Regional brain electrical activity in posttraumatic stress disorder after motor vehicle accident

This study examined whether patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) would show an abnormal pattern of electroencephalographic (EEG) alpha asymmetries, which has been proposed for particular types of anxiety. Patients with PTSD (n = 22) or subsyndromal PTSD (n = 21), traumatized controls without PTSD (non-PTSD with MVA; n = 21), and healthy controls without MVA (n = 23) underwent measurement of EEG activity during baseline and exposure to a neutral, a positive, a negative, and an accident-related picture. Differences in brain asymmetry between groups were observed only during exposure to trauma-related material. PTSD and subsyndromal PTSD patients showed a pattern of enhanced right anterior and posterior activation, whereas non-PTSD with MVA participants showed the opposite pattern. Furthermore, posterior asymmetry in nontraumatized healthy controls varied with gender, with female participants showing a pattern of higher right posterior activation. The results support the hypothesis that symptomatic MVA survivors are characterized by a pattern of right hemisphere activation that is associated with anxious arousal and symptoms of PTSD during processing of trauma-specific information.     

THE CHANGING CULTURAL CONTEXT OF THE INSTITUTE ON RELIGION IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE AND ZYGON

Since Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science was founded 49 years ago and since one of its co‐publishers, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS), was founded 60 years ago, there have been significant developments in their various cultural contexts—in science, in religion, in culture, in academia, and in the science and religion dialogue. This article is a personal remembrance and reflection that compares the context of IRAS in 1954 when it was first organized with the context of IRAS and Zygon today. It considers the contemporary niche of IRAS in relation to the developments that have occurred over the past 60 years.     

The positivity proportion effect: A list context effect in masked affective priming

In the evaluative decision task, participants decide whether target words denote something positive or negative. Positive and negative prime words are known to engender so-called affective priming effects in this task. Primes were sandwich masked, and the proportion of positive to negative target words was manipulated. In Experiment 1, prime valence and positivity proportion interacted, so that primes of the less frequently presented target valence caused larger priming effects. Experiment 2 rendered an explanation of this interaction in terms of response bias unlikely, Experiment 3 ruled out a peripheral locus of the effect, and Experiment 4 ruled out an account in terms of stimulus repetition. The effect is explained by means of an attentional bias favoring the rare kind of valence.     

The novel and the familiar: Sources of interest in verbal information

In a series of experiments, students were presented with selections of brief encyclopedia articles and biographical sketches, and asked to state which they preferred to read, and which they actually found to be most interesting after the reading. In all experiments, interest ratings were clearly influenced by amount of prior knowledge of the topic in question. There was in some cases a tendency to prefer less known to better known items, but more often familiar topics or persons were thought of as more interesting than unfamiliar ones. The results are compatible with the hypothesis that the inherent interestingness of a communication is directly related to its degree of perceived informativeness, and that both are dependent upon the possibility of getting to know something new about something already sufficiently well known. This study was written while the author was on sabbatical leave at the Aesthetics Research Group, University of Leicester, and was supported by a grant from the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities.     

Insulin receptor substrate 2 is a negative regulator of memory formation

Insulin has been shown to impact on learning and memory in both humans and animals, but the downstream signaling mechanisms involved are poorly characterized. Insulin receptor substrate-2 (Irs2) is an adaptor protein that couples activation of insulin- and insulin-like growth factor-1 receptors to downstream signaling pathways. Here, we have deleted Irs2, either in the whole brain or selectively in the forebrain, using the nestin Cre- or D6 Cre-deleter mouse lines, respectively. We show that brain- and forebrain-specific Irs2 knockout mice have enhanced hippocampal spatial reference memory. Furthermore, NesCreIrs2KO mice have enhanced spatial working memory and contextual- and cued-fear memory. Deletion of Irs2 in the brain also increases PSD-95 expression and the density of dendritic spines in hippocampal area CA1, possibly reflecting an increase in the number of excitatory synapses per neuron in the hippocampus that can become activated during memory formation. This increase in activated excitatory synapses might underlie the improved hippocampal memory formation observed in NesCreIrs2KO mice. Overall, these results suggest that Irs2 acts as a negative regulator on memory formation by restricting dendritic spine generation.     

Syntactic priming and the lexical boost effect during sentence production and sentence comprehension: An fMRI study

Behavioral syntactic priming effects during sentence comprehension are typically observed only if both the syntactic structure and lexical head are repeated. In contrast, during production syntactic priming occurs with structure repetition alone, but the effect is boosted by repetition of the lexical head. We used fMRI to investigate the neuronal correlates of syntactic priming and lexical boost effects during sentence production and comprehension. The critical measure was the magnitude of fMRI adaptation to repetition of sentences in active or passive voice, with or without verb repetition. In conditions with repeated verbs, we observed adaptation to structure repetition in the left IFG and MTG, for active and passive voice. However, in the absence of repeated verbs, adaptation occurred only for passive sentences. None of the fMRI adaptation effects yielded differential effects for production versus comprehension, suggesting that sentence comprehension and production are subserved by the same neuronal infrastructure for syntactic processing.     

Item Screening in Graphical Loglinear Rasch Models

In behavioural sciences, local dependence and DIF are common, and purification procedures that eliminate items with these weaknesses often result in short scales with poor reliability. Graphical loglinear Rasch models (Kreiner & Christensen, in Statistical Methods for Quality of Life Studies, ed. by M. Mesbah, F.C. Cole & M.T. Lee, Kluwer Academic, pp. 187–203, 2002) where uniform DIF and uniform local dependence are permitted solve this dilemma by modelling the local dependence and DIF. Identifying loglinear Rasch models by a stepwise model search is often very time consuming, since the initial item analysis may disclose a great deal of spurious and misleading evidence of DIF and local dependence that has to disposed of during the modelling procedure.     

Obtaining 16 PF Scores from the MMPI,and MMPI Scores from the 16 PF

Recent statistical analyses of the relation of the MMPI surface traits to the source traits in the 16 P.F. were extended to (a) the calculation of beta weights for estimating MMPI scale scores from the 16 P.F. and (b) deriving the MMPI item composition in terms of 16 P.F. scores from the MMPI, and vice versa. It has been argued from the specific nature of surface and source traits that additional diagnostic insight can be gained from their comparison, a principle which has been designated as depth psychometry.     

Conversation and Communication by J. A. M. Meerloo

Recent research shows that adolescents are a high-risk group for HIV infection, and that educational campaigns designed to reduce risk taking concerning HIV/AIDS have been largely ineffective with this population. It is probable that irrational psychodynamic processes underlie this risky behavior. In order to explore these behaviors, a sample of low-risk high-school adolescents and one of high-risk institutionalized juvenile offenders were formed into small groups for psychodynamic group therapy. This article presents preliminary findings based on qualitative analysis of the group process. Several sources of participants' difficulties in forming realistic appraisals of HIV/AIDS risk and of acting in accordance with them were unidentified, especially attempts to cope with experiences of loss, developing sexuality, and sexual identity and changing relations with adults. Certain problems were developmentally salient with all adolescents, whereas others were especially marked for the high-risk population of developmentally disturbed adolescents.