Visualizing peripheral nerve regeneration by whole mount staining.

Peripheral nerve trauma triggers a well characterised sequence of events both proximal and distal to the site of injury. Axons distal to the injury degenerate, Schwann cells convert to a repair supportive phenotype and macrophages enter the nerve to clear myelin and axonal debris. Following these events, axons must regrow through the distal part of the nerve, re-innervate and finally are re-myelinated by Schwann cells. For nerve crush injuries (axonotmesis), in which the integrity of the nerve is maintained, repair may be relatively effective whereas for nerve transection (neurotmesis) repair will likely be very poor as few axons may be able to cross between the two parts of the severed nerve, across the newly generated nerve bridge, to enter the distal stump and regenerate. Analysing axon growth and the cell-cell interactions that occur following both nerve crush and cut injuries has largely been carried out by staining sections of nerve tissue, but this has the obvious disadvantage that it is not possible to follow the paths of regenerating axons in three dimensions within the nerve trunk or nerve bridge. To try and solve this problem, we describe the development and use of a novel whole mount staining protocol that allows the analysis of axonal regeneration, Schwann cell-axon interaction and re-vascularisation of the repairing nerve following nerve cut and crush injuries

Seeing Emotion with Your Ears: Emotional Prosody Implicitly Guides Visual Attention to Faces

Interpersonal communication involves the processing of multimodal emotional cues, particularly facial expressions (visual modality) and emotional speech prosody (auditory modality) which can interact during information processing. Here, we investigated whether the implicit processing of emotional prosody systematically influences gaze behavior to facial expressions of emotion. We analyzed the eye movements of 31 participants as they scanned a visual array of four emotional faces portraying fear, anger, happiness, and neutrality, while listening to an emotionally-inflected pseudo-utterance (Someone migged the pazing) uttered in a congruent or incongruent tone. Participants heard the emotional utterance during the first 1250 milliseconds of a five-second visual array and then performed an immediate recall decision about the face they had just seen. The frequency and duration of first saccades and of total looks in three temporal windows ([0–1250 ms], [1250–2500 ms], [2500–5000 ms]) were analyzed according to the emotional content of faces and voices. Results showed that participants looked longer and more frequently at faces that matched the prosody in all three time windows (emotion congruency effect), although this effect was often emotion-specific (with greatest effects for fear). Effects of prosody on visual attention to faces persisted over time and could be detected long after the auditory information was no longer present. These data imply that emotional prosody is processed automatically during communication and that these cues play a critical role in how humans respond to related visual cues in the environment, such as facial expressions

How to create a flourishing classroom? : An intervention protocol for enhancing teachers' social and emotional learning

The positive psychology movement values good atmosphere and flourishing in the classroom. In order to do this, it is important to develop teachers’ social and emotional learning (SEL) as a part of expertise, because teachers are in key position to create supportive and engaging learning environment. Even though promoting SEL as a means to create a flourishing classroom is often recommended in the literature, there is not much multi-national evidence about the development of the teachers’ competencies associated with SEL. Previous research indicates that it is difficult to aid students to flourish without teachers having the necessary skills to scaffold them. Focusing merely on cognitive outcomes is not helping, but instead, we need to train the teachers to support autonomy, agency and self-efficacy in classrooms to build sustainable success and happiness among youth. The whole classroom culture should be developed to support positive encounters. This chapter describes studies on SEL interventions on teachers. The participants of the first study were Finnish teachers who attended to Gordon’s Teacher Effectiveness Training (TET) workshops, based on humanistic psychology. For assessing teachers’ development of SEL, a new method, Dealing with Challenging Interaction (DCI) was developed. DCI helps to capture the real-life challenging situations at teacher’s work in various settings. In all, after the TET intervention the teachers really started using the studied skills, and they were more likely to support their students’ autonomy and agency than the teachers in the comparison groups. The next step was to carry out global investigations about the Lions Quest teacher workshops. These studies revealed increased readiness to develop teachers’ SEL competencies worldwide. Finally, various SEL interventions in nine European countries were looked at. So far, using mixed-method approach in several countries has produced consistent results with satisfactory effect sizes. The research methods appear ecologically valid, yet generalizable in various cultures and contexts. In all, these studies demonstrated that teachers benefit from SEL training. Diverse interventions appeared to increase teachers’ readiness to implement SEL. Especially, teachers’ sense of competence in teaching SEL increased. As such, the purpose of this chapter is to present an intervention protocol, based on the SEL interventions described above that aims at enhancing teachers’ social and emotional learning. The final aim is to develop classroom cultures that promote flourishing in both teachers and students. The present research adds to both theoretical and practical understanding of teachers’ continuing professional development worldwide.Peer reviewe

Mutations in <i>LNK</i> gene found in 8 of the 285 MPN cases.

<p>Mutations in <i>LNK</i> gene found in 8 of the 285 MPN cases.</p