Under what conditions would people be willing to make a living organ donation?

The aim was to examine the factors involved in people's willingness to make a living organ donation. A convenience sample of 200 people in southern France rated willingness to be a living donor in 48 scenarios consisting of all combinations of five factors: recipient's identity (close family member and city resident); donor's surgical risk (little and some); donor's possible long-term health consequences (none, some lessening over time, and durable); transplant success ("generally durably successful" and "durably successful one time out of two"); and likelihood of other donors (subject is one of the rare compatible donors or one among others). Cluster analyses showed the existence of three distinct organ donation philosophies. For the largest cluster (49% of participants), willingness to donate was very high to a family member, but low to a city resident. For the second cluster (37%), willingness was high to family, but also moderately high to a city resident. For the third cluster (14%), willingness was always low. Thus, most participants judged themselves ready to make a living organ donation to a family member and many even to a stranger.     

Dentist phobia

This study analyzes so-called hopeless gaggers,i.e., patients in whom dental treatment and wearing of a prosthesis produced a retching or vomiting reaction, in order to investigate the sources and properties of this pathologic reaction. In 35 patients, an anamnestic inquiry, a determination of the reflexogenic zone, a recording of the peripheral pattern of the pathologic reflex, and extinction training were performed. A group of six normal persons served as a comparison group. It was shown that patients, in comparison with normals, had an enlarged receptive field, were sensitive to a broader population of stimuli, and showed precursors and aftereffects of the retching-vomiting not found in normals. This pathologic reaction was the symptom of different Psychopathologie processes, such as specific fear, repugnance-fear-based disturbances, diffuse anxiety, goal-directed behavior, depressive states and, at least in one case, visceral pathology. The various patients differed with respect to properties of the reaction as well as in the sensitivity to the extinction procedure. It is discussed that different integrative nervous processes play a role in the origin and development of the syndrome: activation of unconditional reflexes, activation of classic and instrumental conditional reflexes, activation of such reflexes by an increase of the reactivity level of specific and unspecific structures of the brain, generalization of stimuli,etc.     

Does heart rate differentiate neurotic from normal people in a conditional reflex test?

This study is to compare heart reactivity between normals and anxiety neurotic patients. Five male and five female patients with anxiety neurosis and four male and five female normal persons were submitted to classic delayed conditional reflexes with different probabilities of reinforcement (shock), to a defensive instrumental conditional reflex, and to a neutral nonreinforced stimulus. The basal heart frequency was higher in neurotics and in women than in normals and men. The conditional stimulus (CS) associated with a shock generally produced a bradycardia in normal individuals and in neurotic men, but a tachycardia in neurotic women (effects most pronounced in cases with 100% shock probability). The instrumental CS caused a tachycardia in all of the groups, with highest values in neurotic women. The neutral stimulus produced bradycardia in all persons. The aftereffect of the light stimulus depended on whether a shock was administered and on the CS. The differences between neurotics and normals are explained as caused by the heightened excitatory level of the CNS of the neurotic group, produced by the unspecific activating effect of chronic anxiety, and differences of plastic processes in both groups, resulting in different effects of phasic anxiety on the heart. Complex inhibitory-excitatory interactions of the sympathetic and the vagal system underlying the heart rate changes may be assumed. Possible mechanisms leading to sex differences are discussed.     

Bilingual computerized speech-recognition screening for clinical depression: Evaluating a cellular telephone prototype

This exploratory field study evaluated a bilingual computerized speech-recognition cellular telephone prototype of the Center for Epidemiological Studies—Depression scale (CES-D). Thirty Spanish and 22 English speakers completed both computer-telephone and face-to-face CES-D methods and an oral depression checklist in counterbalanced order. Both language groups reported high positive ratings for the computer-telephone method, with the English sample preferring the computer-telephone over the face-to-face method. In both samples, the computer-telephone method yielded high internal consistency estimates, strong alternate form reliabilities, and similar high correlations to the depression checklist. Both groups reported significantly elevated scores with the computer-telephone method, but total score variances for both methods did not differ. Computer-telephone limitations included occasional misrecognitions and template training constraints.     

Are preference reversals reduced when made explicit?

Previous research has shown that preferences for options, such as gambles, can reverse depending on the response mode. These preference reversals have been demonstrated when tasks were performed sequentially. That is, subjects completed one task before beginning another. In an attempt to eliminate preference reversals, we asked subjects to perform tasks simultaneously. That is, subjects made two types of responses for each pair of gambles before evaluating the next pair. In the condition with no financial incentives, preference reversal rates were slightly reduced. In another condition, subjects were paid for their participation and they were allowed to play a gamble with real monetary compensation. A gamble pair was randomly selected, and if a subject's responses in the two tasks were consistent for that pair, he or she was allowed to play the ‘preferred’ gamble. Otherwise, the experimenter selected the gamble from the pair. With these financial incentives, systematic preference reversals were eliminated for two of the three task combinations. Preference reversals continued to occur for attractiveness ratings versus selling prices, although, even for that pair of tasks, the reversal rate was significantly reduced. For all three task pairs, preference orders from the two tasks appeared to merge into more consistent orders.     

A comparison of the codeswitching patterns of aphasic and neurologically normal bilingual speakers of English and Spanish

Conversational discourse samples were obtained from four aphasic and four neurologically normal Hispanic bilinguals in monolingual English, monolingual Spanish, and bilingual contexts to identify codeswitching patterns. Analysis of the samples based on the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) Model (Myers-Scotton, 1993a) revealed consistent matching of the language context by the aphasic and normal subjects. The aphasic subjects demonstrated a greater frequency of MLF constituents and codeswitching patterns not evident in the speech samples of the normal subjects. Results suggest an increased dependence on both languages for communication following neurological impairment.     

Hippocampal expression of the orphan nuclear receptor gene hzf-3/nurr1 during spatial discrimination learning

The immediate-early gene hzf-3, also known as nurr1, is a member of the inducible orphan nuclear receptor family and is one candidate in the search for genes associated with learning and memory processes. Here we report that acquisition of a spatial food search task is accompanied by elevated levels of hzf-3 mRNA in the hippocampus. Adult male Long-Evans rats were handled, food-restricted, and allowed to habituate to the maze prior to training. During acquisition, rats were given one training session per day for 5 days. Each training session consisted of five trials in which animals searched the maze for food located in 4 of 16 holes in the floor of the maze. Training resulted in spatial acquisition of the task. Northern blot analysis showed significant increases in hippocampal hzf-3 mRNA 3 h after training in the maze. Next, brains were obtained from Naive, Habituated, Day 1, Day 3, and Day 5 animals and processed for in situ hybridization. The results showed significant increases of hzf-3 mRNA in CA1 and CA3 subregions of the dorsal hippocampus during acquisition of the task. We conclude that expression of the hzf-3 gene in the brain is associated with long-term spatial memory processes. The present results are the first to implicate an orphan nuclear receptor in long-term information storage in the hippocampus.