Personality disorders and dimensions in pathological gambling

Comorbid DSM-IV Axis II personality disorders appear to be common in pathological gambling (PG) and may contribute to the chronic problems often associated with the disorder. This study sought to examine the relationship between PG, personality disorders, and impulsivity in a sample of pathological gamblers. Personality assessments included the SCID-II, Eysenck Impulsiveness Questionnaire, Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire, and Barratt Impulsiveness Scale. A total of 77 individuals with DSM-IV PG were included in this study, of which 35 (45.5%) met criteria for at least one personality disorder. Specific aspects of impulsivity were associated with certain personality disorders in PG when grouped by cluster, yet the presence of a personality disorder was not positively correlated with gambling severity. It remains unclear how the presence of a personality disorder and aspects of impulsivity may affect treatment outcome. Further exploration of these disorders and dimensions of personality may encourage a more inclusively global treatment approach.     

Benefits of regular aerobic exercise for executive functioning in healthy populations

Research suggests that regular aerobic exercise has the potential to improve executive functioning, even in healthy populations. The purpose of this review is to elucidate which components of executive functioning benefit from such exercise in healthy populations. In light of the developmental time course of executive functions, we consider separately children, young adults, and older adults. Data to date from studies of aging provide strong evidence of exercise-linked benefits related to task switching, selective attention, inhibition of prepotent responses, and working memory capacity; furthermore, cross-sectional fitness data suggest that working memory updating could potentially benefit as well. In young adults, working memory updating is the main executive function shown to benefit from regular exercise, but cross-sectional data further suggest that task-switching and posterror performance may also benefit. In children, working memory capacity has been shown to benefit, and cross-sectional data suggest potential benefits for selective attention and inhibitory control. Although more research investigating exercise-related benefits for specific components of executive functioning is clearly needed in young adults and children, when considered across the age groups, ample evidence indicates that regular engagement in aerobic exercise can provide a simple means for healthy people to optimize a range of executive functions.     

Effects of unilateral distractors: A comparison of eye movement and key press responses

We compared the effects of a unilateral distractor on the latencies of voluntary eye movements and key press responses in order to elucidate some of the differences between these two types of response with respect to processing distractors. On each trial, participants indicated the colour of a central patch by making a left or a right response. The colour of the distractor either matched the target colour or matched the colour associated with the incorrect response. Similarly, the side of the distractor corresponded to the side of either the correct or the incorrect response. The results showed that side congruency exerted a main effect only on eye movement responses, but colour congruency affected eye movement and key press responses similarly. Moreover, when we made the target more distinct from the distractor, only distractors that appeared on the same side as the response elicited a colour congruency effect, for both response modalities. Wepropose that (1) the appearance of the distractor activates oculomotor cells, which facilitate a subsequent eye movement with the same direction vector, (2) the distinctiveness of the target determines whether colour and side congruency interact, and (3) spatial codes mediate the interaction between colour and side congruency that occurs when the target is sufficiently distinct from the distractor.     

3-d interpolation in object perception: evidence from an objective performance paradigm

Object perception requires interpolation processes that connect visible regions despite spatial gaps. Some research has suggested that interpolation may be a 3-D process, but objective performance data and evidence about the conditions leading to interpolation are needed. The authors developed an objective performance paradigm for testing 3-D interpolation and tested a new theory of 3-D contour interpolation, termed 3-D relatability. The theory indicates for a given edge which orientations and positions of other edges in space may be connected to it by interpolation. Results of 5 experiments showed that processing of orientation relations in 3-D relatable displays was superior to processing in 3-D nonrelatable displays and that these effects depended on object formation. 3-D interpolation and 3-D relatabilty are discussed in terms of their implications for computational and neural models of object perception, which have typically been based on 2-D-orientation-sensitive units.     

Spatial Repetition Blindness Is Modulated by Selective Attention to Color or Shape

Subjects reported either the colors or shapes of two simultaneous masked letters. Our first study found that they were less accurate when the reported features were identical ("repetition blindness," or RB), while repetition along the unreported dimension had no effect. Three follow-up studies confirmed that when the same dimension was judged (overtly or covertly) for both stimuli, performance was only affected by repetition along that dimension. However, when different dimensions were judged for the two stimuli, performance was affected by repetition on both dimensions. These findings support new conclusions about both RB and visual attention. First, RB depends critically on visual attention, rather than simply on the stimulus presented or the overt response required. Second, while attention can be restricted to a single visual dimension, this is efficient only when the same dimension is selected for both objects. Selecting the color of one object and the shape of another simultaneous object results in both dimensions being accessed for both objects.     

Emotional priming of pop-out in visual search

When searching for a discrepant target along a simple dimension such as color or shape, repetition of the target feature substantially speeds search, an effect known as feature priming of pop-out (V. Maljkovic and K. Nakayama, 1994). The authors present the first report of emotional priming of pop-out. Participants had to detect the face displaying a discrepant expression of emotion in an array of four face photographs. On each trial, the target when present was either a neutral face among emotional faces (angry in Experiment 1 or happy in Experiment 2), or an emotional face among neutral faces. Target detection was faster when the target displayed the same emotion on successive trials. This effect occurred for angry and for happy faces, not for neutral faces. It was completely abolished when faces were inverted instead of upright, suggesting that emotional categories rather than physical feature properties drive emotional priming of pop-out. The implications of the present findings for theoretical accounts of intertrial priming and for the face-in-the-crowd phenomenon are discussed.     

A four-part working bibliography of neuroethics: part 1: overview and reviews – defining and describing the field and its practices

Background

Neuroethics entails investigations of neurocognitive mechanisms of morality and ethics; and studies and address of the ethical issues spawned by the use of neuroscience and its technologies to investigate cognition, emotion and actions. These two principal emphases, or what have been called “traditions” of neuroethics both mirror traditional bioethical discussions (such as debates about the safety of technological and pharmaceutical advances and ethical implications of new scientific and technological discoveries), and engage discourse about neuroscientific investigations of (proto-moral and moral) cognition, emotions and behaviors, and what such findings may mean for human beliefs and conduct - from the individual to the political levels.Given the growth, range, and rapid maturation of the field of neuroethics we provide an iterative, four-part document that affords a repository of international papers, books, and chapters that address the field in overview, and present discussion(s) of more particular aspects and topics of neuroethics. This first installment lists reviews and overviews of the discipline, and broad summaries of basic developments and issues of the field.

Methods

To systematically survey the neuroethics literature, searches were performed by accessing 11 databases, 8 additional literature depositories, and 4 individual journal searches using indexing language for National Library of Medicine (NLM) Medical Subject Heading databases. Searches and assurance against overlapping coverage were conducted using the RefWorks citation management program.

Results

Overview, review and reflections upon the history and multicultural perspectives of neuroethics were obtained and relevant listings from international journals, books, and book chapters are provided. Part I will be followed by three installments that will address a): the neuroscience of morality and ethics, including discussions of free will, and personal autonomy; b) “second tradition neuroethics”, to include specific ethical issues in neuroscience; clinical neuroethics; and c) neuroethics education/training; neuroethics and society; neuroethics and law; neuroethics and policy; and international neuroethics.

     

Differential sensitisation to central cardiovascular effects of angiotensin II in rats with a myocardial infarct: relevance to stress and interaction with vasopressin

The purpose of the present study was to elucidate if rats with myocardial infarction manifest altered responsiveness to central cardiovascular effects of low doses of angiotensin II (ANG II), and if ANG II and vasopressin (VP) cooperate in the central regulation of cardiovascular functions at rest and during stress. Conscious Sprague-Dawley rats with myocardial infarction induced by left coronary artery ligation, or sham-ligated (SL) controls were infused intracerebroventricularly with artificial cerebrospinal fluid (aCSF), ANG II, ANG II + VP or ANG II + V1a receptor antagonist (V1ANT) 4 weeks after cardiac surgery. In the infarcted but not in the SL rats, the resting mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) was significantly elevated by infusions of ANG II and ANG II + VP, while infusion of ANG II + V1ANT was not effective. During administration of aCSF, the pressor, and tachycardic responses to an air-jet stressor were significantly greater in the infarcted than in the SL rats. In the SL rats, the pressor responses to the stressor were significantly greater during infusions of ANG II, ANG II + VP and ANG II + V1ANT than during infusion of aCSF. The tachycardic response in the SL rats was enhanced only by the combined infusion of ANG II + VP. In the infarcted rats, the pressor and the tachycardic responses to the stressor were similar in all groups. It is concluded that: (1) under resting conditions the infarcted rats manifest sensitisation to the central pressor effect of ANG II and that this effect depends on concomitant stimulation of V1a VP receptors, (2) central ANG II may enhance the pressor response to an alarming stressor in the SL rats through an action which does not depend on the concomitant stimulation of V1a receptors, (3) the cooperative action of ANG II and VP is required for intensification of the tachycardic response to the alarming stressor in the SL rats and (4) exaggeration of the cardiovascular responses to the alarming stressor in the infarcted rats cannot be further augmented by an additional stimulation of central ANG II receptors or combined stimulation of ANG II and VP receptors.     

3D mapping of language networks in clinical and pre-clinical Alzheimer's disease

We investigated the associations between Boston naming and the animal fluency tests and cortical atrophy in 19 probable AD and 5 multiple domain amnestic mild cognitive impairment patients who later converted to AD. We applied a surface-based computational anatomy technique to MRI scans of the brain and then used linear regression models to detect associations between animal fluency and Boston Naming Test (BNT) performance and cortical atrophy. The global permutation-corrected significance for the maps associating BNT performance with cortical atrophy was p=.0124 for the left and p=.0196 for the right hemisphere and for the animal fluency maps p=.055 for the left and p=.073 for the right hemisphere. The degree of language impairment correlated with cortical atrophy in the left temporal and parietal lobes (BA 20, 21, 37, 39, 40, and 7), bilateral frontal lobes (BA 8, 9, and 44) and the right temporal pole (BA 38). Using a novel 3D mapping technique, we demonstrated that in AD language abilities are strongly influenced by the integrity of the perisylvian cortical regions.