Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences最新文献

Narrative is a fundamental component of human cognition necessary for social meaning and cultural learning, yet its origins in preverbal infancy are not well understood. This study provides the first longitudinal analysis of the development of preverbal narrative in infancy. We measured its temporal structure in the interactions of 18 mother−infant dyads selected from a cohort of 60 dyads at 4, 7, and 10 months. Timings of infant gaze, affect, engagement duration, and progress through the four-part narrative cycle were coded and analyzed. Interestingly, the narrative complexity of mother−infant interactions significantly increased with age; infants at 7 and 10 months reached the climax and resolution phases significantly more often than at 4 months, while also significantly decreasing in duration. Progressing through this narrative arc was strongly associated with increased positive affect, with completed narratives generating longer durations of positive affect for both infant and mother. These results identify a coherent narrative structure present in preverbal interactions that develops in complexity across the first year, strongly associated with positive feelings. This provides an affective, embodied, and participatory foundation for narrative cognition as a primary organizer of shared experience, learning, and socioemotional regulation evident from birth.

The pleasurable urge to move to music ("groove") has been shown to be greatest for moderately complex musical rhythms. This is thought to occur because temporal predictions from the motor system reinforce our perception of the beat when there is a balance between expectation and surprise. The supplementary motor area (SMA) has been identified as the potential origin of these temporal predictions. Thus, to causally test the role of the SMA in the experience of groove, we used continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) to disrupt activity in this region or an active control site (V1). Nonmusicians listened to and rated musical clips that varied in rhythmic complexity and groove before and after stimulation. Following inhibitory stimulation over the left SMA, participants preferred moving to music with higher rhythmic complexity while after V1 stimulation, they preferred moving to music with lower rhythmic complexity. Pleasure ratings, however, were unaffected. These results suggest that the SMA weighs the precision of beat-based predictions generated by the dorsal auditory stream. Therefore, stimulating the SMA may have disinhibited the dorsal striatum or other nodes generating the beat-based predictions. In summary, these findings provide causal evidence that the SMA and V1 play critical roles in embodied rhythm processing.

On the cover: The cover image is based on the Original Article Students' associations with the STEM acronym and their impact on value beliefs and STEM choices by Heidrun Stoeger et al., https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.70018.

On the cover: The cover image is based on the Perspective Chromatin-associated condensates as an inspiration for the system architecture of future DNA computers by Lennart Hilbert et al., https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15415.

Human bitter taste plays an important role in the quality assessment of food. The presence of the corresponding receptors, the taste receptor 2 family (TAS2Rs), in nongustatory tissues without direct contact to the environment suggested that, apart from food compounds, putative endogenous agonists may also exist. Recent studies on bitter taste receptors of vertebrates, including humans, identified occasional steroid hormones as agonists for these receptors; therefore, steroid hormones represent relevant, potentially endogenous agonists for TAS2Rs. In this study, a comprehensive analysis of 19 steroid hormones, cholesterol, and two plant-derived hormones was performed using functional assays to assess the activation of TAS2Rs. Two TAS2Rs, TAS2R14 and TAS2R46, were found to be differentially activated by the test compounds, with TAS2R46 being in almost all cases the more sensitive receptor. Some steroid hormones activated TAS2R46 with extraordinarily high potencies. Comparison with a human metabolite database revealed that several steroid hormone levels reach activating concentrations for TAS2Rs, suggesting that TAS2Rs indeed could act as sensors for circulating steroid hormones.