Challenging perceptual tasks require more attention: The influence of task difficulty on the N1 effect of temporal orienting

Both filter and resource models of attention suggest an influence of task difficulty on the size of early attention effects. As for temporal orienting, the idea that early effects are modulated by task difficulty has not been tested directly, so far. To fill this empirical gap, the present study used an auditory temporal-orienting task, in which two differently pitched pure tones served as targets. To manipulate perceptual difficulty, the pitch difference between the targets was either small or large. Temporal orienting enhanced the N1 component of the auditory event-related potential. This early, sensory effect tended to be larger in the more difficult condition, particularly over the frontal scalp. Notably, increasing task difficulty affected predominantly the processing of attended stimuli. Hence, temporal orienting may operate by increasing processing resources or gain settings for the attended time point – rather than by withdrawing resources from the unattended time point.     

Dilemmas of Practice: Challenges to Program Quality Encountered by Youth Program Leaders

To create and sustain high quality youth development programs it is important to understand the challenging situations and dilemmas that emerge in program leaders’ daily work with youth. In this research the experiences of leaders in 12 programs were followed over a 2–9 month period, which led to the identification of 250 dilemma situations. Qualitative analyses identified 5 categories and 12 subcategories of dilemmas that reflected distinct types of considerations (e.g., youth’s personalities, relationships with the community). The analyses also found that the experienced leaders in the study typically responded to these dilemmas in ways that were youth-centered and that balanced multiple considerations. It is argued that researchers need to go beyond identifying features of high quality programs, and more fully examine how effective leaders create and sustain high quality in response to the challenging situations of practice.     

Adopting the Objectifying Gaze: Exposure to Sexually Objectifying Music Videos and Subsequent Gazing Behavior

We investigated the effects of exposure to sexually objectifying music videos on viewers’ subsequent gazing behavior. We exposed participants (N = 129; 68 women, 61 men) to music videos either high in sexual objectification or low in sexual objectification. Next, we measured participants’ eye movements as they viewed photographs of 36 women models with various body shapes (i.e., ideal size model, plus size model) and degree of dress (i.e., fully dressed, scantily dressed, partially clad). Results indicated that sexually objectifying music videos influenced participants’ objectifying gaze upon photographs of women with an ideal size, but not plus size, body shape. Interestingly, that effect neither differed among men and women nor depended upon the models’ degree of dress. Altogether, once primed with sexually objectifying imagery, participants looked at women’s sexual body parts more than they looked at women’s faces.     

Leader Inquisitiveness,Political Skill,and Follower Attributions of Leader Charisma and Effectiveness: Test of a moderated mediation model

Given the variability in personality's relationship with leadership and the use of personality measures in leader selection and assessment, we examine the joint influence of leader trait inquisitiveness and leader political skill on subordinate perceptions of leader charisma and effectiveness. Findings indicate a positive main effect of political skill on charisma, the positive relationship between inquisitiveness and charisma is moderated by heightened political skill, and charisma mediates the relationship between the inquisitiveness by political skill interaction and perceived effectiveness. The moderated mediation results of our study suggest that organizations should not only select creative and imaginative leaders, but also select those who are politically skilled or provide political skill training.     

Themes of Self‐Regulation and Self‐Exploration in the Life Stories of Religious American Conservatives and Liberals

A sample of 128 highly religious (Christian) midlife American adults completed a series of attitudinal and personality trait measures and narrated 12 important autobiographical scenes in their life stories. Individuals high on self‐reported political conservatism tended to accentuate the theme of self‐regulation in their life stories, repeatedly describing important autobiographical scenes wherein they struggled to control, discipline, manage, restrain, protect, or preserve the self. By contrast, individuals high on political liberalism tended to emphasize the theme of self‐exploration, telling stories about expanding, discovering, articulating, or fulfilling the self. Demographics and dispositional traits (especially openness to experience) showed significant associations with conservatism‐liberalism, as well, but these variables did not mitigate the robust relationship between life‐narrative themes and political orientation. The results are discussed in terms of a broadened understanding of personality that conceives of dispositional traits and narrative identity as comprising distinct layers and complementary features of psychological individuality, both implicated in political lives.     

Depolarization-initiated endogenous cannabinoid release and underlying retrograde neurotransmission in interneurons of amygdala

The depolarization is also important for the short-term synaptic plasticity, known as depolarization-induced suppression of excitation (DSE). The two major types of neurons and their synapses in the lateral nucleus of amygdala (LA) are prone to plasticity. However, DSE in interneurons has not been reported in amygdala in general and in LA in particular. Therefore, we conducted the patch-clamp experiments with LA interneurons. These neurons were identified by lack of adaptation in firing rate of action potentials. In this study, we show for the first time a transient suppression of neurotransmission at synapses both within the local network and between cortical inputs and interneurons of the LA. The retrograde neurotransmission from GABAergic interneurons were comparable with that of glutamatergic pyramidal cells. That is the axonal terminals of cortical inputs do not posses selectivity toward two neuronal subtypes. However, the DSE of both types of neurons involve an increase in intracellular Ca²⁺ and the release of endogenous cannabinoids (eCB) and activation of presynaptic CB1 receptors. The magnitude of DSE was significantly higher in interneurons compared with pyramidal cells, though developed with some latency.

…I made experiments on myself and my assistant, using smaller doses, and not repeating them so often… — Clouston 1870

The biological actions of endogenous cannabinoids (eCB) occur by binding to the CB₁ and CB₂ receptors throughout the whole body (Ameri 1999; Pertwee 2006; Hill et al. 2007; Yoshida et al. 2011). The density of CB₁ receptors in the amygdala is comparably high in mammals (Herkenham et al. 1990).Amygdala similar to hippocampus is important for memory formation and often studied to elucidate plasticity at cellular level using the classical paradigm of Pavlov that continuously serves as a substrate (Pavlov 1927; Bliss and Lomo 1973; Rogan et al. 1997). The amygdala not only receives, but also sends behavior underlying signals into other regions (Racine et al. 1983; Aggleton and Mishkin 1984). While the role of hippocampus is crucial for memory formation, those associated with many different kinds of emotions are mainly modulated by the amygdala (Bucherelli et al. 2006; Fujii et al. 2020). The memory enabling substrate is a long-term potentiation (LTP) of neurotransmission into the postsynaptic neurons (Rogan et al. 1997; Kodirov et al. 2006).The short-term synaptic plasticity in the form of depolarization-induced suppression of either excitation or inhibition (DSE and DSI) has been reported in several regions of the brain (Alger et al. 1996; Kano et al. 2009; Ivanova and Storozhuk 2011). We have discovered DSE in the lateral amygdala (LA), specifically at cortical inputs into the pyramidal neurons (Kodirov et al. 2010).Despite the extensive studies on DSE and DSI, there are only three papers on interneurons that we are aware of. Two of them describe the presence of these phenomena: One study was carried out on parvalbumin immunoreactive interneurons of the stratum radiatum in the hippocampus (Ali 2007) and another on cerebellar stellate and basket cells (Beierlein and Regehr 2006). However, none of the cortical interneurons exhibited DSI despite the presence of a functional and cannabinoid-sensitive inhibitory inputs (Lemtiri-Chlieh and Levine 2007). The retrograde neurotransmission (Llano et al. 1991) takes place via the release of two natural ligands of endogenous cannabinoids anandamide and 2-arachidonoyl-glycerol (Urbanski et al. 2009). These ligands also suppress the evoked excitatory neurotransmission when applied exogenously in vitro (Ameri et al. 1999; Ameri and Simmet 2000; Lemak et al. 2007).Since DSE in interneurons has not been reported in amygdala and we demonstrated the existence of DSE in pyramidal cells of LA (Kodirov et al. 2010), we then studied the same phenomenon in regard to interneurons; the main question was whether or not does depolarization-induced mobilization of eCBs from the two types of postsynaptic LA neurons cause similar retrograde modulation of cortical inputs? Subsequently, DSE between the presynaptic terminals and interneurons was shown, and we found that its properties are similar to those in pyramidal cells of LA. Our study documents the participation of endogenous cannabinoids of interneurons in DSE.