A different recruitment of the lateral and basolateral amygdala promotes contextual or elemental conditioned association in Pavlovian fear conditioning

Convergent data suggest dissociated roles for the lateral (LA) and basolateral (BLA) amygdaloid nuclei in fear conditioning, depending on whether a discrete conditioned stimulus (CS)-unconditional stimulus (US) or context-US association is considered. Here, we show that pretraining inactivation of the BLA selectively impaired conditioning to context. In contrast, inactivation of the LA disrupted conditioning to the discrete tone CS, but also either impaired or enhanced contextual conditioning, depending on whether the context was in the foreground or in the background. Hence, these findings refine the current model of the amygdala function in emotional learning by showing that the BLA and the LA not only differentially contribute to elemental and context-US association, but also promote, through their interaction, the most relevant of these two associations.     

Shape-from-shading depends on visual, gravitational, and body-orientation cues

The perception of shading-defined form results from an interaction between shading cues and the frames of reference within which those cues are interpreted. In the absence of a clear source of illumination, the definition of 'up' becomes critical to deducing the perceived shape from a particular pattern of shading. In our experiments, twelve subjects adjusted the orientation of a planar disc painted with a linear luminance gradient from one side to the other, until the disc appeared maximally convex-that is, until the luminance gradient induced the maximum perception of a three-dimensional shape. The vision, gravity, and body-orientation cues were altered relative to each other. Visual cues were manipulated by the York Tilted Room facility, and body cues were altered by simply lying on one side. The orientation of the disc that appeared maximally convex varied in a systematic fashion with these manipulations. We present a model in which the direction of perceptual 'up' is determined from the sum of three weighted vectors corresponding to the vision, gravity, and body-orientation cues. The model predicts the perceived direction of 'up', contributes to our understanding of how shape-from-shading is deduced, and also predicts the confidence with which the 'up' direction is perceived.     

Suffering and the Dialectical Self in Buddhism and Relational Psychoanalysis

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

The impact of self-efficacy and implementation intentions-based interventions on fruit and vegetable intake among adults

This study tested the effect of interventions designed for people who do not eat yet the recommended daily fruit and vegetable intake (FVI) but have a positive intention to do so. Adults (N?=?163) aged 20-65 were randomised into four groups: implementation intentions (II group), self-efficacy (SE group), combination of II?+?SE group) and a control group receiving written information on nutrition. Study variables were measured at baseline, post-intervention and at 3-month follow-up. At follow-up, compared to the control group, FVI increased significantly in the II and II?+?SE groups (1.5 and 1.9 servings per day, respectively). Most psychosocial variables significantly increased compared to the control group, with the exception of SE for vegetable intake (VI). Moreover, at 3-month follow-up, change in FVI was mediated by changes in fruit intake (FI) intention and VI action planning. In conclusion, II interventions were efficient to increase FVI, with or without consideration for the development of SE. Thus, future studies should favour the adoption of this approach to bridge the intention-behaviour gap for FVI.     

Comparison of the distortion of probability information in decision under risk and an equivalent visual task

Decision makers typically overweight small probabilities and underweight large probabilities. However, there are recent reports that when probability is presented in the form of relative frequencies, this typical pattern reverses. We tested this hypothesis by comparing decision making in two tasks: In one task, probability was stated numerically, and in the other task, it was conveyed through a visual representation. In the visual task, participants chose whether a "stochastic bullet" should be fired at either a large target for a small reward or a small target for a large reward. Participants' knowledge of probability in the visual task was the result of extensive practice firing bullets at targets. In the classical numerical task, participants chose between pairs of lotteries with probabilities and rewards matched to the probabilities and rewards in the visual task. We found that participants' probability-weighting functions were significantly different in the two tasks, but the pattern for the visual task was the typical, not the reversed, pattern.     

Temperament and Problematic Alcohol Use in Adolescence: an Examination of Drinking Motives as Mediators

The present study investigated the associations between temperamental reactivity, drinking motives, alcohol consumption and alcohol-related consequences. Furthermore, it investigated whether drinking motives mediate the relations between temperamental reactivity and the alcohol use variables. The sample consisted of 188 adolescents (64.9% boys) between the ages of 13–20 years (M _age  = 16.9, SD = 1.32). Results revealed that the temperament factors of high BAS fun seeking and high negative affectivity were related to alcohol consumption and alcohol-related consequences respectively. Furthermore, high social and enhancement motives and low conformity motives were associated with alcohol consumption, whereas high coping-depression motives were associated with alcohol-related consequences. Finally, the relation between BAS fun seeking and alcohol consumption was mediated by enhancement and social motives and the association between negative affectivity and alcohol-related consequences was mediated by coping-depression motives. These results highlight the importance of focusing on temperament profiles and their associated drinking motives in the prevention and intervention of alcohol use problems among adolescents.