Socioaffective neuroscience & psychology最新文献

Motor memory is the process by which humans can adopt both persistent and flexible motor behaviours. Persistence and flexibility can be assessed through the examination of the cooperation/competition between new and old motor routines in the motor memory repertoire. Two paradigms seem to be particularly relevant to examine this competition/cooperation. First, a manual search task for hidden objects, namely the C-not-B task, which allows examining how a motor routine may influence the selection of action in toddlers. The second paradigm is procedural learning, and more precisely the consolidation stage, which allows assessing how a previously learnt motor routine becomes resistant to subsequent programming or learning of a new - competitive - motor routine. The present article defends the idea that results of both paradigms give precious information to understand the evolution of motor routines in healthy children. Moreover, these findings echo some clinical observations in developmental neuropsychology, particularly in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder. Such studies suggest that the level of equilibrium between persistence and flexibility of motor routines is an index of the maturity of the motor system.

Background: An enhancement in recall of simple instructions is found when actions are performed in comparison to when they are verbally presented - the subject-performed task (SPT) effect. This enhancement has also been found with older adults. However, the reason why older adults, known to present a deficit in episodic memory, have a better performance for this type of information remains unclear. In this article, we explored this effect by comparing the performance on the SPT task with the performance on other tasks, in order to understand the underlying mechanisms that may explain this effect.

Objective: We hypothesized that both young and older adult groups should show higher recall in SPT compared with the verbal learning condition, and that the differences between age groups should be lower in the SPT condition. We aimed to explore the correlations between these tasks and known neuropsychological tests, and we also measured source memory for the encoding condition.

Design: A mixed design was used with 30 healthy older adults, comparing their performance with 30 healthy younger adults. Each participant was asked to perform 16 simple instructions (SPT condition) and to only read the other 16 instructions (Verbal condition - VT). The test phase included a free recall task. Participants were also tested with a set of neuropsychological measures (speed of processing, working memory and verbal episodic memory).

Results: The SPT effect was found for both age groups; but even for SPT materials, group differences in recall persisted. Source memory was found to be preserved for the two groups. Simple correlations suggested differences in correlates of SPT performance between the two groups. However, when controlling for age, the SPT and VT tasks correlate with each other, and a measure of episodic memory correlated moderately with both SPT and VT performance.

Conclusions: A strong effect of SPT was observed for all but one, which still displayed the expected aging deficit. The correlations and source memory data suggest that the SPT and VT are possibly related in respect to their underlying processes, and SPT, instead of being an isolated process, is in connection with both the episodic memory and executive function processes. Under these circumstances, the SPT seems to contribute to an enhancement of the episodic memory trace, presumably from the multimodality it provides, without involving a separated set of cognitive mechanisms. Future research using more pure measures of other cognitive processes that could be related to SPT is necessary.

Pseudobulbar affect (PBA) is a common complication of central nervous system diseases such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, and other neurological diseases, but it remains under-recognized and under-treated in the clinic. PBA caused by acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) has rarely been reported. Here, we report a 30-year-old Chinese woman who has experienced PBA from ADEM for 7 years. The patient's principal manifestations were extreme emotions or tears when she saw, heard, or spoke about sad news or other sad things; the durations of these unmanageable emotions were often less than 30 sec, and they occurred at frequencies that ranged from one to several times a day. Occasionally, she laughed uncontrollably while people were talking despite a lack of funny or sad stimuli in the conversation or the surrounding environment. Thus, her social functioning was impaired. This case indicates that the long-term PBA can occur secondarily to ADEM, and this possibility should be considered clinically to ensure timely identification and treatment.

Background : Although genital sensations are an essential aspect of sexual behavior, the cortical somatosensory representation of genitalia in women and men remain poorly known and contradictory results have been reported. Objective : To conduct a systematic review of studies based on electrophysiological and functional neuroimaging studies, with the aim to identify insights brought by modern methods since the early descriptions of the sensory homunculus in the primary somatosensory cortex (SI). Results : The review supports the interpretation that there are two distinct representations of genital sensations in SI, one on the medial surface and the other on the lateral surface. In addition, the review suggests that the secondary somatosensory cortex and the posterior insula support a representation of the affective aspects of genital sensation. Conclusion : In view of the erogenous character of sensations originating in the genitalia, future studies on this topic should systematically assess qualitatively as well as quantitatively the sexually stimulating and/or sexually pleasurable characteristics of sensations felt by subjects in response to experimental stimuli.

Background: Early adolescence is a key developmental period for the initiation of alcohol use, and consumption among adolescents is characterized by drinking in high quantities. At the same time, adolescence is characterized by rapid biological transformations including dramatic changes in the brain, particularly in the prefrontal cortex and the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system.

Methods: This article begins with an overview of the unique neural and behavioural characteristics of adolescent development that predispose these individuals to seek rewards and take risks such as initiation of drinking and high levels of alcohol intake. The authors then outline important factors associated with an increased risk for developing alcohol problems in later adolescence and young adulthood. Thereafter they address causality and the complex interplay of risk factors that lead to the development of alcohol use problems in late adolescence and young adults.

Conclusions: A few recommendations for the prevention of underage drinking are presented.

Background: Several studies showed that facial attractiveness, as a highly salient social cue, influences behavioral responses. It has also been found that attractive faces evoke distinctive neural activation compared to unattractive or neutral faces.

Objectives: Our aim was to design a face recognition task where individual preferences for facial cues are controlled for, and to create conditions that are more similar to natural circumstances in terms of decision making.

Design: In an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, subjects were shown attractive and unattractive faces, categorized on the basis of their own individual ratings.

Results: Statistical analysis of all subjects showed elevated brain activation for attractive opposite-sex faces in contrast to less attractive ones in regions that previously have been reported to show enhanced activation with increasing attractiveness level (e.g. the medial and superior occipital gyri, fusiform gyrus, precentral gyrus, and anterior cingular cortex). Besides these, females showed additional brain activation in areas thought to be involved in basic emotions and desires (insula), detection of facial emotions (superior temporal gyrus), and memory retrieval (hippocampus).

Conclusions: From these data, we speculate that because of the risks involving mate choice faced by women during evolutionary times, selection might have preferred the development of an elaborated neural system in females to assess the attractiveness and social value of male faces.