Familiar and unfamiliar face recognition in crested macaques (Macaca nigra).

Many species use facial features to identify conspecifics, which is necessary to navigate a complex social environment. The fundamental mechanisms underlying face processing are starting to be well understood in a variety of primate species. However, most studies focus on a limited subset of species tested with unfamiliar faces. As well as limiting our understanding of how widely distributed across species these skills are, this also limits our understanding of how primates process faces of individuals they know, and whether social factors (e.g. dominance and social bonds) influence how readily they recognize others. In this study, socially housed crested macaques voluntarily participated in a series of computerized matching-to-sample tasks investigating their ability to discriminate (i) unfamiliar individuals and (ii) members of their own social group. The macaques performed above chance on all tasks. Familiar faces were not easier to discriminate than unfamiliar faces. However, the subjects were better at discriminating higher ranking familiar individuals, but not unfamiliar ones. This suggests that our subjects applied their knowledge of their dominance hierarchies to the pictorial representation of their group mates. Faces of high-ranking individuals garner more social attention, and therefore might be more deeply encoded than other individuals. Our results extend the study of face recognition to a novel species, and consequently provide valuable data for future comparative studies

Tumor to normal single-cell mRNA comparisons reveal a pan-neuroblastoma cancer cell

Neuroblastoma is a childhood cancer that resembles developmental stages of the neural crest. It is not established what developmental processes neuroblastoma cancer cells represent. Here, we sought to reveal the phenotype of neuroblastoma cancer cells by comparing cancer (n = 19,723) with normal fetal adrenal single-cell transcriptomes (n = 57,972). Our principal finding was that the neuroblastoma cancer cell resembled fetal sympathoblasts, but no other fetal adrenal cell type. The sympathoblastic state was a universal feature of neuroblastoma cells, transcending cell cluster diversity, individual patients, and clinical phenotypes. We substantiated our findings in 650 neuroblastoma bulk transcriptomes and by integrating canonical features of the neuroblastoma genome with transcriptional signals. Overall, our observations indicate that a pan-neuroblastoma cancer cell state exists, which may be attractive for novel immunotherapeutic and targeted avenues

The Time Course of the Influence of Valence and Arousal on the Implicit Processing of Affective Pictures

In the current study, we investigated the time course of the implicit processing of affective pictures with an orthogonal design of valence (negative vs. positive) by arousal (low vs. high). Previous studies with explicit tasks suggested that valence mainly modulates early event-related potential (ERP) components, whereas arousal mainly modulates late components. However, in this study with an implicit task, we observed significant interactions between valence and arousal at both early and late stages over both parietal and frontal sites, which were reflected by three different ERP components: P2a (100–200 ms), N2 (200–300 ms), and P3 (300–400 ms). Furthermore, there was also a significant main effect of arousal on P2b (200–300 ms) over parieto-occipital sites. Our results suggest that valence and arousal effects on implicit affective processing are more complicated than previous ERP studies with explicit tasks have revealed

Targeting the trypanosome kinetochore with CLK1 protein kinase inhibitors

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International meta-analysis of PTSD genome-wide association studies identifies sex- and ancestry-specific genetic risk loci

The risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following trauma is heritable, but robust common variants have yet to be identified. In a multi-ethnic cohort including over 30,000 PTSD cases and 170,000 controls we conduct a genome-wide association study of PTSD. We demonstrate SNP-based heritability estimates of 5–20%, varying by sex. Three genome-wide significant loci are identified, 2 in European and 1 in African-ancestry analyses. Analyses stratified by sex implicate 3 additional loci in men. Along with other novel genes and non-coding RNAs, a Parkinson’s disease gene involved in dopamine regulation, PARK2, is associated with PTSD. Finally, we demonstrate that polygenic risk for PTSD is significantly predictive of re-experiencing symptoms in the Million Veteran Program dataset, although specific loci did not replicate. These results demonstrate the role of genetic variation in the biology of risk for PTSD and highlight the necessity of conducting sex-stratified analyses and expanding GWAS beyond European ancestry populations. © 2019, This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply

Vacation (after-) effects on employee health and well-being, and the role of vacation activities, experiences and sleep

Contains fulltext : 116760.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Most vacations seem to have strong, but rather short-lived effects on health and well-being (H&W). However, the recovery-potential of relatively long vacations and the underlying processes have been disregarded. Therefore, our study focused on vacations longer than 14 days and on the psychological processes associated with such a long respite from work. In the present study, we investigated (1) how health and well-being (H&W) develop during and after a long summer vacation, (2) whether changes in H&W during and after vacation relate to vacation activities and experiences and (3) whether changes in H&W during and after vacation relate to sleep. Fifty-four employees reported their H&W before, three or four times during and five times after vacation. Vacations lasted 23 days on average. Information on vacation experiences, work-related activities and sleep was collected during vacation. Vacation activities were assessed immediately after vacation. H&W increased quickly during vacation, peaked on the eighth vacation day and had rapidly returned to baseline level within the first week of work resumption. Vacation duration and most vacation activities were only weakly associated with H&W changes during and after vacation. Engagement in passive activities, savoring, pleasure derived from activities, relaxation, control and sleep showed strong relations with improved H&W during and to a lesser degree after vacation. In conclusion, H&W improved during long summer vacations, but this positive effect was short-lived. Vacation experiences, especially pleasure, relaxation, savoring and control, seem to be especially important for the strength and persistence of vacation (after-) effects