Integrity in Pastoral Counseling

This essay suggests that pastoral counseling involves a spiritual and emotional quest for wholeness. The personal quest of the pastoral counselor has a parallel impact upon the quest of those who seek his or her counsel. The essay presents the view that faith must be established in the life of the pastoral counselor in at least four areas: in community, in the use of one's spiritual gifts, in the love of mercy and the doing of justice, and in communion with God.     

Selective Synaptic Plasticity within the Cerebellar Cortex Following Complex Motor Skill Learning

Complex motor skill learning, but not mere motor activity, leads to an increase in synapse number within the cerebellar cortex. The present experiment used quantitative electron microscopy to determine which synapse types were altered in number. Adult female rats were allocated to either an acrobatic condition (AC), a voluntary exercise condition (VX), or an inactive condition (IC). AC animals were trained to traverse an elevated obstacle course requiring substantial motor coordination to complete. VX animals were housed with unlimited access to running wheels and IC animals received no motor training but were handled briefly each day. Results showed the AC animals to have significantly more parallel fiber to Purkinje cell synapses than both the VX and IC animals. No other synapse type was significantly altered. Thus, the learning-dependent increase in synapse number observed within the cerebellar cortex is accomplished primarily through the addition of parallel fiber synapses.     

Sexual experimentation by adolescents while babysitting.

This paper deals with the sexual experiences an adolescent might have as a result of babysitting. The impact of babysitters in our culture has been ignored in the literature, and yet we find it practiced widely by teenagers in the United States. Parents and society in general have few guidelines in sitter selection and in recognizing the potential impact of the sitter on their children.     

Computer control of grating phase and movement

A method is presented which uses an on-line computer to control the spatial phase and movement of an electronically generated grating display for visual experiments. This technique minimizes CPU overhead and is inexpensive. The method is compared with several other schemes for controlling grating phase and movement.     

Neuropathology of Rett syndrome

Rett Syndrome is unlike any other pediatric neurologic disease, and its clinical-pathologic correlation can not be defined with standard histology techniques. Based on hypotheses suggested by careful clinical observations, the nervous system of the Rett child has been explored utilizing morphometry, golgi preparations, computerized tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, chemistry, immunocytochemistry, autoradiography, and molecular biologic techniques. From these many perspectives we conclude that Rett syndrome is not a typical degenerative disorder, storage disorder, nor the result of gross malformation, infectious or neoplastic processes. There remain regions of the brain that have not been studied in detail but the available data suggest that the neuropathology of Rett syndrome can be summarized as follows: the Rett brain is small for the age and the height of the patient; it does not become progressively smaller over three to four decades; it has small dendritic trees in pyramidal neurons of layers III and V in selected lobes (frontal, motor, and temporal); it has small neurons with an increased neuronal packing density; it has an immature expression of microtubular protein-2 and cyclooxygenase; it exhibits a changing pattern of neurotransmitter receptors with an apparent reduction in many neurotransmitters, possibly contributing to some symptomatology. A mutation in Mecp2 causes this unique disorder of brain development. Neuronal mosaicism for normal and mutated Mecp2 produces a consistent phenotype in the classic female patient and a small brain with some preserved islands of function, but with an inability to support hand use and speech. This paper summarizes our current observations about neuropathology of Rett syndrome. MRDD Research Reviews 2002;8:72-76.     

Control of saccades in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's patients (PD) made pro- and antisaccades: In the no-delay condition, the target appeared concurrent with the GO signal. In the delay condition, the target appeared before the signal for movement. Second, we probed spatial working memory in PD. Subjects looked to the remembered locations of sequential targets. In the no-delay prosaccade condition, PD had faster reaction times, made more express saccades, and exhibited hypometria. In the no-delay antisaccade condition, PD had longer reaction times and made more direction errors. In the delay tasks, PD made more direction errors and had more difficulty withholding a movement. PD made more sequencing errors in the spatial working memory task. These findings are consistent with a basal ganglia pathophysiology influencing eye movement processing in the frontal cortex.     

Unique pathways to resilience across cultures

An international mixed methods study of resilience of 14 sites in eleven countries identified seven tensions that youth resolve in culturally specific ways. Resolution of these tensions is foundational to experiences of resilience. This paper reports on the qualitative findings from interviews with 89 youth. Results support a culturally embedded understanding of positive youth development that better accounts for young people's resilience in western and non-western countries. Specifically, the seven tensions identified include: access to material resources, relationships, identity, cohesion, power and control, social justice, and cultural adherence. Findings show that no one pattern in the resolution of these tensions predicts resilience better than another. A case study of a Palestinian boy demonstrates the intersection of the seven tensions and the uniqueness of their resolution. The implications of this work for interventions is discussed.     

Wild robins (Petroica longipes) respond to human gaze

Gaze following and awareness of attentional cues are hallmarks of human and non-human social intelligence. Here, we show that the North Island robin (Petroica longipes), a food-hoarding songbird endemic to New Zealand, responds to human eyes. Robins were presented with six different conditions, in which two human experimenters altered the orientation or visibility of their body, head or eyes in relation to mealworm prey. One experimenter had visual access to the prey, and the second experimenter did not. Robins were then given the opportunity to ‘steal’ one of two mealworms presented by each experimenter. Robins responded by preferentially choosing the mealworm in front of the experimenter who could not see, in all conditions but one. Robins failed to discriminate between experimenters who were facing the mealworm and those who had their head turned 90° to the side. This may suggest that robins do not make decisions using the same eye visibility cues that primates and corvids evince, whether for ecological, experiential or evolutionary reasons.