Individual differences in trait rumination and the neural systems supporting cognitive reappraisal

Cognitive reappraisal can alter emotional responses by changing one’s interpretation of a situation’s meaning. Functional neuroimaging has revealed that using cognitive reappraisal to increase or decrease affective responses involves left prefrontal activation and goal-appropriate increases or decreases in amygdala activation (Ochsner, Bunge, Gross, & Gabrieli, 2002; Ochsner, Ray, et al., 2004). The present study was designed to examine whether patterns of brain activation during reappraisal vary in relation to individual differences in trait rumination, which is the tendency to focus on negative aspects of one’s self or negative interpretations of one’s life. Individual differences in rumination correlated with increases in amygdala response when participants were increasing negative affect and with greater decreases in prefrontal regions implicated in self-focused thought when participants were decreasing negative affect. Thus, the propensity to ruminate may reflect altered recruitment of mechanisms that potentiate negative affect. These findings clarify relations between rumination and emotion regulation processes and may have important implications for mood and anxiety disorders.     

Illusory Conjunctions of Color and Motion With Shape Following Bilateral Parietal Lesions

The primate visual system responds to shapes, colors, and various other features more strongly in some brain areas than others. However, it remains unclear how these features are bound together so that an object with all its attributes is perceived. A patient (R.M.) with bilateral parietal-occipital lesions has been shown previously to miscombine the shape and color of items, making errors known as illusory conjunctions (ICs). In this study, we examined the effects of a third feature (motion) on this patient's IC rates. R.M. was presented with two letters that moved in different ways. He often reported seeing the shape of one of the letters with the other letter's motion. His performance on the same task with three features shows that correctly combining two features did not necessarily lead to correctly binding the third. These data support modularity of feature representations in the human brain and provide supporting evidence that spatial representations associated with the parietal lobe are necessary for normal feature integration.     

A COMPARISON OF THE CULTURAL VALUES OF SCOT AND U.S. CHILDREN

Afin de mettre en évidence les différences qui peuvent exister dans le système de valeurs des Américains et des Ecossais, on a administré à 1 189 enfants écossais et 1 268 enfants américains, de 10 à 18 ans, une question à réponses libres et un questionnaire de type Likert qui comporte 27 items relatifs aux valeurs suivantes : compréhension - utilité - espace vital - liberté - égalité - absence de besoins physiques - communauté - statut social. Les réponses à ce questionnaire permettent d'ordonner les valeurs selon un ordre décroissant : compréhension - utilité - égalité - communauté - absence de besoins physiques - espace vital - statut social - liberté; L'âge, le sexe, la culture n'entraînent pas de différences. Avec le questionnaire à réponses libres, il apparaît que les Ecossais mentionnent plus fréquemment les valeurs suivantes : bonheur - carrière - santé - besoins biologiques tandis que les enfants américains valorisent davantage L'éducation, la famille et la réalisation de soi-même. On peut en conclure que le système de valeurs est très semblable d'un pays à L'autre et reflète le caractère capitaliste de L'organisation sociale. La valeur relativement faible attribuée à la liberté et à la communauté d'une part, la valeur relativement élevée de L'utilité d'autre part, seraient indicatives de L'aliénation moderne de L'homme.     

The effect of visual angle on global and local reaction times depends on the set of visual angles presented

It has been shown that there is a transition from a global to a local advantage in reaction time as visual angle increases (Kinchla & Wolfe, 1979), and it has been assumed that this transition reflects lower level (e.g., retinal) processes. In three experiments, we examined whether higher level (e.g., attentional) processes play a role in this transition. In each experiment, subjects received a different stimulus set in each of two blocks of trials. In Experiment 1, stimuli subtending 1.5 degrees, 3 degrees, 4.5 degrees, or 6 degrees of visual angle vertically (small-stimuli set) were randomly presented in one block, while the other block consisted of random presentations of 3 degrees, 6 degrees, 9 degrees, or 12 degrees stimuli (large-stimuli set). The subjects' task was to identify targets that appeared randomly at either the local or the global level. It was found that the transition from a global to a local reaction-time advantage took place at a larger visual angle for the large-stimuli set than for the small-stimuli set. The same effects of stimulus set were found in Experiment 2, in which the small-stimuli set included 1.5 degrees, 3 degrees, or 6 degrees stimuli while the large-stimuli set included 3 degrees, 6 degrees, or 9 degrees stimuli. In Experiment 3, eye position was monitored to rule out the possibility that subjects adopted different fixation strategies depending on which stimulus set was being presented. The findings suggest that attention plays a major role in determining the relative speed of processing of local-and global-level information.     

Policy issues in a non-heart-beating donor protocol

The Pittsburgh protocol is ethically and legally acceptable as written, but more research is needed to determine if it can be implemented in ways that will observe the procedures that make it ethically acceptable. If so, its desirability as public policy will depend on the number of organs it is likely to generate and its effects on public attitudes toward organ donation generally. In the final analysis, the controversial aspects of this protocol concern symbolic issues about respect for the dead and near dead, rather than substantive concerns that real patient interests will be harmed.