Behavioral lateralization during spontaneous smelling tasks

The smelling behavior of 52 right-handed subjects was videotaped during tasks involving identification and recognition of different odors. Analysis showed that men more often used the right nostril than the left whatever the odor. There was no significant difference for the women. These results support a more marked cerebral asymmetry in men than in women and a main involvement of the right cerebral hemisphere in the olfactory processes at least by right-handed men.     

Conditioned and unconditioned fear organized in the periaqueductal gray are differentially sensitive to injections of muscimol into amygdaloid nuclei

The lateral and basolateral nuclei of the amygdala (LaA and BLA, respectively) serve as a filter for unconditioned and conditioned aversive information that ascends to higher structures from the brainstem, whereas the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) is considered to be the main output for the defense reaction. It has been shown that the dorsal periaqueductal gray (dPAG) is activated by threatening stimuli and has important functional links with the amygdala through two-way anatomical connections. In this work, we examined the influence of chemical inactivation of these nuclei of amygdala on the freezing and escape responses induced by electrical stimulation through electrodes implanted in the dPAG of Wistar rats. Each rat also bore a cannula implanted in the LaA, BLA or CeA for injections of muscimol (0.5 microg/0.5 microL) or its vehicle. The duration of freezing behavior that outlasts electrical stimulation of the dPAG was also measured. On the following day, these animals were submitted to a contextual fear-conditioning using foot shocks as unconditioned stimulus. Conditioned freezing to contextual cues previously associated with foot shocks was also inhibited by injections of muscimol into these amygdaloid nuclei. The contextual conditioned freezing behavior is generated in the neural circuits of conditioned fear in the amygdala. The data obtained also show that injections of muscimol into the three amygdaloid nuclei did not change the aversive threshold of freezing, but disrupted the dPAG post-stimulation freezing. Previous findings that the latter freezing results directly from dPAG stimulation and that it is not sensitive to a context shift suggest that it is unconditioned in nature. Thus, the amygdala can affect some, but not all, aspects of unconditioned freezing. Post-stimulation freezing may reflect the process of transferring aversive information from dPAG to higher brain structures.     

Use of the Hereford Parent Attitude Survey as an outcome measure in parent education research

Research on outcome evaluation published since 1980 on the Hereford Parent Attitude Survey was reviewed in terms of sample size, type of parent training program used, and the scales' sensitivity to change in parental attitudes after intervention. Some support for the sensitivity of the Hereford was found, and, as an evaluation device to assess whether program goals have been achieved, the scale proved to be a useful instrument. The Hereford scale can be applied with reasonable confidence in research on parenting and in strategies to enhance effective parenting.     

Enhancing the training integrity of human service staff using pyramidal behavioral skills training

This experiment used a pyramidal training model to evaluate the effects of behavioral skills training (BST), delivered in a 1-time group-training format, on the extent to which 25 human service staff implemented BST when training others how to implement behavioral procedures. Results indicated that (a) the training workshop increased BST integrity to mastery levels for the majority of participants with varying levels of education, organizational positions, and training experience, (b) the training effects generalized to teaching an untrained skill, and (c) high levels of BST integrity maintained at follow-up 4 to 6 weeks after training for all 3 participants with whom probes were conducted. Moreover, participants indicated high levels of satisfaction with both the training workshop and BST as a training procedure.     

Young children can extend motion verbs to point-light displays

In the first study using point-light displays (lights corresponding to the joints of the human body) to examine children's understanding of verbs, 3-year-olds were tested to see if they could perceive familiar actions that corresponded to motion verbs (e.g., walking). Experiment 1 showed that children could extend familiar motion verbs (e.g., walking and dancing) to videotaped point-light actions shown in the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. Children watched the action that matched the requested verb significantly more than they watched the action that did not match the verb. In Experiment 2, the findings of Experiment 1 were validated by having children spontaneously produce verbs for these actions. The use of point-light displays may illuminate the factors that contribute to verb learning.     

Reinstatement of episodic-like memory in rats by neurokinin-1 receptor antagonism

We previously showed that a systemic administration of the selective non-peptide neurokinin-1-receptor (NK-1-R) antagonist SR140333 increases hippocampal acetylcholine levels and facilitates long term memory. In the present study, we investigated whether systemic SR140333 has beneficial effects on episodic-like memory for unique experiences. Rats received either no injection, a vehicle injection or SR140333 at doses of 1, 3 and 9 mg/kg (i.p.) prior to the acquisition of an object memory for what, where and when. In line with previous results, untreated rats showed episodic-like memory, while vehicle-injected rats were impaired. A low dose of 1mg/kg SR140333 reinstated episodic-like memory. This result might be related to the effects of SR140333 on hippocampal cholinergic transmission and/or on the stress-response elicited by the injection procedure. Higher doses of SR140333 (3 and 9 mg/kg) induced psychomotor effects, including stereotypic behaviors and arched posture. Since NK-1-R antagonists have anxiolytic and promestic properties and induce hippocampal acetylcholine release at lower doses, they might be effective in the alleviation of the cognitive deficits and increased anxiety seen in early stages of Alzheimer's disease.