Fear and the human amygdala

We have previously reported that bilateral amygdala damage in humans compromises the recognition of fear in facial expressions while leaving intact recognition of face identity (Adolphs et al., 1994). The present study aims at examining questions motivated by this finding. We addressed the possibility that unilateral amygdala damage might be sufficient to impair recognition of emotional expressions. We also obtained further data on our subject with bilateral amygdala damage, in order to elucidate possible mechanisms that could account for the impaired recognition of expressions of fear. The results show that bilateral, but not unilateral, damage to the human amygdala impairs the processing of fearful facial expressions. This impairment appears to result from an insensitivity to the intensity of fear expressed by faces. We also confirmed a double dissociation between the recognition of facial expressions of fear, and the recognition of identity of a face: these two processes can be impaired independently, lending support to the idea that they are subserved in part by anatomically separate neural systems. Based on our data, and on what is known about the amygdala's connectivity, we propose that the amygdala is required to link visual representations of facial expressions, on the one hand, with representations that constitute the concept of fear, on the other. Preliminary data suggest the amygdala's role extends to both recognition and recall of fearful facial expressions

A Pirâmide das RP: Os media sociais e o papel das Relações

This paper explores the relationship between social media as tools used by public relations professionals and as part of the daily lives of organizations’ stakeholders, identifying emergent practices in public relations and confronting new perspectives, both professional and academic, on public relations functions and on its role within organizational communication. Departing from the agreement shared by academics and professionals on a profound shift in public relations as a consequence of the increasingly widespread, intense and frequent use of social media, this paper intends to clarify the nature and terms of that shift. Two perspectives are confronted: one of them is focused on emergent professional practices and regards social media as tools at the disposal of the PR professional; the other is broader in scope and views social media as a contextual factor that influences both the stakeholders’ behavior patterns and PR practices, thus redefining the role of public relations within organizational communication. The paper presents results from an exploratory study whose goal was to identify a conceptual framework for understanding the impact of social media on public relations.A relevant case study was identified, presenting the solution found by TAP, the Portuguese airline company, to deal with communication crisis involving the social media and to successfully manage social media use as a complementary communication channel. TAP’s social media presence is managed through an articulation of public relations, marketing and customer support where public relations assume a pivotal role. Drawing on this case study, we propose the PR pyramid as a theoretical model that redefines the role of public relations as the orchestrator of the consistent, coherent and integrated communication that is demanded by the contemporary digital context

O Gnuteca e o OpenBiblio: avaliação de softwares livres para a automação de bibliotecas

Leaving of the necessity of users of university libraries, currently working in more digital and available platforms each time in the Internet, free softwares has versions searching to answer adequately to these demands, being sold at a loss general costs of implantation of software. The present article aims at to carry through the comparative evaluation between two softwares free: the OpenBiblio and the Gnuteca, amongst other available ones in the Brazilian market of softwares for university libraries while complete systems of automation. A revision of national and international literature was made, having as methodology the important considered election of itens in this task. The choice of a software (either of “free code” or proprietor) that it works as automatized systems covering all its functions of university libraries, requires to consider aspects as so great of quantities, strategies of growth, human resources and financial e, over all, the demands of its users varying very of library for library. We point, for end, general aspects of the comparative evaluation between the OpenBiblio and the Gnuteca and of the evaluated criteria

The Cross-Cultural Evidence On "Extreme Behaviors": What Can It Tell Us?

Many kinds of body/mind practices are capable of producing remarkable behaviors and altered body states. A typology of such behaviors and states, defined as observable and intentional “extreme” alterations to the body, is presented. Epistemological and methodological issues are discussed: limitations of observational data, and role of meaning, intentionality, and consciousness. Rapprochement between Western medicine and Indo-Tibetan medicine requires rethinking biomedicine's radical grounding in physicality and reliance on “evidence-based medicine,” and guarding against an ethnocentric Western intellectual hegemony motivating medical science and clinical practice to colonize and subvert non-Western traditions like Indo-Tibetan Buddhist medicine

The role of spatial frequency information for ERP components sensitive to faces and emotional facial expression

To investigate the impact of spatial frequency on emotional facial expression analysis, ERPs were recorded in response to low spatial frequency (LSF), high spatial frequency (HSF), and unfiltered broad spatial frequency (BSF) faces with fearful or neutral expressions, houses, and chairs. In line with previous findings, BSF fearful facial expressions elicited a greater frontal positivity than BSF neutral facial expressions, starting at about 150 ms after stimulus onset. In contrast, this emotional expression effect was absent for HSF and LSF faces. Given that some brain regions involved in emotion processing, such as amygdala and connected structures, are selectively tuned to LSF visual inputs, these data suggest that ERP effects of emotional facial expression do not directly reflect activity in these regions. It is argued that higher order neocortical brain systems are involved in the generation of emotion-specific waveform modulations. The face-sensitive N170 component was neither affected by emotional facial expression nor by spatial frequency information

Software livre para bibliotecas, sua importância e utilização: o caso GNUTECA

This article presents the importance of the use of softwares for libraries, having "free software", its advantages. Through the use of “Gnuteca-Sistema de Gestão de Acervo, Empréstimos e Colaboração para Bibliotecas” (Gnuteca-System of Collection Management, Lending and Collaboration for Libraries), that was developed by the Center Univ. Univates, it is being used in Brazil and other countries. It uses the methodology GNU and was developed to use MARC21 standards and to import data of Microisis. The article presents the types of softwares, the importance of softwares without costs, and the definition of free software. It has as a result of bibliographical research, the use of Gnuteca, its advantages for the libraries, its interoperability with others softwares, its main modules and its interface in the InterNet. It was demonstrated that it is a viable software for libraries that do not want to have costs with licenses of softwares

Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements

The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce an abnor- mally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives)7,8. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements