Neuroticism and extraversion are associated with amygdala resting-state functional connectivity

The personality traits neuroticism and extraversion are differentially related to socioemotional functioning and susceptibility to affective disorders. However, the neurobiology underlying this differential relationship is still poorly understood. This discrepancy could perhaps best be studied by adopting a brain connectivity approach. Whereas the amygdala has repeatedly been linked to neuroticism and extraversion, no study has yet focused on the intrinsic functional architecture of amygdala-centered networks in relation to both traits. To this end, seed-based correlation analysis was employed to reveal amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and its associations with neuroticism and extraversion in 50 healthy participants. Higher neuroticism scores were associated with increased amygdala RSFC with the precuneus, and decreased amygdala RSFC with the temporal poles, insula, and superior temporal gyrus (p < .05, cluster corrected). Conversely, higher extraversion scores were associated with increased amygdala RSFC with the putamen, temporal pole, insula, and several regions of the occipital cortex (p < .05, cluster corrected). The shifts in amygdala RSFC associated with neuroticism may relate to the less-adaptive perception and processing of self-relevant and socioemotional information that is frequently seen in neurotic individuals, whereas the amygdala RSFC pattern associated with extraversion may relate to the heightened reward sensitivity and enhanced socioemotional functioning in extraverts. We hypothesize that the variability in amygdala RSFC observed in the present study could potentially link neuroticism and extraversion to the neurobiology underlying increased susceptibility or resilience to affective disorders.     

Familiality of mood repair responses among youth with and without histories of depression

Affect regulation skills develop in the context of the family environment, wherein youths are influenced by their parents', and possibly their siblings', regulatory responses and styles. Regulatory responses to sadness (mood repair) that exacerbate or prolong dysphoria (maladaptive mood repair) may represent one way in which depression is transmitted within families. We examined self-reported adaptive and maladaptive mood repair responses across cognitive, social and behavioural domains in Hungarian 11- to 19-year-old youth and their parents. Offspring included 214 probands with a history of childhood-onset depressive disorder, 200 never depressed siblings and 161 control peers. Probands reported the most problematic mood repair responses, with siblings reporting more modest differences from controls. Mood repair responses of parents and their offspring, as well as within sib-pairs, were related, although results differed as a function of the regulatory response domain. Results demonstrate familiality of maladaptive and adaptive mood repair responses in multiple samples. These familial associations suggest that relationships with parents and siblings within families may impact the development of affect regulation in youth.     

EPIGENETICS,REPRESENTATION, AND SOCIETY

In recent decades, advances in the life sciences have created an unprecedentedly detailed picture of heredity and the formation of the phenotype where clusters of simplistic reductionist and deterministic views and interpretations have begun to lose ground to more complex and holistic notions. The developments in gene regulation and epigenetics have become a vivid emblem of the ongoing ‘softening’ of heredity. Despite this headway, the outlook and rhetoric widely popular in the twentieth century favoring the ‘gene’ in the ‘gene?genetic plasticity?phenotype?environment’ tetrad have not been successfully tackled but continue to exist in parallel with a new, equally monochromatic, viewpoint championing genetic plasticity. An examination of epigenetics and its presentation in the public sphere, open to a conversation with the social disciplines and philosophy, could address this dichotomy and contribute to the discourse. This article outlines key biological aspects of epigenetics and discusses the language, presentation and wider resonance of this field of life science research.     

Developmental relations between depressive symptoms, minor hassles, and major events from adolescence through age 30 years

Stress generation and stress exposure models of the relations among depressive symptoms, minor hassles, and major event stress were investigated among 815 community-dwelling participants. Autoregressive latent trajectory models were constructed to examine latent growth patterns from ages 15 years to 30 years and to test 1-year lagged, reciprocal paths between depressive symptoms and stress constructs. Results indicated significant cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between depressive symptoms and both stress constructs at the latent level. At the manifest level, lagged paths from hassles at 1 year to depressive symptoms at the next year were significant between ages 17 years and 24 years. Significant cross-sectional paths between major events and depressive symptoms were found between ages 24 years and 28 years, and modest support was found for lagged paths from depressive symptoms to major events 1 year later. Findings generally suggest a high degree of covariation in depressive symptoms and stress concurrently and over time. One-year lagged predictive effects net of the associations between individuals' latent trajectories appear to be weak, constrained to specific time periods, and most consistent with a stress exposure effect of hassles on depressive symptoms.     

The World War against the spirit of Immanuel Kant: philosophical Germanophobia in Russia in 1914–1915 and the birth of cultural racism

During the First World War the radical nationalist sentiments were widespread in different European countries involved in military activities, including the Russian Empire. In Russia this rise united the features of Russian ethnonationalism and imperial enthusiasm. The Russian philosopher Vladimir Ern (1882–1917) in his article “From Kant to Krupp” (1914) attempted “to ground” the hostility between Russia and its allies, on the one hand, and Germany, on the other hand. This attempt turned Ern’s article into one of the earliest manifestoes of cultural racism in Russia, maybe the very first one. Discussing this article in the context of other works by Ern of 1910–1917, one can see that Ern applied Friedrich Nietzsche’s genealogical method for the political interpretation of “the problem of technology” causing the aggressive approach to the human’s environment. Nevertheless, Ern’s cultural racism and aggressive rhetoric blocked further development and even reception of his methodological innovations. The psychological compensatory pragmatic of his rhetoric seems to resemble the analogical function of rigid opposition between “Russia” and “West” in speeches of contemporary Russia’s official ideologues.     

Hegel’s political philosophy and the social imaginary of early Russian realism

This article considers aspects of the social imaginary underlying early Russian realist thought and narrative by exploring two canonical novels from the 1840s, Ivan Gon?arov’s Obyknovennaja istorija and Aleksandr Gercen’s Kto vinovat?, in light of Vissarion Belinskij’s activist reception of Hegel’s political philosophy. The Russian texts are read symptomatically against their western counterparts as illustrating the intriguing transformations that dominant European models of narrative and sociality undergo as they migrate to Russia.     

当代认识论中的跨学科观念

当代（或非古典）认识论是靠若干关键词获得其资格。其中最为重要的有：“建构主义”、“语境主义”、“自然主义”、“话语”以及“跨学科性”。对于最后一个词以及与之相关的方法论的理解构成了本文的主题,文中将讨论认识论与社会人文学相互作用的方法与形式。     

Notes on selective influence, probabilistic causality, and probabilistic dimensionality

The paper provides conceptual clarifications for the issues related to the dependence of jointly distributed systems of random entities on external factors. This includes the theory of selective influence as proposed in Dzhafarov [(2003a). Selective influence through conditional independence. Psychometrika, 68, 7-26] and generalized versions of the notions of probabilistic causality [Suppes, P., & Zanotti, M. (1981). When are probabilistic explanations possible? Synthese, 48, 191-199] and dimensionality in the latent variable models [Levine, M. V. (2003). Dimension in latent variable models. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 47, 450-466]. One of the basic observations is that any system of random entities whose joint distribution depends on a factor set can be represented by functions of two arguments: a single factor-independent source of randomness and the factor set itself. In the case of random variables (i.e., real-valued random entities endowed with Borel sigma-algebras) the single source of randomness can be chosen to be any random variable with a continuous distribution (e.g., uniformly distributed between 0 and 1).     

What Form of Historical Consciousness Should Schools Impart?

Studies in Philosophy and Education - In this essay, I ask what form of historical consciousness schools should nurture in students. The two criteria I set up in this regard are...     

An item response theory analysis of the Problem Gambling Severity Index

Increases in the availability of gambling heighten the need for a short screening measure of problem gambling. The Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) is a brief measure that allows for the assessment of characteristics of gambling behavior and severity and its consequences. The authors evaluate the psychometric properties of the PGSI using item response theory methods in a representative sample of the urban adult population in South Africa (N = 3,000). The PGSI items were evaluated for differential item functioning (DIF) due to language translation. DIF was not detected. The PGSI was found to be unidimensional, and use of the nominal categories model provided additional information at higher values of the underlying construct relative to a simpler binary model. This study contributes to the growing literature supporting the PGSI as the screen of choice for assessing gambling problems in the general population.