The Evangelical Necessity of Creedal Confession in the World of Empire

The author argues that in the world of Empire where greed, violence, and idolatry pervade, the Church is challenged to recognise that it exists to witness to the radical, liberating message of the gospel of the crucified and risen Lord, Jesus Christ. The Church is challenged to recognise and acknowledge how it is a beneficiary of Empire, but that its focus is to be on the Lord Jesus Christ and not the ‘Caesars’ who cannot give the life, healing, and forgiveness that only God can give. Faithfulness to the gospel calls for creedal‐confession that becomes both inevitable and necessary because the church's confession is communal. The community in Christ needs one another in order to be faithful through mutual creedal‐remembering and reminding of the identity of the God of Jesus Christ.     

Pure agraphia in Romaji after left inferior frontal gyrus infarction: A case of selective deficit in syllable-to-grapheme conversion in Japanese

The Japanese writing system employs two distinct categories of characters: Kana and Kanji. The difference between Kana and Kanji writing corresponds roughly to that between phonological and lexical systems in Western languages. When typing, most Japanese use alphabetical characters based purely on phonological rules. In particular, the Romaji system is used, in which a syllable consists of a single vowel, a consonant–vowel compound (e.g., ka, ki), or a sequence of consonant–y(semivowel)–vowel (e.g., kya, kyu). We describe a right-handed Japanese patient who developed pure agraphia that affected Romaji writing but preserved Kana and Kanji writing and who had a lesion in the left pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus that extended to the anterior precentral gyrus. The patient demonstrated literal paragraphia in spelling Romaji across modalities. Our findings suggested that the patient’s agraphia in Romaji after a confined left frontal infarction was manifested by a selective impairment in syllable-to-grapheme conversion.     

慢性应激性抑郁发生中大鼠眶额叶多巴胺D1受体对谷氨酸及其NMDA受体的调节

本文旨在探讨慢性应激性抑郁发生过程中眶额叶多巴胺D1受体对谷氨酸(glutamic acid, Glu)及其N-甲基-D-天冬氨酸(N-methyl-D-aspartic acid, NMDA)受体的NR2B亚基的影响。实验通过建立慢性不可预见性温和应激(chronic unpredictable mild stress, CUMS)抑郁模型, 结合眶额叶微量注射多巴胺D1受体激动剂SKF38393和多巴胺D1受体拮抗剂SCH23390, 运用糖水偏爱测试、悬尾实验和敞箱实验等方法检测动物的行为表现, 采用高效液相色谱法(high-performance liquid chromatography, HPLC)和蛋白质免疫印迹法(Western blot, WB)来检测眶额叶内谷氨酸、多巴胺含量及NR2B和多巴胺D1受体的表达。结果显示, 与对照组相比, CUMS组大鼠表现出明显的抑郁样行为变化, 且眶额叶多巴胺含量降低, 其D1型受体表达降低, 谷氨酸含量升高, 其NMDA受体的NR2B亚基也明显上调; 注射SKF38393后可明显改善应激引起的抑郁样行为, 且眶额叶谷氨酸含量显著下降, NMDA受体的NR2B亚基表达也有所降低; 正常大鼠注射多巴胺D1受体拮抗剂SCH23390, 大鼠表现出和CUMS模型组相似的抑郁样行为, 且眶额叶谷氨酸含量升高, 其NMDA受体的NR2B亚基也明显上调。以上结果表明, 慢性不可预见性应激可能使眶额叶多巴胺释放减少, 从而使谷氨酸过量释放, NMDA受体过度激活, 导致抑郁发生。多巴胺抗抑郁作用是通过D1型受体抑制谷氨酸及其NMDA受体NR2B亚基表达来实现。     

Neural correlates of metonymy resolution

Metonymies are exemplary models for complex semantic association processes at the sentence level. We investigated processing of metonymies using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).During an 1.5 Tesla fMRI scan, 14 healthy subjects (12 female) read 124 short German sentences with either literal (like “Africa is arid”), metonymic (“Africa is hungry”), or nonsense (“Africa is woollen”) content. Sentences were constructed so that they obey certain grammatical, semantic, and plausibility conditions and were matched for word frequency, semantic association, length and syntactic structure. We concentrated on metonymies that were not yet fossilised; we also examined a wide variety of metonymic readings.Reading metonymies relative to literal sentences revealed signal changes in a predominantly left-lateralised fronto-temporal network with maxima in the left and right inferior frontal as well as left middle temporal gyri. Left inferior frontal activation may reflect both inference processes and access to world knowledge during metonymy resolution.     

Frontal EEG alpha band asymmetry as a predictor of reasoning deficiency in depressed people

Cognitive deficits in depression are mostly apparent in executive functions, especially when integration of information and reasoning is required. In parallel, there are also numerous studies pointing to the frontal alpha band asymmetry as a psychophysiological marker of depression. In this study, we explored the role of frontal alpha asymmetry as a potential factor explaining the cognitive problems accompanying depression. Twenty-six depressed and 26 control participants completed a reasoning task and underwent 5 minutes of electroencephalography recording. In line with the previous studies, depressed people showed difficulties with reasoning but we did not observe the relationship between frontal asymmetry in the alpha band and depression. However, we found that in the depressed group the frontal alpha asymmetry index was characterised by larger variance than in the control group, and it was also a strong predictor of cognitive functioning exclusively in the depressed group. Our results point to the disruption of a psychophysiological balance, reflected in changed frontal alpha asymmetry (into more left-sided frontal asymmetry in the alpha band, reflecting more right-sided cortical activity) as a possible brain correlate of cognitive disturbances present in depressive disorders.     

Hemispheric asymmetries in auditory distraction

Serial-verbal short-term memory is impaired by irrelevant sound, particularly when the sound changes acoustically (the changing-state effect). In contrast, short-term recall of semantic information is impaired only by the semanticity of irrelevant speech, particularly when it is semantically related to the target memory items (the between-sequence semantic similarity effect). Previous research indicates that the changing-state effect is larger when the sound is presented to the left ear in comparison to the right ear, the left ear disadvantage. In this paper, we report a novel finding whereby the between-sequence semantic similarity effect is larger when the irrelevant speech is presented to the right ear in comparison to the left ear, but this right ear disadvantage is found only when meaning is the basis of recall (Experiments 1 and 3), not when order is the basis of recall (Experiment 2). Our results complement previous research on hemispheric asymmetry effects in cross-modal auditory distraction by demonstrating a role for the left hemisphere in semantic auditory distraction.     

语义启动效应的脑机制研究综述

文章主要介绍了语义启动的过程及其脑机制的研究进展。启动效应是内隐记忆的研究焦点,而语义启动是通过刺激的语义特征来研究启动效应的。语义启动的脑机制研究一般是通过脑损伤、脑成像和ERPs等方法实现的。研究表明,大脑的广泛区域都参与着语义启动过程,尤其是脑前区和大脑的左半球。     

Parent Education for Migrant Mothers of Left‐Behind Children in China: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Although numerous studies have indicated the significance of parental support and parent–child communication in alleviating the adverse effects of parental departure on left‐behind children, researchers have rarely addressed the impact of parent education on migrant parents. On the basis of the results of a pilot randomized controlled trial, the study reported here involved examining the possible outcomes and feasibility of a parent education program for rural‐to‐urban migrant mothers of left‐behind children in China. Informed by an existential–narrative approach to parent education, the program was composed of six 2.5‐hour sessions. The sample included 56 migrant mothers recruited from a social service center in Shenzhen, China, who were randomly assigned to either the immediate group (n = 28, M = 34.82 years, SD = 4.12, aged 23–43) or the waitlist control group (n = 28, M = 34.68 years, SD = 4.53, aged 28–43). The hypotheses of the trial were twofold: that the program would positively affect participants’ parental identity and that it would improve mother–child relationships and parenting practices. The results revealed no significant difference in parental identity between the intervention group and the waitlist control group at the post‐test assessment after ruling out the effects of pretest survey scores. However, significant differences did emerge in parent–child relationships and parenting practices. Overall, the results corroborate the feasibility of examining the current program for migrant mothers in China in a full trial. The findings also offer insights into developing empirically supported parent education programs for migrant parents.     

语言理解中语义整合的神经机制

语义整合是语言阅读理解中非常重要的环节。随着认知神经科学技术的广泛应用,当前关于语义整合的研究取得了长足进步,各种模型层出不穷。但是不同模型对于语义整合的功能定位及其内在机制却存在较大的争议。本文首先介绍当前关于语义整合的主要模型,然后对当前不同理论模型之间关于语义整合的界定,以及语义整合的功能定位是在额下回还是颞叶的争论进行了分析。我们认为,关于语义整合的实质、语义整合的功能网络将是未来研究的主要方向,相关的研究对于语言理解理论的发展将具有重要的启示。     

SIMPLIFYING HEURISTICS VERSUS CAREFUL THINKING: SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS OF MILLENNIAL SPIRITUAL ISSUES

There is ample evidence that humans (and other primates) possess a knowledge instinct—a biologically driven impulse to make coherent sense of the world at the highest level possible. Yet behavioral decision‐making data suggest a contrary biological drive to minimize cognitive effort by solving problems using simplifying heuristics. Individuals differ, and the same person varies over time, in the strength of the knowledge instinct. Neuroimaging studies suggest which brain regions might mediate the balance between knowledge expansion and heuristic simplification. One region implicated in primary emotional experience is more activated in individuals who use primitive heuristics, whereas two areas of the cortex are more activated in individuals with a strong knowledge drive: one region implicated in detecting risk or conflict and another implicated in generating creative ideas. Knowledge maximization and effort minimization are both evolutionary adaptations, and both are valuable in different contexts. Effort minimization helps us make minor and routine decisions efficiently, whereas knowledge maximization connects us to the beautiful, to the sublime, and to our highest aspirations. We relate the opposition between the knowledge instinct and heuristics to the biblical story of the fall, and argue that the causal scientific worldview is mathematically equivalent to teleological arguments from final causes. Elements of a scientific program are formulated to address unresolved issues.