Neuromuscular-skeletal origins of predominant patterns of coordination in rhythmic two-joint arm movement

The authors tested for predominant patterns of coordination in the combination of rhythmic flexion-extension (FE) and supination- (SP) at the elbow-joint complex. Participants (N=10) spontaneously established in-phase (supination synchronized with flexion) and antiphase (pronation synchronized with flexion) patterns. In addition, the authors used a motorized robot arm to generate involuntary SP movements with different phase relations with respect to voluntary FE. The involuntarily induced in-phase pattern was accentuated and was more consistent than other patterns. The result provides evidence that the predominance of the in-phase pattern originates in the influence of neuromuscular-skeletal constraints rather than in a preference dictated by perceptual-cognitive factors implicated in voluntary control. Neuromuscular-skeletal constraints involved in the predominance of the in-phase and the antiphase patterns are discussed.     

Correlations for number of sunspots, unemployment rate, and suicide mortality in Japan

We studied the correlations among sunspot numbers, business cycles, and suicide mortalitites. Based on data from Japan between 1971 and 2001, a significant negative correlation between sunspot numbers and unemployment rate was found, R= -.17. The correlation between suicide mortality and unemployment rate was positive for males (R=.46) and negative for females (R =-.69). Both are statistically significant. The hypothesis that variation of sun activity may affect the economy and the unemployment rate and hence increase the male suicide mortality is raised.     

Predictability of locomotion: Effects on updating of spatial situation models during narrative comprehension

We investigated how the updating of spatial situation models during narrative comprehension depends on the interaction of cognitive abilities and text characteristics. Participants with low verbal and visuospatial abilities and participants with high abilities read narratives in which the protagonist's motions in a fictitious building were either highly predictable or very hard to predict. In Experiment 1, high-ability readers updated spatial situation models only if the protagonist's motions were hard to predict, whereas low-ability readers did so only if the motions were highly predictable. In Experiment 2, facilitated integrative spatial processing compensated for the low-ability participants' resource limitations. As a result, both ability groups updated spatial situation models with hard-to-predict protagonist motions. These results highlight the interactions of cognitive abilities and text characteristics in spatial situation model updating.     

Is there a linear or a nonlinear relationship between rotation and configural processing of faces?

Research suggests that inverted faces are harder to recognise than upright faces because of a disruption in processing their configural properties. Reasons for this difficulty were explored by investigating people's ability to identify faces at intermediate angles of rotation. Participants were asked to discriminate blurred famous and unfamiliar faces presented at nine angles. Blurred faces were used to minimise featural processing strategies, and to assess the effects of rotation that are specific to configural processing. The results indicate a linear relationship between angle of rotation and recognition accuracy. It appears that configural processing becomes gradually more disrupted the further a face is oriented away from the upright. The implications of these findings for competing explanations of the face-inversion effect are discussed.     

Comments on the Institute of Medicine's 2002 report on the safety of anthrax vaccine

In April 2002, the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences issued a final report on the safety and effectiveness of the anthrax vaccine currently in use by the United States military. It concluded that the present vaccine was completely safe and effective, but ignored evidence of several recent research studies from three different nations that have implicated vaccines, often including anthrax vaccine, in the epidemiology of Gulf War illnesses. Omissions and limitations of that report are discussed.     

Ecstasy and agony: activation of the human amygdala in positive and negative emotion

Considerable evidence indicates that the amygdala plays a critical role in negative, aversive human emotions. Although researchers have speculated that the amygdala plays a role in positive emotion, little relevant evidence exists. We examined the neural correlates of positive and negative emotion using positron emission tomography (PET), focusing on the amygdala. Participants viewed positive and negative photographs, as well as interesting and uninteresting neutral photographs, during PET scanning. The left amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex were activated during positive emotion, and bilateral amygdala activation occurred during negative emotion. High-interest, unusual photographs also elicited left-amygdala activation, a finding consistent with suggestions that the amygdala is involved in vigilance reactions to associatively ambiguous stimuli. The current results constitute the first neuroimaging evidence for a role of the amygdala in positive emotional reactions elicited by visual stimuli. Although the amygdala appears to play a more extensive role in negative emotion, it is involved in positive emotion as well.     

An endogenous distributed model of ordering in serial recall

We introduce a distributed model of memory for serial order, called SOB, that produces ordered serial recall by relying on encoding and retrieval processes that are endogenous to the model. SOB explains the basic shape of the serial position curve, the pattern of errors during recall (including the balance between transpositions, omissions, intrusions, and erroneous repetitions), the effects of list length on the distribution of errors, the overall level of recall and response latency, and the effects of natural language frequency on recall performance. In addition, contrary to several recent suggestions, SOB demonstrates that distributed representations can support unambiguous recall, selective response suppression, and novelty-sensitive encoding.     

Identical words are read differently in different languages

It is hypothesized that written languages differ in the preferred grain size of units that emerge during reading acquisition. Smaller units (graphemes, phonemes) are thought to play a dominant role in relatively consistent orthographies (e.g., German), whereas larger units (bodies, rhymes) are thought to be more important in relatively inconsistent orthographies (e.g., English). This hypothesis was tested by having native English and German speakers read identical words and nonwords in their respective languages (zoo-Zoo, sand-Sand, etc.). Although the English participants exhibited stronger body-rhyme effects, the German participants exhibited a stronger length effect for words and nonwords. Thus, identical items were processed differently in different orthographies. These results suggest that orthographic consistency determines not only the relative contribution of orthographic versus phonological codes within a given orthography, but also the preferred grain size of units that are likely to be functional during reading.     

Psychic tonus, body schema and the parietal lobes: a multiple lesion case analysis

The psychic tonus model (Braun and colleagues, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2006) states that the left hemisphere is a "booster" of internal experience and behavior in general, and that the right hemisphere is a "dampener". Twenty-five patients with a "positive" extreme disturbance of body schema (somatoparaphrenia) and 37 patients with a "negative" disturbance of body schema (autotopagnosia or Gerstmann's syndrome), all following a unilateral parietal lesion, were found in the literature and were analyzed to test predictions from Braun's "psychic tonus" model. As expected, patients with a positive syndrome had a right hemisphere lesion significantly more frequently, and those with a negative syndrome had a left hemisphere lesion significantly more frequently. Thus the psychic tonus model of hemispheric specialization, previously supported with regard to psychomotor baseline, libido, talkativeness, memory, auditory and visual perceptual tonus, now incorporates the tonus of representation of the body (body schema) in the parietal lobes.