Neuroplasticity and Healthy Lifestyle: How Can We Understand This Relationship?

Our brain has this extraordinary ability to experience functional and structural changes before environmental stimuli, cognitive demand, or our experience itself. Exercise, diet, an appropriate sleep pattern, and reading habits are among those activities proposed to induce effects on cerebral architecture—an active lifestyle seems to induce changes in the brain function that favour welfare and better quality of life. This special issue is intended to extend the knowledge about the relationship between neuroplasticity and a healthy lifestyleFil: Begega, Azucena. Universidad de Oviedo; EspañaFil: Santín, Luis J.. Universidad de Málaga; EspañaFil: Galeano, Pablo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Cutuli, Debora. Universita Di Roma; ItaliaFil: Sampedro Piquero, Patricia. Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. Facultad de Psicología. Departamento de Psicología Biológica y de la Salud; Españ

Génesis política y nuevas coberturas de la Directiva revisada sobre comités de empresa europeos

The creation of a body of participation rights for European employees in transnational companies constitutes a major challenge in the road to the construction of the European system of industrial relations. The adoption of the Directive 94/45/EC in 22th September 1994 opened the way for establishing more than 800 European works councils in transnational firms with operations in, al least, two national members of the European Union. Once tested the validity of the regulation for the promotion of information and consultation practices (and identified its limitations), a complex political debate was initatied on the revision the Directive. As a result of this debate, a new legal piece on European works council was adopted by the European Parlament and the European Council in 6th May 2009: the Directive 2009/38/CE. The aim of the article is to analyse the contribution of the successful Directive 94/45/CE, to assess the expected impact of the revised Directive and to evaluate the political process which has led to the adoption of the new regulation on information and consultation of employees in transnational firms. The exercise goes far beyond the study of firm-level European industrial relations. First, the tensions behind the regulatory process which resulted into the Directive 2009/38/CE are quite similar to those which hinder and/or promote advances at sectoral and cross-sectoral European industrial relations. And second, the analysis sheds light to the complexity of the political decision-making instruments and mechanisms in the Enlarged Europe.La definición de un cuerpo de derechos de participación para los trabajadores de empresas transnacionales constituye uno de los retos de mayor magnitud a los que se ha enfrentado la construcción del edificio de las relaciones laborales europeas. La Directiva 94/45/CE de 22 de septiembre de 1994 abrió el camino para la constitución de más de 800 comités de empresa europeos en empresas con actividades en más de un país miembro de la Unión Europea. Una vez testada su validez como impulsora de prácticas de información y consulta a los trabajadores y detectadas también sus limitaciones, se inicia un complejo debate político que ha culminado con la revisión de la normativa a comienzos de 2009, a través de la nueva Directiva 2009/38/CE. El objetivo de este artículo es examinar las aportaciones del proceso de revisión de la exitosa Directiva 94/45/CE, a la cual sustituye y analizar los intercambios protagonizados por las instituciones europeas, los socios nacionales y los agentes sociales, a lo largo del proceso político que ha conducido a la actual regulación. El interés de este ejercicio trasciende el estudio de las relaciones laborales europeas a escala de empresa. En primer lugar, porque las tensiones que se encuentran detrás del proceso de definición normativa que conduce a la Directiva 2009/38/CE son similares a las que bloquean o impulsan procesos distintos a otros niveles de las relaciones laborales europeas. Y en segundo lugar, porque este análisis arroja luz sobre la complejidad de los mecanismos de toma de decisiones en el contexto de la Europa Ampliada

Diálogo social y negociación colectiva a escala sectorial en la Unión Europea. Limitaciones y perspectivas

The lack of stable and clear structures for dialogue and negotiation at sectoral level represents a fundamental problem threatening future developments in European industrial relations. In fact, whereas interprofessional and firm level European industrial relations underwent an important improvement after the Social Protocol of Maastricht, advances in sectoral level have been much more limited. This article attempts to analyze the two different but not mutually exclusive ways to develop this level of dialogue and negotiation: the European Sectoral Social Dialogue and the various trade union initiatives for transnational coordination of collective bargaining. We will present the current situation of the debate on these topics and we will connect our arguments with the consequences the latests economic and political projects of the European Union (Economic and Monetary Union and enlargement) are having on European industrial relations

The European Society (SE). A missed opportunity for industrial democracy in europe?

The adoption of the European Society Statute in 2001 fulfilled a long pursued goal of the European Union institutions. It provided companies with a single legal tool to register in all member states. Besides, the European Society Statute was supplemented with a Directive on workers’ involvement which was seen as legal piece with many possibilities for the future development of European industrial relations. Those expectations have not been met a decade and almost a half after. The regulation has not achieved the transformational effects on the practice of employee representation at corporate decision-making that some experts and practitioners foresaw by the time it was passed. The article evaluates the reasons for this failure. The track of the European Society Statute is reconstructed in order to explain why its alleged capacity for transformation has not been shown

Environmental enrichment results in both brain connectivity efficiency and selective improvement in different behavioral tasks

Exposure to environmental enrichment (EE) has been a useful model for studying the effects of experience on brain plasticity, but to date, few is known about the impact of this condition on the brain functional networks that probably underlies the multiple behavioral improvements. Hence, we assessed the effect of an EE protocol in adult Wistar rats on the performance in several behavioral tasks testing different domains (Open field (OP): locomotor activity; Elevated-zero maze (EZM): anxiety-related behaviors; 5-choice serial reaction time task (5-CSRTT): attentional processes; 4-arm radial water maze (4-RAWM): spatial memory) in order to check its effectiveness in a wide range of functions. After this, we analyzed the functional brain connectivity underlying each experimental condition through cytochrome C oxidase (COx) histochemistry. Our EE protocol reduced both locomotor activity in the OP and anxiety-related behaviors in the EZM. On the other hand, enriched rats showed more accuracy in the 4-RAWM, whereas 5-CSRTT performance was not significantly ameliorated by EE condition. In relation to COx functional connectivity, we found that EE reduced the number of strong positive correlations both in basal and training conditions, suggesting a modulating effect on specific brain connections. Our results suggest that EE seems to have a selective effect on specific brain regions, such as prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, leading to a more efficient brain connectivity.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. PPIT.UMA.B1.2017/3

Contested industrial democracy discourses in transnational companies. The case of the ArcelorMittal European Social Dialogue Group

This article discusses the potential of European transnational company agreements for developing industrial democracy at European company level. It describes the experience of the ArcelorMittal European Social Dialogue Group, established in 2009 through a European transnational company agreement as an innovative channel for trade union involvement in corporate decision-making. The conceptual framework draws on a cross-national comparison of industrial democracy discourses in two European countries, Germany and Spain. A qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with trade union representatives and management is used to identify divergent national discourses of employee voice giving rise to common misunderstandings of industrial democracy at European level. The findings illustrate the persisting communication challenges faced by trade unions when engaging in employee representation structures at transnational company level. The article also shows that trade union representatives are able to adapt their national discourses on industrial democracy under the influence of European practice

La calidad del empleo en la Unión Europea. Debate político y construcción de indicadores

(Ana Marta

Influence of pre-reproductive maternal enrichment on coping response to stress and expression of c-Fos and glucocorticoid receptors in adolescent offspring

Environmental enrichment (EE) is an experimental setting broadly used for investigating the effects of complex social, cognitive, and sensorimotor stimulations on brain structure and function. Recent studies point out that parental EE experience, even occurring in the pre-reproductive phase, affects neural development and behavioral trajectories of the offspring. In the present study we investigated the influences of pre-reproductive EE of female rats on maternal behavior and adolescent male offspring's coping response to an inescapable stressful situation after chronic social isolation. For this purpose female Wistar rats were housed from weaning to breeding age in enriched or standard environments. Subsequently, all females were mated and housed in standard conditions until offspring weaning. On the first post partum day (ppd 1), mother-pup interactions in undisturbed conditions were recorded. Further, after weaning the male pups were reared for 2 weeks under social isolation or in standard conditions, and then submitted or not to a single-session Forced Swim Test (FST). Offspring's neuronal activation and plastic changes were identified by immunohistochemistry for c-Fos and glucocorticoid receptors (GRs), and assessed by using stereological analysis. The biochemical correlates were measured in the hippocampus, amygdala and cingulate cortex, structures involved in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis regulation. Enriched dams exhibited increased Crouching levels in comparison to standard reared dams. In the offspring of both kinds of dams, social isolation reduced body weight, decreased Immobility, and increased Swimming during FST. Moreover, isolated offspring of enriched dams exhibited higher levels of Climbing in comparison to controls. Interestingly, in the amygdala of both isolated and control offspring of enriched dams we found a lower number of c-Fos immunopositive cells in response to FST and a higher number of GRs in comparison to the offspring of standard dams. These results highlight the profound influence of a stressful condition, such as the social isolation, on the brain of adolescent rats, and underline intergenerational effects of maternal experiences in regulating the offspring response to stress

Functional brain networks underlying latent inhibition of conditioned disgust in rats

The present experiment examined the neuronal networks involved in the latent inhibition of conditioned disgust by measuring brain oxidative metabolism. Rats were given nonreinforced intraoral (IO) exposure to saccharin (exposed groups) or water (non-exposed groups) followed by a conditioning trial in which the animals received an infusion of saccharin paired (or unpaired) with LiCl. On testing, taste reactivity responses displayed by the rats during the infusion of the saccharin were examined. Behavioral data showed that preexposure to saccharin attenuated the development of LiCl-induced conditioned disgust reactions, indicating that the effects of taste aversion on hedonic taste reactivity had been reduced. With respect to cumulative oxidative metabolic activity across the whole study period, the parabrachial nucleus was the only single region examined which showed differential activity between groups which received saccharin-LiCl pairings with and without prior non-reinforced saccharin exposure, suggesting a key role in the effects of latent inhibition of taste aversion learning. In addition, many functional connections between brain regions were revealed through correlational analysis of metabolic activity, in particular an accumbens-amygdala interaction that may be involved in both positive and negative hedonic responses

¿Previene la actividad física y mental el deterioro cognitivo? Evidencia de la investigación animal

In recent decades, several pharmacological strategies have been developed to prevent age-related cognitive impairment. However, the ineffectiveness of the majority of these strategies has led to growing interest in behavioural intervention. Cognitive stimulation and physical activity have been shown to provide significant benefits by counteracting cognitive impairment and dementia. Animal models have provided information on the neurobiological mechanisms that mediate the formation of cognitive and brain reserve. This paper reviews several studies on aged rodents showing the positive effects of environmental enrichment and aerobic exercise on brain and cognitive function of these animals. The implications of this research for human aging is discussed.En las últimas décadas se han desarrollado varias estrategias farmacológicas para prevenir el declive cognitivo en el envejecimiento, sin embargo la inefectividad de la mayoría de ellas ha hecho que las intervenciones conductuales estén recibiendo cada vez más atención. La estimulación cognitiva y la actividad física han mostrado importantes beneficios al reducir las alteraciones cognitivas relacionadas con la edad y la demencia. Gracias a los modelos animales cada vez se sabe más acerca de los mecanismos neurobiológicos que subyacen a la reserva cognitiva y cerebral que promueven estas intervenciones. En esta revisión presentaremos varias investigaciones en roedores viejos en las que se muestran los efectos positivos del enriquecimiento ambiental y ejercicio aeróbico sobre la función cerebral y cognitiva de estos animales. La implicación de estas investigaciones para el envejecimiento humano será también discutida