Life stories managing chronic illness: Young adults’ lived experiences with type 1 diabetes

This study aimed to characterise diabetes management experiences of South African young adults living with well-controlled type 1 diabetes (n = 8, female = 5, male = 3, age range = 20–25). The young adults told life stories managing their type 1 diabetes. Thematic analysis revealed the young adults to construct personal identities as people living with type 1 diabetes, to mostly utilise emotion-focused management strategies and social support for successful living with type 1 diabetes. Behavioural health strategies appear important for living well with this chronic insulin deficiency condition.     

Songs to syntax: the linguistics of birdsong

Unlike our primate cousins, many species of bird share with humans a capacity for vocal learning, a crucial factor in speech acquisition. There are striking behavioural, neural and genetic similarities between auditory-vocal learning in birds and human infants. Recently, the linguistic parallels between birdsong and spoken language have begun to be investigated. Although both birdsong and human language are hierarchically organized according to particular syntactic constraints, birdsong structure is best characterized as 'phonological syntax', resembling aspects of human sound structure. Crucially, birdsong lacks semantics and words. Formal language and linguistic analysis remains essential for the proper characterization of birdsong as a model system for human speech and language, and for the study of the brain and cognition evolution.     

Basolateral amygdala noradrenergic activity mediates corticosterone-induced enhancement of auditory fear conditioning

The present experiment examined whether posttraining noradrenergic activity within the basolateral complex of the amygdala (BLA) is required for mediating the facilitating effects of acutely administered glucocorticoids on memory for auditory-cue classical fear conditioning. Male Sprague-Dawley rats received five pairings of a single-frequency auditory stimulus and footshock, followed immediately by bilateral infusions of the beta1-adrenoceptor antagonist atenolol (0.5 microg in 0.2 microl) or saline into the BLA together with a subcutaneous injection of either corticosterone (3.0 mg/kg) or vehicle. Retention was tested 24 h later in a novel test chamber and suppression of ongoing motor behavior served as the measure of conditioned fear. Corticosterone facilitated memory as assessed by suppression of motor activity during the 10-s presentation of the auditory stimulus and intra-BLA administration of atenolol selectively blocked this corticosterone-induced memory enhancement. These findings provide evidence that, as found with other emotionally arousing tasks, the enhancing effects of corticosterone on memory consolidation of auditory-cue fear conditioning require posttraining noradrenergic activity within the BLA.     

Posttraining handling facilitates memory for auditory-cue fear conditioning in rats

A large number of studies have indicated that stress exposure or the administration of stress hormones and other neuroactive drugs immediately after a learning experience modulates the consolidation of long-term memory. However, there has been little investigation into how arousal induced by handling of the animals in order to administer these drugs affects memory. Therefore, the present study examined whether the posttraining injection or handling procedure per se affects memory of auditory-cue classical fear conditioning. Male Sprague-Dawley rats, which had been pre-handled on three days for 1 min each prior to conditioning, received three pairings of a single-frequency auditory stimulus and footshock, followed immediately by either a subcutaneous injection of a vehicle solution or brief handling without injection. A control group was placed back into their home cages without receiving any posttraining treatment. Retention was tested 24 h later in a novel chamber and suppression of ongoing motor behavior during a 10-s presentation of the auditory-cue served as the measure of conditioned fear. Animals that received posttraining injection or handling did not differ from each other but showed significantly less stimulus-induced movement compared to the non-handled control group. These findings thus indicate that the posttraining injection or handling procedure is sufficiently arousing or stressful to facilitate memory consolidation of auditory-cue classical fear conditioning.     

Visual sensing IS seeing: why "mindsight," in hindsight, is blind

Faced with the surprising failure to notice large changes to visual scenes (change blindness), many researchers have sought evidence for alternative, nonattentional routes to change detection. A recent article in Psychological Science (Rensink, 2004) proposed a new, nonsensory "mindsight" mechanism to explain the finding that some subjects on some trials reported sensing the presence of a recurring change before they could explicitly identify it and without having a localizable visual experience of change. This mechanism would constitute a previously unknown mode of seeing that, as Rensink suggested, might be akin to a sixth sense. Its existence would have radical implications for the mechanisms underlying conscious visual experience. Provocative claims merit rigorous scrutiny. We rebut the existence of a mindsight mechanism by supporting a more mundane explanation: Some subjects take time to verify their initial conscious detection of changes.     

The detection and tracing of melodic key changes

Adjusting to key changes in music is vital to a listener's understanding of it, although it is unclear when this adjustment occurs. In three experiments, participants heard obscure melodies that sometimes contained key changes. Both the number of notes after the change and the change distance were manipulated. For one task, the participants were explicitly asked to detect a change. For another task, the participants rated probe tones. These ratings allowed us to trace the listeners' multiple representations of keys. Results suggest that old keys were abruptly abandoned but that new keys were accepted gradually. More distant key changes (e.g., C-F#) were associated with more accurate detection of change, as well as with more time being required to adapt to the new key.     

The accuracy of spatial information from temporally and spatially organized mental maps

The way a space is learned can result in a mental mapthat is either temporally or spatially organized (Curiel & Radvansky, 1998). The present study examined the availability of spatial information under maplearning conditions where either temporal or spatial organization has been previously observed. The finding was that people were fairly accurate in tasks that explicitly required the use of spatial information. However, there was a particular advantage for having a spatially organized mental mapin a direction judgment task, especially for short distances where fine-grained knowledge was required. In contrast, there was no clear advantage for either group in a distance estimation task. These data are interpreted in the context of Huttenlocher’s category adjustment model.