Communication patterns in pedodontics.

This investigation examined communication patterns between 16 randomly selected senior dental students and their child patients. Interactions were videotaped during a regular treatment appointment and analyzed according to four Practitioner Communication categories and four Child Cooperation categories. Communication categories included Directive Guidance Behavior, Permissive Behavior, Coercive Behavior, and Other Behavior. Child behavior categories included Cooperation, Resistance, Noncooperation, and Other. The probability that a given category of child's behavior would follow a given category of practitioner's behavior was calculated. Results indicated a .85 probability that Directive Guidance would be followed by Cooperation; a .67 probability that Permissiveness would lead to Noncooperation; and a .97 likelihood that Coerciveness would lead to either Noncooperation or Resistance. Practitioners' confidence was also considered; less confident operators account for 95% of the Coercive behaviors, 86% of Permissive behaviors and 87% of Uncooperative behaviors.     

McEwen-Induced Modulation of Endocrine History: A Partial Review

In endless facets of physiology, there are points of homeostatic balance, such that too much or too litttle of something can both be deleterious (i.e., an "inverse U" pattern). This is particularly true when considering glucocorticoids (GCs), the adrenals steroid secreted during stress. In the first part of this paper, I review a number of realms in which a paucity and an excess of GCs are both damaging. Some findings are classical (for example, concerning GC effects upon body weight), while some are quite recent and have considerable implications for both physiology and pathophysiology (for example, inverse U's of GC actions in the realm of immunity and neuronal survival). The second part of the review considers the far thornier issue of how such inverse U's of GC actions are generated on a cellular and molecular level. One solution that has evolved, primarily in the hippocampus within the nervous system, involves the presence of two different types of receptors for GCs within the same cells; so long as the two receptors have very different affinities and mediate opposing effects on some cellular endpoint, an inverse U will emerge. The second solution, found in a number of peripheral tissues, involves GCs having opposing effects on the amount of some signal being generated (e.g., an immune cytokine) and the sensitivity of target tissues to that signal; under conditions that appear to be physiologically relevant, inverse U's emerge from this pattern as well. The final section of this review considers the enormous role played by Bruce McEwen in the emergence of this literature. I suggest that while much of this obviously has to do with the facts that have come from his group, another substantial contribution is from his steadying and supportive personality, the veritable embodiment of homeostatic balance.     

Crewmember performance before, during, and after spaceflight

The development of technologies for monitoring the welfare of crewmembers is a critical requirement for extended spaceflight. Behavior analytic methodologies provide a framework for studying the performance of individuals and groups, and brief computerized tests have been used successfully to examine the impairing effects of sleep, drug, and nutrition manipulations on human behavior. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the feasibility and sensitivity of repeated performance testing during spaceflight. Four National Aeronautics and Space Administration crewmembers were trained to complete computerized questionnaires and performance tasks at repeated regular intervals before and after a 10-day shuttle mission and at times that interfered minimally with other mission activities during spaceflight. Two types of performance, Digit-Symbol Substitution trial completion rates and response times during the most complex Number Recognition trials, were altered slightly during spaceflight. All other dimensions of the performance tasks remained essentially unchanged over the course of the study. Verbal ratings of Fatigue increased slightly during spaceflight and decreased during the postflight test sessions. Arousal ratings increased during spaceflight and decreased postflight. No other consistent changes in rating-scale measures were observed over the course of the study. Crewmembers completed all mission requirements in an efficient manner with no indication of clinically significant behavioral impairment during the 10-day spaceflight. These results support the feasibility and utility of computerized task performances and questionnaire rating scales for repeated measurement of behavior during spaceflight.     

The “EA brief”: A single session of parent feedback and coaching to improve emotional attachment and emotional availability (EA)

The goal of this study was to determine the extent to which a brief parenting intervention provided the context for helping families to support positive mother–child interactions as well as more optimal mother and child outcomes. Participants in this study were middle income mothers and their children were between 0–3 years of age (N = 25 dyads). Participants were filmed via Skype during a 20-minute mother–child free play and completed questionnaires (Time 1) before attending the brief intervention (involving: a single session of one-on-one parent feedback and coaching, and information via group meeting, texts, and reading) followed by a repeat of the 20-minute Skype interaction and the completion of the same questionnaires (Time 2). Paired samples t-tests were performed, revealing that mothers reported improvements in their personal well-being (using the Flourishing Scale), reports about the mother-child relationship (using the Emotional Availability Self Report), and observed interactions, particularly the child's side of the relationship (using the Emotional Availability System), from pretest to posttest. Results are discussed in terms of a single session of parent feedback and coaching (in conjunction with an informational group session and texts) potentially having a role in “planting a seed” for observed and self-reported parenting enhancement and child development.     

Developmental and sex-related differences in preschoolers' affective decision making

This study investigated developmental and sex-related differences in affective decision making, using a two-deck version of Children's Gambling Task administered to 3- and 4-year-old children. The main findings were that 4-year-old children displayed better decision-making performance than 3-year-olds. This effect was independent of developmental changes in inductive reasoning, language, and working memory. There were also sex differences in decision-making performance, which were apparent only in 3-year-old children and favored girls. Moreover, age predicted awareness of task and the correlation between the latter and decision-making performance was significant, but only in 4-year-old children. This study thus indicates that there is a remarkable developmental leap in affective decision making, whose effects are apparent around the age of 4, which according to our results, also marks the age when the correlation of declarative knowledge and decision-making performance becomes significant.     

Choice between food and heroin: effects of morphine, naloxone, and secobarbital.

Baboons responded on a choice task on which discrete trials involved choosing between an intravenous injection of heroin (.32 or 1.0 mg/kg) or the availability of food pellets. An intertrial interval of three hours followed the completion of each trial. Under baseline conditions baboons consistently completed the eight available trials each day. Typically, animals chose heroin on three or four trials a day and food on the remaining trials. Animals tended to space the selection of heroin rather than choosing heroin on consecutive trials. A series of single-day experimental manipulations was undertaken to characterize performance further. Manipulation of the heroin dose produced shifts in the relative frequency of choosing the drug option which were inversely related to dose. Manipulation of number of pellets per food trial produced little change in distribution of choices. Noncontingent administration of morphine produced dose-related decreases in relative frequency of heroin choices, and a higher dose decreased the number of trials completed. Noncontingent naloxone produced dose-related increases in the relative frequency of heroin choices. Noncontingent secobarbital had no effect on distribution of choices, and high doses reduced the number of trials completed per day. The results suggest that morphine and naloxone produce shifts in this choice behavior by selectively interacting with the reinforcing properties of the option involving heroin.     

Stress, Glucocorticoids, and Damage to the Nervous System: The Current State of Confusion

An extensive literature demonstrates that glucocorticoids (GCs), the adrenal steroids secreted during stress, can have a broad range of deleterious effects in the brain. The actions occur predominately, but not exclusively, in the hippocampus, a structure rich in corticosteroid receptors and particularly sensitive to GCs. The first half of this review considers three types of GC effects: a) GC-induced atrophy, in which a few weeks' exposure to high GC concentrations or to stress causes reversible atrophy of dendritic processes in the hippocampus; b) GC neurotoxicity where, over the course of months, GC exposure kills hippocampal neurons; c) GC neuroendangerment, in which elevated GC concentrations at the time of a neurological insult such as a stroke or seizure impairs the ability of neurons to survive the insult. The second half considers the rather confusing literature as to the possible mechanisms underlying these deleterious GC actions. Five broad themes are discerned: a) that GCs induce a metabolic vulnerability in neurons due to inhibition of glucose uptake; b) that GCs exacerbate various steps in a damaging cascade of glutamate excess, calcium mobilization and oxygen radical generation. In a review a number of years ago, I concluded that these two components accounted for the deleterious GC effects. Specifically, the energetic vulnerability induced by GCs left neurons metabolically compromised, and less able to carry out the costly task of containing glutamate, calcium and oxygen radicals. More recent work has shown this conclusion to be simplistic, and GC actions are shown to probably involve at least three additional components: c) that GCs impair a variety of neuronal defenses against neurologic insults; d) that GCs disrupt the mobilization of neurotrophins; e) that GCs have a variety of electrophysiological effects which can damage neurons. The relevance of each of those mechanisms to GC-induced atrophy, neurotoxicity and neuroendangerment is considered, as are the likely interactions among them.