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Categorization skills in infants.

The prototypical category-learning experiences with which infants are confronted are ones in which they have had prior experience with and have clearly noted the differences among a set of objects. Their task, then, is to notice also the similarities among the objects and to form a category based on these similarities. The goals of the current experiments were to create a laboratory situation in which it was clear that 10-month-old infants were distinguishing one category exemplar from another, and then to determine the structure of the category representation the infants developed under these learning conditions. A set of artificially created face stimuli was used in which the mean and modal prototypes were distinct. The infants' performance could not be explained by the context theory; they appear to have retained a count of the feature values observed during study. These data give support to the claim that prior to language, infants have available strategies for abstracting category-level information from their perceptual experiences with discriminable objects and events.

Attention↗

The enigma of conditioned taste aversion learning: stimulus properties of 2-phenylethylamine derivatives.

The functional aversive stimulus properties of several IP doses of (+/-)-amphetamine (1.25-10 mg.kg-1), 2-phenylethylamine (PEA, 2.5-10 mg.kg-1, following inhibition of monoamine oxidase with pargyline 50 mg.kg-1) and phenylethanolamine (6.25-50 mg.kg-1) were measured with the conditioned taste aversion (CTA) paradigm. A two-bottle choice procedure was used, water vs. 0.1 % saccharin with one conditioning trial and three retention trials. (+/-)-Amphetamine and phenylethanolamine induced a significant conditioned taste aversion but PEA did not. (+/-)-Amphetamine and PEA increased spontaneous locomotor activity but phenylethanolamine had no effects on this measure. Measurement of whole brain levels of these drugs revealed that the peak brain elevation of PEA occurred at approximately 10 min whereas the peak elevations of (+/-)-amphetamine and phenylethanolamine occurred at approximately 20 min. The present failure of PEA to elicit conditioned taste aversion learning is consistent with previous reports for this compound. The differential functional aversive stimulus effects of these three compounds are surprising since they exhibit similar discriminative stimulus properties and both (+/-)-amphetamine and PEA are self-administered by laboratory animals. The present data suggest that time to maximal brain concentrations following peripheral injection may be a determinant of the aversive stimulus properties of PEA derivatives.

Amphetamine↗

[Cerebral blood flow, metabolism and learning after a cerebral infarction in the rat (author's transl)].

Experimental microembolization of the rat brain has been used as a model for the production of cerebral microinfarction which resulted in a decrease in blood flow and secondary brain edema with changes in the oxidative metabolic pathways. The use of radioactive microspheres as embolizing agents allowed to determine the number of microinfarctions and their localization. In every microinfarct, oedema developed and it could be quantified by measuring the water percentage as soon as the fourth hour following the microembolization. The activity of oxygen-dependent enzymes was severely reduced in the ischemic area around which hyperemia was present. A quick decrease in the ATP and glucose levels and an increase in the lactate levels were observed, showing that the energetic metabolism was deviated towards the anaerobic pathway. On the fifth day following the microembolization, the oedema disappeared. The cellular metabolic activity and the cerebral blood flow almost returned to normal values within the same time. The simultaneously study of an avoidance response in a conditioned learning test showed a correlation between the reappearance of this response and the regression of the oedema.

Animals↗

Evaluation of two different teaching concepts in dentistry using computer technology.

The common teaching goal of two different phantom head courses was to enable the students to provide an all-ceramic restoration by the means of computer technology. The aim of this study was to compare these two courses with regard to the different educational methods using identical computer software. Undergraduate dental students from a single year were randomly assigned to two different courses. One course was a conventional teacher-centred course [TRAD]. The other course contained problem-based learning (PBL) oriented structured modules [HYBRID]. The students completed an evaluation based on a 25 item seven-point Likert scale. Two independent evaluators assessed the practical work. Differences between TRAD and HYBRID were tested for significance using the Mann-Whitney U-test (at p < or = 0.05). Both courses were rated as demanding. The HYBRID group rated those items significantly better, which focused on course atmosphere and student-teacher relationship. The TRAD group felt that their course was more satisfying. Practical results of the two groups did not differ significantly. Within the limits of the study it was revealed, that the HYBRID group was less satisfied with the own success although the learning conditions were rated better. This could be interpreted in two ways: (1) the PBL oriented course lead the students to more self skepticism to their own work or (2) due to increased intellectual demands and the lack of detailed guidelines the course was felt as more burdening.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

The accuracy of spatial information from temporally and spatially organized mental maps.

The way a space is learned can result in a mental map that is either temporally or spatially organized (Curiel & Radvansky, 1998). The present study examined the availability of spatial information under map learning conditions where either temporal or spatial organization has been previously observed. The finding was that people were fairly accurate in tasks that explicitly required the use of spatial information. However, there was a particular advantage for having a spatially organized mental map in a direction judgment task, especially for short distances where fine-grained knowledge was required. In contrast, there was no clear advantage for either group in a distance estimation task. These data are interpreted in the context of Huttenlocher's category adjustment model.

Cognition↗

ERPs predictive of subsequent recall and recognition performance.

By exploiting measures of information processing complementary to those obtained from behavioral studies, electrophysiological studies of human memory may provide insights into the cognitive processes associated with encoding. In the present experiment, subjects viewed words under incidental learning conditions in which each word required a two-choice decision based on semantic criteria (interesting/uninteresting or edible/inedible). Memory for those words was subsequently assessed by a free recall test and then a recognition test. Event-related brain potentials elicited in response to the original presentation of each word were found to differ as a function of later memory performance. Over the 400-800 ms latency range, responses to remembered words were positive relative to responses to forgotten words, especially for recall. These electrophysiological differences are interpreted as reflections of processes that correlated with encoding.

Adult↗

One process is not enough! A speed-accuracy tradeoff study of recognition memory.

Speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) methods have been used to contrast single- and dual-process accounts of recognition memory. In these procedures, subjects are presented with individual test items and are required to make recognition decisions under various time constraints. In this experiment, we presented word lists under incidental learning conditions, varying the modality of presentation and level of processing. At test, we manipulated the interval between each visually presented test item and a response signal, thus controlling the amount of time available to retrieve target information. Study-test modality match had a beneficial effect on recognition accuracy at short response-signal delays (< or =300 msec). Conversely, recognition accuracy benefited more from deep than from shallow processing at study only at relatively long response-signal delays (> or =300 msec). The results are congruent with views suggesting that both fast familiarity and slower recollection processes contribute to recognition memory.

Auditory Perception↗

Dopamine in drug abuse and addiction: results from imaging studies and treatment implications.

The involvement of dopamine in drug reinforcement is well recognized but its role in drug addiction is much less clear. Imaging studies have shown that the reinforcing effects of drugs of abuse in humans are contingent upon large and fast increases in dopamine that mimic but exceed in the intensity and duration those induced by dopamine cell firing to environmental events. In addition, imaging studies have also documented a role of dopamine in motivation, which appears to be encoded both by fast as well as smooth DA increases. Since dopamine cells fire in response to salient stimuli, the supraphysiological activation by drugs is likely to be experienced as highly salient (driving attention, arousal conditioned learning and motivation) and may also reset the thresholds required for environmental events to activate dopamine cells. Indeed, imaging studies have shown that in drug-addicted subjects, dopamine function is markedly disrupted (decreases in dopamine release and in dopamine D2 receptors in striatum) and this is associated with reduced activity of the orbitofrontal cortex (neuroanatomical region involved with salience attribution and motivation and implicated in compulsive behaviors) and the cingulate gyrus (neuroanatomical region involved with inhibitory control and attention and implicated in impulsivity). However, when addicted subjects are exposed to drug-related stimuli, these hypoactive regions become hyperactive in proportion to the expressed desire for the drug. We postulate that decreased dopamine function in addicted subjects results in decreased sensitivity to nondrug-related stimuli (including natural reinforcers) and disrupts frontal inhibition, both of which contribute to compulsive drug intake and impaired inhibitory control. These findings suggest new strategies for pharmacological and behavioral treatments, which focus on enhancing DA function and restoring brain circuits disrupted by chronic drug use to help motivate the addicted subject in activities that provide alternative sources of reinforcement, counteract conditioned responses, enhance their ability to control their drive to take drugs and interfere with their compulsive administration.

Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity↗

From spreading depression to spatial cognition.

The Laboratory of Neurophysiology of Memory started its existence in 1954 by systematic research into spreading depression of EEG activity of laboratory rodents and by the use of this remarkable phenomenon as a functional ablation method in behavioral research. Its main contributions were in the study of memory formation and consolidation, interhemispheric transfer, motor learning, conditioned taste aversion and spatial orientation and navigation. In the last five years it concentrated on navigation of rats in multiple reference frames, on electrophysiological evidence for the role of hippocampal place cells support of behavior in such dissociated frames, on the analysis of idiothetic and allothetic forms of navigation and on the mathematical methods allowing assessment of the contribution of goal directed locomotion to place cell activity. The methods used in spatial memory research in rats were used for examination of human subjects in a laboratory equipped with a tracking system for humans in the hospital Homolka. Animal models of Alzheimer disease were studied in transgenic mice with the human gene for the beta amyloid precursor protein.

Animals↗

The effect of hypoxia on the acquisition of a two-way avoidance task in the guinea-pig.

Male guinea-pigs learned conditioned two-way shuttle behaviour to acoustic stimuli. Training was given during 5 consecutive days. Two daily training sessions were held with intersession intervals of 120 (Experiment 1) and 60 (Experiment 2) min. In each experiment one group was given post-session hypoxia (H) and another group received no hypoxia (NH). In the NH group the performance during the second session was higher than during the first session on the same day. In the H group this gain was abolished but the course of acquisition was unchanged. The induced amnesia confirmed the selective effect of hypoxia on medium-term memory (MTM) formation previously observed in rats. The results are discussed with reference to the validity of the multistage model of memory formation.

Animals↗

Children's associative learning: automatic and deliberate encoding of meaningful associations.

Three experiments were conducted examining 10- and 11-year-old children's deliberate and automatic encoding of meaningful associative relationships on a paired-associate learning task. Subjects in Experiment 1 were presented pairs of related and unrelated words under deliberate memorization and item-specific incidental-learning conditions. Cued-recall performance was superior with related relative to unrelated pairs under both instructional conditions, suggesting that the encoding of an association between items occurred automatically with meaningfully related words. In Experiment 2, it was found that execution of a verbal elaboration strategy required more time with unrelated than with related pairs, suggesting greater ease of elaboration strategy execution with related materials. Experiment 3 monitored strategy use online using a think-aloud procedure. Cued-recall performance was superior with related pairs when subjects used rehearsal. In contrast, elaboration produced equivalent levels of recall with both types of items, but subjects executed the strategy successfully more often with related than with unrelated pairs. These findings are discussed in terms of the role of automatic processes and the effort demands of strategy execution in children's strategy use.

Attention↗

Hippocampal functional magnetic resonance imaging during a face-name learning task in adolescents with antecedents of prematurity.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to map hippocampal activation during a declarative memory task in a sample of 14 adolescents with antecedents of prematurity (AP). The sample with AP was matched by age, sex and handedness with 14 full-term controls with no history of neurological or psychiatric illness. The target task consisted in learning 16 novel face-name pairs, and the control task involved the examination of two repeated face-name pairs. Stereological methods were also used to quantify hippocampal volumes. In both groups, we observed increased activation in the learning condition compared to the control task in the right fusiform gyrus and the left inferior occipital gyrus, but only premature subjects activated the hippocampus. Group comparison of the activation versus control conditions showed that prematures had greater activity in the right hippocampus than controls during the encoding of the word-face association. Volumetric analyses showed a significant left hippocampal volume loss in adolescents with AP. In addition, we found a significant positive correlation in the premature group between right hippocampal activation and face-name recognition. Functional MRI data also correlated with structural MRI data: right hippocampal activation correlated positively with right hippocampal volume. Our findings are consistent with previous studies of brain plasticity after focal lesions. Left hippocampal tissue loss may be related to an increase in contralateral brain activity, probably reflecting a compensatory mechanism. Our data also suggest that this plasticity is not enough to achieve normal performance.

Adolescent↗

Behavioral analogues of anxiety. Animal models.

In the absence of fully characterized biological indexes, anxiety is at present measured as unpleasant effects reported verbally by patients. Because of the subjective nature of the syndrome, animal analogues have been difficult to design, but quests for new anxiolytics and a deeper understanding of the neurobiology of anxiety have fostered the development of several animal models. Usually, animals are exposed to exteroceptive or interoceptive stimuli which can be interpreted as capable of causing anxiety in humans. Then, the animals are observed for responses or behavioral deficits resulting from those stimuli in order to provide an index of anxiety. Behavioral responses that are reliably produced by those stimuli and that are also antagonized by anxiolytic drugs are accepted as analogues of anxiety. Exteroceptive stimuli, useful in this respect, consist of a variety of noxious treatments such as exposure to conflict-situations or unavoidable electric shock, whereas interoceptive stimuli consist of treatment with anxiogenic drugs or electrical stimulation of selected brain areas. Elicitation of unconditioned behavior or changes in the rate of conditioned (learned) responding have been employed as measures of anxiety responses following application of either exteroceptive or interoceptive stimuli. These measures, although useful in detecting anxiolytic drugs, possess several weaknesses. They suffer from difficulties in obtaining quantitative and objective data, they do not differentiate between anxiety and stress or fear, they are unable to measure further deterioration of behavior expected to occur when more potent anxiogenic stimuli are tested and they often present difficulty in differentiating direct motor effects of a number of stimuli are not related to anxiety. More recently, interest in the development of other analogues of anxiety has led to the use of drug-discrimination paradigms. In this approach, interoceptive discriminative stimuli, produced by anxiogenic drugs, are used as analogues of anxiety in animals. As an example of this approach, data are reviewed showing that pentylenetetrazol, an anxiogenic drug in humans, produces interoceptive stimuli which can be readily discriminated by rats. Further, these stimuli can be easily quantified through dose-response analysis. All known anxiogenic drugs generalize to pentylenetetrazol-induced interoceptive discriminative stimuli. Similarly, other anxiety-provoking situations in humans, such as withdrawal from dependence on benzodiazepines, also generalize to the pentylenetetrazol-induced stimuli. Alternatively, all known anxiolytic drugs antagonize these stimuli with a relative potency similar to

Animals↗

Inhibitory learning tests of conditioned stimulus associability in rats with lesions of the amygdala central nucleus.

Normal rats showed faster inhibitory learning about a light conditioned stimulus (CS) if it had previously been an inconsistent predictor of a tone CS than if it had been a consistent predictor of the tone. In contrast, the inhibitory learning of rats with ibotenic acid lesions of the amygdala central nucleus (CN) was unaffected by the prior predictive value of the light. These results support claims that the CN is critical to surprise-induced enhancement of attentional processing of CSs.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

Pretraining for group psychotherapy. A cognitive-experiential approach.

Pretherapy training for group psychotherapy is conceptualized in terms of learned conditions of preparedness (objectives) and in terms of methods of preparation (procedures). Controlled studies of pretraining for group psychotherapy were reviewed in reference to these two dimensions and their effects. A controlled study of pretraining involving five outpatient therapy groups that used a new cognitive-experiential approach to pretraining was performed. Pretrained groups had significantly higher patient attendance and significantly fewer dropouts than nonpretrained groups.

Adult↗

A behavioral analysis of complete unilateral section of the pyramidal tract at the medullary level in Macaca mulatta.

Ten Macaca mulatta monkeys were operantly conditioned to perform three motor paradigms designed to evaluate single and combination finger movements. Eight of these monkeys were retested after left medullary pyramidotomy; 2 monkeys underwent left medullary pyramidotomy prior to conditioning. All animals were tested for three years after operation. Monkeys with a completely sectioned medullary pyramid could, with time, perform difficult motor paradigms that required: (1) both individual and combination finger movements; (2) proximal upper extremity motor control; (3) thumb and index finger pincer grasp; and (4) the ability to preprogram and then execute a precision hand movement. The greater the extent of pyramidal tract destruction, the longer the time necessary for recovery of both discrete finger movement and pincer grasp, the greater the effort needed to attain recovery of hand function, and the weaker the affected musculature. The 2 animals in which pyramidotomy of at least 70% of the tract preceded efforts at operant conditioning learned and performed difficult motor paradigms. In all animals, neurological examination revealed that the most enduring and functionally most important deficit that interferes with hand function following pyramidotomy is loss of contactual hand orienting responses and failure of reflex sensorimotor adjustments.

Animals↗

Examining the psychosocial impact of implantable cardioverter defibrillators: a literature review.

BACKGROUND: The implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) has proven to be superior to medications in treating potentially life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias, resulting in reduced mortality rates. Despite the number of patients receiving this therapy, its psychosocial impact is not well understood. HYPOTHESIS: The purposes of this paper are (1) to review the available literature documenting the psychosocial impact of the ICD on patients, (2) to hypothesize possible mechanisms for this psychosocial impact, and (3) to suggest clinical risk profiles and indications for psychological consultation. METHODS: Electronic and library searches (e.g., MEDLINE, PsychLit) were used to gather studies examining the psychosocial impact of the ICD. Only studies investigating psychosocial outcomes (e.g., psychological distress, quality of life, social and role functioning), either prospectively or cross-sectionally, were admitted into the review. No literature reviews or secondary sources were included. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Current research suggests that ICD-specific fears and symptoms of anxiety (e.g., excessive worry, physiological arousal) are the most common psychological symptoms experienced by ICD recipients, with approximately 13-38% of recipients experiencing diagnosable levels of anxiety. Depressive symptoms are reported at rates that are generally consistent with other cardiac populations. Although the incidence of psychological disorders appears to be similar to that found in general cardiac populations, specific ICD-related concerns such as fear of shock, fear of device malfunction, fear of death, and fear of embarrassment have been identified. Selected psychological theories such as classical conditioning, learned helplessness, and a cognitive appraisal model help to explain the occurrence of psychological symptoms post implantation. Psychosocial adjustment risk profiles indicate that young ICD recipients and those with high discharge rates may experience the most adjustment difficulties.

Adaptation, Psychological↗