GERSHOM SCHOLEM’S DIALECTIC OF JEWISH HISTORY

Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856–1941) evolved from a political liberal, committed to free competition, hard money and honest government, to become in his maturity a social liberal chiefly pursuing social justice and free speech. In the Supreme Court (1916–1939) he remained faithful to his liberal and progressive parameters. Since about 1905 he evolved from being a half-assimilated Jew to an identified Jew and a Zionist. His original concept of Zionism was as a mission to achieve higher social goals. However, from about the mid-1920s he intensified his Zionism as a vital goal in itself. His synthesis of Progressivism and Zionism gradually came to be the classic tradition of all major American Zionist and pro-Israel trends.     

A cognitive perspective on mindfulness

Mindfulness, the core teaching of the Buddhist tradition, has been receiving serious attention from the West in recent decades as evidence of the efficacy of mindfulness‐based interventions for emotional distress have become available. Although traditional Buddhist texts have described the mechanisms of mindfulness and the way to cultivate it in great detail, much is still not known from the perspective of Western science. In particular, there is no general agreement on the conceptualization and operationalization of mindfulness. Several conceptual models of mindfulness (referred to as “state” or “trait”) have been put forward to elucidate different aspects of this phenomenon, but none has gained sufficient empirical validation. This article proposes a new cognitive model of mindfulness. It has been our goal to describe and interrelate a relatively comprehensive group of determinants of a state of mindfulness, the consequences of its regular practicing, the mechanisms responsible for its beneficial effects, and the feedback mechanisms operating between the various constituents of the model. Within this model, the primary emphasis has been placed on understanding the cognitive processes shaping a state of mindfulness (i.e., the links between consciousness, meta‐awareness and the unconscious), and on their determinants (i.e., the executive functions of attention and the components of working memory). A metacognitive system promoting mindfulness, as well as the general capability of the central executive system, is suggested as a factor explaining individual differences in mindfulness, whereas decentering, self‐compassion, and reduction of self‐focused attention are proposed as mechanisms mediating beneficial changes. We hope that the model presented will encourage further discussion and orient future studies in the area of mindfulness.     

Ethical and legal aspects in teaching students of medicine

Due to the rapid advances in medical technology, medical students are now being faced with increasingly complex and unparalleled ethical and practical dilemmas during their training. The new and future challenges of high-tech medicine demand improvements in current medical education, not only by meeting the needs of students through humanized training programs, but also by involving them in finding solutions to the ethical and legal quandaries they encounter. Today’s students of medical universities must acquire knowledge and understanding of the ethical and legal issues relevant to the practice of medicine, and we have to do everything possible to introduce these students to the current discussions on more or less controversial ethical and legal topics. Although final answers may not be found, the very discussion, argumentation, and awakening of students’ interest should become an essential part of the core curriculum of every doctor. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “The Ethics of Intellectual Property Rights and Patents,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 23–24 April, 2004. The author is a student and member of the Senate Committee on Teaching.     

Dissociation of oxytocin effects on body weight in two variants of female Sprague-Dawley rats

As a counterpoint to studies that make a case for the use of oxytocin in short-term inhibition of food intake, the aim of the present study was to determine whether the peptide facilitates weight gain in female rats in a more long-term perspective. Two different variants of female Sprague-Dawley rats were used. The two variants differed in daily weight gain (0.38 g/day vs. 1.41 g/day during 28 days), and were designated slowly and rapidly growing rats (SGR and RGR) respectively. Oxytocin 1 mg/kg given s.c. to SGR for a five-day period increased weight gain significantly in comparison to a previous five-day period with NaCl-treatment (18.0 g/5 days versus 5.0 g/5 days; p<0.01). In a separate study, oxytocin 1 mg/kg given for four days increased weight gain significantly in SGR versus saline-treated controls (7.5 g/4 days versus 1.6 g/4 days; p<0.05). The weight-difference persisted six days later (p<0.001). The weight increase of oxytocin occurred only during estrus (p<0.05) and was not accompanied by any measurable increase in food intake. In RGR, oxytocin-treatment decreased food intake significantly (p<0.001) and tended to decrease weight gain, although not significantly. The SGR and RGR also had different endocrine profiles with, for example, twice as high oxytocin (p<0.01) and insulin levels (p<0.01) in RGR compared to the SGR. These data suggest that oxytocin influences weight gain and food intake differently in the two variants of Sprague-Dawley rats, perhaps depending on factors such as endocrine profile and oxytocin sensitivity.     

Remaining a Pole or Becoming a Canadian: National Self-Identity among Polish Immigrants to Canada1

The construct of national self-identity has been theoretically elaborated, following Tajfel's (1981) distinction between criterial and correlated (dimensional) attributes. A third identity component, affects for country, was included with these two aspects. The research program built on these distinctions was designed to compare the national self-identities of Polish immigrants to Canada. Men and women who were new (recent), old (WWII veterans) or second generation immigrants participated in the study. Polish criterial identity (knowledge and personal relevance of national symbols) exhibited a gradual decline from new to second generation immigrants, and a similar but sharper rise in Canadian criterial identity occurred. Correlated aspect of identity was measured as the similarity between self and Canadian/Polish prototypes. Unlike in the criterial sense, Self/Polish was stronger than Self/Canadian correlated identity. Self/Polish identity showed stability across gender and generation. Self/Canadian showed an increase, but only in women. Rating the prototypes high in materialism and low in the family/social concern factor resulted in a low Self/Canadian identity. Four factors were found in the affects for country test: healthy, neurotic, psychotic, and involvement. The first was predominantly a Canadian factor, and the second was a Polish factor. With a succession of new, old, and second generation groups, results showed a shift from less to more positive, from less to more concerned, and from more to less psychotic affects toward Canada. Affects toward Poland were fixed across the categories of subjects. Finally, a syndrome of positive identity with Canada was found, consisting of its criterial, correlated, and healthy affect components.     

Egotism and evaluation in self and other attributions for achievement related outcomes

A critical appraisal of the existing motivational versus cognitive controversies in the area of attributional research led to the formulation of a model which contains the dimension of Evaluation conceptualized independently from Locus of causality. The model was tested, with Nigerian undergraduate students serving as subjects, in an experiment on self versus other attributions for success and failure outcomes. The data revealed two major findings: (1) Positive evaluation, and not attributional asymmetry, is the pattern of self-perception in the achievement-related contexts; (2) The pattern of positive evaluation in other-perception is self-outcome mediated, it shows a high level of generalization in the co-shared experience and an egotistic reversal if opposite outcomes occur.     

The relation between temperament and rate of temporal discounting

The present study examines the relationship between several temperamental traits (sensation seeking, extraversion–introversion, and impulsivity) and rate of temporal discounting, that is the rate of decrease in the subjective value of a reward as the delay to its receipt increases. Participants made choices between hypothetical monetary rewards that could be obtained immediately or after a specified delay. Temporal discounting functions were calculated and differences in rate of discounting between different groups were evaluated. For all groups of participants, hyperbolic discounting functions described well the decreases in subjective value with delay (R² ranged from 0.700 to 0.985). The rate of discounting was equivalent in high and low sensation seekers. However, both extraverts and high impulsive individuals showed higher temporal discounting rates than introverts and low impulsive individuals. The relationship between temperament and temporal discounting may be related to differences in time perception and/or to differences in susceptibility to rewards in extraverts versus introverts and in high- versus low-impulsive individuals.     

Valence of Affective Verbal Fluency: fMRI Studies on Neural Organization of Emotional Concepts <Emphasis Type="Italic">Joy</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Fear</Emphasis>

The present study was designed to examine the underlying brain mechanisms of positive and negative emotional verbal fluency. Three verbal fluency tasks (one non-emotional phonemic task, two emotional tasks: Joy and Fear) were used in this study. The results were analyzed for 35 healthy, Polish-speaking, right-handed adults aged 20–35. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (3T) was used to show brain activity during active participation in emotional verbal fluency tasks. The results reported for emotional fluency confirmed activation of different brain regions for the negative and positive emotional verbal fluency: in positive emotional verbal fluency Joy elicits greater activation in the frontal regions and the cingulate cortex, while in negative verbal fluency Fear is reflected in activation of parietal and temporal areas. The study provides an evidence for differentiation in neural mechanisms between positive and negative emotional verbal fluency and/or positive and negative retrieving processes, and differentiation in brain-related determinants of the emotional concepts organization.     

Asymmetrical stimulus generalization following differential fear conditioning

Rodent ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are ethologically critical social signals. Rats emit 22 kHz USVs and 50 kHz USVs, respectively, in conjunction with negative and positive affective states. Little is known about what controls emotional reactivity to these social signals. Using male Sprague–Dawley rats, we examined unconditional and conditional freezing behavior in response to the following auditory stimuli: three 22 kHz USVs, a discontinuous tone whose frequency and on–off pattern matched one of the USVs, a continuous tone with the same or lower frequencies, a 4 kHz discontinuous tone with an on–off pattern matched to one of the USVs, and a 50 kHz USV. There were no differences among these stimuli in terms of the unconditional elicitation of freezing behavior. Thus, the stimuli were equally neutral before conditioning. During differential fear conditioning, one of these stimuli (the CS⁺) always co-terminated with a footshock unconditional stimulus (US) and another stimulus (the CS⁻) was explicitly unpaired with the US. There were no significant differences among these cues in CS⁺-elicited freezing behavior. Thus, the stimuli were equally salient or effective as cues in supporting fear conditioning. When the CS⁺ was a 22 kHz USV or a similar stimulus, rats discriminated based on the principal frequency and/or the temporal pattern of the stimulus. However, when these same stimuli served as the CS⁻, discrimination failed due to generalization from the CS⁺. Thus, the stimuli differed markedly in the specificity of conditioning. This strikingly asymmetrical stimulus generalization is a novel bias in discrimination.     

Temporal discounting in "gain now-lose later" and "lose now-gain later" conditions

Studies on temporal discounting typically involve choosing between two outcomes of the same sign, i.e., positive or negative. For example, participants often are given a choice between a smaller, sooner gain and a larger, but later gain, or (less commonly) the options may be a sooner, larger loss and a later, but smaller loss. In contrast, participants in this study (N= 129; 66 women and 63 men, volunteers from Warsaw, Poland, all employed, with college education, ranging in age from 23 to 50 years, M=32.3 yr., SD=7.4) had to make a yes-or-no decision as to whether they would accept a financial offer involving a combination of a gain and a loss. This offer could be either an immediate gain to be followed later by a larger loss or an immediate loss followed later by a larger gain. Despite the substantial differences between the options in the present study and those in typical discounting studies, the same hyperboloid discounting function that describes choice between immediate and delayed gains also accurately described choice in the substantially different situations presented in the present study. In addition, steeper discounting was observed with a smaller delayed outcome than with a larger delayed outcome.