Psychological research increasingly indicates that emotional processes interact with other aspects of cognition. Studies have demonstrated both the ability of emotional stimuli to influence a broad ...range of cognitive operations, and the ability of humans to use top-down cognitive control mechanisms to regulate emotional responses. Portions of the prefrontal cortex appear to play a significant role in these interactions. However, the manner in which these interactions are implemented remains only partially elucidated. In the present review we describe the anatomical connections between ventral and dorsal prefrontal areas as well as their connections with limbic regions. Only a subset of prefrontal areas are likely to directly influence amygdalar processing, and as such models of prefrontal control of emotions and models of emotional regulation should be constrained to plausible pathways of influence. We also focus on how the specific pattern of feedforward and feedback connections between these regions may dictate the nature of information flow between ventral and dorsal prefrontal areas and the amygdala. These patterns of connections are inconsistent with several commonly expressed assumptions about the nature of communications between emotion and cognition.
The ability to use cognitive reappraisal to regulate emotions is an adaptive skill in adulthood, but little is known about its development. Because reappraisal is thought to be supported by linearly ...developing prefrontal regions, one prediction is that reappraisal ability develops linearly. However, recent investigations into socio-emotional development suggest that there are non-linear patterns that uniquely affect adolescents. We compared older children (10-13), adolescents (14-17) and young adults (18-22) on a task that distinguishes negative emotional reactivity from reappraisal ability. Behaviorally, we observed no age differences in self-reported emotional reactivity, but linear and quadratic relationships between reappraisal ability and age. Neurally, we observed linear age-related increases in activation in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, previously identified in adult reappraisal. We observed a quadratic pattern of activation with age in regions associated with social cognitive processes like mental state attribution (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, anterior temporal cortex). In these regions, we observed relatively lower reactivity-related activation in adolescents, but higher reappraisal-related activation. This suggests that (i) engagement of the cognitive control components of reappraisal increases linearly with age and (ii) adolescents may not normally recruit regions associated with mental state attribution, but (iii) this can be reversed with reappraisal instructions.
This book explores what development banks, governments, and communities have learned in the last decade of careful negotiation between social and environmental protections in the Andean Amazon, and ...the pressures of a surging infrastructure and development boom.
While mega-dams, highways, and ports are filling up the pipelines of planners, the national governments of Andean and Amazon-basin countries and major development banks have enacted ambitious social and environmental protections. The book traces the development of social and environmental protections after years of struggle by affected communities, going beyond official policies to discover how these reforms work in practice, and ultimately whether they are enough to stem the risks of infrastructure mega-projects. As Chinese public banks play an increasingly important role in the region, the book also demonstrates that there is a risk of governments undercutting their own standards. By contrast, this book shows that making infrastructure work for everyone involved requires mutually reinforcing networks of support and accountability among communities, governments, and development banks.
This book, led by an expert multi-disciplinary, international team, will be of considerable interest to researchers in the fields of development and development economics, geography, anthropology, and ecology, as well as practitioners in development banks and in government regulatory and foreign aid agencies.
The regional relationships between tau positron emission tomography (PET) imaging and cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's disease (AD) remain uncertain. We examined cross-sectional associations ...between cognitive performance, cerebral uptake of the novel tau PET tracer 18FGTP1, and other neuroimaging indices (18Fflorbetapir amyloid PET, magnetic resonance imaging) in 71 participants with normal cognition, prodromal AD, or AD dementia. Greater 18FGTP1 uptake was seen with increasing clinical severity and correlated with poorer cognition. 18FGTP1 uptake and cortical volume (but not 18Fflorbetapir uptake) were independently associated with cognitive performance, particularly within the temporal lobe. Delayed memory was more specifically associated with temporal 18FGTP1 uptake; other domains correlated with a broader range of regional 18FGTP1 uptake. These data confirm that 18FGTP1 tau PET uptake significantly correlates with cognitive performance in AD, but regional correlations between performance in non-memory cognitive domains were less specific than reported by tau PET imaging studies that included participants with atypical focal cortical AD syndromes. Tau PET imaging may have utility as a surrogate biomarker for clinical AD progression in therapeutic trials of disease-modifying interventions.
•Brain 18FGTP1 tau positron emission tomography (PET) correlates with cognition in Alzheimer's disease (AD).•18FGTP1 uptake progressively increases with worsening clinical AD severity.•Temporal lobe 18FGTP1 uptake strongly correlates with delayed memory performance.•Our 18FGTP1 analyses are similar to prior work with 18Fflortaucipir tau PET.•In amnestic AD, weaker regional correlations of tau PET seen with nonmemory tests.
Prior psychophysiological studies of cognitive reappraisal have generally focused on the down-regulation of negative affect, and have demonstrated either changes in self-reports of affective ...experience, or changes in facial electromyography, but not both. Unfortunately, when taken separately, these measures are vulnerable to different sources of bias, and alternative explanations might account for changes in these indicators of negative affect. What is needed is a study that (a) obtains measures of self-reported affect together with facial electromyography, and (b) examines the use of reappraisal to regulate externally and internally generated affective responses. In the present study, participants up- or down-regulated negative affect in the context of both negative and neutral pictures. Up-regulation led to greater self reports of negative affect, as well as greater corrugator and startle responses to both negative and neutral stimuli. Down-regulation led to lesser reports of negative affect, and lesser corrugator responses to negative and neutral stimuli. These results extend prior research by (a) showing simultaneous effects on multiple measures of affect, and (b) demonstrating that cognitive reappraisal may be used both to regulate responses to negative stimuli and to manufacture a negative response to neutral stimuli.
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Research on rumination has demonstrated that compared with distraction, rumination intensifies and prolongs negative emotion. However, rumination and distraction differ both in
what
one thinks about ...and
how
one thinks about it. Do the negative outcomes of rumination result from how people think about negative events or simply that they think about them at all? To address this question, participants in 2 studies recalled a recent anger-provoking event and then thought about it in 1 of 2 ways: by ruminating or by reappraising. The authors examined the impact of these strategies on subsequent ratings of anger experience (Study 1) as well as on perseverative thinking and physiological responding over time (Study 2). Relative to reappraisal, rumination led to greater anger experience, more cognitive perseveration, and greater sympathetic nervous system activation. These findings provide compelling new evidence that how one thinks about an emotional event can shape the emotional response one has.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
Parental leave laws can support new parents in two complementary ways: by offering job-protected leave and by offering financial support during that leave. This study assesses the design of parental ...leave policies operating in 21 high-income countries. Specifically, the study analyzes how these countries vary with respect to the generosity of their parental leave policies; the extent to which their policy designs are gender egalitarian; and the ways in which these two crucial dimensions are inter-related. The study finds that public policies in all 21 study countries protect at least one parent’s job for a period of weeks, months, or years following the birth or adoption of a child. The availability and generosity of wage replacement varies widely, as does the gendered nature of policy designs. Four countries stand out as having policies that are both generous and gender egalitarian: Finland, Norway, Sweden and — unexpectedly — Greece.
Emotions are generally thought to arise through the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes. However, prior work has not delineated their relative contributions.In a sample of 20 females, we ...used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the neural correlates of negative emotions generated by the bottom-up perception of aversive images and by the top-down interpretation of neutral images as aversive. We found that (a) both types of responses activated the amygdala, although bottom-up responses did so more strongly; (b) bottom-up responses activated systems for attending to and encoding perceptual and affective stimulus properties, whereas top-down responses activated prefrontal regions that represent highlevel cognitive interpretations; and (c) self-reported affect correlated with activity in the amygdala during bottom-up responding and with activity in the medial prefrontal cortex during top-down responding. These findings provide a neural foundation for emotion theories that posit multiple kinds of appraisal processes and help to clarify mechanisms underlying clinically relevant forms of emotion dysregulation.
Abstract Background The aim of this study was to evaluate validity evidence using idle time as a performance measure in open surgical skills assessment. Methods This pilot study tested psychomotor ...planning skills of surgical attendings (n = 6), residents (n = 4) and medical students (n = 5) during suturing tasks of varying difficulty. Performance data were collected with a motion tracking system. Participants' hand movements were analyzed for idle time, total operative time, and path length. We hypothesized that there will be shorter idle times for more experienced individuals and on the easier tasks. Results A total of 365 idle periods were identified across all participants. Attendings had fewer idle periods during 3 specific procedure steps ( P < .001). All participants had longer idle time on friable tissue ( P < .005). Conclusions Using an experimental model, idle time was found to correlate with experience and motor planning when operating on increasingly difficult tissue types. Further work exploring idle time as a valid psychomotor measure is warranted.
Abstract Background Surgery residents may take years away from clinical responsibilities for dedicated research time. As part of a longitudinal project, the study aim was to investigate residents' ...perceptions of clinical skill reduction during dedicated research time. Our hypothesis was that residents would perceive a greater potential reduction in skill during research time for procedures they were less confident in performing. Materials and methods Surgical residents engaged in dedicated research training at multiple training programs participated in four simulated procedures: urinary catheterization, subclavian central line, bowel anastomosis, and laparoscopic ventral hernia (LVH) repair. Using preprocedure and postprocedure surveys, participants rated procedures for confidence and difficulty. Residents also indicated the perceived level of skills reduction for the four procedures as a result of time in the laboratory. Results Thirty-eight residents (55% female) completed the four clinical simulators. Participants had between 0–36 mo in a laboratory (M = 9.29 mo, standard deviation = 9.38). Preprocedure surveys noted lower confidence and higher perceived difficulty for performing the LVH repair followed by bowel anastomosis, central line insertion, and urinary catheterization ( P < 0.05). Residents perceived the greatest reduction in bowel anastomosis and LVH repair skills compared with urinary catheterization and subclavian central line insertion ( P < 0.001). Postprocedure surveys showed significant effects of the simulation scenarios on resident perception for urinary catheterization ( P < 0.05) and LVH repair ( P < 0.05). Conclusions Residents in this study expected greater skills decay for the procedures they had lower confidence performing and greater perceived difficulty. In addition, carefully adapted simulation scenarios had a significant effect on resident perception and may provide a mechanism for maintaining skills and keeping confidence grounded in experience.
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