Task and content modulate amygdala-hippocampal connectivity in emotional retrieval

The ability to remember emotional events is crucial for adapting to biologically and socially significant situations. Little is known, however, about the nature of the neural interactions supporting the integration of mnemonic and emotional information. Using fMRI and dynamic models of effective connectivity, we examined regional neural activity and specific interactions between brain regions during a contextual memory retrieval task. We independently manipulated emotional context and relevance of retrieved emotional information to task demands. We show that retrieval of emotionally valenced contextual information is associated with enhanced connectivity from hippocampus to amygdala, structures crucially involved with encoding of emotional events. When retrieval of emotional information is relevant to current behavior, amygdala-hippocampal connectivity increases bidirectionally, under modulatory influences from orbitofrontal cortex, a region implicated in representation of affective value and behavioral guidance. Our findings demonstrate that both memory content and behavioral context impact upon large scale neuronal dynamics underlying emotional retrieval.     

Sex differences of functional lateralization in the perception of verbal and emotional information in ontogeny

Experimental data show certain differences between men and women in perception of verbal and emotional information. They are revealed in the ability of correct perception of definite kind of information, in the degree of brain functional asymmetry in perception of the given information, in prevalence of domination type. The character of sex differences in functional asymmetry changes little with the age; quantitative correlations of the coefficient of asymmetry diminish with the age.     

Model Selection in Systems Biology Depends on Experimental Design

Experimental design attempts to maximise the information available for modelling tasks. An optimal experiment allows the inferred models or parameters to be chosen with the highest expected degree of confidence. If the true system is faithfully reproduced by one of the models, the merit of this approach is clear - we simply wish to identify it and the true parameters with the most certainty. However, in the more realistic situation where all models are incorrect or incomplete, the interpretation of model selection outcomes and the role of experimental design needs to be examined more carefully. Using a novel experimental design and model selection framework for stochastic state-space models, we perform high-throughput in-silico analyses on families of gene regulatory cascade models, to show that the selected model can depend on the experiment performed. We observe that experimental design thus makes confidence a criterion for model choice, but that this does not necessarily correlate with a model''s predictive power or correctness. Finally, in the special case of linear ordinary differential equation (ODE) models, we explore how wrong a model has to be before it influences the conclusions of a model selection analysis.     

Management of the rape victim.

A woman''s response to rape can be divided into three phases: an acute reaction, an intermediate stage and a period of resolution. Proper management of the physical and emotional problems of each phase, ideally by the woman''s family doctor or gynecologist, may prevent future problems. Treatment during the first phase includes responding to the emotional needs of the patient as well as doing a pelvic and general physical examination to detect any injuries; information for possible legal procedures may be obtained quickly and efficiently. Follow-up particularly psychological, is important in the second and third phases.     

栖息地选择的理论与模型

栖息地选择理论和模型的发展经历了两个主要阶段:理想自由分布模型和空间直观的栖息地选择模型。随着对理论模型假设的放宽,近年来产生了越来越多的新模型。通过对栖息地选择过程的分析,提出了栖息地选择的几个关键环节:栖息地偏好、信息获取、行为决策及选择行为。在建立栖息地选择模型的各个关键环节上均存在大量有待解决的问题。目前对栖息地偏好的研究主要为相关分析,栖息地信息获取的过程仍然是一黑箱;对动物在栖息地选择过程中的行为决策以及对其生理状态的影响尚不了解,而解决这些问题需要生态学、生态学及认知学等多个领域的研究结果支持,也有待新的理论及方法加以充实,甚至还需要其他学科的介入。     

Cell motility as persistent random motion: theories from experiments

Experimental time series for trajectories of motile cells may contain so much information that a systematic analysis will yield cell-type-specific motility models. Here we demonstrate how, using human keratinocytes and fibroblasts as examples. The two resulting models reflect the cells' different roles in the organism, it seems, and show that a cell has a memory of past velocities. They also suggest how to distinguish quantitatively between various surfaces' compatibility with the two cell types.     

Animal care and use issues in movement disorder research

Animal models of movement disorders can present special challenges for the research institutions that use them. Such models often affect the animals' ability to ambulate and perform normal body functions, and these potential effects on health and well-being mandate additional steps to ensure humane animal care and use. Indeed, the appropriate level of care for these models may call for actions that go beyond what is required or considered standard for other protocols. A proactive team approach to animal use protocol development and animal management is important. Through the commitment and involvement of the entire team-researchers, facility personnel, and institutional animal care and use committee members--institutions that use these valuable models can ensure both the fulfillment of research objectives and the implementation of the best practices for animal care. Among the most commonly used animal models of movement disorder are models of stroke, brain and spinal cord injury, dystonia, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease. Despite their relatively wide use, there is very little in the literature that describes the specific needs of individual models and the challenges those needs may present in today's regulatory environment. In this article, we discuss animal use considerations and provide the available animal care information on specific models. Interested readers are also referred to the additional information in the accompanying articles in this issue of ILAR Journal.     

Unconsciously Triggered Emotional Conflict by Emotional Facial Expressions

The present study investigated whether emotional conflict and emotional conflict adaptation could be triggered by unconscious emotional information as assessed in a backward-masked affective priming task. Participants were instructed to identify the valence of a face (e.g., happy or sad) preceded by a masked happy or sad face. The results of two experiments revealed the emotional conflict effect but no emotional conflict adaptation effect. This demonstrates that emotional conflict can be triggered by unconsciously presented emotional information, but participants may not adjust their subsequent performance trial-by trial to reduce this conflict.     

Contributions of the amygdala to emotion processing: from animal models to human behavior

Research on the neural systems underlying emotion in animal models over the past two decades has implicated the amygdala in fear and other emotional processes. This work stimulated interest in pursuing the brain mechanisms of emotion in humans. Here, we review research on the role of the amygdala in emotional processes in both animal models and humans. The review is not exhaustive, but it highlights five major research topics that illustrate parallel roles for the amygdala in humans and other animals, including implicit emotional learning and memory, emotional modulation of memory, emotional influences on attention and perception, emotion and social behavior, and emotion inhibition and regulation.     

Managing change: the human aspects of the NHS.

Whatever ministers actually decide about London following the Tomlinson report, the changes are likely to be large-scale and affect many staff and patients. Therefore how well those changes are handled becomes crucial to their success. The NHS has much to learn from other industries and organisations that have been through similar changes. Firstly, there needs to be an overall strategy for the change, rather than individual units trying to manage their own parts of it in an ad hoc way. Secondly, how well those made redundant are treated is an important factor in maintaining the morale of those who stay behind. For those affected by changes the NHS needs to provide full information, imagination, time, emotional and practical support, and money. Though decisions need to be made quickly, their implementation should take as much time as is necessary.     

Emotions in farm animals: a new approach to animal welfare in applied ethology

One of the major topics of applied ethology is the welfare of animals reared by humans. Welfare can be defined as a state of harmony between an individual and its environment. Any marked deviation from this state, if perceived by the individual, results in a welfare deficit due to negative emotional experiences. In humans, verbal language helps to assess emotional experiences. In animals, only behavioural and physiological measurements help to detect emotions. However, how to interpret these responses in terms of emotional experiences remains an open question. The information on the cognitive abilities of farm animals, which are available but scattered, could help the understanding of their emotions. We propose a behavioural approach based on cognitive psychology: emotions can be investigated in farm animals in terms of the individual's appraisal of the situation. This evaluative process depends on: (a) the intrinsic characteristics of the eliciting event (suddenness, novelty, pleasantness); (b) the degree of conflict of that event with the individual's needs or expectations; and (c) the individual's coping possibilities offered by the environment. The result of such an evaluation determines the negative versus positive emotions. We propose an analysis of the emotional repertoire of farm animals in terms of the relationship between the evaluative process of the event on the one hand and the behavioural and physiological responses on the other hand.     

The role of the right and left hemispheres in emotional evaluation of visual stimuli

This work is devoted to the analysis of the role of the right and left hemispheres in realization of various parameters of subjective emotional reactions to external stimuli. Experimental study of the evaluation of difficult-to-verbalize visual stimuli, according to the preset emotional valences, showed that damage to the posterior parts of the right hemisphere predominantly impairs evaluation of the emotion valence, and damage to the anterior parts of the left hemisphere impairs discrimination of the modality (quality) of the emotion.     

Emotion modulation of visual attention: categorical and temporal characteristics

Background

Experimental research has shown that emotional stimuli can either enhance or impair attentional performance. However, the relative effects of specific emotional stimuli and the specific time course of these differential effects are unclear.

Methodology/Principal Findings

In the present study, participants (n = 50) searched for a single target within a rapid serial visual presentation of images. Irrelevant fear, disgust, erotic or neutral images preceded the target by two, four, six, or eight items. At lag 2, erotic images induced the greatest deficits in subsequent target processing compared to other images, consistent with a large emotional attentional blink. Fear and disgust images also produced a larger attentional blinks at lag 2 than neutral images. Erotic, fear, and disgust images continued to induce greater deficits than neutral images at lag 4 and 6. However, target processing deficits induced by erotic, fear, and disgust images at intermediate lags (lag 4 and 6) did not consistently differ from each other. In contrast to performance at lag 2, 4, and 6, enhancement in target processing for emotional stimuli was observed in comparison to neutral stimuli at lag 8.

Conclusions/Significance

These findings suggest that task-irrelevant emotion information, particularly erotica, impairs intentional allocation of attention at early temporal stages, but at later temporal stages, emotional stimuli can have an enhancing effect on directed attention. These data suggest that the effects of emotional stimuli on attention can be both positive and negative depending upon temporal factors.     

Analysis of conformational variation in macromolecular structural models

Experimental conditions or the presence of interacting components can lead to variations in the structural models of macromolecules. However, the role of these factors in conformational selection is often omitted by in silico methods to extract dynamic information from protein structural models. Structures of small peptides, considered building blocks for larger macromolecular structural models, can substantially differ in the context of a larger protein. This limitation is more evident in the case of modeling large multi-subunit macromolecular complexes using structures of the individual protein components. Here we report an analysis of variations in structural models of proteins with high sequence similarity. These models were analyzed for sequence features of the protein, the role of scaffolding segments including interacting proteins or affinity tags and the chemical components in the experimental conditions. Conformational features in these structural models could be rationalized by conformational selection events, perhaps induced by experimental conditions. This analysis was performed on a non-redundant dataset of protein structures from different SCOP classes. The sequence-conformation correlations that we note here suggest additional features that could be incorporated by in silico methods to extract dynamic information from protein structural models.     

动脉粥样硬化动物模型制作方法的介绍

动脉粥样硬化动物模型在病因学、病理学及预防方面的研究中起着非常重要的作用。近年来,运用兔子、小鼠、大鼠、鹌鹑等成功地建立了大量高脂饲料、单纯药物、高脂饲料加药物、基因敲除鼠及基因工程模型等诱导的动物模型。本文介绍了这几种动物模型的制作方法,以期为动脉粥样硬化的深入研究提供参考。     

Fatty acid levels in blood of cyclostomes and fish

Synopsis Experimental data obtained on cyclostomes and fish concerning the levels of plasma fatty acids (PFA), their biological role as an energetic substrate, various factors affecting PFA and mechanisms involved in the control of their level are reviewed.It was shown that PFA levels in lamprey and fish depend strongly on season, circadian rhythm, nutritional state, age, sex, intrinsic activity of individuals and are regulated by some metabolites as well as hormones. The question concerning the nervous control of PFA in cyclostomes and fish needs further elucidation on account of scarce information available at present.     

Analyzing the dynamics of emotional scene sequence using recurrent neuro-fuzzy network

In this paper, we propose a new framework to analyze the temporal dynamics of the emotional stimuli. For this framework, both electroencephalography signal and visual information are of great importance. The fusion of visual information with brain signals allows us to capture the users’ emotional state. Thus we adopt previously proposed fuzzy-GIST as emotional feature to summarize the emotional feedback. In order to model the dynamics of the emotional stimuli sequence, we develop a recurrent neuro-fuzzy network for modeling the dynamic events of emotional dimensions including valence and arousal. It can incorporate human expertise by IF-THEN fuzzy rule while recurrent connections allow the fuzzy rules of network to see its own previous output. The results show that such a framework can interact with human subjects and generate arbitrary emotional sequences after learning the dynamics of an emotional sequence with enough number of samples.     

Sleep, emotions, and visceral control

It is known that sleep is connected with sensory isolation of the brain, inactivation of the consciousness and reorganization of the electrical activity in all cerebral cortical areas. On the other hand, sleep deprivation leads to pathology in visceral organs and finally to the death of animals, while there are no obvious changes in the brain itself. It is still unclear how the changes in the brain activity during sleep could be connected with the visceral health. We assumed that the same brain areas and the same neurons that, in wakefulness, process exteroceptive information, switch, during sleep, to the processing of the interoceptive information. Thus, the central nervous system is involved in regulating the life support functions of the body during sleep. The results of our experiments supported this hypothesis, explained many observations obtained in somnology, and offered mechanisms of several pathological states connected with sleep. However, at the present level of the visceral sleep theory, there is no understanding of the well-known link between the emotional reactions of the body and transition from wakefulness to sleep, and sleep quality. In this study, an attempt is undertaken to combine the visceral theory of sleep with the need-informational theory of emotions proposed by P. Simonov. The visceral theory of sleep assumes that in living organisms there is a constant monitoring of the correspondence of the visceral parameters to the genetically determined values. Mismatch signals evoke the feeling of tiredness and the need of sleep. This sleep need enters the competition with other actual needs of the body. In accordance with the theory of Simonov, emotions connected with a particular need play an important role in their ranking for satisfaction. We propose that emotional estimation of the sleep need based on visceral signals occurs in the same brain structures which undertake this estimation for other behavioral needs in wakefulness. During sleep, the same brain structures involved in estimating emotions continue to rank visceral needs and define their order for processing in the cortical areas and in the highest centers of visceral integration. In the context of the proposed hypothesis, we discuss the results of the studies on the link between sleep and emotions.     

Emotional Meaning in Context in Relation to Hypomanic Personality Traits: An ERP Study

The ability to integrate contextual information is important for the comprehension of emotional and social situations. While some studies have shown that emotional processes and social cognition are impaired in people with hypomanic personality trait, no results have been reported concerning the neurophysiological processes mediating the processing of emotional information during the integration of contextual social information in this population. We therefore chose to conduct an ERP study dealing with the integration of emotional information in a population with hypomanic personality trait. Healthy participants were evaluated using the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS), and ERPs were recorded during a linguistic task in which participants silently read sentence pairs describing short social situations. The first sentence implicitly conveyed the positive or negative emotional state of a character. The second sentence was emotionally congruent or incongruent with the first sentence. We analyzed the difference in the modulation of two components (N400 and LPC) in response to the emotional word present at the end of the “target” sentences as a function of the HPS score and the emotional valence of the context. Our results showed a possible modulation of the N400 component in response to both positive and negative context among the participants who scored high on the Mood Volatility subscale of the Hypomanic Personality Scale. These results seem to indicate that the participants with hypomanic personality traits exhibited specificities in the integration of emotions at the level of the early-mobilized neurocognitive processes (N400). Participants with hypomanic personality traits found it difficult to integrate negative emotional contexts, while simultaneously exhibiting an enhanced integration of positive emotional contexts.     

Fluid network response characteristics under pulsating flow conditions

The strong analogies between electrical and fluid system can be used to effect in modeling behaviour under pulsating flow conditions. This paper discusses the model of a simple pipe network experiencing pulsating flow as a result of valve movement. Experimental results are presented, indicating that care needs to be taken in modeling the valve behaviour as analogous to thermionic valve.

One of the major problems in modeling fluid networks of this type is the lack of information regarding the characteristics of active components such as the valve. Developments in the field of Electro-magnetic and Ultrasonic flow measurement are helping to improve this situation.