Using Technology for Community Engagement: Four Key Web-Based Platforms for Adoption in Extension

Extension professionals engage with communities to present programming, find solutions, and disseminate research-based knowledge. While traditional means of communication and face-to-face meetings are still important, the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the ways these professionals connect to their communities. Web-based platforms can provide unique, alternative ways to engage communities in programs, evaluations, and information sharing. Our team of Extension professionals share platforms that create engaged communities by meeting virtual demands

Light-evoked Somatosensory Perception of Transgenic Rats That Express Channelrhodopsin-2 in Dorsal Root Ganglion Cells

In vertebrate somatosensory systems, each mode of touch-pressure, temperature or pain is sensed by sensory endings of different dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons, which conducted to the specific cortical loci as nerve impulses. Therefore, direct electrical stimulation of the peripheral nerve endings causes an erroneous sensation to be conducted by the nerve. We have recently generated several transgenic lines of rat in which channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) transgene is driven by the Thy-1.2 promoter. In one of them, W-TChR2V4, some neurons were endowed with photosensitivity by the introduction of the ChR2 gene, coding an algal photoreceptor molecule. The DRG neurons expressing ChR2 were immunohistochemically identified using specific antibodies to the markers of mechanoreceptive or nociceptive neurons. Their peripheral nerve endings in the plantar skin as well as the central endings in the spinal cord were also examined. We identified that ChR2 is expressed in a certain population of large neurons in the DRG of W-TChR2V4. On the basis of their morphology and molecular markers, these neurons were classified as mechanoreceptive but not nociceptive. ChR2 was also distributed in their peripheral sensory nerve endings, some of which were closely associated with CK20-positive cells to form Merkel cell-neurite complexes or with S-100-positive cells to form structures like Meissner's corpuscles. These nerve endings are thus suggested to be involved in the sensing of touch. Each W-TChR2V4 rat showed a sensory-evoked behavior in response to blue LED flashes on the plantar skin. It is thus suggested that each rat acquired an unusual sensory modality of sensing blue light through the skin as touch-pressure. This light-evoked somatosensory perception should facilitate study of how the complex tactile sense emerges in the brain

Anger as “seeing red”: Evidence for a perceptual association

Metaphor representation theory contends that people conceptualise their non-perceptual states (e.g., emotion concepts) in perceptual terms. The present research extends this theory to colour manipulations and discrete emotional representations. Two experiments (N=265) examined whether a red font colour would facilitate anger conceptions, consistent with metaphors referring to anger to “seeing red”. Evidence for an implicit anger-red association was robust and emotionally discrete in nature. Further, Experiment 2 examined the directionality of such associations and found that they were asymmetrical: Anger categorisations were faster when a red font colour was involved, but redness categorisations were not faster when an anger-related word was involved. Implications for multiple literatures are discussed

Computations of uncertainty mediate acute stress responses in humans

The effects of stress are frequently studied, yet its proximal causes remain unclear. Here we demonstrate that subjective estimates of uncertainty predict the dynamics of subjective and physiological stress responses. Subjects learned a probabilistic mapping between visual stimuli and electric shocks. Salivary cortisol confirmed that our stressor elicited changes in endocrine activity. Using a hierarchical Bayesian learning model, we quantified the relationship between the different forms of subjective task uncertainty and acute stress responses. Subjective stress, pupil diameter and skin conductance all tracked the evolution of irreducible uncertainty. We observed a coupling between emotional and somatic state, with subjective and physiological tuning to uncertainty tightly correlated. Furthermore, the uncertainty tuning of subjective and physiological stress predicted individual task performance, consistent with an adaptive role for stress in learning under uncertain threat. Our finding that stress responses are tuned to environmental uncertainty provides new insight into their generation and likely adaptive function. Copyright The Authors