Aggression, anxiety and vocalizations in animals: GABA A and 5-HT anxiolytics

A continuing challenge for preclinical research on anxiolytic drugs is to capture the affective dimension that characterizes anxiety and aggression, either in their adaptive forms or when they become of clinical concern. Experimental protocols for the preclinical study of anxiolytic drugs typically involve the suppression of conditioned or unconditioned social and exploratory behavior (e.g., punished drinking or social interactions) and demonstrate the reversal of this behavioral suppression by drugs acting on the benzodiazepine-GABA A complex. Less frequently, aversive events engender increases in conditioned or unconditioned behavior that are reversed by anxiolytic drugs (e.g., fear-potentiated startle). More recently, putative anxiolytics which target 5-HT receptor subtypes produced effects in these traditional protocols that often are not systematic and robust. We propose ethological studies of vocal expressions in rodents and primates during social confrontations, separation from social companions, or exposure to aversive environmental events as promising sources of information on the affective features of behavior. This approach focusses on vocal and other display behavior with clear functional validity and homology. Drugs with anxiolytic effects that act on the benzodiazepine-GABA A receptor complex and on 5-HT 1A receptors systematically and potently alter specific vocalizations in rodents and primates in a pharmacologically reversible manner; the specificity of these effects on vocalizations is evident due to the effectiveness of low doses that do not compromise other physiological and behavioral processes. Antagonists at the benzodiazepine receptor reverse the effects of full agonists on vocalizations, particularly when these occur in threatening, startling and distressing contexts. With the development of antagonists at 5-HT receptor subtypes, it can be anticipated that similar receptor-specificity can be established for the effects of 5-HT anxiolytics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46351/1/213_2005_Article_BF02245590.pd

Scattering And The Role Of Operators In Bohmian Mechanics

Using Bohmian mechanics, we analyze the problem of describing escape time, escape position and sojourn time---quantities for which the quantum formalism assigns no self-adjoint operator---for quantum systems. The large-scale behavior relevant to scattering theory is also discussed. HOW DOES ONE HANDLE THIS? Consider an electron with a localized initial wave function, with support inside a certain region G. Surrounding the electron are detectors, placed along the boundary of G, which measure the position and the time of "escape" of the electron from the region. What are the quantum mechanical predictions for the statistics of these quantities? Predictions in quantum mechanics are based on a correspondence between operators and observable quantities, with the operators that correspond to classical observables arising as follows: The operators q, p for position and momentum may be found by replacing the classical Poisson bracket by the commutator: f ; g ! 1 i¯h [ ; ]. For a general ..

Process evaluation in occupational stress management programs: A systematic review

Objective: To conduct a systematic review of workplace stress management intervention studies that have incorporated process evaluation. Data Source: Electronic databases such as PsycINFO and MEDline were searched. Study Inclusion Criteria: The inclusion criteria included interventions published in the English language that were focused on either individual- or organizational-level stress management interventions at the workplace, with an outcome evaluation. Data Extraction: Each article was coded on key process-relevant variables, including context, recruitment, reach, dose delivered, dose received, fidelity, implementation, and participant's attitudes toward the intervention. Studies that reported on at least one of these process variables were also coded on the following study characteristics: Participants, setting, evaluation design, intervention content, intervention format, and study outcomes. Data Synthesis:Statistical Package for the Social Science was used to analyze the data with descriptive statistics. Results: Of the 84 studies identified that met the study inclusion criteria, 52 (61.9%) reported findings on at least one of the key relevant process-relevant variables. Variables most frequently included were recruitment (30%), intervention dose received (22%), participants' attitudes toward intervention (19%), and program reach (13%). Fewer than half of the studies presented any findings linking process evaluation and outcome evaluation. Conclusions: The incomplete reporting of information relevant to process evaluation makes it difficult to identify reliable determinants of effective intervention implementation or outcomes

On radial Schrödinger operators with a Coulomb potential

International audienceThis paper presents a thorough analysis of 1-dimensional Schrödinger operators whose potential is a linear combination of the Coulomb term 1/r and the centrifugal term 1/r 2. We allow both coupling constants to be complex. Using natural boundary conditions at 0, a two parameter holomorphic family of closed operators on L 2 (R +) is introduced. We call them the Whittaker operators, since in the mathematical literature their eigenvalue equation is called the Whittaker equation. Spectral and scattering theory for Whittaker operators is studied. Whittaker operators appear in quantum mechanics as the radial part of the Schrödinger operator with a Coulomb potential