Dreaming and cognition in patients with frontotemporal dysfunction

Individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) have hallucinations and mild cognitive dysfunction. The objective of this work was to study dreams in PD and TLE patients using a common functional model of dream production involving the limbic and paralimbic structures.Dreams were characterised in early-stage PD (19 males) and TLE patients (52) with dream diaries classified by the Hall van de Castle system and were compared with matched controls.In PD, there were significant differences between patients’ dreams and those of controls: animals, physical aggression, and a befriender were more common in patients, and aggressor and bodily misfortunes were less common. The dreams of patients with frontal dysfunction showed more aggressive features.TLE patients had lower recall than PD patients and a higher proportion of dreams involving family and familiar settings, lower proportions involving success, and a higher incidence of frontal dysfunction.The dreams of PD and TLE patients share important features.     

Autoscopic phenomena and one's own body representation in dreams

Autoscopic phenomena (AP) are complex experiences that include the visual illusory reduplication of one’s own body. From a phenomenological point of view, we can distinguish three conditions: autoscopic hallucinations, heautoscopy, and out-of-body experiences. The dysfunctional pattern involves multisensory disintegration of personal and extrapersonal space perception. The etiology, generally either neurological or psychiatric, is different. Also, the hallucination of Self and own body image is present during dreams and differs according to sleep stage. Specifically, the representation of the Self in REM dreams is frequently similar to the perception of Self in wakefulness, whereas in NREM dreams, a greater polymorphism of Self and own body representation is observed. The parallels between autoscopic phenomena in pathological cases and the Self-hallucination in dreams will be discussed to further the understanding of the particular states of self awareness, especially the complex integration of different memory sources in Self and body representation.     

Psychological factors related to eating disordered behaviors: a study with Portuguese athletes

This study analyzes eating disordered behaviors in a sample of Portuguese athletes and explores its relationship with some psychological dimensions. Two hundred and ninety nine athletes (153 male, 51.2%) practicing collective (65.2%) or individual sports (34.8%) were included. The assessment protocol included the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) (Fairburn & Beglin, 1994); the Sport Condition Questionnaire (Bruin et al., 2007; Hall et al., 2007); the Sport Anxiety Scale (Smith et al., 2006); the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (Duda, 1992; Duda & Whitehead, 1998); the Cognitive Evaluation of Sport-Threat Perceptions (Cruz, 1994; Lazarus, 1991); and the Self-Presentation Exercise Questionnaire (Gammage et al., 2004). Results revealed that: i) no case of clinical significance was detected in the four dimensions of the EDE-Q simultaneously; ii) females scored higher on the EDE-Q Global Score, and athletes with the better sport results scored higher on the Restraint subscale; iii) athletes with a higher desire to weigh less scored higher on the EDE-Q Global Score; iv) athletes with lower scores on EDE-Q displayed more positive results on the psychological measures; v) several psychological dimensions were identified as predictors of eating disordered behaviors. In conclusion, the prevalence of eating disordered behaviors was negligible in this study, yet the relationship of this problem with personal, sport and psychological factors was evident.     

The Role of Witnessing Violence,Peer Provocation,Family Support,and Parenting Practices in the Aggressive Behavior of Rural Adolescents

This study examined the influence of witnessing violence, peer provocation, family support, and parenting practices (monitoring and discipline) on aggression. Participants were 1,196 ninth graders at nine schools in poor, predominantly agricultural, rural communities who completed measures of these variables. Witnessing violence, peer provocation, low levels of family support, and poor parenting practices were each related to higher frequencies of aggression. Witnessing violence and peer provocation partially mediated relations between parenting and aggression, such that students who reported high levels of appropriate parenting reported lower levels of witnessing violence and peer provocation. These were, in turn, related to lower levels of aggression. The relation between family support and aggression was also mediated by peer provocation, though the Degrees of mediation was not as strong as for parenting. Both parenting and family support moderated the relation between witnessing violence and aggression such that this relation was stronger among adolescents who reported low family support or high levels of poor parenting. Neither parenting nor family support moderated the relation between peer provocation and aggression. Overall, parenting practices had a stronger influence on aggression than did family support. Results were generally consistent across gender. These findings have important implications for intervention efforts.     

Activation of adenosine receptors in the posterior cingulate cortex impairs memory retrieval in the rat

Adenosine A1 and A2A receptor agonists and antagonists have been reported to alter learning and memory. The aim of our study was to investigate the involvement of adenosinergic system in memory retrieval into posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) of Wistar rats. To clarify this question, we tested specifics agonist and antagonists of adenosine A1 and A2A receptors in rats submitted to a one-trial inhibitory avoidance task. The stimulation of adenosine A1 and A2A receptors by CPA and CGS21680, respectively, impaired memory retrieval for inhibitory avoidance task, into PCC. These findings provide behavioral evidence for the role of adenosinergic system in the memory retrieval into PCC.     

The effects of skill demands and object position on the distribution of preferred hand reaches

Performance-based measures of hand preference have been developed as an objective method of examining handedness. Previous research using this method showed that both skill demands and the position of the object in working space affect preferential hand reaching. Specifically, preferred hand reaches predominated in left hemispace, in spite of the biomechanical inefficiency involved in reaching across the body midline. This was mediated by the skill demands, with a higher frequency of preferred hand reaches for tasks requiring more skill. To further examine this issue, we increased the task skill demands. Twenty-two right-handed adults reached for five tools located in an array of five positions in front of them. Participants were required to pick up the tool, pick up and demonstrate how to use it, or pick up and actually use the tool on the materials provided. The results showed that the frequency of right hand reaches was greatest for the tool use condition. This effect was mediated by the position of the object in hemispace, with more right hand reaches occurring for the Use task in left hemispace than the other tasks, in support of our previous work.     

Facilitation and Inhibition in the Superordinate and Instance Naming of Pictures

A new paradigm, analogous to that used to study inhibition in visual selection (Tipper, 1985), was employed to investigate the possible role of inhibition in selection among instance names (e.g.rabbit) and superordinate names (e.g.animal) for pictured objects. Participants named two sequentially presented pictures in pairs of three types: SAME (e.g., RABBIT-RABBIT), SAME CATEGORY (e.g., HORSE-RABBIT), and DIFFERENT (e.g., BALL-RABBIT). Naming instructions were varied so that participants either used superordinate (S) or instance (I) names for both pictures in a pair (S-S or I-I; Experiment 1) or switched predictably from one type of name to the other across the two pictures (S-I or I-S; Experiment 2). The patterns of naming reaction times revealed both facilitatory and inhibitory effects and provided preliminary support for the hypothesis that selection of a target name involves inhibition of a competing distractor name. Suggestions are given for extending this new paradigm to provide further evidence on the mechanisms underlying name selection.     

Racial Identity,African Self-Consciousness,and Career Decision Making in African American College Women

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among racial Identity, African self-consciousness, and career decidedness in 212 African American women classified as first year or senior at an historically Black university and a predominantly White university. It was hypothesized that senior women at both institutions would have higher levels of racial identity and African self-consciousness and would be more career decided than first year women. The findings provided partial support for the hypothesis.     

Gender and coping: The dual-axis model of coping

Examined a dual-axis model of coping that included both action (active vs. passive) and social dimensions (prosocial vs. antisocial) of coping strategies among a combined sample of students and community residents. We developed an assessment device to represent the model and allow investigation. Mixed support for the model and instrument were noted. Women were more prosocial than men in their coping, but no less active. Men were more likely to use antisocial and aggressive, but less assertive coping strategies than women. More prosocial, action coping strategies were also more likely to be related to greater sense of mastery and more liberal gender-role orientation. Antisocial and passive strategies tended to be related to lower mastery and more traditional gender-role orientation. Active coping was related to lower emotional distress for men and women, but both prosocial and antisocial coping were related to greater emotional distress for men, suggesting that men may have a narrower band of beneficial coping strategies than do women. This research was made possible, in part, by a grant from the National Institute of Health (R01-HD24901-01) and by support of the Kent State Applied Psychology Center, which was established through the support of the Ohio Board of Regents.