Can People Guess What Happened to Others from Their Reactions?

Are we able to infer what happened to a person from a brief sample of his/her behaviour? It has been proposed that mentalising skills can be used to retrodict as well as predict behaviour, that is, to determine what mental states of a target have already occurred. The current study aimed to develop a paradigm to explore these processes, which takes into account the intricacies of real-life situations in which reasoning about mental states, as embodied in behaviour, may be utilised. A novel task was devised which involved observing subtle and naturalistic reactions of others in order to determine the event that had previously taken place. Thirty-five participants viewed videos of real individuals reacting to the researcher behaving in one of four possible ways, and were asked to judge which of the four ‘scenarios’ they thought the individual was responding to. Their eye movements were recorded to establish the visual strategies used. Participants were able to deduce successfully from a small sample of behaviour which scenario had previously occurred. Surprisingly, looking at the eye region was associated with poorer identification of the scenarios, and eye movement strategy varied depending on the event experienced by the person in the video. This suggests people flexibly deploy their attention using a retrodictive mindreading process to infer events.     

Baculoviruses Modulate a Proapoptotic DNA Damage Response To Promote Virus Multiplication

The baculovirus Autographa californica multicapsid nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcMNPV) initiates apoptosis in diverse insects through events triggered by virus DNA (vDNA) replication. To define the proapoptotic pathway and its role in antivirus defense, we investigated the link between the host''s DNA damage response (DDR) and apoptosis. We report here that AcMNPV elicits a DDR in the model insect Drosophila melanogaster. Replication of vDNA activated DDR kinases, as evidenced by ATM-driven phosphorylation of the Drosophila histone H2AX homolog (H2Av), a critical regulator of the DDR. Ablation or inhibition of ATM repressed H2Av phosphorylation and blocked virus-induced apoptosis. The DDR kinase inhibitors caffeine and KU55933 also prevented virus-induced apoptosis in cells derived from the permissive AcMNPV host, Spodoptera frugiperda. This block occurred at a step upstream of virus-mediated depletion of the cellular inhibitor-of-apoptosis protein, an event that initiates apoptosis in Spodoptera and Drosophila. Thus, the DDR is a conserved, proapoptotic response to baculovirus infection. DDR inhibition also repressed vDNA replication and reduced virus yields 100,000-fold, demonstrating that the DDR contributes to virus production, despite its recognized antivirus role. In contrast to virus-induced phosphorylation of Drosophila H2Av, AcMNPV blocked phosphorylation of the Spodoptera H2AX homolog (SfH2AX). Remarkably, AcMNPV also suppressed SfH2AX phosphorylation following pharmacologically induced DNA damage. These findings indicate that AcMNPV alters canonical DDR signaling in permissive cells. We conclude that AcMNPV triggers a proapoptotic DDR that is subsequently modified, presumably to stimulate vDNA replication. Thus, manipulation of the DDR to facilitate multiplication is an evolutionarily conserved strategy among DNA viruses of insects and mammals.     

Is prostaglandin E the neural mediator of the febrile response? The case against a proven obligatory role.

We have reviewed the evidence in favor of a prostaglandin mediator of the thermal responses in fever and found that PGE injected into the hypothalamus does not always cause fever, that cerebrospinal fluid concentrations of PGE are not reliable reflections of hypothalamic events, and that antipyretic drugs may act in ways other than inhibiting PGE synthesis. Fever is not blocked by prostaglandin antagonists, nor by ablation of PGE-sensitive areas of the brain. There is poor correlation between the effects of pyrogens and of PGE on cerebral neurons. There is evidence that at least one prostanoid other than prostaglandin is a mediator of fever, but the prostanoid has not been identified yet. We conclude that PGE may contribute to the neural responses in fever but is not essential.