Violent phenotype in SAL mice is inflexible and fixed in adulthood

Violence was shown to be qualitatively different from functional hyper‐aggression in mice selected for high aggression namely Short Attack Latency (SAL), Turku Aggressive (TA) and North Carolina (NC900) strains. This study aimed at investigating whether this adulthood violent phenotype as seen previously in the SAL mice is fixed and hence behaviorally inflexible right from day 1 of the experiment or consequential, i.e., subject to gradual change from functional aggression to violence. The functionally hyper‐aggressive strains namely TA and NC900 strains served as controls for the study. Methodologically, behavioral (in)flexibility was studied using the overall sequential structure of agonistic behavior. In particular, intra‐individual variations in the overall agonistic behavior as well as offensive, pre‐ and post‐offensive behavior transitions, directly related to the resident–intruder interactions were investigated. The SAL mice showed the least intra‐individual variation in their overall sequential agonistic structure as well as a fixed offense‐oriented agonistic behavior of highest magnitude when compared with the other strains. Additionally, the pre‐ and post‐ offensive transitions were most salient in the functionally hyper‐aggressive TA and NC900 strains, whereas virtually absent in the SAL mice. Thus, the violent behavior of the adult SAL mice is behaviorally inflexible or fixed, whereas the functionally hyper‐aggressive behavior of the adult TA and NC900 mice is behaviorally flexible and constantly adaptive to the opponent behavior, over 3 days of repeated resident–intruder interaction. Aggr. Behav. 35:430–436, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The effects of switching between targets on the performance of a simple motor skill

Little direct evidence has emerged regarding the influence of switching between tasks on the performance of skills studied in the motor domain. The present study reported the results of two experiments that examined the effects of task switching on a simple object projection task, which presumably emphasized processes related to response planning and execution. The experimental task required participants to gently tap a knob to make it travel along two parallel rods until it reached a specified target distance. In both experiments, participants in the repeated conditions performed a single target distance while participants in the switched conditions alternated between two target distances. Results indicated that switching between targets degraded accuracy for the two short targets (30cm, Exp. 1; 20cm, Exp. 2). Results were consistent with the preservation of parameter values [Rosenbaum, D. A., Weber, R. J., Hazelett, W. M., & Hindorff, V. (1986). The parameter remapping effect in human performance. Evidence form tongue twisters and finger fumblers. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 710-725; Sherwood, D. E. (2007). Separate movement planning and spatial assimilation effects in sequential bimanual aiming movements. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 105, 501-513] and suggested an additional role for persisting activation in accounting for spatial assimilation and magnitude effects.     

Systematische Überlegungen zu Husserls Einstellungslehre

In this paper I sketch a systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s fundamental concept of “attitude”. I first explore Husserl’s account with respect to the three faculties of intellect, will, and emotivity [Gemüt], which also define the three basic kinds of attitude. The attitude assumed by the subject plays at this level the important role of articulating and unifying, according to an overall direction, various underlying moments of a complex act. I then focus on the specific intellectual, viz. cognitive attitudes and highlight the difference between the naturalistic attitude (which characterizes the natural sciences) and the personalistic attitude (which characterizes the human sciences). I then consider the notion of the natural attitude and argue that the personalistic attitude represents the systematic core of it. The natural attitude may be defined as the human attitude, i.e., as the attitude in which subjects posit themselves exclusively as human subjects belonging to the world, which is itself unceasingly posited as being. In the final part of the paper I explore the function of the phenomenological reduction insofar as it opens up a possibility of self-understanding that breaks with the natural, human self-apprehension and discloses subjectivity in its transcendental dimension. This opens up a radically new attitude, the phenomenological, which should not be confused with a first-person perspective within the framework of the natural attitude.     

Positive evidence for Eysenck’s arousal hypothesis: A combined EEG and MRI study with multiple measurement occasions

Eysenck’s arousal hypothesis suggests that introverts have greater cortical activity than extraverts. This prediction was tested in several studies that used the electroencephalogram (EEG) alpha activity to index cortical arousal, but empirical findings are inconsistent. Possibly, external factors of the measurement situation or static factors such as skull thickness may act as nuisance variables on alpha activity and thus mitigate the relation between arousal and extraversion. The aim of the present study was to test the arousal hypothesis with a focus on these methodological issues. Resting EEG was acquired on several occasions of measurement, skull thickness was quantified with anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and extraversion was assessed by questionnaire. There was a positive association between alpha activity and extraversion, which was neither affected by external factors nor by skull thickness. This finding is in line with the arousal hypothesis and suggests that external or static factors do not contribute to the inconsistency of empirical findings.     

Self and Self-Consciousness: Aristotelian Ontology and Cartesian Duality

The relationship between self-consciousness, Aristotelian ontology, and Cartesian duality is far closer than it has been thought to be. There is no valid inference either from considerations of Aristotle's hylomorphism or from the phenomenological distinction between body and living body, to the undermining of Cartesian dualism. Descartes' conception of the self as both a reasoning and willing being informs his conception of personhood; a person for Descartes is an unanalysable, integrated, self-conscious and autonomous human being. The claims that Descartes introspectively encounters the self and that the Cartesian extent of inner space is self-contained are profound errors, distortions through the lenses of modern theories.     

Perceptual illusions in brief visual presentations

We often feel that our perceptual experience is richer than what we can express. For instance, when flashed with a large set of letters, we feel that we can see them all, while we can report only a few. However, the nature of this subjective impression remains highly debated: while many favour a dissociation between two forms of consciousness (access vs. phenomenal consciousness), others contend that the richness of phenomenal experience is a mere illusion. Here we addressed this question with a classical partial-report paradigm now modified to include unexpected items in the unreported parts of the stimuli. We show that even in the presence of unexpected pseudo-letters, participants still felt that there were only letters. Additionally, we show that this feeling reflects an illusion whereby participants reconstruct letters using partial letter-like information. We propose that the feeling of seeing emerges from the interplay between partially accessible information and expectations.     

Mindfulness Meditation for Symptom Reduction in Fibromyalgia: Psychophysiological Correlates

Objectives Fibromyalgia, a chronic pain syndrome, is often accompanied by psychological distress and increased basal sympathetic tone. In a previous report it was shown that mindfulness-based stress-reduction (MBSR) reduced depressive symptoms in patients with fibromyalgia with gains maintained at two months follow-up (Sephton et al., Arthr Rheum 57:77–85, 2007). This second study explores the effects of MBSR on basal sympathetic (SNS) activation among women with fibromyalgia. Methods Participants (n = 24) responded to a television news appearance, newspaper, and radio advertisements. Effects on anxiety, depressive symptoms, and SNS activation measures were tested before and after MBSR using a within-subjects design. Results The MBSR treatment significantly reduced basal electrodermal (skin conductance level; SCL) activity (t = 3.298, p = .005) and SCL activity during meditation (t = 4.389, p = .001), consistent with reduced SNS activation. Conclusions In this small sample, basal SNS activity was reduced following MBSR treatment. Future studies should assess how MBSR may help reduce negative psychological symptoms and attenuate SNS activation in fibromyalgia. Further clarification of psychological and physiological responses associated with fibromyalgia may lead to more beneficial treatment.     

Early morphological processing is morphosemantic and not simply morpho-orthographic: A violation of form-then-meaning accounts of word recognition

Many studies have suggested that a word’s orthographic form must be processed before its meaning becomes available. Some interpret the (null) finding of equal facilitation after semantically transparent and opaque morphologically related primes in early stages of morphological processing as consistent with this view. Recent literature suggests that morphological facilitation tends to be greater after transparent than after opaque primes, however. To determine whether the degree of semantic transparency influences parsing into a stem and a suffix (morphological decomposition) in the forward masked priming variant of the lexical decision paradigm, we compared patterns of facilitation between semantically transparent (e.g., coolant—cool) and opaque (e.g., rampant—ramp) prime—target pairs. Form properties of the stem (frequency, neighborhood size, and prime—target letter overlap), as well as related—unrelated and transparent—opaque affixes, were matched. Morphological facilitation was significantly greater for semantically transparent pairs than for opaque pairs. Ratings of prime—target relatedness predicted the magnitude of facilitation. The results limit the scope of form-then-meaning models of word recognition and demonstrate that semantic similarity can influence even early stages of morphological processing. The research reported here was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Development Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories.     

Behavioral and neuronal attributes of short- and long-term habituation in the crab Chasmagnathus

Investigations using invertebrate species have led to a considerable progress in our understanding of the mechanisms underlying learning and memory. In this review we describe the main behavioral and neuronal findings obtained by studying the habituation of the escape response to a visual danger stimulus in the crab Chasmagnathus granulatus. Massed training with brief intertrial intervals lead to a rapid reduction of the escape response that recovers after a short term. Conversely, few trials of spaced training renders a slower escape reduction that endures for many days. As predicted by Wagner’s associative theory of habituation, long-term habituation in the crab proved to be determined by an association between the contextual environment of the training and the unconditioned stimulus. By performing intracellular recordings in the brain of the intact animal at the same time it was learning, we identified a group of neurons that remarkably reflects the short- and long-term behavioral changes. Thus, the visual memory abilities of crabs, their relatively simple and accessible nervous system, and the recording stability that can be achieved with their neurons provide an opportunity for uncovering neurophysiological and molecular events that occur in identifiable neurons during learning.