空间导航的脑网络基础和调控机制

空间导航在生活中时刻发生,空间能力衰退是阿尔兹海默症的重要早期表现。早期关于空间导航神经机制的研究主要关注单个脑区的特异性功能,但这些脑区如何交互以整合不同模态的信息支持复杂导航行为尚不清楚。脑成像技术、脑网络建模方法和神经调控手段的发展,为在脑网络水平理解人类空间导航的认知神经机制提供了重要研究手段。本研究试图融合空间导航认知神经机制研究的最新进展,借助脑网络建模、大数据分析、微电流刺激等前沿研究手段,研究空间导航脑网络的关键拓扑属性特征(如模块化、核心节点等),探寻该功能特异性神经网络的重要影响因素和调控机制,并构建空间导航的脑网络理论模型。研究成果将有利于理解人类复杂导航行为的脑网络基础,为阿尔兹海默症等相关认知障碍脑疾病的筛查和诊断提供重要参考。     

Reducing risk of head injury in youth soccer: An extension of behavioral skills training for heading

Recently, concerns regarding sport-related concussions have increased within the research literature, the media, and popular culture. One potential source of soccer-related concussions involves the purposeful striking of the ball with one's head (i.e., heading). There is currently limited research on an effective teaching method to improve safe heading technique. In the current study, Behavior Skills Training (BST) was evaluated as a method to teach correct heading techniques to youth soccer players. BST increased the percentage of correct steps for each player based on a task analysis of heading. Based on social validity questionnaires administered to players and the coach, BST was rated as an acceptable form of training. After the final training session, experienced coaches rated each player as having improved from baseline to training.     

婴儿的痛觉

婴儿痛觉对婴儿的生长发育有重要意义, 已经日益引发研究者的兴趣。痛觉本质上是一种不愉悦的感官和情绪体验, 是通过早年与伤害有关的经历习得的。在心理学角度, 在介绍婴儿痛觉概念、神经生理机制、评估工具的基础上, 系统梳理痛觉对婴儿生长发育的影响及其影响因素十分必要。后续研究需继续完善婴儿痛觉的测量方法, 考察疼痛反应在不同文化和不同群体间的差异。     

外侧缰核作用于抑郁的神经生理机制

本文旨在梳理国内外有关外侧缰核作用于抑郁神经生理机制的研究成果,以期为今后抑郁研究提供借鉴和参考。首先,阐明了外侧缰核的过度兴奋会加强对下游奖赏中心单胺能脑区的抑制从而诱发抑郁的内在通路。然后,进一步论述了介导外侧缰核过度兴奋的分子机制。最后,未来要重点以人类为被试,采用纵向设计,加强外侧缰核对抑郁的影响、作用机制及其性别差异的研究,同时考察遗传基因和环境在其间的调控效应等问题。     

Centrally elicited aggressive behavior: A model system for the study of episodic neurobehavioral pathologies?

Studies in which the predatory-like attack of a cat upon a rat has been elicited by electrical brain stimulation have been briefly reviewed with an emphasis on the question of where within the central nervous system such brain stimulation is producing its behaviorally meaningful effects. Two opposing but by no means mutually exclusive views are considered. The first is that brain stimulation elicits this behavior pattern primarily because it affects a specific motivated behavior system that is organized discretely in the midbrain and pons. The second is that forebrain neural activity is modulated in behaviorally significant ways by brainstem stimulation, which elicits predatory-like aggressive behavior in the cat. The possibility that further research on the altered state of central nervous system activity, induced by brain stimulation which elicits aggressive behavior in the cat, may lead to a further understanding of the altered states of central nervous system activity that underlie the aggressive dyscontrol syndrome and other episodic state disorders is discussed.     

Explaining neurocognitive aging: is one factor enough?

As an introduction to the special issue on neurocognitive factors underlying age effects, we discuss a number of recent developments in the literature on aging. The classic distinction between generalized and process-specific cognitive changes with old age has reappeared in the distinctions between the frontal lobe hypothesis and more differentiated views of neurocognitive aging. We argue that neurological decay in the frontal cortex has important implications for cognitive control, but that the frontal lobe hypothesis does not capture the plethora of changes that characterize aging and incorrectly suggests a unitary effect.     

What We Owe to the Global Poor

This essay defends an account of the duties to the global poor that is informed by the empirical question of what makes countries rich or poor, and that tends to be broadly in agreement with John Rawlss account in The Law of Peoples. I begin by introducing the debate about the sources of growth and explore its implications for duties towards the poor. Next I explore whether (and deny that) there are any further-reaching duties towards the poor. Finally, I ask about the moral foundations for the duties to the poor of the sort that earlier parts argue there are.     

Do Patriotic Ties Limit Global Justice Duties?

Some theorists who accept the existence of global justice duties to alleviate the condition of distant needy strangers hold that these duties are significantly constrained by special ties to fellow countrymen. The patriotic priority thesis holds that morality requires the members of each nation-state to give priority to helping needy fellow compatriots over more needy distant strangers. Three arguments for constraint and patriotic priority are examined in this essay: an argument from fair play, one from coercion, another from coercion and autonomy. Under scrutiny, none of these arguments qualifies as successful.     

Transcranial magnetic stimulation as a tool for cognitive studies

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a tool for the non-invasive stimulation of the human brain. It allows the activation of arbitrary sites of the superficial cortex and, combined with other brain-imaging techniques such as EEG, PET, and fMRI, it can be used to evaluate cortical excitability and connectivity. This is of major importance in, for example, the study of cognitive processes such as language, learning, memory and self-representation, which are thought to be represented in multiple brain areas. The mechanisms of action of TMS are known on a basic level, but its effect on the activation state of brain tissue is still poorly understood. Clinical applications of TMS have also been proposed and guidelines for its safe use drafted.     

Global Inequality and International Institutions

This article considers the links between international institutions and global economic justice: how international institutions might be morally important; how they have changed; and at what those changes imply for justice. The institutional structure of international society has evolved in ways that help to undercut the arguments of those who take a restrictionist position towards global economic justice. There is now a denser and more integrated network of shared institutions and practices within which social expectations of global justice and injustice have become more securely established. But, at the same time, our major international social institutions continue to constitute a deformed political order. This combination of density and deformity shapes how we should think about international justice in general and has important implications for the scope, character, and modalities of global economic justice. Having laid out a view of normative development and where it leads, the article then examines why international distributive justice remains so marginal to current practice.