The long‐term effects of institutional rearing,foster care intervention and disruptions in care on brain electrical activity in adolescence

Exposure to early psychosocial deprivation as a result of institutional care disrupts typical brain development. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) is the first longitudinal study to investigate the neurodevelopment of institutionalized infants randomized to a foster care (FCG) intervention versus care as usual (CAUG). Here, we present findings from a follow‐up assessment of brain electrical activity as indexed by resting EEG at age 16 years. In addition, we examined the effects of disruption of foster care placement (e.g. the number of moves among foster care placements) on brain electrical activity. Resting‐state EEG was collected from 48 CAUG, 46 FCG and 48 never institutionalized (NIG) control participants. Absolute (µV²) and relative (proportion) power were computed from eyes closed, resting EEG data for theta, alpha and beta frequency bands. The CAUG displayed higher relative theta and lower relative alpha power compared to the FCG at 16 years of age. The FCG showed brain activity comparable to the NIG. The results further showed that disruptions following the original foster care placement had an adverse effect on brain electrical activity. Within the foster care group, there were no effects of age of placement on EEG power. Placement of children who have experienced early institutional rearing into stable foster care settings ensure long‐term improvement in brain functioning.     

睡眠拖延行为背后的心理生理机制解析

摘 要 睡眠拖延行为是健康行为拖延领域提出的一个新概念,其可概括为在没有外部原因阻碍的情况下,仍无法在预定时间上床睡觉的现象。目前的研究认为睡眠拖延行为是导致普通人群睡眠不足的重要原因,睡前日常活动及沉浸式活动常常诱导其发生,探讨其背后机制主要涉及自我调节和生物节律两大因素。利用时限性自我调节理论可尝试解析睡眠拖延行为的发生过程。未来研究可从其神经机制探讨及预防和干预措施等方面尝试展开。     

趣味性听觉材料对驾驶疲劳的作用：来自EEG的证据

疲劳驾驶是诱发交通事故的重要因素,研究驾驶疲劳的有效干预方法具有重要意义。本研究通过让驾驶员在驾驶模拟器中完成1小时的单调驾驶任务来诱发驾驶疲劳,同时记录驾驶员主观疲劳、驾驶绩效和脑电θ波功率,来探究趣味听觉材料是否可以缓解驾驶疲劳。结果发现,在单调驾驶条件下收听趣味听觉材料的驾驶员脑电θ波功率高于控制组,表明收听趣味听觉材料不利于缓解驾驶疲劳。     

“时间窗”—— 认知加工的后勤基础

时间加工是认知加工的内在属性。因此, 理解发生在知觉或更广泛的认知过程中的时间加工极为重要。为了应对中枢信息加工所面临的外部挑战, 大脑显然已形成了一些用于整合信息的特殊时间窗。已经发现, 其中一个时间窗介于数十毫秒的范围内, 它用于为意识活动产生必要的建构单元。来自反应时、时序阈限以及神经元结构振荡反应的研究为该时间窗的存在提供了实证证据。另一个时间窗的作用范围是2~3秒, 它用于产生“主观现在感”或作为使知觉体的标识保持不变的时间整合区间。支持该窗口存在的实验证据来自时距再现、两可图形、感觉运动同步以及神经生理学研究。还有一种时间窗以昼夜节律的形式存在。所有的心理和生理功能似乎都有着24小时的周期性变化。时间窗的紊乱会以神经或精神疾病的形式表现出来, 这恰恰表明了在基础研究之外对时间加工进行研究的重要性。     

The Role of Physical Activity in the Lives of Researchers: A Body-Narrative

Physical movement as a cohesive rhythmic mediumfor better understanding the qualities of livedexperience, keeps us intimately connected toour selves, others and our environment.Incorporating elements of evocativeautoethnography (Ellis, 1997), this workemploys the implicated reading (Pearce, 1997)of the authors' co-constructed body narrativeas a necessary analytical and representationaldevice for better understanding the embodiedand relational qualities of research. Pullingfrom Dewey's theories of naturalism,qualitative thought, and aesthetics,researchers relive and re-present theirmovement (running) experience as practice forembodied approaches to more authentic research.In the process, researchers discover thatrunning as a shared rhythmical threadilluminated intersections in their lives andtheir research, nurtured universal qualities ofembodied experience often unexplored inresearch, and served as kinesthetic practicefor more fully understanding the contextualqualities of experience that informunderstanding.     

Production of Stress Retraction by Left- and Right-Hemisphere-Damaged Patients

An acoustic-perceptual investigation of a phonological phenomenon in which stress is retracted in double-stressed words (e.g., thirTEEN vs THIRteen MEN) was undertaken to identify the locus of functional impairments in speech prosody. Subjects included left-hemisphere-damaged (LHD) and right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) patients and nonneurological controls. They were instructed to read sentences containing double-stressed target words in the presence of a clause boundary or its absence. Whereas all three groups of subjects were capable of manipulating the acoustic parameters that signal a shift in stress, there were some differences between the performance of the patient groups and that of the normal controls. Further, stress production deficits were more severe in LHD aphasic patients than in RHD patients. LHD speakers exhibited deficits in the control of both temporal and F0 cues. Their F0 disturbance appears to be secondary to a primary deficit in temporal control at the phase or sentence level, as an increased number of continuation rises found for the LHD patients seemed to arise from lengthy pauses within sentences. Findings are highlighted to address the nature of breakdown in speech prosody and the competing views of prosodic lateralization.     

QEEG markers of superior shooting performance in skilled marksmen: An investigation of cortical activity on psychomotor efficiency hypothesis

For elite performers, psychomotor behavior's success or failure can be traced to differences in brain dynamics. The psychomotor efficiency hypothesis suggests refined cortical activity through 1) selective activation of task-relevant processes and 2) inhibition of non-essential processes. The use of electroencephalography (EEG) has been applied to investigate psychomotor performance's neural processes. The EEG markers that reflect an elevation of psychomotor efficiency include left temporal alpha (T3 alpha), frontal midline theta (Fm theta), sensorimotor rhythm (SMR), and the coherence between frontal and left temporal regions. However, the relationship between elite performers' task-relevant and non-essential neural processes is still not well understood. Therefore, this study aimed to explore how each task-relevant and inhibition of non-essential processes contribute to superior psychomotor behavior. Thirty-five highly skilled marksmen were recruited to perform 30 shots in the shooting task while the EEG was recorded. The marksmen were divided into two groups (superior & inferior) based on a median split of shooting performance. The superior group exhibited higher accuracy and precision, with a reduction in movement jerk. EEG measures revealed that the superior group exhibited higher SMR before the trigger pull than the inferior group. In addition, the superior group demonstrated reduced Fz-T3 coherence in their bull's eye shots than the missed shots. These results suggest that the superior group exhibited less effortful engagement of task-relevant processes and lower interference from non-essential cortical regions than the inferior group. The study's overall findings support the psychomotor efficiency hypothesis. When comparing highly skilled performers, the slight differences in brain dynamics ultimately contribute to the success or failure of psychomotor performance.     

Persistent operational synchrony within brain default-mode network and self-processing operations in healthy subjects

Based on the theoretical analysis of self-consciousness concepts, we hypothesized that the spatio-temporal pattern of functional connectivity within the default-mode network (DMN) should persist unchanged across a variety of different cognitive tasks or acts, thus being task-unrelated. This supposition is in contrast with current understanding that DMN activated when the subjects are resting and deactivated during any attention-demanding cognitive tasks. To test our proposal, we used, in retrospect, the results from our two early studies (Fingelkurts, 1998; Fingelkurts et al., 2003). In both studies for the majority of experimental trails we indeed found a constellation of operationally synchronized cortical areas (indexed as DMN) that was persistent across all studied experimental conditions in all subjects. Furthermore, we found three major elements comprising this DMN: two symmetrical occipito-parieto-temporal and one frontal spatio-temporal patterns. This new data directly supports the notion that DMN has a specific functional connotation - it provides neurophysiologic basis for self-processing operations, namely first-person perspective taking and an experience of agency.     

《黄帝内经》时间医学思想对急性心肌梗死时间节律的解释

《黄帝内经》“天人相应”理论比较完备地奠定了中医关于人体生物节律知识的基础,强调人体自然节律与四季日月昼夜节律之间的密切关系。在急性心肌梗死发病呈现显著的时间节律特征,以中医时间学理论进行解释,充分掌握急性心肌梗死发病的规律性,指导高危人群合理作息,减少急性心梗的发生。