The Main Contributors to a Future Utopia

Which people, events, movements, institutions, and documents in the history of humankind have contributed most to the possible realization of a future utopia (i.e., a time when the Golden Rule is universally lived by)? This study consisted of two phases. The first phase involved generating nominated lists from over 100 graduate students and professionals in a variety of fields. In the second phase, the two resultant lists of 155 people and 122 events, movements, institutions, and documents were sent to a randomly-selected list of 400 tenured and tenure-track history and philosophy professors at 40 randomly-selected public Research 1 universities. These professors were asked to select who and what would be on their ‘A’ lists. The most frequently-selected people included Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Buddha. The most-frequently selected events, movements, institutions, and documents included: the Abolitionist movement, the American Bill of Rights, and the Abolishment of Apartheid in South Africa. The lists are presented and discussed.     

Conditioned fear is modulated by D2 receptor pathway connecting the ventral tegmental area and basolateral amygdala

Excitation of the mesocorticolimbic pathway, originating from dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), may be important for the development of exaggerated fear responding. Among the forebrain regions innervated by this pathway, the amygdala is an essential component of the neural circuitry of conditioned fear. The functional role of the dopaminergic pathway connecting the VTA to the basolateral amygdala (BLA) in fear and anxiety has received little attention. In vivo microdialysis was performed to measure dopamine levels in the BLA of Wistar rats that received the dopamine D(2) agonist quinpirole (1 μg/0.2 μl) into the VTA and were subjected to a fear conditioning test using a light as the conditioned stimulus (CS). The effects of intra-BLA injections of the D(1) antagonist SCH 23390 (1 and 2 μg/0.2 μl) and D(2) antagonist sulpiride (1 and 2 μg/0.2 μl) on fear-potentiated startle (FPS) to a light-CS were also assessed. Locomotor performance was evaluated by use of open-field and rotarod tests. Freezing and increased dopamine levels in the BLA in response to the CS were both inhibited by intra-VTA quinpirole. Whereas intra-BLA SCH 23390 did not affect FPS, intra-BLA sulpiride (2 μg) inhibited FPS. Sulpiride's ability to decrease FPS cannot be attributed to nonspecific effects because this drug did not affect motor performance. These findings indicate that the dopamine D(2) receptor pathway connecting the ventral tegmental area and the basolateral amygdala modulates fear and anxiety and may be a novel pharmacological target for the treatment of anxiety.     

Psychological factors related to eating disordered behaviors: a study with Portuguese athletes

This study analyzes eating disordered behaviors in a sample of Portuguese athletes and explores its relationship with some psychological dimensions. Two hundred and ninety nine athletes (153 male, 51.2%) practicing collective (65.2%) or individual sports (34.8%) were included. The assessment protocol included the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) (Fairburn & Beglin, 1994); the Sport Condition Questionnaire (Bruin et al., 2007; Hall et al., 2007); the Sport Anxiety Scale (Smith et al., 2006); the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (Duda, 1992; Duda & Whitehead, 1998); the Cognitive Evaluation of Sport-Threat Perceptions (Cruz, 1994; Lazarus, 1991); and the Self-Presentation Exercise Questionnaire (Gammage et al., 2004). Results revealed that: i) no case of clinical significance was detected in the four dimensions of the EDE-Q simultaneously; ii) females scored higher on the EDE-Q Global Score, and athletes with the better sport results scored higher on the Restraint subscale; iii) athletes with a higher desire to weigh less scored higher on the EDE-Q Global Score; iv) athletes with lower scores on EDE-Q displayed more positive results on the psychological measures; v) several psychological dimensions were identified as predictors of eating disordered behaviors. In conclusion, the prevalence of eating disordered behaviors was negligible in this study, yet the relationship of this problem with personal, sport and psychological factors was evident.     

Near-term fetuses process temporal features of speech

The perception of speech and music requires processing of variations in spectra and amplitude over different time intervals. Near-term fetuses can discriminate acoustic features, such as frequencies and spectra, but whether they can process complex auditory streams, such as speech sequences and more specifically their temporal variations, fast or relatively slow acoustic variations, is unclear. We recorded the cardiac activity of 82 near-term fetuses (38 weeks GA) in quiet sleep during a silent control condition and four 15 s streams presented at 90 dB SPL Leq: two piano melodies with opposite contours, a natural Icelandic sentence and a chimera of the sentence--all its spectral information was replaced with broadband noise, leaving its specific temporal variations in amplitude intact without any phonological information. All stimuli elicited a heart rate deceleration. The response patterns to the melodies were the same and differed significantly from those observed with the Icelandic sentence and its chimera, which did not differ. The melodies elicited a monophasic heart rate deceleration, indicating a stimulus orienting reflex while the Icelandic and its chimera evoked a sustained lower magnitude response, indicating a sustained attentional response or more focused information processing. A conservative interpretation of the data is that near-term fetuses can perceive sound streams and the rapid temporal variations in amplitude that are specific to speech sounds with no spectral variations at all.     

Prevalence and associated factors with body image dissatisfaction among adults in southern Brazil: A population-based study

We investigated the prevalence of body image dissatisfaction (BID) and associated factors in Florianopolis, Brazil. BID was analyzed in a sample (N = 1720) of adults through the Figure Rating Scale. The independent variables were sociodemographic factors, health behaviors, and morbidities. A multinomial logistic regression analysis was used. More men (14.2%) than women (6.1%) presented BID by being lighter than ideal (LI). Conversely, more women (66.6%) than men (46.3%) showed BID by being heavier than ideal (HI). BID by being HI was higher among older women, those with high BMI and those with a partner. In men, lower BMI and the presence of common mental disorders were associated with BID due to being LI. Advanced ages, alcohol abuse, physical inactivity, and obesity were associated with BID due to being HI. We must consider different public health interventions for men and women to reduce BID in Brazilian adults.     

Maintenance and Transformation of Problematic Self-Narratives: A Semiotic-Dialogical Approach

This study focuses on how the emergence of innovative moments (IMs), which are exceptions to a person’s dominant self-narrative (i.e., his or her usual way of understanding and experiencing), progresses to the construction of a new self-narrative. IMs challenge a person’s current framework of understanding and experiencing, generating uncertainty. When uncertainty is excessively threatening, a semiotic strategy to deal with it often emerges: attenuation of novelty’s meanings and implications by a quick return to the dominant self-narrative. From a dialogical perspective, a dominant voice (which organizes one’s current self-narrative) and a non-dominant or innovative voice (expressed during IMs) establish a cyclical relation, mutual in-feeding, blocking self-development. In this article, we analyze a successful psychotherapeutic case focusing on how the relation between dominant and non-dominant voices evolves from mutual in-feeding to other forms of dialogical relation. We have identified two processes: (1) escalation of the innovative voice(s) thereby inhibiting the dominant voice and (2) dominant and innovative voices negotiating and engaging in joint action.     

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.     

One-dimensional and multi-dimensional studies of the exocentric distance estimates in frontoparallel plane, virtual space, and outdoor open field

The aim of this study is twofold: on the one hand, to determine how visual space, as assessed by exocentric distance estimates, is related to physical space. On the other hand, to determine the structure of visual space as assessed by exocentric distance estimates. Visual space was measured in three environments: (a) points located in a 2-D frontoparallel plane, covering a range of distances of 20 cm; (b) stakes placed in a 3-D virtual space (range = 330 mm); and (c) stakes in a 3-D outdoors open field (range = 45 m). Observers made matching judgments of distances between all possible pairs of stimuli, obtained from 16 stimuli (in a regular squared 4 x 4 matrix). Two parameters from Stevens' power law informed us about the distortion of visual space: its exponent and its coefficient of determination (R2). The results showed a ranking of the magnitude of the distortions found in each experimental environment, and also provided information about the efficacy of available visual cues of spatial layout. Furthermore, our data are in agreement with previous findings showing systematic perceptual errors, such as the further the stimuli, the larger the distortion of the area subtended by perceived distances between stimuli. Additionally, we measured the magnitude of distortion of visual space relative to physical space by a parameter of multidimensional scaling analyses, the RMSE. From these results, the magnitude of such distortions can be ranked, and the utility or efficacy of the available visual cues informing about the space layout can also be inferred.     

Distance perception in a natural outdoor setting: is there a developmental trend to overconstancy?

The main purpose of the present study was to investigate whether in natural environment, using very large physical distances, there is a trend to overconstancy for distance estimates during development. One hundred and twenty-nine children aged 5 to 13 years old and twenty-one adults (in a control group), participated as observers. The observer's task was to bisect egocentric distances, ranging from 1.0 to 296.0 m, presented in a large open field. The analyses focused on two parameters, constant errors and variable errors, such as measuring accuracy and precision, respectively. A third analysis focused on the developmental pattern of shifts in constancy as a function of age and range of distances. Constant error analysis showed that there are two relevant parameters for accuracy, age, and range of distances. For short distances, there are three developmental stages: 5-7 years, when children have unstable responses, 7-11, underconstancy, and 13 to adulthood, when accuracy is reached. For large distances, there is a two-stage development: 5-11 years, with severe underconstancy, and beyond this age, with mild underconstancy. Variable errors analyses indicate that precision is noted for 7 year-old children, independently of the range of distances. The constancy analyses indicated that there is a shift from constancy (or slightly overconstancy) to underconstancy as a function of physical distance for all age groups. The age difference is noted in the magnitude of underconstancy that occurs in larger distances, where adults presented lower levels of underconstancy than children. The present data were interpreted as due to a developmental change in cognitive processing rather than to changes in visual space perception.