Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews最新文献

Background

Cannabis is consumed in various social and environmental settings, and such contexts may be important predictors of subjective effects. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to examine the relationship between contextual factors and subjective effects of cannabis.

Methods

A PRISMA-guided search of MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Global Health, and Google Scholar yielded 29 studies.

Results

Study type (Ecological Momentary Assessment or Experimental) was a significant predictor of intoxication effects, and experimental studies had a greater pooled effect size (z =.296,95 % CI [.132,.478], p=.004) than Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) studies (z =.071,95 % CI [.011,.130], p =.02). Contextual conditions (environment, social group, expectancy, time of day, day of week) were not significant predictors of cannabis effects.

Conclusion

Findings did not point to a significant association between contextual conditions and subjective effects. However, as current literature is methodologically weak, it may be premature to conclude that subjective effects are not shaped by contextual factors. In view of policy and therapeutic implications, replications and study refinements are recommended.

Exposure to environmental pollutants, such as metals, pesticides, and air pollutants during early life, is a risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Our systematic review aimed to select and summarize more recent case-control studies that examined the association between prenatal and early postnatal exposure to environmental pollutants and NDDs. We searched five databases (Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Ovid), screened 2261 records, and included 24 eligible case-control studies. Meta-analyses were conducted on subgroups of at least three studies that shared both the outcome and the exposure. A noteworthy discovery from this literature review is the existence of non-linear or non-monotonic dose-response relationships between the exposure to certain metals and the risk of ASD. The meta-analysis revealed a significant association between exposure to particular matter (PM)₁₀ during the first year of life and the risk of ASD. Overall, studies included in our systematic review indicate that exposure to several pollutants within the first three years of life was significantly associated with the risk of NDDs.

Concepts such as "neurodoping" have contributed to an expansion in the area of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and its impact over physical performance in recent years. This umbrella review examines meta-analyses to evaluate tDCS's impact on exercise performance in healthy individuals. We identified 9 meta-analyses that met our inclusion criteria, encompassing 50 crossover studies and 683 participants. Like previous meta-analyses, we found a small but significant effect across individual studies (g_z = 0.28, 95%CI [0.18, 0.39]). However, we also found clear evidence of publication bias, low power and substantial variability in methodological decisions. The average effect became non-significant after accounting for publication bias (g_rm = 0.10, 95%CrI [−0.04, 0.20], BF₁₀ = 0.99), and a specification curve analysis showed that the final effect could range from g = −0.23 to g = 0.33, depending on decisions such as the formula used for estimating the effect size and multiple additional analytic steps. Overall, our findings suggest that current evidence does not conclusively support acute tDCS as an exercise performance enhancer.

I believe consciousness is a property of advanced nervous systems, and as such a product of evolution. Thus, to understand consciousness we need to describe the trajectory leading to its evolution and the selective advantages conferred. A deeper understanding of the neurology would be a significant contribution, but other advanced functions, such as hearing and vision, are explained with a comparable lack of detailed knowledge of the brain processes responsible. In this paper, I try to add details and credence to a previously suggested, evolution-based model of consciousness. According to this model, the feature started to evolve in early amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals) some 320 million years ago. The reason was the introduction of feelings as a strategy for making behavioral decisions.

Visuomanual prism adaptation (PA), which consists of pointing to visual targets while wearing prisms that shift the visual field, is one of the oldest experimental paradigms used to investigate sensorimotor plasticity. Since the 2000’s, a growing scientific interest emerged for the expansion of PA to cognitive functions in several sensory modalities. The present work focused on the aftereffects of PA within the auditory modality. Recent studies showed changes in mental representation of auditory frequencies and a shift of divided auditory attention following PA. Moreover, one study demonstrated benefits of PA in a patient suffering from tinnitus. According to these results, we tried to shed light on the following question: How could this be possible to modulate audition by inducing sensorimotor plasticity with glasses? Based on the literature, we suggest a bottom-up attentional mechanism involving cerebellar, parietal, and temporal structures to explain crossmodal aftereffects of PA. This review opens promising new avenues of research about aftereffects of PA in audition and its implication in the therapeutic field of auditory troubles.

CHENG, T.W., K.L. Mills and J.H. Pfeifer. Revisiting adolescence as a sensitive period for sociocultural processing. NEUROSCI BIOBEHAV REV XX(X) XXX-XXX, 2024. Waves of research and public discourse have characterized adolescence as periods of developmental risk and opportunity. Underlying this discussion is the recognition that adolescence is a period of major biological and social transition when experience may have an outsized effect on development. This article updates and expands upon prior work suggesting that adolescence may be a sensitive period for sociocultural processing specifically. By integrating evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience, we identify how trajectories of social and neurobiological development may relate to adolescents’ ability to adapt to and learn from their social environments. However, we also highlight gaps in the literature, including challenges in attributing developmental change to adolescent experiences. We discuss the importance of better understanding variability in biology (e.g., pubertal development) and cultural environments, as well as distinguishing between sensitive periods and periods of heightened sensitivity. Finally, we look toward future directions and translational implications of this research.

Within the past decade, the term “phantasia” has been increasingly used to describe the human capacity, faculty, or power of visual mental imagery, with extremes of imagery vividness characterised as “aphantasia” and “hyperphantasia”. A substantial volume of empirical research addressing these constructs has now been published, including attempts to find inductive correlates of behaviourally defined aphantasia, for example using research questionnaires and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Mental imagery has long been noted as a source of conceptual confusions but no specific conceptual analysis of the new formulation of phantasia, aphantasia, and hyperphantasia has been undertaken hitherto. We offer some conceptual considerations on phantasia, noting the ongoing confusion of perceptual with mental images, and the ubiquitous use of unvalidated subjective assessment instruments such as the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) in diagnosis and assessment, development of which was predicated on these conceptual confusions. We offer some suggestions for a conceptual framework for future empirical studies in this field, circumventing these conceptual confusions.