Neurochemical regulation of feeding in the rat: facilitation by alpha-noradrenergic, but not dopaminergic, receptor stimulants.

Rats ate voraciously after intraventricular injections of the alpha-noradrenergic receptor stimulant clonidine. Intraventricular administration of l-norepinephrine also facilitated feeding, but similar injections of dopamine and apomorphine (a dopamine receptor stimulant) were ineffective and even tended to suppress feeding. Clonidine was 100 times more potent than norepinephrine and increased the intake of both the ordinary diet of powdered food and a highly palatable wet food. The anorexic action of amphetamine was reversed by centrally administered clonidine. These observations suggest "respondent" rather than "operant" regulation of feeding by noradrenergic systems. That is, in relation to noradrenergic mechanisms, feeding appears to be a respondent which is sensitized or disinhibited by activation of alpha-noradrenergic receptors, rather than an operant which is reinforced by the release of norepinephrine.     

Collateral behavior of the pigeon during conditioned suppression of key pecking

Ethological recording procedures measured collateral behavior in pigeons whose key-pecking performance was suppressed during a tone that ended with unavoidable electric shock. Independent recordings of gross behavior were made by two observers throughout 60-sec intervals immediately before, during, and after tone presentation. Results indicated significant reductions in the frequency of collateral movements and an increase in the time between successive movements during tone presentations. These effects were observed in all subjects, despite differences in the sequential patterns of behavior. Only partial recovery of the behavior evidenced before tone presentation was found during a 60-sec interval following shock. It was concluded that conditioned suppression procedures caused the bird to “freeze” during tone presentation and in this fashion produced a general inhibitory effect on ongoing overt activity, including key pecking.     

Public Attitudes Toward the Trustworthiness, Competence, and Altruism of Twenty Selected Occupations

Ratings on 4-point scales of truthfulness, competence, and altruism of 20 selected occupations were obtained from 4 samples of subjects. The subjects included 200 students from the University of Connecticut, 96 students from the University of Maryland, 50 secretaries from a small town in Connecticut, and 50 teachers from the public schools of the same town. In spite of differences in sex, age, occupation, education, and locale, all the samples and subsamples were remarkably similar in their ratings of the 20 occupations. A strong tendency appears for professionals to be rated high and for people who may be regarded as powerful in our society to be rated poorly on all 3 variables. Several interesting differences in ratings on the 3 variables within professions were obtained.     

Decision policies minimizing risk in a multistage betting game

Considered in this paper is a decision task which has been employed to study multistage betting behavior. When the task commences, a decision maker (DM) is provided with some capital x (x > 0) which he is required to allocate over m (m > 1) mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive alternatives, each of which occurs with probability p_i (p_i > 0, i = 1,…, m; Σ_i=1^mp_i = 1). If the amount y_i is allocated to alternative i (y_i ≥ 0, Σ_i=1^my_i = x) and alternative i obtains, DM's capital for the next stage of the game becomes y_ir_i, where r_i (r_i > 0) is the return per unit allocated to alternative i. The task consists of N stages.Defining risk in terms of the mean and variance of DM's bets, and assuming that the minimization of risk is DM's objective, decision policies satisfying this objective are derived in closed form and their testable properties are briefly discussed.     

From Campers to Counselors: a Resource for Prospective Genetic Counseling Students

When thinking about the future of the genetic counseling field, one place to start is with prospective genetic counseling graduate school applicants. Although resources and mentorship opportunities exist for genetic counselors entering the field, the process of deciding on a career, applying to graduate programs, and being admitted can be daunting. As members of the profession, we should take responsibility for ensuring that individuals have the information and resources necessary to make an educated decision about whether genetic counseling is the correct path for them and to take the initial steps along this path. In this article, we present our Genetic Counseling Boot Camp as a model for other genetic counselors to use in developing their own local programs. This type of program can benefit prospective genetic counselors as they begin their professional journeys and can also provide value for the organizers and presenters who are already seasoned in the field.     

Perceptual expertise improves category detection in natural scenes

There is much debate about how detection, categorization, and within-category identification relate to one another during object recognition. Whether these tasks rely on partially shared perceptual mechanisms may be determined by testing whether training on one of these tasks facilitates performance on another. In the present study we asked whether expertise in discriminating objects improves the detection of these objects in naturalistic scenes. Self-proclaimed car experts (N = 34) performed a car discrimination task to establish their level of expertise, followed by a visual search task where they were asked to detect cars and people in hundreds of photographs of natural scenes. Results revealed that expertise in discriminating cars was strongly correlated with car detection accuracy. This effect was specific to objects of expertise, as there was no influence of car expertise on person detection. These results indicate a close link between object discrimination and object detection performance, which we interpret as reflecting partially shared perceptual mechanisms and neural representations underlying these tasks: the increased sensitivity of the visual system for objects of expertise – as a result of extensive discrimination training – may benefit both the discrimination and the detection of these objects. Alternative interpretations are also discussed.     

Of mice and marbles: Novel perspectives on burying behavior as a screening test for psychiatric illness

Burying forms part of the normal behavioral routine of rodents, although its expression is species-specific. However, it has been suggested that aberrant burying behavior, of which marble-burying (MB) is an example, may represent neophobic and/or compulsive-like behavior. In the present investigation, we assessed MB in an established animal model of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD)—namely, spontaneous stereotypy in the deer mouse—to establish whether high (H) stereotypy is associated with neophobia and/or another compulsive endophenotype, i.e. MB, as compared to nonstereotypical (N) controls. A three-trial, one-zone MB test was performed over three consecutive evenings both before and after chronic treatment with high-dose (50 mg/kg/day) oral escitalopram. Neophobia was measured via the number of marbles buried during the first pre- and posttreatment MB trials, and compulsive-like behavior via the number of marbles buried over all pre- and posttreatment MB trials. The data from the present study support earlier findings that burying is a normal behavioral routine (inherent burying behavior, IBB) that is expressed by all deer mice, irrespective of stereotypical cohort, and is not associated with either neophobia or compulsiveness. Indeed, chronic escitalopram treatment, which is similarly effective in treating clinical anxiety and OCD, as well as in attenuating H behavior, failed to influence IBB. Although 11 % of the animals presented with a unique burying endophenotype (high burying behavior), escitalopram also failed to attenuate said behavior, necessitating further investigation as to its relevance. In conclusion, MB cannot be regarded as a measure of anxiety-like or compulsive behavior in the deer mouse model of OCD.     

Emotional Intelligence in the Collection of Debt

Two studies are reported which compare more and less successful account officers (debt collectors) in terms of their emotional intelligence, measured using the BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory. The findings support the view that higher levels of emotional intelligence lead to enhanced job performance. Implications for selection are considered in the conclusion.