Making Group Brainstorming More Effective: Recommendations From an Associative Memory Perspective

Much literature on group brainstorming has found it to be less effective than individual brainstorming. However, a cognitive perspective suggests that group brainstorming could be an effective technique for generating creative ideas. Computer simulations of an associative memory model of idea generation in groups suggest that groups have the potential to generate ideas that individuals brainstorming alone are less likely to generate. Exchanging ideas by means of writing or computers, alternating solitary and group brainstorming, and using heterogeneous groups appear to be useful approaches for enhancing group brainstorming.     

Imagery and olfactory stimulation

The purpose of the present study was to investigate a possible odor-emotion interaction by determining whether humans could differentially detect other humans' odor collected under varying emotional conditions. Odorants were collected from the axillary apocrine glands of four female donors, each of whom underwent different imagery induction procedures of anxiety, relaxation, and sexual arousal. The odorants were chemically preserved and later evaluated by 16 naive white male judges as to the presence of discriminatory odor cues. Judges' imagery was differentially related to the anxiety imagery-produced odorants but only for those produced by the most imaginative donors. The relaxation odorants of all donors were correlated. The judges were unable to detect the sexual imagery arousal odorants.     

ATTENTION TRAINING: THE USE OF OVERCORRECTION AVOIDANCE TO INCREASE THE EYE CONTACT OF AUTISTIC AND RETARDED CHILDREN

A crucial first step in teaching and training the retarded and autistic is to develop and maintain eye contact with the therapist. Functional movement training (an overcorrection procedure) plus edibles and praise were compared with edibles and praise alone as a method of developing eye contact in three such children. In both conditions, the child was given food and praise when eye contact occurred within 5 sec of the therapist's verbal prompt: “Look at me.” Functional movement training avoidance plus edibles and praise produced about 90% attention for the three children, while edibles and praise alone were less effective (eye contact never exceeded 55%). Functional movement training avoidance combined with edibles and praise appears to be an effective method of teaching eye contact and possibly other forms of instruction-following to behaviorally disordered children who are not always responsive to positive consequences.     

Food and intracranial stimulation responding suppressed with regular-interval shock.

Attenuation of conditioned suppression during intracranial stimulation was compared with that during food reinforcement. Response rates controlled by food and by brain stimulation were equalized on a multiple schedule by adjusting the stimulating current. When foot shock was delivered during timeout periods separating response components, responding for food was significantly more suppressed than responding for brain stimulation. When components were shortened from 10 to 2 minutes, responding maintained by either food or brain stimulation showed a similar temporal pattern of suppression preceding each shock, but responding in the component involving food remained significantly more suppressed. Explanations for the attenuated suppression during brain stimulation based on neural disruption, stimulus blocking, and analgesic properties were questioned. The increased responding during brain stimulation seemed to reflect greater response strength relative to food reinforced responding.     

“生生”、“感通”、“偕行”——《易传》的天人共生哲学

天人问题是中国哲学的基本问题,天人的基本含义之一相当于我们现在通常说的自然与人;基本含义之二是视天人为有德性(道德)的、有能动性的动态的、协调的存在。中国哲学中的这种天人观在《易传》中表现为"生生"——"感通"——"偕行"的天人共生态。《易传》既将天人视为一个"生生不息"的自然的生命有机体,又充分发掘天人的德性,并使二者相资相长,"日新之谓盛德,生生之谓易",天地人各有其位,各尽其能,各循其道,"各正性命",一体偕行,共生共存共荣。     

Input-specific long-term potentiation in the rat lateral amygdala of horizontal slices

Long-term potentiation (LTP) at input synapses to the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA) is a candidate mechanism for memory storage during fear learning. Cellular mechanisms of LTP have been nearly exclusively investigated in coronal brain slices. In our experiments, we used a horizontal brain slice preparation of rats that preserved most of the connections to cortical areas and the hippocampus. The stimulation electrodes were located either within the external capsule (EC) or the LA. The aim of the present study was to investigate the mechanisms of LTP induced either by weak theta burst stimulation (TBS) or strong high frequency stimulation (HFS) using the two different stimulation sites. Whereas both TBS and HFS of afferences running through the LA induced stable LTP, TBS failed to induce LTP of EC-inputs to the LA. The present findings also show that LTP in the LA exhibits vulnerability at different time windows after induction. The time window was dependent on the kind of stimulated afferences. Later LTP becomes resistant to disruption by low frequency stimulation. We could show that both used inputs depended on NMDA receptors for LTP-induction. LTP induced by stimulation of fibers within the LA was not altered by nifedipine (10 microM). In contrast, EC-induced LTP was dependent on L-type voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCC). Finally, we found a higher magnitude of LTP in females using TBS, whereas HFS did not cause gender-specific differences. Our study supports the conclusion that the form of LA-LTP depend on which afferences are activated and what pattern of stimulation is used to induce LTP.     

Enhancing Creativity With Combined Transcranial Direct Current and Random Noise Stimulation of the Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex and Inferior Frontal Gyrus

Creativity is a fundamental human accomplishment from scientific advances to composing music. The left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) are important metacontrol hubs in flexibility and persistence brain states, respectively. Those hubs are related to divergent thinking, insight problem-solving, and convergent thinking. In this double-blind, between-subjects study, 81 healthy participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups (n = 27) that received a combined transcranial direct current stimulation–transcranial random noise stimulation (tDCS-tRNS) protocol with the anode over the left DLPFC and cathode over the left IFG (+DLPFC−IFG), the opposite montage (−DLPFC+IFG), and a sham group (+DLPFC−IFG). Both active tDCS-tRNS groups received 20 min of 1 mA tDCS with 1 mA (100–500 Hz) tRNS. Creativity was assessed before (baseline) and during stimulation with the Unusual Uses, Picture Completion (PC), Remote Association test (RAT), Matchstick Arithmetic (MA), and Nine-dot (ND) problems. Only the +DLPFC−IFG group had significantly higher scores compared with sham in the RAT (p = .009), PC fluency (p = .018), PC originality (p = .007), ND (p = .007), and MA (p = .032). Overall, −DLPFC+IFG had greater scores in all creativity tests compared with sham. Implications from the metacontrol theory are discussed.     

鼻腔流场数值模拟与鼻声反射相关性研究

探讨应用鼻声反射测量评估基于CT图像的三维重建人体鼻腔模型的可靠性,并用有限元方法对模型的流场进行数值模拟。基于志愿者CT医学图像,用表面重建的方法对人体鼻腔进行三维重建,并用有限元方法对腔体中气体的流动进行数值模拟及分析;采用鼻声反射仪测试得到志愿者鼻声反射曲线,分别提取并对比两种方法得到的鼻腔多个轴向横截面面积数据。结果显示。两种方法得到的数据有很好的吻合。由此得出结论,所建模型较真实的反映了鼻腔实际解剖结构形态。数值模拟结果可靠,对临床上呼吸道解剖结构与功能相关疾病的诊断、发病机理的深入探讨具有参考价值。