Suppressing Unwanted Autobiographical Memories Reduces Their Automatic Influences: Evidence from Electrophysiology and an Implicit Autobiographical Memory Test

The present study investigated the extent to which people can suppress unwanted autobiographical memories in a mock crime memory detection context. Participants encoded sensorimotor-rich memories by enacting a lab crime (stealing a ring) and received direct suppression instructions so as to evade guilt detection in a brainwave-based concealed information test. Aftereffects of suppression on automatic memory processes were measured in an autobiographical implicit association test (aIAT). Results showed that suppression attenuated brainwave activity (P300) that is associated with crime-relevant memory retrieval, rendering innocent and guilty/suppression participants indistinguishable. However, guilty/suppression and innocent participants could nevertheless be discriminated via the late posterior negative slow wave, which may reflect the need to monitor response conflict arising between voluntary suppression and automatic recognition processes. Lastly, extending recent findings that suppression can impair implicit memory processes; we provide novel evidence that suppression reduces automatic cognitive biases that are otherwise associated with actual autobiographical memories

The Nora Virtual Tour: an immersive visit in the ancient city

The ancient city of Nora was a Phoenician, Punic and Roman settlement rising on a peninsula in the south-western coast of Sardinia. Since 1990, the University of Padova has been carrying on an interdisciplinary research project of excavation, architectural analysis, historical reconstruction and cultural promotion of tourism in this site. The excavations allow us to increase our knowledge of Middle Imperial Roman urban planning and to get a better understanding of the whole city and its history; the restoration of excavated monuments using gravels with different colours helps more than 60,000 tourists every year to recognize the function of different areas. In spite of this, visitors experience difficulty in understanding a landscape of ruins with barely visible evidence. Thus, a complete virtual reconstruction of the ancient city has become essential. 3D models of the Phoenician and Roman settlement have been developed, reshaping archaeological plans produced in 25 years by Universities that work in the site. The main monuments of the Roman city and the major crossroads have been rendered in greater detail, using sample-based textures that give a photorealistic effect and implementing the models with furniture and decorations selected through reliable sources of information. 3D reconstructions are now available for tourist groups led by a guide in the Nora Virtual Tour: stereoscopic images have been rendered and uploaded in an app for mobile headsets that provides immersive virtual reality for the users. The guide controls the devices with a tablet using a Bluetooth connection: at the beginning of the visit, the tourists can view equirectangular panoramas of the ruins taken from a helicopter, then they are accompanied to hot-spots where the ancient monuments are shown in an evocative Roman reconstruction

Treatment Outcomes of Treatment-Naïve Hepatitis C Patients co-infected with HIV: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational cohorts

Co-infection with Hepatitis C (HCV) and HIV is common and HIV accelerates hepatic disease progression due to HCV. However, access to HCV treatment is limited and success rates are generally poor

Systematic processes of land use/land cover change to identify relevant driving forces: Implications on water quality

Land use and land cover (LULC) are driving forces that potentially exert pressures on water bodies, which are most commonly quantified by simply obtained aggregated data. However, this is insufficient to detect the drivers that arise from the landscape change itself. To achieve this objective one must distinguish between random and systematic transitions and identify the transitions that show strong signals of change, since these will make it possible to identify the transitions that have evolved due to population growth, industrial expansion and/or changes in land management policies. Our goal is to describe a method to characterize driving forces both from LULC and dominant LULC changes, recognizing that the presence of certain LULC classes as well as the processes of transition to other uses are both sources of stress with potential effects on the condition of water bodies. This paper first quantifies the driving forces from LULC and also from processes of LULC change for three nested regions within the Mondego river basin in 1990, 2000 and 2006. It then discusses the implications for the environmental water body condition and management policies. The fingerprint left on the landscape by some of the dominant changes found, such as urbanization and industrial expansion, is, as expected, low due to their proportion in the geographic regions under study, yet their magnitude of change and consistency reveal strong signals of change regarding the pressures acting in the system. Assessing dominant LULC changes is vital for a comprehensive study of driving forces with potential impacts on water condition.The present study was carried using means provided by the research projects RECONNECT (PTDC/MAR/64627/2006), WISER (FP7-ENV-2008-226273), and 3M-RECITAL (LTER/BIA-BEC/0019/ 2009). Additionally, it benefited from two grants attributed by the FCT (Portuguese National Science Foundation): SFRH/BD/74804/ 2010 and SFRH/BPD/82127/2011

Manifolds associated with (Z2)n(Z_2)^n-colored regular graphs

In this article we describe a canonical way to expand a certain kind of $(\mathbb Z_2)^{n+1}$-colored regular graphs into closed $n$-manifolds by adding cells determined by the edge-colorings inductively. We show that every closed combinatorial $n$-manifold can be obtained in this way. When $n\leq 3$, we give simple equivalent conditions for a colored graph to admit an expansion. In addition, we show that if a $(\mathbb Z_2)^{n+1}$-colored regular graph admits an $n$-skeletal expansion, then it is realizable as the moment graph of an $(n+1)$-dimensional closed $(\mathbb Z_2)^{n+1}$-manifold.Comment: 20 pages with 9 figures, in AMS-LaTex, v4 added a new section on reconstructing a space with a $(Z_2)^n$-action for which its moment graph is a given colored grap

Implicit Tensor-Mass solver on the GPU

International audienceThe realist and interactive simulation of deformable objects has become a challenge in Computer Graphics. For this, the Tensor-Mass model is a good candidate: it enables local solving of mechanical equations, making it easier to control deformations from collisions or tool interaction. In this paper, a GPU implementation is presented for the implicit integration scheme. Results show a notable speedup, especially for complex scenes

An Implicit Tensor-Mass solver on the GPU for soft bodies simulation

International audienceThe realistic and interactive simulation of deformable objects has become a challenge in Computer Graphics. In this paper, we propose a GPU implementation of the resolution of the mechanical equations, using a semi-implicit as well as an implicit integration scheme. At the contrary of the classical FEM approach, forces are directly computed at each node of the discretized objects, using the evaluation of the strain energy density of the elements. This approach allows to mix several mechanical behaviors in the same object. Results show a notable speedup of 30, especially in the case of complex scenes. Running times shows that this efficient implementation may contribute to make this model more popular for soft bodies simulations

Aluminium-26 production in low- and intermediate-mass binary systems

Aluminium-26 is a radioactive isotope which can be synthesized within asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, primarily through hot bottom burning. Studies exploring $^{26}$Al production within AGB stars typically focus on single-stars; however, observations show that low- and intermediate-mass stars commonly exist in binaries. We use the binary population synthesis code binary_c to explore the impact of binary evolution on $^{26}$Al yields at solar metallicity both within individual AGB stars and a low/intermediate-mass stellar population. We find the key stellar structural condition achieving most $^{26}$Al overproduction is for stars to enter the thermally-pulsing AGB (TP-AGB) phase with small cores relative to their total masses, allowing those stars to spend abnormally long times on the TP-AGB compared to single-stars of identical mass. Our population with a binary fraction of 0.75 has an $^{26}$Al weighted population yield increase of $25\%$ compared to our population of only single-stars. Stellar-models calculated from the Mt Stromlo/Monash Stellar Structure Program, which we use to test our results from binary_c and closely examine the interior structure of the overproducing stars, support our binary_c results only when the stellar envelope gains mass after core-He depletion. Stars which gain mass before core-He depletion still overproduce $^{26}$Al, but to a lesser extent. This introduces some physical uncertainty into our conclusions as $55\%$ of our $^{26}$Al overproducing stars gain envelope mass through stellar wind accretion onto pre-AGB objects. Our work highlights the need to consider binary influence on the production of $^{26}$Al.Comment: 20 pages, 17 figures, and 6 tables. This article has been accepted for publication in MNRAS Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Societ

Reconsolidation and extinction are dissociable and mutually exclusive processes: behavioral and molecular evidence.

Memory persistence is critically influenced by retrieval. In rats, a single presentation of a conditioned fear stimulus induces memory reconsolidation and fear memory persistence, while repeated fear cue presentations result in loss of fear through extinction. These two opposite behavioral outcomes are operationally linked by the number of cue presentations at memory retrieval. However, the behavioral properties and mechanistic determinants of the transition have not yet been explored; in particular, whether reconsolidation and extinction processes coexist or are mutually exclusive, depending on the exposure to non-reinforced retrieval events. We characterized both behaviorally and molecularly the transition from reconsolidation to extinction of conditioned fear and showed that an increase in calcineurin (CaN) in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) supports the shift from fear maintenance to fear inhibition. Gradually increasing the extent of retrieval induces a gradual decrease in freezing responses to the conditioned stimulus and a gradual increase in amygdala CaN level. This newly synthesized CaN is required for the extinction, but not the reconsolidation, of conditioned fear. During the transition from reconsolidation to extinction, we have revealed an insensitive state of the fear memory where NMDA-type glutamate receptor agonist and antagonist drugs are unable either to modulate CaN levels in the BLA or alter the reconsolidation or extinction processes. Together, our data indicate both that reconsolidation and extinction are mutually exclusive processes and also reveal the presence of a transitional, or "limbo," state of the original memory between these two alternative outcomes of fear memory retrieval, when neither process is engaged.This research was supported by aUK Medical Research Council Programme Grant (no. 9536855) to B.J.E., and was conducted in the Department of Psychology and the Medical Research Council/Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute. E.M. was supported by a Royal Society Newton International Fellowship. A.L.M. was partly supported by the Ferreras-Willetts Fellowship in Neuroscience at Downing College, Cambridge University.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Society for Neuroscience via http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4001-13.2014