A semi-persistent adult ocular dominance plasticity in visual cortex is stabilized by activated CREB

The adult cerebral cortex can adapt to environmental change. Using monocular deprivation as a paradigm, we find that rapid experience-dependent plasticity exists even in the mature primary visual cortex. However, adult cortical plasticity differs from developmental plasticity in two important ways. First, the effect of adult, but not juvenile monocular deprivation is strongly suppressed by administration of barbiturate just prior to recording visual evoked potentials, suggesting that the effect of adult experience can be inactivated acutely. Second, the effect of deprivation is less persistent over time in adults than in juveniles. This correlates with the known decline in CREB function during maturation of the visual cortex. To compensate for this decline in CREB function, we expressed persistently active VP16-CREB and find that it causes adult plasticity to become persistent. These results suggest that in development and adulthood, the regulation of a trans-synaptic signaling pathway controls the adaptive potential of cortical circuits.     

Perspective-taking and comprehension of passive sentences by Japanese-speaking children

This study demonstrates that children's difficulties in the interpretation of passives are attributed to their perspective-taking ability. Thirty-six Japanese preschool children participated in act-out sentence comprehension tasks. They were asked to manipulate two toy animals to demonstrate the meaning of two types of stimulus sentences: Type I had the child's toy, whose reference involved the child's actual name (e.g., Jun-kun no neko Jun's cat) encoded as grammatical subject, while Type II had the child's toy encoded as non-subject. Since passive structures take the perspective of the patient-denoting subject NP, it is assumed that only Type I passives have the perspective that matches that of the child.The results show that children's performance on passives was significantly better in Type I than in Type II sentences. But this difference was not observed for active sentences. For those who showed (nearly) perfect performance on active sentences, only Type I passives were equally well understood. These results strongly suggest that perspective-taking difficulties mask children's true competence on passives and that even 6-year-olds may not yet have attained the full perspective-taking ability required for comprehension of passive sentences.     

Analyzing the aesthetic impressions of alexithymic Japanese students

We investigated the association between alexithymic tendencies as measured by the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the characteristics of aesthetic impressions for words and drawings. Impressions were measured using the semantic differential technique in three groups of Japanese students (High scores n = 31, Moderate scores n = 40, and a Control group n = 182) who were presented only words (Word condition), only drawings (Drawing condition), or pairs comprising one word plus one drawing that represented the same emotional categories (Drawing/Word condition). In a factor analysis on the data from participants, three factors (Evaluation, Activity, and Potency) were extracted. Based on the factor scores, the distances among the three conditions were calculated for each of the groups. For Potency, significant group differences were found between the Drawing/Word and other conditions. In the High-scoring alexithymia group, in particular, the Potency impressions based on tactile sensation, e.g., soft-hard, blunt-sharp, were amplified regardless of stimulus condition. These results are discussed in the context of somatosensory amplification associated with alexithymia and the difficulty of distinguishing between emotion and somatic sensations.     

Robustness of the two-dimensional structure of recognition of facial expression: evidence under different intensities of emotionality.

Many studies have indicated that recognition of facial expression is geometrically represented in terms of two underlying bipolar dimensions, pleasure-displeasure and the intensity of arousal. A psychological space defined by these two dimensions has been found under particular conditions using prototype faces: however, the question arises whether this two-dimensional psychological space is also an accurate representation for faces with lower emotional intensity. To test this we prepared four different conditions of emotional intensity (100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% of emotionality) for six basic facial expressions using morphing. Participants (29 for the 100%, 30 for 75%, 35 for 50%, and 34 for the 25% condition) in each condition rated the facial stimuli on a 6-point scale of "not at all" and "very much so". Multidimensional scaling for each condition clearly indicated a two-dimensional representation and multiple correlations showed significant similarity across conditions (p < .001). This shows that the two-dimensional representation of recognition of facial expression is robust.     

Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration in Japan: Controlling for the Big Five Personality Traits

Abstract : The present study investigated the function of satisfaction and frustration of the basic psychological needs – autonomy, competence, and relatedness – that contribute to subjective well‐being (life‐satisfaction, vitality, and depression) through a back‐translation procedure of the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (BPNSFS). A total of 564 Japanese undergraduates (356 males, 205 females, three unknown; M _age = 18.61 years, SD = 1.48) participated in a questionnaire survey. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the BPNSFS had the same six‐factor structure as that found in the original version. Structural equation modeling showed that satisfaction of each of the three needs contributed to the prediction of subjective well‐being (life satisfaction and vitality), whereas frustration of each need uniquely contributed to the prediction of ill‐being (depressed affect). These results support previous findings found in Belgium, China, the USA, and Peru, confirming that satisfaction of basic psychological needs represents a critical element for healthy functioning across cultures. However, controlling for the effects of the Big Five personality traits indicates the possible over‐estimation for the functions of the needs while clarifying these roles.     

A small-world network model of facial emotion recognition

Various models have been proposed to increase understanding of the cognitive basis of facial emotions. Despite those efforts, interactions between facial emotions have received minimal attention. If collective behaviours relating to each facial emotion in the comprehensive cognitive system could be assumed, specific facial emotion relationship patterns might emerge. In this study, we demonstrate that the frameworks of complex networks can effectively capture those patterns. We generate 81 facial emotion images (6 prototypes and 75 morphs) and then ask participants to rate degrees of similarity in 3240 facial emotion pairs in a paired comparison task. A facial emotion network constructed on the basis of similarity clearly forms a small-world network, which features an extremely short average network distance and close connectivity. Further, even if two facial emotions have opposing valences, they are connected within only two steps. In addition, we show that intermediary morphs are crucial for maintaining full network integration, whereas prototypes are not at all important. These results suggest the existence of collective behaviours in the cognitive systems of facial emotions and also describe why people can efficiently recognize facial emotions in terms of information transmission and propagation. For comparison, we construct three simulated networks—one based on the categorical model, one based on the dimensional model, and one random network. The results reveal that small-world connectivity in facial emotion networks is apparently different from those networks, suggesting that a small-world network is the most suitable model for capturing the cognitive basis of facial emotions.     

Interpersonal and intrapersonal variance of exponent of power function observed in grip strength task.

For grip strength there is a power function with an exponent of 1.7 between the subjective magnitude and the actual force exerted by a subject, but large variabilities among and within individuals were found. We focused on these variabilities and investigated the relationship between them by conducting a ratio production procedure requiring trials of maximum effort and half of maximum effort. For 30 adults we conducted four measurement trials, two on the same day, and the remaining two trials on a day or two later. The mean value of the exponent, the standard deviation, and the coefficient of variation of the four trials for each subject were calculated. The mean value of the exponent of the power function for all subjects was 1.6. This value approximated the value of 1.7 reported by Stevens and Mack. The values ranged from .50 to 5.39. The correlation between subjects' mean exponent value and standard deviation was .90, and the correlation between the mean value of the exponent and the coefficient of variation was .50. There was a close relationship between interpersonal and intrapersonal variance.     

Perception of motion transparency in 5-month-old infants

We investigated the perceptual development of motion transparency in 3- to 5-month-old infants. In two experiments we tested a total of 55 infants and examined their preferential looking behaviour. In experiment 1, we presented transparent motion as a target, and uniform motion as a non-target consisting of random-dot motions. We measured the time during which infants looked at the target and non-target stimuli. In experiment 2, we used paired-dot motions (Qian et al, 1994 Journal of Neuroscience 14 7357-7366) as non-targets and also measured target looking time. We calculated the ratio of the target looking time to the total target and no-target looking time. In both experiments we controlled the dot size, speed, the horizontal travel distance of the dots, and the motion pattern of the dots. The results demonstrated that 5-month-old infants showed a statistically significant preference for motion transparency in almost all stimulus conditions, whereas the preference in 3- and 4-month-old infants depended on stimulus conditions. These results suggest that the sensitivity to motion transparency was robust in 5-month-olds, but not in 3- and 4-month-olds.     

Offender and crime characteristics of female serial arsonists in Japan

This study of Japanese female serial arsonists examined their crimes and background characteristics. The data were a sample from the national police register containing arson cases resulting in charges in Japan between 1982 and 2005. Serial arsonists were 6% of the arson offenders and 12% of these were female, resulting in 83 female serial arsonist data sets. The mean age was 37.6 years and 43% were unemployed. Nearly half were married. Only 28% had a documented history of mental problems and 22% had a prior arrest, usually for theft (19%). Female serial arsonists are characterised by going to a place near their home with a lighter and setting fire directly to combustible materials. Non‐metric multidimensional scaling was used to analyse 33 variables related to the offences. The arsons could be differentiated in terms of either expressive or instrumental sources of action. Expressive arsons were opportunistic and impulsive acts, motivated by emotional distress. The fires were mostly set close to home. Expressive arsons were characteristic of 66% of the females. Instrumental arsons were often motivated by revenge and involved planned and goal‐directed behaviours. They were committed by 13% of the females. Instrumental arsonists tended to travel further from home. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-referential processing of negative stimuli within the ventral anterior cingulate gyrus and right amygdala

Neural activity associated with self-referential processing of emotional stimuli was investigated using whole brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Fifteen healthy subjects underwent fMRI scanning while making judgments about positive and negative trait words in four conditions (self-reference, other-reference, semantic processing, and letter processing). Significant activity was observed in the right ventral anterior cingulate gyrus and the right amygdala in the negative-word/self-reference condition, and in the left amygdala in the positive-word/self-reference condition. Compared with the semantic-processing condition, the self-reference conditions showed significantly more activity in the medial prefrontal and temporal gyri, posterior cingulate gyrus, and precuneus. These results suggest that the medial prefrontal gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus, and precuneus are associated with a self-referential processing, and the ventral anterior cingulate gyrus is involved in self-referential processing of negative emotional stimuli. The results also suggest that the amygdala is associated with self-referential processing of both positive and negative emotional stimuli.