Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences最新文献

Within the transactional framework of stress, resilience may be conceptualized as a dynamic process wherein individuals, when confronted with adversity, utilize both internal and external coping resources. This article focuses on two resources, namely self-efficacy and social support, examining their roles in the context of war, terrorism, and forced migration. These resources are perceived as protective factors capable of mitigating the impact of adversity and aiding in the recovery from traumatic experiences. They facilitate individuals in reshaping their perspectives and engaging in cognitive restructuring as integral components of the coping process, ultimately leading to a rebound from adversity or even the development of higher levels of functioning post trauma.

When scrutinizing the trajectories of coping resources over time, distinct mechanisms may come to the fore. A causation model posits a positive effect of resources on recovery outcomes, while an erosion model elucidates the wear and tear that ongoing adversity may inflict upon these resources.

In exploring the interplay between self-efficacy and social support within the resilience process, diverse mechanisms may emerge. These include the enabling effect, where support enhances self-efficacy, and the cultivation effect, wherein self-efficacy contributes to the development of robust social networks.

Animal brains are probably the most complex computational machines on our planet, and like everything in biology, they are the product of evolution. Advances in developmental and palaeobiology have been expanding our general understanding of how nervous systems can change at a molecular and structural level. However, how these changes translate into altered function — that is, into ‘computation’ — remains comparatively sparsely explored. What, concretely, does it mean for neuronal computation when neurons change their morphology and connectivity, when new neurons appear or old ones disappear, or when transmitter systems are slowly modified over many generations? And how does evolution use these many possible knobs and dials to constantly tune computation to give rise to the amazing diversity in animal behaviours we see today? Addressing these major gaps of understanding benefits from choosing a suitable model system. Here, I present the vertebrate retina as one perhaps unusually promising candidate.

The retina is ancient and displays highly conserved core organisational principles across the entire vertebrate lineage, alongside a myriad of adjustments across extant species that were shaped by the history of their visual ecology. Moreover, the computational logic of the retina is readily interrogated experimentally, and our existing understanding of retinal circuits in a handful of species can serve as an anchor when exploring the visual circuit adaptations across the entire vertebrate tree of life, from fish deep in the aphotic zone of the oceans to eagles soaring high up in the sky.

Cognition relies on the flexible organization of neural activity. In this discussion, we explore how many aspects of this organization can be described as emergent properties, not reducible to their constituent parts. We discuss how electrical fields in the brain can serve as a medium for propagating activity nearly instantaneously, and how population-level patterns of neural activity can organize computations through subspace coding.

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood-onset neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by repetitive movements and vocalizations called tics, which are linked to alterations in the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical (CBGTC) circuits. CBGTC circuits also play a key role in procedural memory, which is a fundamental human ability that enables us to extract repeating patterns from the environment and underlies skill-based and habitual behavior. The present review summarizes findings on procedural memory in TS, with a focus on more recent studies probing the acquisition and consolidation of procedural knowledge in TS. The review reveals mixed findings; some aspects of procedural memory seem to be impaired in TS, whereas other aspects appear intact or even enhanced. We discuss these results in relation to alterations in the CBGTC circuits in TS, suggest reasons for potential inconsistencies across studies, and propose directions for future research.

This paper contends with the emerging pattern of cerebellar abnormalities being reported across a diverse array of clinical phenotypes in terms of what this means regarding cerebellar involvement in psychopathology. This question of the functional significance of transdiagnostic cerebellar abnormalities is explored through three different lenses. First, recent advances in cerebellar functional neuroanatomy and cerebellar cognitive neuroscience are reviewed, providing an account of recent progress made in understanding cerebellar contributions to ‘nonmotor’ functions. Next, conceptual and methodological pitfalls in trying to integrate cerebellar findings at the level of diagnostic group are discussed, as are examples of recent studies inspired by the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria in their interrogation of cerebellar abnormalities transdiagnostically. Finally, arguably even thornier complexities and knowledge gaps related to more squarely mechanistic questions regarding the role of the cerebellum in psychopathology are grappled with, and recent advances in the literature relevant to these issues are also highlighted.

History illustrates that economic crises and other sociopolitical threats often lead to a rise of polarization and radicalism, whereby people become more susceptible to intolerant political messages, including propaganda and ideological rhetoric. Political science, sociology, economics, and psychology have explored many dimensions of this phenomenon, yet a critical piece of the puzzle is still missing: what cognitive and neural mechanisms in the brain mediate between these threats and responsiveness to political messages? To answer this question, here, we present a theory that combines cognitive neuroscience theories, namely stress-induced memory shift and competitive cognitive processes, with political science. Our Threat-based Neural Switch Theory posits that the processing of political information, similarly to other information processing, is shaped by the competitive interaction between goal-directed and habitual processes. Threats, including resource overload or scarcity, can shift neural networks toward receptiveness to oversimplified political messages. This theory sets out a research program aimed at discovering the cognitive and neural underpinning of how situational factors alter brain functions and modify political information processing.

Our ability to overcome habitual responses in favor of goal-driven novel responses depends on frontoparietal cognitive control networks (CCNs). Recent and ongoing work is revealing the brain network and information processes that allow CCNs to generate cognitive flexibility. First, working memory processes necessary for flexible maintenance and manipulation of goal-relevant representations were recently found to depend on short-term network plasticity (in contrast to persistent activity) within CCN regions. Second, compositional (i.e. abstract and reusable) rule representations maintained within CCNs have been found to reroute network activity flows from stimulus to response, enabling flexible behavior. Together, these findings suggest cognitive flexibility is enhanced by CCN-coordinated network mechanisms, utilizing compositional reuse of neural representations and network flows to flexibly accomplish task goals.

The contents of consciousness seem to relentlessly advance from the present moment to the past, bringing about the conscious impression of time’s flow. On the other hand, the image of the universe as described by the current state of knowledge in physics does not entail any notion of temporal passage. In this paper, I review the most popular current theories and hypotheses addressing this paradox, proposed by philosophers, psychologists, and physicists.

The central complex (CX) is a highly conserved region of the insect brain, and its ubiquitous occurrence suggests that its neural circuits are of fundamental importance. While its overall layout has not changed since the evolution of insect flight, substantial variations exist in the internal organization of all CX components. By changing the details of a system of repeating columns and layers, these differences affect the almost crystalline internal organization of the CX and thus the characteristic neuroarchitecture that directly links structure with function. While neuropil level changes suggest widespread differences in cellular architecture and circuits, data at these deeper levels are mostly limited to the fruit fly Drosophila. Nevertheless, interspecies neuron-level differences have begun to emerge. Whereas these differences are small compared to the astounding degree of conservation, they reveal highly evolvable aspects of the CX circuitry, providing promising starting points for future research using comparative circuit-level analysis.

Since the neurological criterion of death was established in medical practice in the 1960s, there has been a debate in the academic world about its scientific and philosophical validity, its ethical acceptability, and its political appropriateness. Among the many and varied proposals for revising the criteria for human death, we will focus on those that advocate allowing people to choose their own definition and criteria for death within a range of reasonable or tolerable alternatives. These proposals can be categorized under the rubric of pluralism in the determination of death. In this article, we will outline the main proposals and their rationales and provide a current overview of the state of the controversy.