REM need in adolescents as indicated by resistance to REM deprivation.

The hypothesis that adolescents have an exceptionally strong need for REM sleep was tested by measuring their resistance to REM deprivation. Ten adolescents (aged 16 to 17 yr.) were compared with 12 young adults (aged 25 to 27 yr.) in a standard REM deprivation procedure. The adolescents had to be awakened significantly more times than the young adults; this is consistent with the hypothesis that adolescents have a greater need for REM sleep.     

Note on luminous flux discrimination in monkey and man

Subjects were instructed to equate the brightness of two stimuli of different areas presented alternately to the far periphery. The results are closely describable by IA = k (Ricco's Law), indicating that the subjects equated total luminous flux. It is suggested that these results and certain other behavioural and anatomical considerations make it unnecessary to consider flux discrimination a “subcortical” or “lower” visual function as compared with brightness discrimination.     

Linguistic boundaries as predictors of the time between letters in oral and typed spellings

The authors investigated the importance of boundaries between phonemes, syllables, onsets and rimes, and morphemes in English spelling. They analyzed oral spelling data from a previous sample of 17 college students to predict time between consecutive letters (pause time) on the basis of the presence or absence of each linguistic boundary. The authors used a parallel approach to analyze pause times of 30 college students when typing individual words and when typing words in an essay. For oral and typed spellings of individual words, syllable boundaries significantly predicted pause times. Phoneme boundaries also predicted pause times in typed spellings of individual words. For typing essays, only onset-rime boundaries significantly predicted pause times. The results support the importance of syllables in the spelling of individual words. Further, the results suggest that spelling in the context of writing is a qualitatively different process than is spelling individual words by dictation.     

Motivationally neutral stimulation of the nucleus basalis induces specific behavioral memory

The cholinergic system has been implicated in learning and memory. The nucleus basalis (NB) provides acetylcholine (ACh) to the cerebral cortex. Pairing a tone with NB stimulation (NBstm) to alter cortical state induces both associative specific tuning plasticity in the primary auditory cortex (A1) and associative specific auditory behavioral memory. NB-induced memory has major features of natural memory that is induced by pairing a tone with motivational reinforcers, e.g., food or shock, suggesting that the cholinergic system may be a “final common pathway” whose activation promotes memory storage. Alternatively, NB stimulation might itself be motivationally significant, either rewarding or punishing. To investigate these alternatives, adult male rats (n = 7) first formed a specific NB-induced memory (CS = 8.0 kHz, 2.0 s paired with NBstm, ISI = 1.8 s, 200 trials), validated by post-training (24 h) frequency generalization gradients (1–15 kHz) of respiration interruption that were specific to the CS frequency. Thereafter, they received the same level of NBstm that had induced memory, while confined to one quadrant of an arena, and later tested for place-preference, i.e., avoidance or seeking of the quadrant of NBstm. This NBstm group exhibited neither preference for nor against the stimulated quadrant, compared to sham-operated subjects (n = 7). The findings indicate that specific associative memory can be induced by direct activation of the NB without detectable motivational effects of NB stimulation. These results are concordant with a memory-promoting role for the nucleus basalis that places it “downstream” of motivational systems, which activate it to initiate the storage of the current state of its cholinergic targets.     

Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processes in Emotion Generation: Common and Distinct Neural Mechanisms

ABSTRACT— Emotions are generally thought to arise through the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes. However, prior work has not delineated their relative contributions. In a sample of 20 females, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the neural correlates of negative emotions generated by the bottom-up perception of aversive images and by the top-down interpretation of neutral images as aversive. We found that (a) both types of responses activated the amygdala, although bottom-up responses did so more strongly; (b) bottom-up responses activated systems for attending to and encoding perceptual and affective stimulus properties, whereas top-down responses activated prefrontal regions that represent high-level cognitive interpretations; and (c) self-reported affect correlated with activity in the amygdala during bottom-up responding and with activity in the medial prefrontal cortex during top-down responding. These findings provide a neural foundation for emotion theories that posit multiple kinds of appraisal processes and help to clarify mechanisms underlying clinically relevant forms of emotion dysregulation.     

A note on the sociological eye and the discovery of a new Durkheim text

The text consisting of recently discovered student notes taken during Émile Durkheim's 1883–1884 lycée lectures on philosophy bears few signs of the social realist perspective with which Durkheim's later work has been identified. Though some scholars have argued that Durkheim's thought was sociological almost from the start, the lectures suggest that Durkheim's sociological eye did not develop until well after the completion of his schooling at the École Normale Supérieure in 1882. This finding is consistent with accounts of Durkheim's intellectual development that stress the importance of his exposure to German scholarship, as well as his consideration of the work of Comte and Rousseau, in the years following 1885. However, these accounts have generally failed to distinguish between the development of Durkheim's philosophy of social realism and the unfolding of the practical worldview that constituted his sociological perspective. This failure is not unique to Durkheimian scholarship, as there exists no general theory of the sociological eye on which historians of ideas can draw. This short essay makes the case that Durkheim's lycée lectures should be used to help develop such a theory. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.