Macromolecular synthesis, distributed synaptic plasticity, and fear conditioning

Recent work from a number of laboratories has provided new and important insights about how gene expression is altered by experience and how these molecular changes may provide a substrate for the long-term storage of new memories. Here, we review a series of recent studies using aversive Pavlovian conditioning in rats as a well characterized model system in which experience-dependent alterations in gene expression can be manipulated and quantified within a specific neural circuit. We highlight some of the issues involved in using broad-spectrum inhibitors of mRNA and protein synthesis to study cellular changes underlying the formation and long-term stability of memory and discuss the idea that these changes occur over widespread, behaviorally-defined, networks of cells. We also discuss the idea that the maintenance of memory and its susceptibly to disruption after retrieval may relate to local protein synthesis in dendrites. Finally, a series of recent experiments from our laboratory studying the role of a specific signaling pathway (mTOR) which regulates translational processes and memory formation in the amygdala and hippocampus during fear conditioning are reviewed.     

Assessment for the Right Reason The Ethics of Outcomes Assessment

This essay explores and challenges the two primary ethical arguments for assessment, accountability, and professional responsibility, by demonstrating their strengths and exposing their weaknesses, which are rooted in their limited notions of community, contract, and guild respectively. In contrast, I argue for assessment on the basis of an ethic of covenantal obligation which incorporates both accountability and responsibility but grounds them on a broader view of community, a view of the teaching-learning environment as a covenant community replete with mutual obligations and responsibilities, one of which is assessment. While the notion of covenant community has deep roots in American society, its theological underpinnings make the ethic of assessment as covenant obligation most relevant to church-related institutions of higher education, the context in which I teach and learn. I conclude the paper by delineating some principles for ethical assessment practice which follow from a covenantal perspective.     

A breakdown in the family unit

In his article, "Autonomy and beneficence in the family," David J. Doukas describes the dynamic relationship between the family and the physician. He points out: "the family covenant spells out the obligations of all parties to give and receive respect and beneficial care within the realm of medical practice"....While this model may provide a framework for ethical discussion under certain circumstances, it falls short in several major respects....     

Assessing psycholinguistic orientation and decoding strategies for remedial and nonremedial readers

Remedial readers (8 to 9 year olds) were compared with nonremedial readers of the same age with younger children (6 to 7 year olds) in terms of their acceptance of a psycholinguistic approach vs. a decoding approach to reading, and in terms of the strategies they reported for word attack. Neither remedial nor nonremedial readers (except for a few older nonremedial readers) indicated willingness to skip words in a sentence, but remedial readers were less willing to skip over letters in a word, a psycholinguistic strategy that might allow them to find and use letter patterns to determine an unknown word. They also showed a heavy emphasis on phonic and a narrower range of potential strategies than did other children of the same age.