Decision making under risk condition in patients with Parkinson's disease: a behavioural and fMRI study

We aimed to study whether previously described impairment in decision making under risky conditions in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) is affected by deficits in using information about potential incentives or by processing feedback (in terms of fictitious gains and losses following each decision). Additionally, we studied whether the neural correlates of using explicit information in decision making under risk differ between PD patients and healthy subjects. We investigated ten cognitively intact PD patients and twelve healthy subjects with the Game of Dice Task (GDT) to assess risky decision making, and with an fMRI paradigm to analyse the neural correlates of information integration in the deliberative decision phase. Behaviourally, PD patients showed selective impairment in the GDT but not on the fMRI task that did not include a feedback component. Healthy subjects exhibited lateral prefrontal, anterior cingulate and parietal activations when integrating decision-relevant information. Despite similar behavioural patterns on the fMRI task, patients exhibited reduced parietal activation. Behavioural results suggest that PD patients' deficits in risky decision making are dominated by impaired feedback utilization not compensable by intact cognitive functions. Our fMRI results suggest similarities but also differences in neural correlates when using explicit information for the decision process, potentially indicating different strategy application even if the interfering feedback component is excluded.     

Patient Perspectives on the Learning Health System: The Importance of Trust and Shared Decision Making

We conducted focus groups to assess patient attitudes toward research on medical practices in the context of usual care. We found that patients focus on the implications of this research for their relationship with and trust in their physicians. Patients view research on medical practices as separate from usual care, demanding dissemination of information and in most cases, individual consent. Patients expect information about this research to come through their physician, whom they rely on to identify and filter associated risks. In general, patients support this research, but worry that participation in research involving randomization may undermine individualized care that acknowledges their unique medical histories. These findings suggest the need for public education on variation in practice among physicians and the need for a collaborative approach to the governance of research on medical practices that addresses core values of trust, transparency, and partnership.     

Mapping the psyche-civilization relationship: how overcoming conceptual dualisms can help us better comprehend the trajectory of the human race

Global living standards have increased considerably as a result of the progress brought about by human civilization. However, ecological crises, global nuclear armament and an increasing sense of psychological discontent are among a list of things that bring into question the nature of modernity. Often these large-scale collective issues seem too overwhelming for the individual to ponder in any great depth and thus the question, ‘how are we, as individuals, supposed to address the problems facing broader humanity?’ remains. This paper suggests that it is the underlying conceptual dualisms that prevent an answer to this question, and by mapping the interaction between psyche and civilization, the actions necessary to correct the trajectory of Western civilization may become apparent.     

Addiction in Maternity: Prevalence of Mental Illness,Substance Use,and Trauma

Women living in vulnerable neighborhoods experience higher rates of poverty, homelessness, psychiatric issues, illicit substance use, rates of HIV, and a lowered life expectancy. The aim of the study was to further explore the history of mental illness and trauma in a sample of women (N?=?31) who had recently given birth and had a substance use problem while pregnant. We investigated sociodemographic characteristics, history of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), rates of substance use and dependence, and psychiatric symptoms. Childhood and adult traumatic experiences were found in the majority of the sample, and one-third presented with suspected PTSD diagnosis at the time of the interview. Women-centered services are in great demand, as well as trauma informed care, and further research on appropriate treatment for substance using, traumatized, women with a mental illness.     

Trust in organismic development, autonomy support, and adaptation among mothers and their children

The current studies examined relations between mothers’ trust in organismic development, autonomy supportive parenting, and adaptation among mothers and their young children. Study 1 showed that trust in organismic development was distinct from optimism, neuroticism, and social desirability whereas it correlated with having relaxed expectations for developmental milestones and making fewer social comparisons about one’s child. Study 2 used observational methods to demonstrate a significant link between trust in organismic development and mothers behaving in an autonomy-supportive rather than controlling manner toward their 1-year-old child during puzzle solving activities. Study 3 used a 1 year prospective design to show that trust in first time mothers was associated with better maternal and child adaptation over time, controlling for initial levels of adaptation and child temperament. Study 4 explored possible social/political antecedents of trust in organismic development by comparing the beliefs of first time mothers from Canada and Norway. The four studies suggest that trust in organismic development fosters autonomy supportive parenting practices and positive maternal and child adaptation. These findings are discussed from the perspective of self-determination theory.

The effects of the contingence during the visual habituation task in 3 and 6 months old infants]

Thirty-six 3-month old infants and the same number of 6-month old infants underwent three visual habituation procedures differentiated by degree of behavioural contingency. Results showed significant differences between conditions only for the six-month olds: the lower the contingency, the higher the visual fixation scores. Results support some of the propositions that Gergely and Watson (1996, 1999) have put forth regarding the developmental model for detecting contingencies. The results also challenge the traditional model for visual habituation which suggests that varied durations of visual fixation should basically be determined by the visual characteristics of the stimulus.     

Care of the transgender or gender-nonconforming patient undergoing in vitro fertilization

Background: Assisted reproductive technologies, including in vitro fertilization (IVF), can be utilized for fertility preservation and family building in the transgender and gender-nonconforming population.

Methods: This is a retrospective case series from an academic tertiary care center.

Results: We present three couples with a transgender or gender-nonconforming member who pursued IVF to build their families. The first case involves a transgender man who suspends hormone therapy to undergo IVF. The second involves a transgender woman who uses her previously banked sperm to undergo IVF with her wife. The third involves a gender nonbinary patient and their cisgender wife who create and transfer embryos from both partners.

Conclusion: IVF can provide unique family-building opportunities to transgender and gender-nonconforming patients, and providers should seek to broaden their clinical experience with this population.     

When political expertise moderates the impact of scandals on young adults' judgments of politicians

This short note investigated how expertise in a political scandal moderates whether the activation of this scandal produces assimilation in the evaluation of politicians in general and contrast in the evaluation of specific politicians. It was hypothesized that participants with a rich knowledge about the scandal would display the assimilation and contrast effects whereas those with a poorer knowledge would not. Results tended to support this prediction, suggesting that the impact on judgment of a specific context depends on the amount of knowledge participants possess about this context. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Black Box effect: sensory stimulation after learning interferes with the retention of long-term object location memory in rats

Reducing sensory experiences during the period that immediately follows learning improves long-term memory retention in healthy humans, and even preserves memory in patients with amnesia. To date, it is entirely unclear why this is the case, and identifying the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning this effect requires suitable animal models, which are currently lacking. Here, we describe a straightforward experimental procedure in rats that future studies can use to directly address this issue. Using this method, we replicated the central findings on quiet wakefulness obtained in humans: We show that rats that spent 1 h alone in a familiar dark and quiet chamber (the Black Box) after exploring two objects in an open field expressed long-term memory for the object locations 6 h later, while rats that instead directly went back into their home cage with their cage mates did not. We discovered that both visual stimulation and being together with conspecifics contributed to the memory loss in the home cage, as exposing rats either to light or to a cage mate in the Black Box was sufficient to disrupt memory for object locations. Our results suggest that in both rats and humans, everyday sensory experiences that normally follow learning in natural settings can interfere with processes that promote long-term memory retention, thereby causing forgetting in form of retroactive interference. The processes involved in this effect are not sleep-dependent because we prevented sleep in periods of reduced sensory experience. Our findings, which also have implications for research practices, describe a potentially useful method to study the neurobiological mechanisms that might explain why normal sensory processing after learning impairs memory both in healthy humans and in patients suffering from amnesia.

One of the most puzzling phenomena of memory is that we forget, and since its beginning as a scientific discipline, psychology has been trying to find out why and how this happens (Ribot 1882; Ebbinghaus 1885; Müller and Pilzecker 1900; Burnham 1903)? Addressing this question, Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) published a remarkable study in 1924 suggesting that much forgetting arises from continued mental activity caused by ongoing everyday experiencing that normally follows learning in natural settings. Their intriguing findings were not systematically pursued during the next decades, as the focus shifted to exploring the role of prior or subsequent learning on forgetting; that is, effects of proactive or retroactive interference of highly similar material on memory retention. This research program eventually led into a dead end (Tulving and Madigan 1970; Wixted 2004), and interference research in humans slowed down in the 1970s. In recent years, however, interest about the neurobiological bases of interference began to emerge again (Appleby and Wiskott 2009; Bartko et al. 2010; Blake et al. 2010; Butterly et al. 2012; Luu et al. 2012; Martínez et al. 2012; Winocur et al. 2012; Peters et al. 2013; Alber et al. 2014; Censor et al. 2014; Martínez et al. 2014; McDevitt et al. 2014; Albasser et al. 2015; Eugenia et al. 2016; Koen and Rugg 2016; Ge et al. 2019; Peters and Smith 2020).In their original experiment, Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) used sleep to reduce the amount of interference after learning. They found that when their participants went about their normal (university campus) day after learning a list of nonsense syllables, their ability to recall the lists 1, 2, 4, or 8 h later was always poorer than when instead they slept during the time between learning and test. Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) concluded that their results “indicate that forgetting is not so much a matter of the decay of old impressions and associations than a matter of the interference, inhibition, or obliteration of the old by the new.” Their findings were replicated by others, confirming that being asleep, compared with being awake and active, indeed improves memory retention (Van Ormer 1932; Ekstrand 1967). However, it remained an open question whether it is the reduction of sensory stimulation and new learning, which would usually occur during wakefulness, that prevents retroactive interference, or whether a specific, possibly sleep-dependent, memory facilitation process was at play (Ekstrand 1967, 1972).Noting that participants in the sleep condition did not immediately fall asleep in the original experiment, but that they experienced increased quiescence shortly after learning, Minami and Dallenbach (1946) tested the retroactive interference explanation of forgetting more directly, by controlling the amount of stimulation after learning in awake animals. This remarkable experiment used Periplaneta americana (American cockroach) and a little treadmill. After learning to suppress their natural tendency to run into a dark shelter box in a bright open alley (encouraged by an electrical shock received in the dark shelter), the cockroaches were either placed on a running treadmill in a transparent box, or in a normally lit circular transparent resting chamber, where they were not able to fall asleep but experienced notably less activity than the cockroaches on the treadmill. The outcome was that cockroaches who were forced to move presented with more forgetting than those who were not, suggesting that sleep—notwithstanding its possible beneficial effect on memory—may not be necessary to promote memory retention; rather, reducing the amount of stimulation and activity after learning may be critical for attenuating retroactive interference and thus forgetting.Some six decades later, a series of experiments picked up this original line of inquiry. Exploring in humans whether memory for short prose, word lists, or spatial knowledge benefits from reduced stimulation after learning, these studies have invariably replicated the main finding that spending a 10-min retention interval in quiet wakefulness in a dimly lit room after learning leads to better memory for the learned material than participating in unrelated cognitive tasks during the retention interval (Dewar et al. 2007, 2010). Increased memory for the acquired material following quiet wakefulness is long-lasting and can be detected up to 7 d after learning (Dewar et al. 2012; Alber et al. 2014). Even in amnesic patients 10 min of reduced sensory stimulation, compared with participating in cognitive tasks, enhances memory retention for verbal material (Cowan et al. 2004; Dewar et al. 2009, 2010). This lends strong support to the suggestion that the memory loss in amnesia arises from an increased vulnerability to interference shortly after encoding (Warrington and Weiskrantz 1974; Hardt et al. 2013)Similar results have been obtained in rodents in studies exploring the role of perirhinal cortex in object recognition memory. Rats with lesions to the perirhinal cortex typically show robust impairments in object recognition tasks (Brown and Aggleton 2001; Mumby et al. 2002, 2007; Norman and Eacott 2005; Albasser et al. 2015). However, if rats are placed into a dark box during the retention interval between the encoding phase and the test phase of an object recognition task, rats with lesions to perirhinal cortex no longer show a memory deficit and perform as well as intact animals (McTighe et al. 2010). Thus, reduction of sensory stimulation between encoding and test appears to enhance memory for objects even in rats with perirhinal cortex lesions. This finding recapitulates the outcomes of the studies with human patients suffering from amnesia after hippocampal damage.The aim of the current experiments was to determine whether reducing sensory stimulation after encoding would also enhance hippocampus-dependent memory in rats. To do this, we used a spontaneous object exploration task that assesses memory for object locations (Ennaceur and Delacour 1988; Hardt et al. 2010; Migues et al. 2016, 2019). Using this approach, we replicated in rats the basic effect that quiet wakefulness promotes memory retention as previously observed in humans. Specifically, here we show that following learning, everyday activity in the home cage with cage mates impairs object location memory in rats, while reducing sensory stimulation in a dark chamber, without sleep, promotes it.