Personal management of growth: productivity, decision-making, emotion, and social behavior in my senior year.

The writer used self-recording and charting of his own behavior as a way to observe and manage changes during his senior year at high school. The method used has implications for the application of behavior modification technology to self-management, and to behaviors that occur inside an organism's skin. The results have implications for study of the Senior Slump", for college and career planning in high school, for clarifying interpersonal attitudes, and for keeping track of one's emotional well-being.     

Costly authority and transferred responsibility

Philosophical Studies - Revisionist just war theorists maintain that, soldiers, and not merely their leaders or superiors, bear moral responsibility for objectively wrongful harms imposed in...     

Simultaneous motor demands affect decision making under objective risk

Previous studies on factors influencing decision making focused on the effects of additional cognitive load, stress, psychological disorders, and the process of aging. The potential effects of simultaneously performing motor demands have been neglected, so far. However, previous motor / cognitive dual-task studies provide evidence for both negative as well as facilitating effects of simultaneously performing cognitive and motor tasks. The study at hand, aimed to investigate the effects of decision making under objective risk while performing additional motor demands. Seventy-two participants ranging from 18 to 30 years performed the Game of Dice Task either while sitting or while standing on one leg. Participants were asked to put similar effort on the decision task and the motor demand. The results revealed a significant main effect for “choice”, as well as a significant interaction of “choice”?×?“group”. Participants standing on one leg more frequently selected the most disadvantageous choice (one single number), whereas the “sitting group” most often selected the advantageous combination of four numbers. The findings are discussed under the aspects of executive functions, working memory, stress, somatic markers and the dual-process theory.     

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.     

Behavioral lateralization during spontaneous smelling tasks

The smelling behavior of 52 right-handed subjects was videotaped during tasks involving identification and recognition of different odors. Analysis showed that men more often used the right nostril than the left whatever the odor. There was no significant difference for the women. These results support a more marked cerebral asymmetry in men than in women and a main involvement of the right cerebral hemisphere in the olfactory processes at least by right-handed men.