Clinical trials of potential cognitive-enhancing drugs in schizophrenia: what have we learned so far?

In light of the number of studies conducted to examine the treatment of cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia (CIAS), we critically reviewed recent CIAS trials. Trials were identified through searches of the website "www.clinicaltrials.gov" using the terms "schizophrenia AND cognition," "schizophrenia AND neurocognition," "schizophrenia AND neurocognitive tests," "schizophrenia AND MATRICS," "schizophrenia AND MCCB," "schizophrenia AND BACS," "schizophrenia AND COGSTATE," and "schizophrenia AND CANTAB" and "first-episode schizophrenia AND cognition." The cutoff date was 20 April 2011. Included trials were conducted in people with schizophrenia, the effects on cognition were either a primary or secondary outcome, and the effect of a pharmacologically active substance was examined. Drug challenge, pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic, or prodrome of psychosis studies were excluded. We identified 118 trials, with 62% using an add-on parallel group design. The large majority of completed trials were underpowered to detect moderate effect sizes, had ≤8 weeks duration, and were performed in samples of participants with chronic stable schizophrenia. The ongoing add-on trials are longer, have larger sample sizes (with a number of them being adequately powered to detect moderate effect sizes), and are more likely to use a widely accepted standardized cognitive battery (eg, the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery) and MATRICS guidelines. Ongoing studies performed in subjects with recent onset schizophrenia may help elucidate which subjects are most likely to show an effect in cognition. New insights into the demands of CIAS trial design and methodology may help increase the probability of identifying treatments with beneficial effect on cognitive impairment in schizophrenia

Oncoplastic Approaches to Breast Conservation

When a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer many aspects of her physical, emotional, and sexual wholeness are threatened. The quickly expanding field of oncoplastic breast surgery aims to enhance the physician commitment to restore the patient's image and self-assurance. By combining a multidisciplinary approach to diagnosis and treatment with oncoplastic surgery, successful results in the eyes of the patient and physician are significantly more likely to occur. As a way to aid oncoplastic teams in determining which approach is most suitable for their patient's tumor size, tumor location, body habitus, and desired cosmetic outcome we present a review of several oncoplastic surgical approaches. For resections located anywhere in the breast, the radial ellipse segmentectomy incision and circumareolar approach for segmental resection are discussed. For resections in the upper or central breast, crescent mastopexy, the batwing incision, the hemibatwing incision, donut mastopexy, B-flap resection, and the central quadrantectomy are reviewed. For lesions of the lower breast, the triangle incision, inframammary incision, and reduction mastopexy are discussed. Surgeons who are interested in adding oncoplastic breast conserving therapies to their skill sets are encouraged to implement these surgical techniques where applicable and to seek out breast fellowships or enhanced training when appropriate

Rational analysis of the adaptive and predictive nature of memory

In his target article, Klein (2013) makes the important point that many approaches to studying memory neglect the function of memory, in particular its capacity to help predict the future. Here, we complement Klein’s argument in two ways. First, we point to an existing and well-developed research program that formalizes a functional approach to memory, exploring its adaptive nature. Second, we illustrate how this approach can be applied to analyze regularities in social interactions, which memory might exploit to predict future interactions. John R. Anderson and colleagues (Anderson and Milson, 1989, Anderson and Schooler, 1991, Anderson and Schooler, 2000 and Schooler and Anderson, 1997) developed the rational analysis of memory, in which they argued that much of memory performance, including forgetting, might be understood in terms of adaptation to the structure of the environment. The first key assumption of the rational analysis is that environmental stimuli make informational demands on the cognitive system that are met by retrieving memory traces associated with those stimuli. The second assumption is that the memory system acts on the expectation that environmental stimuli tend to reoccur in predictable ways; the pattern of past encounters can, thus, predict the future need of information. The third assumption is that the memory system makes most accessible those traces that it predicts will be most useful in the future. Consequently, memory performance should reflect the patterns with which environmental stimuli occur and reoccur in the environment. For instance, more recently encountered stimuli will likely be encountered again. An adaptive memory system should make information about those stimuli more accessible because it is more likely to be needed. Conversely, the longer time interval since the last encounter, the less likely the information will be needed in the future, and so it can and should be forgotten

Pastoral Livelihoods in South Ethiopia - Value Chain Assessment of Gum & Resins in Moyale Area

This research assessed the value chain of gum and resins, which are available in four woreda in the southern lowlands of Ethiopia. They are Moyale Somali, Moyale Oromia, Dhas and Dire woreda. The output of this research is the elaboration of three value chains. The first is a general one for all the woreda, while the other two concern the Moyale and Dubluk markets. The assessed products are the gum arabic from Acacia trees and the resin exuded by the dunkhal tree - Boswellia family. The aim of this study was not only to understand the way in which resins and gum gain value through the chain and the profit each stakeholder gains, but more importantly how pastoralists use resin and gum collection to diversify their income. The first chapter analyses what it means to be a pastoralist in the Moyale area and its challenges. The second chapter describes how the policies of the central state influenced the pastoral access to rangelands and water and the way in which this contributed to the increase of conflict among the different groups. A particular focus is on the settlement. The third chapter describes the different ethnic groups living in the studied area and their management system to preserve resources and cope with the dry season. This chapter considers the dynamic evolution of the relations among the various groups in terms of negotiating access to resources while facing political and climatic challenges. The fourth chapter illustrates the physical context and the environment, and the way in which it has been managed in order to preserve the pastoral lifestyle. The fifth chapter describes the characteristics of gum and resins in the studied area. Finally, the sixth chapter describes how the value chain methodology was applied in this specific study and its outputs

Non-adaptive phenotypic plasticity: the effects of terrestrial and aquatic herbicides on larval salamander morphology and swim speed

Department of Biology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USAPhenotypic plasticity, although ubiquitous, may not always be advantageous. Non-adaptive plasticity is likely to occur in response to novel environmental stress. Anthropogenic contaminants, such as herbicides, are novel stressors that are not present in the evolutionary history of most species. We investigated the pattern and consequences of phenotypic plasticity induced by four glyphosate-based herbicides (two terrestrial and two aquatic) in larvae of the spotted salamander, , by determining (1) whether the herbicides induced different morphologies; (2) if different morphologies translated to differences in burst swim performance; and (3) how induced individuals performed relative to non-induced controls. Different herbicide formulations led to the production of significantly different head and tail morphologies, and tail morphology correlated with fastest escape speed. However, escape speed did not vary among treatments. In addition, three out of four herbicide treatments experienced accelerated growth rates, in terms of the lateral size of tails, although the tail shapes were either similar to preliminary controls or intermediate between preliminary and final controls. These observations suggest that herbicide-induced morphology is a case of non-adaptive phenotypic plasticity, and that there is potentially a trade-off between growth and development for larvae exposed to different formulations. Understanding the functional significance of induced phenotypes is important for determining their importance in shaping an organism's ecological interactions and evolutionary trajectories. Furthermore, under different conditions, the morphological changes that we observed in response to exposure to herbicides might affect salamander fitness and influence population dynamics

Forgetting Constrains the Emergence of Cooperative Decision Strategies

Theoretical studies of cooperative behavior have focused on decision strategies that depend on a partner's last choices. The findings from this work assume that players accurately remember past actions. The kind of memory that these strategies employ, however, does not reflect what we know about memory. Here, we show that human memory may not meet the requirements needed to use these strategies. When asked to recall the previous behavior of simulated partners in a cooperative memory task, participants performed poorly, making errors in 10-24% of the trials. Participants made more errors when required to track more partners. We conducted agent-based simulations to evaluate how well cooperative strategies cope with error. These simulations suggest that, even with few errors, cooperation could not be maintained at the error rates demonstrated by our participants. Our results indicate that the strategies typically used in the study of cooperation likely do not reflect the underlying cognitive capacities used by humans and other animals in social interactions. By including unrealistic assumptions about cognition, theoretical models may have overestimated the robustness of the existing cooperative strategies. To remedy this, future models should incorporate what we know about cognition

Reflections of the Social Environment in Chimpanzee Memory: Applying Rational Analysis Beyond Humans

In cognitive science, the rational analysis framework allows modelling of how physical and social environments impose information-processing demands onto cognitive systems. In humans, for example, past social contact among individuals predicts their future contact with linear and power functions. These features of the human environment constrain the optimal way to remember information and probably shape how memory records are retained and retrieved. We offer a primer on how biologists can apply rational analysis to study animal behaviour. Using chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as a case study, we modelled 19 years of observational data on their social contact patterns. Much like humans, the frequency of past encounters in chimpanzees linearly predicted future encounters, and the recency of past encounters predicted future encounters with a power function. Consistent with the rational analyses carried out for human memory, these findings suggest that chimpanzee memory performance should reflect those environmental regularities. In re-analysing existing chimpanzee memory data, we found that chimpanzee memory patterns mirrored their social contact patterns. Our findings hint that human and chimpanzee memory systems may have evolved to solve similar information-processing problems. Overall, rational analysis offers novel theoretical and methodological avenues for the comparative study of cognition

Reflections of the Social Environment in Chimpanzee Memory: Applying Rational Analysis Beyond Humans

In cognitive science, the rational analysis framework allows modelling of how physical and social environments impose information-processing demands onto cognitive systems. In humans, for example, past social contact among individuals predicts their future contact with linear and power functions. These features of the human environment constrain the optimal way to remember information and probably shape how memory records are retained and retrieved. We offer a primer on how biologists can apply rational analysis to study animal behaviour. Using chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as a case study, we modelled 19 years of observational data on their social contact patterns. Much like humans, the frequency of past encounters in chimpanzees linearly predicted future encounters, and the recency of past encounters predicted future encounters with a power function. Consistent with the rational analyses carried out for human memory, these findings suggest that chimpanzee memory performance should reflect those environmental regularities. In re-analysing existing chimpanzee memory data, we found that chimpanzee memory patterns mirrored their social contact patterns. Our findings hint that human and chimpanzee memory systems may have evolved to solve similar information-processing problems. Overall, rational analysis offers novel theoretical and methodological avenues for the comparative study of cognition

Why you think Milan is larger than Modena: Neural correlates of the recognition heuristic

When ranking two alternatives by some criteria and only one of the alternatives is recognized, participants overwhelmingly adopt the strategy, termed the recognition heuristic (RH), of choosing the recognized alternative. Understanding the neural correlates underlying decisions that follow the RH could help determine whether people make judgments about the RH's applicability or simply choose the recognized alternative. We measured brain activity by using functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants indicated which of two cities they thought was larger (Experiment 1) or which city they recognized (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, increased activation was observed within the anterior frontomedian cortex (aFMC), precuneus, and retrosplenial cortex when participants followed the RH compared to when they did not. Experiment 2 revealed that RH decisional processes cannot be reduced to recognition memory processes. As the aFMC has previously been associated with self-referential judgments, we conclude that RH decisional processes involve an assessment about the applicability of the RH