On staying grounded and avoiding Quixotic dead ends

The 15 articles in this special issue on The Representation of Concepts illustrate the rich variety of theoretical positions and supporting research that characterize the area. Although much agreement exists among contributors, much disagreement exists as well, especially about the roles of grounding and abstraction in conceptual processing. I first review theoretical approaches raised in these articles that I believe are Quixotic dead ends, namely, approaches that are principled and inspired but likely to fail. In the process, I review various theories of amodal symbols, their distortions of grounded theories, and fallacies in the evidence used to support them. Incorporating further contributions across articles, I then sketch a theoretical approach that I believe is likely to be successful, which includes grounding, abstraction, flexibility, explaining classic conceptual phenomena, and making contact with real-world situations. This account further proposes that (1) a key element of grounding is neural reuse, (2) abstraction takes the forms of multimodal compression, distilled abstraction, and distributed linguistic representation (but not amodal symbols), and (3) flexible context-dependent representations are a hallmark of conceptual processing

Weapons Make the Man (Larger): Formidability Is Represented as Size and Strength in Humans

In order to determine how to act in situations of potential agonistic conflict, individuals must assess multiple features of a prospective foe that contribute to the foe's resource-holding potential, or formidability. Across diverse species, physical size and strength are key determinants of formidability, and the same is often true for humans. However, in many species, formidability is also influenced by other factors, such as sex, coalitional size, and, in humans, access to weaponry. Decision-making involving assessments of multiple features is enhanced by the use of a single summary variable that encapsulates the contributions of these features. Given both a) the phylogenetic antiquity of the importance of size and strength as determinants of formidability, and b) redundant experiences during development that underscore the contributions of size and strength to formidability, we hypothesize that size and strength constitute the conceptual dimensions of a representation used to summarize multiple diverse determinants of a prospective foe's formidability. Here, we test this hypothesis in humans by examining the effects of a potential foe's access to weaponry on estimations of that individual's size and strength. We demonstrate that knowing that an individual possesses a gun or a large kitchen knife leads observers to conceptualize him as taller, and generally larger and more muscular, than individuals who possess only tools or similarly mundane objects. We also document that such patterns are not explicable in terms of any actual correlation between gun ownership and physical size, nor can they be explained in terms of cultural schemas or other background knowledge linking particular objects to individuals of particular size and strength. These findings pave the way for a fuller understanding of the evolution of the cognitive systems whereby humans – and likely many other social vertebrates – navigate social hierarchies

A ‘spoon full of sugar’ helps the medicine go down: how a participant friendly version of a psychophysics task significantly improves task engagement, performance and data quality in a typical adult sample

Few would argue that the unique insights brought by studying the typical and atypical development of psychological processes are essential to building a comprehensive understanding of the brain. Often, however, the associated challenges of working with non-standard adult populations results in the more complex psychophysical paradigms being rejected as too complex. Recently we created a child (and clinical group) friendly implementation of one such technique – the reverse correlation Bubbles approach and noted an associated performance boost in adult participants. Here, we compare the administration of three different versions of this participant-friendly task in the same adult participants to empirically confirm that introducing elements in the experiment with the sole purpose of improving the participant experience, not only boost the participant’s engagement and motivation for the task but results in significantly improved objective task performance and stronger statistical results

High serum levels of transforming growth factor β1 are associated with increased cortical thickness in cingulate and right frontal areas in healthy subjects

ABSTRACT

SHIV-162P3 Infection of Rhesus Macaques Given Maraviroc Gel Vaginally Does Not Involve Resistant Viruses

Maraviroc (MVC) gels are effective at protecting rhesus macaques from vaginal SHIV transmission, but breakthrough infections can occur. To determine the effects of a vaginal MVC gel on infecting SHIV populations in a macaque model, we analyzed plasma samples from three rhesus macaques that received a MVC vaginal gel (day 0) but became infected after high-dose SHIV-162P3 vaginal challenge. Two infected macaques that received a placebo gel served as controls. The infecting SHIV-162P3 stock had an overall mean genetic distance of 0.294±0.027%; limited entropy changes were noted across the envelope (gp160). No envelope mutations were observed consistently in viruses isolated from infected macaques at days 14–21, the time of first detectable viremia, nor selected at later time points, days 42–70. No statistically significant differences in MVC susceptibilities were observed between the SHIV inoculum (50% inhibitory concentration [IC50] 1.87 nM) and virus isolated from the three MVC-treated macaques (MVC IC50 1.18 nM, 1.69 nM, and 1.53 nM, respectively). Highlighter plot analyses suggested that infection was established in each MVC-treated animal by one founder virus genotype. The expected Poisson distribution of pairwise Hamming Distance frequency counts was observed and a phylogenetic analysis did not identify infections with distinct lineages from the challenge stock. These data suggest that breakthrough infections most likely result from incomplete viral inhibition and not the selection of MVC-resistant variants

Age, Sex, and Socio-Economic Status Affect the Incidence of Pediatric Spinal Cord Injury: An Eleven-Year National Cohort Study

Few studies focus on pediatric spinal cord injury (SCI) and there is little information regarding the cause, anatomic level, and high risk population of SCI in children. This study aims to investigate the incidence and risk factors of pediatric SCI.A nationwide cohort of 8.7 million children aged<18 years in an 11-year period was analyzed for causes, age at injury, anatomic sites, disability, and familial socio-economic factors. Incidence rates and Cox regression analysis were conducted.<0.05).In the pediatric population, the overall SCI incidence rate is 5.99 per 100,000 person-years, with traumatic cervical SCI accounting for the majority. The incidence rate increases abruptly in male teenagers. Gender, age, and socio-economic status are independent risk factors that should be considered

Adjuvant breast cancer chemotherapy during late-trimester pregnancy: not quite a standard of care

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Diagnosis of breast cancer during pregnancy was formerly considered an indication for abortion. The pendulum has since swung to the other extreme, with most reviews now rejecting termination while endorsing immediate anthracycline-based therapy for any pregnant patient beyond the first trimester. To assess the evidence for this radical change in thinking, a review of relevant studies in the fields of breast cancer chemotherapy, pregnancy, and drug safety was conducted.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Accumulating evidence for the short-term safety of anthracycline-based chemotherapy during late-trimester pregnancy represents a clear advance over the traditional norm of therapeutic abortion. Nonetheless, the emerging orthodoxy favoring routine chemotherapy during gestation should continue to be questioned on several grounds: (1) the assumed difference in maternal survival accruing from chemotherapy administered earlier – i.e., during pregnancy, rather than after delivery – has not been quantified; (2) the added survival benefit of adjuvant cytotoxic therapy prescribed within the hormone-rich milieu of pregnancy remains presumptive, particularly for ER-positive disease; (3) the maternal survival benefit associated with modified adjuvant regimens (e.g., weekly schedules, omission of taxanes, etc.) has not been proven equivalent to standard (e.g., post-delivery) regimens; and (4) the long-term transplacental and transgenerational hazards of late-trimester chemotherapy are unknown.</p> <p>Summary</p> <p>Although an incrementally increased risk of cancer-specific mortality is impossible to exclude, mothers who place a high priority on the lifelong well-being of their progeny may be informed that deferring optimal chemotherapy until after delivery is still an option to consider, especially in ER-positive, node-negative and/or last-trimester disease.</p

The Risk of Stroke after Percutaneous Vertebroplasty for Osteoporosis: A Population-Based Cohort Study

PURPOSE: To investigate the incidence and risk of stroke after percutaneous vertebroplasty in patients with osteoporosis. METHODS: A group of 334 patients with osteoporosis, and who underwent percutaneous vertebroplasty during the study period, was compared to 1,655 age-, sex- and propensity score-matched patients who did not undergo vertebroplasty. All demographic covariates and co-morbidities were deliberately matched between the two groups to avoid selection bias. Every subject was followed-up for up to five years for stroke. Adjustments using a Cox regression model and Kaplan-Meier analyses were conducted. RESULTS: A total of 1,989 osteoporotic patients were followed up for 3,760.13 person-years. Overall, the incidence rates of any stroke, hemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke were 22.6, 4.2 and 19.6 per 1,000 person-years, respectively. Patients who underwent vertebroplasty were not more likely to have any stroke (crude hazard ratio = 1.13, p = 0.693), hemorrhagic stroke (HR = 2.21, p = 0.170), or ischemic stroke (HR = 0.96, p = 0.90). After adjusting for demographics, co-morbidities and medications, the vertebroplasty group had no significant difference with the comparison group in terms of any, hemorrhagic and ischemic strokes (adjusted HR = 1.22, 3.17, and 0.96, p = 0.518, 0.055, and 0.91, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Osteoporotic patients who undergo percutaneous vertebroplasty are not at higher risk of any stroke in the next five years after the procedure

Pupil Dilation to Explicit and Non-Explicit Sexual Stimuli

Pupil dilation to explicit sexual stimuli (footage of naked and aroused men or women) can elicit sex and sexual orientation differences in sexual response. If similar patterns were replicated with non-explicit sexual stimuli (footage of dressed men and women), then pupil dilation could be indicative of automatic sexual response in fully noninvasive designs. We examined this in 325 men and women with varied sexual orientations to determine whether dilation patterns to non-explicit sexual stimuli resembled those to explicit sexual stimuli depicting the same sex or other sex. Sexual orientation differences in pupil dilation to non-explicit sexual stimuli mirrored those to explicit sexual stimuli. However, the relationship of dilation to non-explicit sexual stimuli with dilation to corresponding explicit sexual stimuli was modest, and effect magnitudes were smaller with non-explicit sexual stimuli than explicit sexual stimuli. The prediction that sexual orientation differences in pupil dilation are larger in men than in women was confirmed with explicit sexual stimuli but not with non-explicit sexual stimuli

The Participation of Calponin in the Cross Talk between 20-Hydroxyecdysone and Juvenile Hormone Signaling Pathways by Phosphorylation Variation

20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) and juvenile hormone (JH) signaling pathways interact to mediate insect development, but the mechanism of this interaction is poorly understood. Here, a calponin homologue domain (Chd) containing protein (HaCal) is reported to play a key role in the cross talk between 20E and JH signaling by varying its phosphorylation. Chd is known as an actin binding domain present in many proteins including some signaling proteins. Using an epidermal cell line (HaEpi), HaCal was found to be up-regulated by either 20E or the JH analog methoprene (JHA). 20E induced rapid phosphorylation of HaCal whereas no phosphorylation occurred with JHA. HaCal could be quickly translocated into the nuclei through 20E or JH signaling but interacted with USP1 only under the mediation of JHA. Knockdown of HaCal by RNAi blocked the 20E inducibility of USP1, PKC and HR3, and also blocked the JHA inducibility of USP1, PKC and JHi. After gene silencing of HaCal by ingestion of dsHaCal expressed by Escherichia coli, the larval development was arrested and the gene expression of USP1, PKC, HR3 and JHi were blocked. These composite data suggest that HaCal plays roles in hormonal signaling by quickly transferring into nucleus to function as a phosphorylated form in the 20E pathway and as a non-phosphorylated form interacting with USP1 in the JH pathway to facilitate 20E or JH signaling cascade, in short, by switching its phosphorylation status to regulate insect development