On the Ethics of Facial Transplantation Research

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase.     

Implicit chord processing and motor representation in pianists

The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of pitch dimension in auditory–motor interaction. Several behavioural and brain imaging studies have shown that auditory processing of sounds can activate motor representations, an effect which is however elicited only by action-related sounds, i.e., sounds linked to a specific motor repertoire. Music provides an appropriate framework for further exploration of this issue. Three groups of participants (pianists, non-pianist musicians and non-musicians) were tested with a shape decision task where left-hand and right-hand responses were required; each visual stimulus was paired with an auditory task-irrelevant stimulus (high-pitched or low-pitched piano-timbre chords). Of the three groups, only pianists had longer reaction times for left-hand/high-pitched chords and right-hand/low-pitched chords associations. These findings are consistent with an auditory-motor effect elicited by pitch dimension, as only pianists show an interaction between motor responses and implicit pitch processing. This interaction is consistent with the canonical mapping of hand gestures and pitch dimension on the piano keyboard. The results are discussed within the ideo-motor theoretical framework offered by the Theory of Event Coding (Hommel et al. in Behav Brain Sci 24:849–937, 2001).     

Development of infant prehension handedness: A longitudinal analysis during the 6- to 14-month age period

Handedness is a developmental phenomenon that becomes distinctively identifiable during infancy. Although infant hand-use preferences sometimes have been reported as unstable, other evidence demonstrates that infant hand-use preference for apprehending objects can be reliably assessed during the second half of the infant's first year of life. The current study provides further insight into the stability of prehension preferences. We modeled individual and group level patterns of prehension handedness during the period from 6 to 14 months of age. We examined the developmental trajectories for prehension handedness in relation to the sampling rate at which preferences are assessed. The results revealed interesting developmental changes in prehension handedness that can only be identified when using monthly sampling intervals. We conclude that using non-linear multilevel models of infant handedness with monthly sampling intervals permit us to accurately capture the developmental changes in manual skills that occur during this period of infancy.     

Generalised Reichenbachian common cause systems

The principle of the common cause claims that if an improbable coincidence has occurred, there must exist a common cause. This is generally taken to mean that positive correlations between non-causally related events should disappear when conditioning on the action of some underlying common cause. The extended interpretation of the principle, by contrast, urges that common causes should be called for in order to explain positive deviations between the estimated correlation of two events and the expected value of their correlation. The aim of this paper is to provide the extended reading of the principle with a general probabilistic model, capturing the simultaneous action of a system of multiple common causes. To this end, two distinct models are elaborated, and the necessary and sufficient conditions for their existence are determined.

     

Mental preparation strategies of elite modern pentathletes

ObjectivesThis study examined the repertoire of preparation strategies and coping responses that elite modern pentathletes display across pre-, during, and post-competition periods.MethodsSix women and eight men were interviewed using an in-depth, open-ended, and semi-structured approach. The qualitative data were then hierarchically content analysed.ResultsThe findings revealed that perseverance, consistency, and commitment during training were critical components of the athletes' preparation in the days preceding an event. The athletes also presented a range of mental and technical preparation strategies across the competitive phases. These included, among others, competition simulation, mental practice, goal setting, emotion control, behavioural routines, specific technical strategies, attentional strategies, reaction to mistakes, and post-competition self-assessment. In addition, athletes' negative expectations during competition emerged as potential threats to personal achievements and were associated with dysfunctional bodily symptoms related to emotions, attentional difficulties, and coping problems.ConclusionsThe practical implications of these findings are discussed focusing on individual differences in cognitive and emotional experiences, and pre-, during, and post-competition strategies.     

MK-801-Induced Disruptions of One-Trial Inhibitory Avoidance Are Potentiated by Stress and Reversed by Naltrexone

Five experiments were carried out to investigate opioid and NMDA receptor-mediated responses to one-trial inhibitory avoidance training in CD1 mice. In the first experiment immediate posttraining intraperitoneal administration of the noncompetitive N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist MK-801 impaired the performance of mice. The effects of MK-801 were time-dependent (they were absent in mice injected with the drug starting 120 min after training). No effect was evident in no-foot-shock groups, showing lack of proactive influence of the treatment on performance. In the second experiment preexposure of the mice to the testing apparatus decreased the effects of MK-801. In the the third experiment naltrexone antagonized the effects of MK-801, suggesting an involvement of opioid neurons. In the fourth experiment immediate posttraining immobilization stress exerted a potentiating effect on the performance of MK-801-injected animals. In the fifth experiment the potentiation of the impairing effect of MK-801 induced by immobilization stress was antagonized by naltrexone.