

A review of the literature was performed to answer the following questions: Does motor cortex excitability correlate with motor function? Do motor cortex excitability and cortex activation change after a rehabilitation program that results in improvements in motor outcomes? Can the 10–20 electroencephalography (EEG) system be used to locate the primary motor cortex when employing transcranial direct current stimulation? Is there a bihemispheric imbalance in individuals with cerebral palsy similar to what is observed in stroke survivors? the authors found there is an adaptation in the geometry of motor areas and the cortical representation of movement is variable following a brain lesion. The 10–20 EEG system may not be the best option for locating the primary motor cortex and positioning electrodes for noninvasive brain stimulation in children with cerebral palsy.     

Acquisition and maintenance of delayed matching-to-sample in tufted capuchin monkeys

Delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) is a commonly used procedure to investigate short-term memory. For the study of functions of forgetting, the delay between the disappearance of the sample stimulus and appearance of choices is manipulated. The intertrial interval (ITI) is also varied to assess interference effects. Performance decrements have been observed as delay increases and, in some cases, performance recovery occurs when ITIs are increased. Other studies indicate that the higher the ITI/delay ratio, the greater the accuracy in DMTS. In this study, 2 experiments investigated DMTS performances of 3 tufted capuchin monkeys as function of delay and ITI. In Experiment 1, alternation of gradual increases of delay and ITI was effective in producing ≥90% accuracy at delays as long as 90 s. Individual monkeys differed in the highest value of delay at which this criterion was met. In Experiment 2, the monkeys were exposed to 5-s DMTS with different ITIs to assess the effects of various ITI/delay ratios on accuracy. Highest accuracy tended to occur at the higher ITI/delay ratios.     

Air pollution, cognitive deficits and brain abnormalities: a pilot study with children and dogs

Exposure to air pollution is associated with neuroinflammation in healthy children and dogs in Mexico City. Comparative studies were carried out in healthy children and young dogs similarly exposed to ambient pollution in Mexico City. Children from Mexico City (n: 55) and a low polluted city (n:18) underwent psychometric testing and brain magnetic resonance imaging MRI. Seven healthy young dogs with similar exposure to Mexico City air pollution had brain MRI, measurement of mRNA abundance of two inflammatory genes cyclooxygenase-2, and interleukin 1 beta in target brain areas, and histopathological evaluation of brain tissue. Children with no known risk factors for neurological or cognitive disorders residing in a polluted urban environment exhibited significant deficits in a combination of fluid and crystallized cognition tasks. Fifty-six percent of Mexico City children tested showed prefrontal white matter hyperintense lesions and similar lesions were observed in dogs (57%). Exposed dogs had frontal lesions with vascular subcortical pathology associated with neuroinflammation, enlarged Virchow-Robin spaces, gliosis, and ultrafine particulate matter deposition. Based on the MRI findings, the prefrontal cortex was a target anatomical region in Mexico City children and its damage could have contributed to their cognitive dysfunction. The present work presents a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary methodology for addressing relationships between environmental pollution, structural brain alterations by MRI, and cognitive deficits/delays in healthy children.     

Auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, and bodily hallucinations in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Although much attention has been paid to patients who lack insight into their obsessional beliefs, less importance has been given to individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who display perceptual disturbances typically found in psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorders, or mood disorders with psychotic features. We would like to call the attention to a phenomenon that has been neglected in the psychiatric literature: the occurrence of hallucinations and related phenomena in patients with OCD. In this case report, we describe five clinical vignettes of patients with OCD with hallucinations in several different sensory modalities, including the auditory, the visual, the tactile, the olfactory, and the cenesthetic ones. Further psychopathological research should clarify the clinical significance of hallucinations among patients with OCD.     

Numerosity discrimination in preschool children

We used a numerical bisection procedure to examine preschool children's sensitivity to the numerical attributes of stimuli. In Experiment 1 children performed two tasks. In the Cups Task they earned coins for choosing a green cup after two drumbeats and a blue cup after eight drumbeats. In the Gloves Task they earned coins for raising a red glove on their left hand after two drumbeats and a yellow glove on their right hand after eight drumbeats. Then in each task a psychometric function was obtained by presenting intermediate numerosities and recording the percentage of trials in which children chose the "many" option. In Experiment 2 children's performance in a '2 vs. 8' discrimination was compared with their performance in a "4 vs. 16" discrimination. Results showed that the individual psychometric functions were of two types, one in which the percentage of "many" choices increased gradually with stimulus numerosity and another in which it increased abruptly, in a step-like manner. Although the average point of subjective equality was close to the geometric mean of the anchor numerosities and the average functions for "2 vs. 8" and "4 vs. 16" superimposed when plotted on a common scale (the scalar property), the individual data were highly variable both across tasks (Cups and Gloves) and numerosity ranges ('2 vs. 8' and '4 vs. 16'). It is suggested that between- and within-subjects variability in the psychometric function is related to children's verbalizations about the sample stimulus.     

Memory retrieval time and memory capacity of the CA3 network: role of gamma frequency oscillations

The existence of recurrent synaptic connections in CA3 led to the hypothesis that CA3 is an autoassociative network similar to the Hopfield networks studied by theorists. CA3 undergoes gamma frequency periodic inhibition that prevents a persistent attractor state. This argues against the analogy to Hopfield nets, in which an attractor state can be used for working memory. However, we show that such periodic inhibition allows one cycle of recurrent excitatory activity and that this is sufficient for memory retrieval (within milliseconds). Thus, gamma oscillations are compatible with a long-term autoassociative memory function for CA3. A second goal of our work was to evaluate previous methods for estimating the memory capacity (P) of CA3. We confirm the equation, P = c/a(2), where c is the probability that any two cells are recurrently connected and a is the fraction of cells representing a memory item. In applying this to CA3, we focus on CA3a, the subregion where recurrent connections are most numerous (c = 0.2) and approximate randomness. We estimate that a memory item is represented by approximately 225 of the 70,000 neurons in CA3a (a = 0.003) and that approximately 20,000 memory items can be stored. Our general conclusion is that the physiological and anatomical findings of CA3a are consistent with an autoassociative function. The nature of the information that is associated in CA3a is discussed. We also discuss how the autoassociative properties of CA3 and the heteroassociative properties of dentate synapses (linking sequential memories) form an integrated system for the storage and recall of item sequences. The recall process generates the phase precession in dentate, CA3, and entorhinal cortex.     

Opportunistic Carnivorism

Some carnivores defend the position that the opportunistic consumption of meat is morally permissible even under the assumption that it is morally wrong to act in ways that ause unnecessary suffering to sentient beings. Ordering and consuming chicken once a week, they argue, will not increase the numbers of chickens suffering or slaughtered, since the system of purchasing and farming chickens is not sufficiently fine-tuned to register differences at margin. We argue that, insensitivity of the market notwithstanding, consistent consequentialists are morally prohibited from each additional purchase and consumption of meat.