Functional neuroanatomy of emotions: A meta-analysis

The application of functional neuroimaging to the study of human emotion has yielded valuable data; however, the conclusions that may be drawn from any one study are limited. We applied novel statistical techniques to the meta-analysis of 106 PET and fMRI studies of human emotion and tested predictions made by key neuroscientific models. The results demonstrated partial support for asymmetry accounts. Greater left-sided activity was observed for approach emotions, whereas neural activity associated with negative/withdrawal emotions was symmetrical. Support was also found for affect program emotion accounts. The activation distributions associated with fear, disgust, and anger differed significantly. These emotions were most consistently associated in activity in regions associated with selective processing deficits when damaged: the amygdala, the insula and globus pallidus, and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, respectively. In contrast, the distributions for happiness and sadness did not differ. These findings are considered in the context of conceptualizations of the neural correlates of human emotion.     

Intensive care units: a systemic perspective

There are no systemic accounts of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) nor is there much to guide the systemic therapist working within these units. This paper attempts to develop an analysis of ICUs and proposes two working models describing the various levels at which the therapist can intervene.     

Modelling the Disruptive Effects of Irrelevant Speech on Order Information

The feature model (Nairne, 1990) is extended to include order information by incorporating aspects of Estes' (1972, 1997) perturbation theory. Order information is encoded with other cues in primary memory and precision is gradually lost due to drift along the appropriate dimension. Recall begins with the cue whose positional uncertainty gradient indicates it was in the first position with the highest probability. Order errors occur primarily because cues can “perturb” to adjacent positions: Although the appropriate secondary memory target is sampled, it is sampled out of order. However, cues that have not perturbed can also sample an incorrect secondary memory item, which is then recalled out of order. Thus, both order errors and item errors can give rise to recalling an item from the list in an incorrect position. A simulation shows that with the addition of the perturbation mechanism, the feature model can produce the appropriate order error gradients for short and long words recalled in quiet, accompanied by irrelevant speech, or accompanied by articulatory suppression.     

Book reviews

Weiskrantz, L. (1986). Blindsight: A case study and implications. Oxford University Press. Pp. 187. ISBN 0-19-852129-4. £19.50.

Humphreys, G. W. & Riddoch, M. J. (1987). to see but not to see: A case study of visual agnosia. Hove and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd. Pp. 124. ISBN 0-83677-064-9. £12.95.

Downing, J. A. (1988). Advances in psychology: Cognitive psychology and reading in the USSR. Amsterdam: North Holland; Elsevier Science Publishers. Pp. 471. ISBN 0-444-70374-8. $108.00.

John Beech & Ann Colley (Eds.) (1987). Cognitive approaches to reading. Chichester: John Wiley. Pp. xii + 315.

James Wertsch (Ed.) (1985). Culture, communication and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 379. ISBN 0-521-25214-8. £27.50 (Hardback).

Fodor, J. A. (1987). Psychosemantics: The problem of meaning in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press. Pp. xiii, 1-171. ISBN 0-262-06106-6.

Richardson, K. (1988). Understanding Psychology. Milton Keynes: The Open University Press. Pp. 114. ISBN 0-335-09842-8. Paperback £7.95.

Stanovich, Keith E. (Ed.) (1988). Children's reading and the development of phonological awareness. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Pp. 177. ISBN 0-8143-1909-2. $20.00.

Allport, A., MacKay, D.G., Prinz, W., & Scheerer, E. (Eds.), (1987). Language perception and production: Relationships between listening, speaking, reading, and writing. London: Academic Press. Pp. xiii + 497. ISBN 0-12-052750-2. £32.00

Light, L. L. & Burke, D. M. (eds.) (1988). Language, Memory and Aging. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 280. ISBN-0-521-32942-6. £27.50

Friedman, S.L., Scholnick, E.F., and Cocking, R. R. (1987). Bleuprints for thinking: The role of planing in cognitive development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. xv + 559. ISBN 0-521-25605-4. £40.00.     

Who uses community mental health centres? A study of one health district

A caseload analysis was undertaken to investigate those clients seen by five community mental health centre teams within one healthcare district. The 985 clients are described in terms of demographic and clinical features and questions relating to service provision are discussed.     

Reverse causation in activity-cognitive ability associations: the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936

Active lifestyles might protect cognitive abilities; however, studies rarely consider the reverse causal direction. Activity-cognition associations might reflect stable intelligence differences rather than a protective effect of activity. The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (n = 1091) completed cognitive tests aged 70, having taken an intelligence test aged 11. Activity (assessed by participation in 15 activities that produced a socio-intellectual activity factor, and by physical activity) was positively associated with cognition (r = .08 to .32, p ≤ .05). When age-11 IQ and adult social class were controlled, only physical activity remained significantly associated with general cognitive ability and processing speed.