As shown in our previous paper (‘Regression I. Experimental approaches to regression’, JAP, 65, 2, 345-65), the common mechanism of regression can be described as reversible dedifferentiation, which is understood as a relative increase of the proportion of low-differentiated (older) systems in actualized experience. Experimental data show that regression following disease (chronic tension headache) is followed by adaptation and an increase in system differentiation in that experience domain which contains systems responsible for that adaptation. The results of mathematical modelling support the idea that reversible dedifferentiation can be one of the mechanisms for increasing the effectiveness of adaptation through learning. Reversible dedifferentiation, which is phenomenologically described as regression, is a general mechanism for restructuring the organism-environment interactions in situations where behaviours that were effective in the past become ineffective. Reversible dedifferentiation has evolved as a component of adaptation when new behaviours are formed and large-scale modifications in the existing behaviours are required in the face of changes in the external and/or internal environment. Thus, the authors believe that this article provides evidence for Jung’s view that regression is not only a ‘return’ to past forms of thinking, affects and behaviour, but that regressive processes provide a significant impetus for psychological growth and development. 相似文献
Language abilities in early childhood show stability over time and play an important role in the development of other cognitive processes. Identifying modifiable environmental risk factors is important to informing prevention and early intervention efforts. Maternal verbal ability has been previously linked to child verbal ability. The current study examined whether maternal and child verbal abilities were linked indirectly through early childhood maternal responsiveness. Data come from a longitudinal birth cohort study. Participants included 133 mothers and their children recruited from maternity wards shortly after birth. Maternal verbal ability was measured using the Vocabulary subtest from the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, Second Edition (child age 8 months). Child verbal ability was assessed using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (36 months). A latent maternal responsiveness variable was estimated using three developmentally sensitive indicators; one during infancy (child age 8 months) and two when children were 36 months. Results of a structural equation model indicated a significant indirect effect from maternal verbal abilities to child verbal abilities through maternal responsiveness. This indirect path was significant even after inclusion of another indirect path from maternal executive functioning to child verbal ability through maternal responsiveness (which was not significant). Future studies will benefit from experimental, genetically sensitive and/or cross‐lagged designs to allow for conclusions related to directionality and causality. This body of research has implications for the study of the intergenerational transmission of verbal abilities and associated skills, behaviours and adaptive outcomes. 相似文献
As more and more people realize that wealth fails to fully capture the essence of human well-being, interest in non-monetary measures of well-being has intensified. Eudaimonic well-being (EWB; i.e., optimal psychosocial functioning) is a largely overlooked aspect of national well-being that has never been examined at the global level. This study uses data from nearly 1,800,000 respondents recruited probabilistically from 166 countries between the years of 2005 and 2017 to construct an index of EWB. EWB demonstrates moderate positive associations with other quality-of-life indicators (i.e., national life satisfaction, national prosperity, overall quality of life, and gross domestic product), indicating that it captures information not reflected by them. The distribution of EWB at national, regional, and global levels, as well as its global trend, is explored. The study also examines the relationships between EWB and a number of theoretically related individual- and country-level variables. Presented are also the results of multilevel modelling including a wide range of predictors. 相似文献
Integrity of both cerebral hemispheres is required to control in-phase or anti-phase coupling of ipsilateral hand and foot oscillations, as shown by the impairment of these tasks when performed on the healthy side of hemiplegic patients. On this basis, coupling of hand–foot movements was analysed in a right-handed subject (ME) who underwent a total resection of the corpus callosum. Oscillations of the prone hand and foot, paced by a metronome at different frequencies, as well as EMG activity in extensor carpi radialis (ECR) and tibialis anterior (TA) muscles were analysed by measuring the average phase difference between the hand and foot movements and EMG cycles.
ME performed in-phase movements (right-hand extension coupled to right-foot dorsal flexion) at frequencies up to 3 Hz, though the hand cycle progressively lagged the foot cycle as the frequency increased. At 3 Hz the hand lag reached −142° (as compared to about 25° in healthy subjects). The lag increased even further after application of an inertial load to the hand, reaching 180° at 1.8 Hz (about 50° in healthy subjects). ME's hand lag is caused by the lack of any anticipatory reaction in hand movers. In contrast to healthy subjects, which activate the ECR earlier than the TA when the frequency increases, ME activated the ECR later than TA at all frequencies higher than 0.9 Hz.
Anti-phase movements (hand extension coupled to foot plantar flexion) were performed only upto 1 Hz in unloaded conditions. At 0.6 Hz, movements were in tight phase-opposition (3°), but at 1 Hz, the hand lag reached −34° because of a delayed ECR activation. After hand loading ME was unable to couple movements in anti-phase. In contrast, normal subjects maintain a tight anti-phase coupling up to 2.0 Hz, both with an unloaded or loaded hand. Similar deficits were observed by ME when performing in-phase and anti-phase coupling on the left side, as well as when he was blindfolded.
In normal subjects, an anticipated muscular activation of hand movers compensates for hand loading. Since this compensation must depend on monitoring the hand delay induced by loading, the absence in ME of such compensatory reaction suggests that callosal division had apparently compromised the mechanisms sustaining feedback compensation for differences in the biomechanical limb properties. They also confirm and reinforce the idea that elaboration of the afferent message, aiming at controlling the phase of the movement association, needs the co-operation of both cerebral hemispheres. 相似文献
A Hebrew adaptation of Gardner and Brownell's (1986) "Right Hemisphere Communication Battery" (HRHCB) was administered to 27 right brain-damaged (RBD) patients, 31 left brain-damaged (LBD) patients, and 21 age-matched normal controls. Both patient groups showed deficits relative to controls and overall there was no difference between the two patient groups. A factor analysis of patients' scores on the HRHCB yielded two interpretable factors, a verbal and a nonverbal one. These factors were not lateralized. Performance of patients on the HRHCB correlated significantly and positively with performance on most tests of basic language functions, measured with a Hebrew adaptation of the "Western Aphasia Battery" (HWAB) and with other cognitive functions measured with standardized neuropsychological tests. There were stronger correlations of HRHCB with subtests of the HWAB in LBD patients and with nonlanguage cognitive tests in RBD patients. In the LBD group, HRHCB subtests' scores correlated negatively with lesion extent in frontal and temporal perisylvian regions. Such localization was not observed in RBD patients. The results argue against selective right hemisphere (RH) involvement in the RHCB, alleged to measure pragmatic aspects of language use, and show, instead, bilateral involvement. The results also argue against a modular organization of these functions of language use, especially in the RH. 相似文献
This article discusses age-related changes in brain weight, total number of cortical neurons, cortical dendrites, spine, and synapse density. The conclusion is that the present outlook is less grim than it was 30 years ago. Age-related reduction appears to be specific to brain region and cortical layer rather than a general feature. In addition, we describe a different pattern of changes that occur in Alzheimer's disease patients. This review concludes that the association cortices in particular are affected in aging and Alzheimer's disease and that the primary visual and somatosensory cortices are relatively spared. 相似文献
This essay argues that Japan's resistance to the practice of transplanting organs from persons deemed "brain dead" may not be the result, as some claim, of that society's religions being not yet sufficiently expressive of love and altruism. The violence to the body necessary for the excision of transplantable organs seems to have been made acceptable to American Christians at a unique historical "window of opportunity" for acceptance of that new form of medical technology. Traditional reserve about corpse mutilation had weakened and, especially as presented by the theologian Joseph Fletcher, organ donation was touted as both expressive of agape and a way of "updating" Christianity via the ethics of Utilitarianism. Many Japanese, largely Buddhist and Confucian in their orientation, view these changed valorizations as neither necessary nor patently more ethical than those of their own traditions. 相似文献
Accumulating epidemiological evidence implicates traumatic brain injury as a pathogenic agent in the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Considering the increase in the prevalence of both traumatic brain injury and AD in recent times, the possibility that brain trauma may provoke the early development of AD has important implications for health service planning, preventative efforts, and medico-legal compensation settlements. This paper evaluates the plausibility of the proposed link between traumatic brain injury and AD, largely by way of exploring a theoretical perspective advanced by Satz (1993) and considering recent contributions from the epidemiological, neuropathological, and biochemical literature that are pertinent to this issue. The literature reviewed provides sufficient support and empirical vindication to give credence to the proposed association between these two neuropsychological entities at the statistical, theoretical, and biological level. 相似文献