Benefit of social support for resilience-building is contingent on social context: examining cardiovascular adaptation to recurrent stress in women

Previous work on social support and stress tolerance using laboratory-based cardiovascular stress response paradigms has suggested that perceived social support may be effective in building resilience in recipients. However, such paradigms are often socially de-contextualized insofar as they fail to take account of the social aspects of stress itself. Using 90 healthy college women, the present study sought to examine the association between self-reported perceived social support and cardiovascular stress tolerance. Participants underwent two consecutive exposures to a mental arithmetic task. On second exposure to the stressor, participants completed the task under either social threat or control conditions. Social threat was manipulated using socially salient instructions, to create a high social context. Adaptation to stress was established in terms of comparisons between cardiovascular responses to successive exposures. Results showed that cardiovascular responses tended to habituate across time, with perceived social support associated with the degree of habituation, but only under certain contextual conditions; high perceived support was associated with effective habituation under control conditions only. This response pattern is consistent with the view that high perceived social support buffers against stress in healthful ways, but only in asocial contexts.     

Post-acquisition release of glutamate and norepinephrine in the amygdala is involved in taste-aversion memory consolidation

Amygdala activity mediates the acquisition and consolidation of emotional experiences; we have recently shown that post-acquisition reactivation of this structure is necessary for the long-term storage of conditioned taste aversion (CTA). However, the specific neurotransmitters involved in such reactivation are not known. The aim of the present study was to investigate extracellular changes of glutamate, norepinephrine, and dopamine within the rat amygdala using in vivo microdialysis during the acquisition and 1-h post-acquisition of CTA paradigm. Microdialysis monitoring showed a significant norepinephrine increase related to novel taste exposure and a glutamate increase after gastric malaise induction by i.p. LiCl administration. Interestingly, we found a spontaneous concomitant increase of glutamate and norepinephrine, but not dopamine, 45 min after conditioning, suggesting the presence of aversive learning-dependent post-acquisition signals in the amygdala. These signals seem to be involved in CTA consolidation process, since post-trial blockade of N-methyl-D-aspartate or β-adrenergic receptors impaired long- but not short-term memory. These data suggest that CTA long-term storage involves post-acquisition release of glutamate and norepinephrine in the amygdala.     

A motivational model for environmentally responsible behavior

This paper presents a study examining whether self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation are related to environmentally responsible behavior (ERB). The study analysed past environmental behavior, self-regulatory mechanisms (self-efficacy, satisfaction, goals), and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in relation to ERBs in a sample of 156 university students. Results show that all the motivational variables studied are linked to ERB. The effects of self-efficacy on ERB are mediated by the intrinsic motivation responses of the participants. A theoretical model was created by means of path analysis, revealing the power of motivational variables to predict ERB. Structural equation modeling was used to test and fit the research model. The role of motivational variables is discussed with a view to creating adequate learning contexts and experiences to generate interest and new sensations in which self-efficacy and affective reactions play an important role.     

Dimensionality and Transcultural Specificity of the Sexual Attraction Questionnaire (SAQ)

Sexual attraction was considered a component of sexual orientation from the beginning of the second half of the 20th century to present times. However, some recent researchers have studied sexual attraction as an independent field measuring it by the Sexual Attraction Questionnaire (SAQ). This study analyzes sexual attraction through the SAQ in 400 university students from a Peruvian catholic university. These participants -191 women and 209 men- show a very diverse curricular background. The following hypotheses were tested: a) the structure of the SAQ, pointing out two concepts: attraction to men and attraction to women; b) the high inverse correlation between these two concepts or factors; c) the specific impact of this context in sexual attraction: higher percentage of attracted by none of the sexes and lower percentage of attracted to the opposite sex, in comparison with other contexts; and d) the Lippa prediction (2006, 2007), regarding a higher polarization of sexual attraction for men than for women. Results support the first three hypotheses. Clarifications are laid down with regard to the fourth one. Discussion focuses on theoretical and applied advantages of using the SAQ as opposed to the frequent use of a single item of sexual attraction for each sex.     

Histamine reverses a memory deficit induced in rats by early postnatal maternal deprivation

Early partial maternal deprivation causes long-lasting neurochemical, behavioral and brain structural effects. In rats, it causes a deficit in memory consolidation visible in adult life. Some of these deficits can be reversed by donepezil and galantamine, which suggests that they may result from an impairment of brain cholinergic transmission. One such deficit, representative of all others, is an impairment of memory consolidation, clearly observable in a one-trial inhibitory avoidance task. Recent data suggest a role of brain histaminergic systems in the regulation of behavior, particularly inhibitory avoidance learning. Here we investigate whether histamine itself, its analog SKF-91844, or various receptor-selective histamine agonists and antagonists given into the CA1 region of the hippocampus immediately post-training can affect retention of one-trial inhibitory avoidance in rats submitted to early postnatal maternal deprivation. We found that histamine, SKF-91844 and the H2 receptor agonist, dimaprit enhance consolidation on their own and reverse the consolidation deficit induced by maternal deprivation. The enhancing effect of histamine was blocked by the H2 receptor antagonist, ranitidine, but not by the H1 receptor antagonist pyrilamine or by the H3 antagonist thioperamide given into CA1 at doses known to have other behavioral actions, without altering locomotor and exploratory activity or the anxiety state of the animals. The present results suggest that the memory deficit induced by early postnatal maternal deprivation in rats may in part be due to an impairment of histamine mediated mechanisms in the CA1 region of the rat hippocampus.     

Res Computans: The Living Subject from Yeast to Human

Since modernity, the concept of subject supposes both an anthropocentric and a dualistic view of life and reality. In this study, we carry out an analytic interpretation of the Descartes’ notion of subject, in order to build a different dimension of the concept of subject. We discuss the activity of computing, as the manner by which the living subject relates with and in-forms the world. We further examine computing in the aging yeast as an example of living subject and we try to comprehend the maturity of the subjectivity in Descartes’ res cogitans and in our proposed res computans.     

Mechanisms of contextual control when contexts are informative to solve the task

An experiment was conducted using a human instrumental learning task with the goal of evaluating the mechanisms underlying the deleterious effect of context-switching on responding to an unambiguous stimulus when contexts are informative to solve the task. Participants were trained in a context-based reversal discrimination in which two discriminative stimuli (X and Y) interchange their meaning across contexts A and B. In context A, discriminative stimulus Z consistently announced that the relationship between a specific instrumental response (RI) and a specific outcome (O1) was in effect. Performance in the presence of stimulus Z was equally deteriorated when the test was conducted outside the training context, regardless of whether the test context was familiar (context B) or new (context C). This result is consistent with the idea that participants code all the information presented in an informative context as context-specific with the context playing a role akin to an occasion setter.     

Recognition memory deficits in mild cognitive impairment

ABSTRACT There is no agreement on the pattern of recognition memory deficits characteristic of patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Whereas lower performance in recollection is the hallmark of MCI, there is a strong controversy about possible deficits in familiarity estimates when using recognition memory tasks. The aim of this research is to shed light on the pattern of responding in recollection and familiarity in MCI. Five groups of participants were tested. The main participant samples were those formed by two MCI groups differing in age and an Alzheimer's disease group (AD), which were compared with two control groups. Whereas one of the control groups served to assess the performance of the MCI and AD people, the other one, composed of young healthy participants, served the purpose of evaluating the adequacy of the experimental tasks used in the evaluation of the different components of recognition memory. We used an associative recognition task as a direct index of recollection and a choice task on a pair of stimuli, one of which was perceptually similar to those studied in the associative recognition phase, as an index of familiarity. Our results indicate that recollection decreases with age and neurological status, and familiarity remains stable in the elderly control sample but it is deficient in MCI. This research shows that a unique encoding situation generated deficits in recollective and familiarity mechanisms in mild cognitive impaired individuals, providing evidence for the existence of deficits in both retrieval processes in recognition memory in a MCI stage.     

Shifts in color discrimination during early pregnancy

The present study explores two hypotheses: a) women during early pregnancy should experience increased color discrimination ability, and b) women during early pregnancy should experience shifts in subjective preference away from images of foods that appear either unripe or spoiled. Both of these hypotheses derive from an adaptive view of pregnancy sickness that proposes the function of pregnancy sickness is to decrease the likelihood of ingestion of foods with toxins or teratogens. Changes to color discrimination could be part of a network of perceptual and physiological defenses (e.g., changes to olfaction, nausea, vomiting) that support such a function. Participants included 13 pregnant women and 18 non-pregnant women. Pregnant women scored significantly higher than non-pregnant controls on the Farnsworth-Munsell (FM) 100 Hue Test, an objective test of color discrimination, although no difference was found between groups in preferences for food images at different stages of ripeness or spoilage. These results are the first indication that changes to color discrimination may occur during early pregnancy, and is consistent with the view that pregnancy sickness may function as an adaptive defense mechanism.