Forced treadmill exercise prevents oxidative stress and memory deficits following chronic cerebral hypoperfusion in the rat

Physical activity impacts functional recovery following stroke in humans, however its effects in experimental animals submitted to chronic cerebral hypoperfusion have not been investigated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the therapeutic potential of exercise, as assessed by cognitive activity in the Morris water maze and the brain oxidative status, through measurement of macromolecules damage, TBARS levels and total cellular thiols, as well as antioxidant enzymes in hippocampus, striatum and cerebral cortex. Adult male Wistar rats were submitted to the modified permanent bilateral occlusion of the common carotid arteries (2VO) method, with right common carotid artery being first occluded, and tested 3 months after the ischemic event. The effects of three different exercise protocols were examined: pre-ischemia, post-ischemia and pre+post-ischemia. Physical exercise consisted of sessions of 20-min, 3 times per week during 12 weeks (moderate intensity). Rats were submitted to cognitive assessment, in both reference and working spatial memory and after the last testing session were sacrificed to have oxidative stress parameters determined. Hypoperfusion caused a significant cognitive deficit in both spatial water maze tasks and this effect was reversed in rats receiving exercise protocol post and pre+post the ischemic event. Moreover, forced regular treadmill exercise regulated oxidative damage and antioxidant enzyme activity in the hippocampus. These results suggest that physical exercise protects against cognitive and biochemical impairments caused by chronic cerebral hypoperfusion.     

Empathic-like responding by domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to distress in humans: an exploratory study

Empathy covers a range of phenomena from cognitive empathy involving metarepresentation to emotional contagion stemming from automatically triggered reflexes. An experimental protocol first used with human infants was adapted to investigate empathy in domestic dogs. Dogs oriented toward their owner or a stranger more often when the person was pretending to cry than when they were talking or humming. Observers, unaware of experimental hypotheses and the condition under which dogs were responding, more often categorized dogs' approaches as submissive as opposed to alert, playful or calm during the crying condition. When the stranger pretended to cry, rather than approaching their usual source of comfort, their owner, dogs sniffed, nuzzled and licked the stranger instead. The dogs' pattern of response was behaviorally consistent with an expression of empathic concern, but is most parsimoniously interpreted as emotional contagion coupled with a previous learning history in which they have been rewarded for approaching distressed human companions.     

Electron diffraction patterns from the Al–Mn decagonal phase

Abstract

The variety of electron diffraction patterns arising from the decagonal phase has been explored using a stereographic analysis for generating the important zone axes as intersection points corresponding to important relvectors. An indexing scheme employing a set of five vectors and an orthogonal vector has been followed. A systematic tilting from the decagonal axis to one of the twofold axes has been adopted to generate a set of experimental diffraction patterns corresponding to the expected patterns from the stereographic analysis with excellent agreement.     

Appraisals of Fear, Helplessness, and Perceived Life-Threat During Emergent Cardiac Surgery: Relationship to Pre-surgical Depression, Trauma History, and Posttraumatic Stress

Depression and posttraumatic stress (PTS) have been linked to medical/psychological outcomes following coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. This study assessed pre-surgical trauma history, PTS, and depression; and peri-surgical appraisals of fear, helplessness, and perceived life-threat among 110 patients. All CABGs were emergent, rather than elective, surgeries. In hierarchical multiple regressions, total severity score for pre-surgical PTS predicted fear regarding the cardiac event and the CABG, and perceived life-threat regarding the cardiac event and the CABG. Pre-surgical depression predicted perceived helplessness regarding the cardiac event and the CABG, and contributed to prediction of perceived life-threat. Trauma history contributed to prediction of fear and perceived helplessness regarding surgery (but not regarding the cardiac event necessitating surgery). When posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis (PTSD) was entered, rather than total severity of PTS, PTSD did not predict any appraisals, and depression showed stronger prediction of fear, helplessness, and perceived life-threat than did PTSD.     

Addressing Sexual Assault within Social Systems: System Justification as a Barrier to College Prevention Efforts

Sexual assault perpetrated by men against women is a distressingly common occurrence, particularly on college campuses. One of the barriers to assault prevention efforts is the general perception of violence against women as an unwanted yet implicitly tolerated aspect of the status quo. Drawing on system justification theory, a concept used to explain why individuals accept aspects of their social systems that are objectively unjust, the mechanisms that perpetuate sexual assault are examined. Furthermore, this theory is used to examine current prevention efforts on college campuses and suggestions for modifications to these programs will be made.     

Enhancing visual working memory encoding: The role of target novelty

Perceptual salience improves the encoding of information into visual working memory (WM). However, the factors that contribute to this facilitation effect are not well understood. This study tested the influence of target familiarity on WM encoding. In each trial, participants were presented with either one or three targets and asked to encode their locations into WM. In Experiment 1, target familiarity was manipulated by presenting either an upright (familiar target) or upside-down (unfamiliar/novel target) A. Increasing the novelty of the targets led to improved performance in the spatial WM task. Experiment 2 showed that participants were faster in responding to novel versus familiar targets in a spatial detection task. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the beneficial effect of target novelty on WM encoding was not driven by differences in low-level features. Our results suggest that target novelty enhances the processes required for WM encoding, just as it facilitates perceptual processing.     

Effectiveness of a mental training program for novice scuba divers

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to assess the effects of a mental training program on state anxiety, respiration rate and performance of novice scuba divers. Forty-four participants enrolled in novice open water diving courses served as participants. An intervention group (n = 15), in addition to scuba training, received an audiotaped mental training program designed to reduce anxiety and improve diving performance. A placebo-control group (n = 15) followed the same procedures except that their audiotape contained general information about scuba diving. A control group (n = 14) received only scuba training. The intervention group reported lower pre-dive scores for cognitive anxiety, higher pre-dive scores for self-confidence, performed better on bail-out and mask removal tasks, and showed lower respiration rate than either control group. Respiration rate and somatic anxiety scores significantly predicted bail-out performance. Respiration rate also predicted mask removal performance. These results suggest that novice divers may benefit from mental training as part of their pre-dive instruction.     

Does Personal Intelligence Exist? Evidence From a New Ability-Based Measure

Personal intelligence has been defined as the ability to reason about personality and personality-relevant information and to use that information to guide one's actions and more generally, one's life. We constructed an initial version of an ability-based measure to test whether personal intelligence can be measured and whether it exists as a unitary intelligence. In 3 studies (N = 241, 308, and 385), we administered this Test of Personal Intelligence (TOPI), composed of 4 sections, to undergraduates along with criterion measures. Results suggested that a personal intelligence can be measured, that it might exist as a unified area of mental abilities, and that it represents psychological qualities that have intriguing predictive aspects.     

Charting the Attributes of God: The Common Ground of Three Religions according to Ramon Llull (1232–1316)

The Open Letter written by 138 major representatives of Islam to the leaders of the Christian churches, on 13 October 2007, came as something of a surprise. Perhaps more surprisingly, in 1283, the Catalan theologian, Ramon Llull, wrote imaginatively of exactly such a letter in one of his novels, thus demonstrating that the interfaith question is not just a problem of our modern times, which became acute only on September 11. On the contrary, the churches have always been conscious of this interfaith context. Yet methods of tackling the problem have differed widely down the centuries and among Christian traditions. The solution proposed by Ramon Llull and analysed in this article starts from the common acceptance of the attributes of God in all three monotheistic religions. It deserves our attention not only as an interesting historical example but also as a way of avoiding some of our current problems and impasses.