Facing temptation: The neural correlates of gambling availability during sports picture exposure

Nowadays, sports betting has become increasingly available and easy to engage in. Here we examined the neural responses to stimuli that represent sporting events available for betting as compared to sporting events without a gambling opportunity. We used a cue exposure task in which football (soccer) fans (N = 42) viewed cues depicting scheduled football games that would occur shortly after the scanning session. In the “betting” condition, participants were instructed to choose, at the end of each block, the game (and the team) they wanted to bet on. In the “watching” condition, participants chose the game they would prefer to watch. After the scanning session, participants completed posttask rating questionnaires assessing, for each cue, their level of confidence about the team they believed would win and how much they would enjoy watching the game. We found that stimuli representing sport events available for betting elicited higher fronto-striatal activation, as well as higher insular cortex activity and functional connectivity, than sport events without a gambling opportunity. Moreover, games rated with more confidence towards the winning team resulted in greater brain activations within regions involved in affective decision-making (ventromedial prefrontal cortex), cognitive inhibitory control (medial and superior frontal gyri) and reward processing (ventral and dorsal striatum). Altogether, these novel findings offer a sensible simulation of how the high availability of sports betting in today’s environment impacts on the reward and cognitive control systems. Future studies are needed to extend the present findings to a sample of football fans that includes a samilar proportion of female and male participants.     

Interactive Effects of Team and Task Shared Mental Models as Related to Air Traffic Controllers' Collective Efficacy and Effectiveness

We assessed the influence of task and team shared mental models (SMMs) on team effectiveness, as mediated by collective efficacy. Using a sample of 422 air traffic controllers representing 43 Navy teams from land-based towers, task SMMs exhibited a significant linear relationship with team effectiveness, whereas team SMMs did not. Moreover, the interaction of team and task SMMs was positively related to team effectiveness. Collective efficacy was found to mediate the relationship between task SMMs (but not team SMMs or their interaction) and team effectiveness. Results are discussed in terms of the complex nature of SMMs and team outcomes.     

Deliberation from Within: Changing One's Mind During an Interview

This article examines whether a public opinion survey can improve the quality of political attitudes. More specifically, we argue that simply positioning a summary attitudinal question after a balanced series of relevant items can increase people's ability to answer in a way that better reflects their underlying interests, values, and predispositions. By manipulating the location of the vote preference question in two separate national election campaign surveys, we find that there are fewer undecided respondents when the question is asked at the end of the survey rather than early on, that some people are changing their mind during the questionnaire, that a larger set of determinants is structuring late‐survey vote choice, and that voting preferences based on the later question are a better predictor of the actual vote. The findings carry important lessons for students of deliberation and of citizen decision making.     

Event-related potentials to overlapping shapes: Effects of saliency and interference

Visual perception is often challenged by various difficulties that act concomitantly and whose respective impacts may therefore be hard to distinguish. We used event-related potentials to dissociate the impact of target saliency, generated by occlusion, from that of interference produced by incongruent nontargets. In one block, the target (a square) partially occluded another square tilted by 45°. This nontarget square interfered only to a small extent with target perception. In another block, the target was the occluded stimulus, and interference from the nontarget was substantial. Blocks including two kinds of overlapping shapes (a cross and a square) were added to control for the interference effect. Block comparisons revealed that occlusion modulated an occipital N250 and reaction times. In contrast, interference modulated a parietal N380 but not reaction times.     

Validation of the DynaPort MiniMod during sleep: a pilot study

To measure activity during sleep, polysomnography and actigraphy are often used. The DynaPort MiniMod measures movement intensity and body position day and night. The goal was to examine the validity of the DynaPort MiniMod in assessing physical activity and body posture during sleep. In Study A, 10 healthy participants slept with the DynaPort MiniMod and the Actiwatch for one night. In Study B, 8 participants suspected of having Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Syndrome slept for one night with the DynaPort MiniMod and underwent complete polysomnography as part of the typical care protocol. In Study A, there was a significant moderate correlation (r = .70) between the movement scores of the Actiwatch and the DynaPort MiniMod. In Study B, a high intraclass correlation (r = .84) between body posture scores of the DynaPort MiniMod and the polysomnography position sensor was observed. The DynaPort MiniMod is a valid measurement device for physical activity during sleep.     

Suppression and hypothesis testing: does suppressing stereotypes during interactions help to avoid confirmation biases?

Recent work indicates that trying not to think in stereotypical terms increases the accessibility of stereotypical information, which paradoxically results in more stereotypical judgments. The present study translated the colour‐blindness ideology in general and stereotype suppression research in particular into an hypothesis testing setting. Participants who were asked to suppress their stereotypes when selecting a set of questions were indeed less guided by ambient stereotypes than control participants, thereby showing a reduction of the classical confirmation orientation in question preferences. Still, compared to control participants, suppressors also later reported more polarized impressions such that consistent targets were seen as more stereotypical and inconsistent ones as more counter‐stereotypical. Moreover, group evaluations were more stereotypical for suppressors than for controls indicating that suppression had led to stronger activation of the stereotypical representation. Results are discussed in light of the prevailing belief regarding the benefits of political correctness and colour‐blindness. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investigating linear and interactive effects of shared mental models on safety and efficiency in a field setting

Linkages between 2 types of shared mental models (SMMs)--that is, positional-goal interdependencies and cue-strategy associations--and effectiveness in an air traffic control environment were investigated. Two types of SMMs were expected to contribute uniquely, as well as interact, to predict tower safety and efficiency. Using SMM data from 306 air traffic controllers, and corresponding archival efficiency and safety measures for 47 airports, the authors found no significant linear relationships between SMMs and either outcome measure. However, the 2 SMMs interacted with one another to predict both outcomes. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of measuring multiple types of SMMs, the examination of complex relationships, and the importance of indexing decisions.     

The role of context in remembering familar persons: insights from semantic dementia

Semantic dementia (SD) is a progressive condition characterized by an insidious and gradual breakdown in semantic knowledge. Patients suffering from this condition gradually lose their knowledge of objects and their attributes, concepts, famous persons, and public events. In contrast, these patients maintain a striking preservation of autobiographical memory. The aim of the present study was to examine in a patient suffering from SD the role of context in the ability to recall knowledge of familiar persons. In an experiment, patient J.M. was asked to name and identify familiar persons that appeared on family photographs from recent and remote periods of her life. In the first experimental condition, the pictures represented personally familiar persons present in a specific spatial and temporal context. In a second experimental condition, the pictures showed personally familiar persons who were presented without any specific episodic context. Results indicate that the patient was able to name and identify familiar persons irrespective of the context of presentation (with/without context) and of the time period (recent/remote). No temporal gradient was found using family photographs. Finally, in contrast with familiar persons, J.M. presented a severe anomia for celebrities. Results are discussed in light of recent research in the field.     

Opposed left and right brain hemisphere contributions to sexual drive: a multiple lesion case analysis

Brain topographical studies of normal men have have shown that sexual excitation is asymmetric in the brain hemispheres. Group studies of patients with unilateral epileptic foci and other studies of patients with unilateral brain lesions have come to the same conclusion. The present study reviewed previously published single case reports of patients with frank hypo or hypersexuality subsequent to a unilateral brain lesion. Hyposexual patients tended to have left hemisphere lesions (primarily of the temporal lobe), and hypersexual patients tended to have right hemisphere lesions (primarily of the temporal lobe) (p < 0.05). We interpret this double dissociation as part of a more general phenomenon of psychic tone similarly dissociated with regard to hemispheric control, including mood, psychomotor baseline, speech rate, and even immunity. The behavioral significance of this psychic tone is to modulate approach versus avoidance behavior.     

Delay-dependent working memory impairment in young-adult and aged 5-HT1BKO mice as assessed in a radial-arm water maze

Serotonin (5-HT) plays a modulatory role in mnemonic functions, especially by interacting with the cholinergic system. The 5-HT1B receptor is a key target of this interaction. The 5-HT1B receptor knockout mice were found previously to exhibit a facilitation in hippocampal-dependent spatial reference memory learning. In the present study, we submitted mice to a delayed spatial working memory task, allowing the introduction of various delays between an exposure trial and a test trial. The 5-HT1BKO and wild-type mice learned the task in a radial-arm water maze (returning to the most recent presented arm containing the escape platform), and exhibited a high level of performance at delays of 0 and 5 min. However, at the delay of 60 min, only 5-HT1BKO mice exhibited an impairment. At a delay of 90 min, all mice were impaired. Treatment by scopolamine (0.8 mg/kg) induced the same pattern of performance in wild type as did the mutation for short (5 min, no impairment) and long (60 min, impairment) delays. The 22-month-old wild-type and knockout mice exhibited an impairment at short delays (5 and 15 min). The effect of the mutation affected both young-adult and aged mice at delays of 15, 30, and 60 min. Neurobiological data show that stimulation of the 5-HT1B receptor inhibits the release of acetylcholine in the hippocampus, but stimulates this in the frontal cortex. This dual function might, at least in part, explain the opposite effect of the mutation on reference memory (facilitation) and delay-dependent working memory (impairment). These results support the idea that cholinergic-serotonergic interactions play an important role in memory processes.