A Specific and Rapid Neural Signature for Parental Instinct

Darwin originally pointed out that there is something about infants which prompts adults to respond to and care for them, in order to increase individual fitness, i.e. reproductive success, via increased survivorship of one's own offspring. Lorenz proposed that it is the specific structure of the infant face that serves to elicit these parental responses, but the biological basis for this remains elusive. Here, we investigated whether adults show specific brain responses to unfamiliar infant faces compared to adult faces, where the infant and adult faces had been carefully matched across the two groups for emotional valence and arousal, as well as size and luminosity. The faces also matched closely in terms of attractiveness. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) in adults, we found that highly specific brain activity occurred within a seventh of a second in response to unfamiliar infant faces but not to adult faces. This activity occurred in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), an area implicated in reward behaviour, suggesting for the first time a neural basis for this vital evolutionary process. We found a peak in activity first in mOFC and then in the right fusiform face area (FFA). In mOFC the first significant peak (p<0.001) in differences in power between infant and adult faces was found at around 130 ms in the 10–15 Hz band. These early differences were not found in the FFA. In contrast, differences in power were found later, at around 165 ms, in a different band (20–25 Hz) in the right FFA, suggesting a feedback effect from mOFC. These findings provide evidence in humans of a potential brain basis for the “innate releasing mechanisms” described by Lorenz for affection and nurturing of young infants. This has potentially important clinical applications in relation to postnatal depression, and could provide opportunities for early identification of families at risk

Diabetes, periodontitis, and the subgingival microbiota

Both type 1 and type 2 diabetes have been associated with increased severity of periodontal disease for many years. More recently, the impact of periodontal disease on glycaemic control has been investigated. The role of the oral microbiota in this two-way relationship is at this stage unknown. Further studies, of a longitudinal nature and investigating a wider array of bacterial species, are required in order to conclusively determine if there is a difference in the oral microbiota of diabetics and non-diabetics and whether this difference accounts, on the one hand, for the increased severity of periodontal disease and on the other for the poorer glycaemic control seen in diabetics

Alternative Specifications of Reference Income Levels in the Income Stabilization Tool

In this chapter, different approaches for the specification of reference income levels in the income stabilization tool (IST) are analyzed. The current proposal of the European Commission suggests a 3-year average or a 5-year Olympic average to specify the farm-level reference income that is used to identify if and to what extent a farmer is indemnified in a specific year. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the impact of income trends on indemnification if these average-based methods are used in the IST. In addition, we propose and investigate a regression-based approach that considers observed income trends to specify reference income levels. Furthermore, we apply these three different approaches to farm-level panel data from Swiss agriculture for the period 2003–2009. We find that average-based approaches cause lower than expected indemnification levels for farmers with increasing incomes, and higher indemnifications if farm incomes are decreasing over time. Small income trends are sufficient to cause substantial biases between expected (fair) and realized indemnification payments at the farm level. In the presence of income trends, average-based specifications of reference income levels will thus cause two major problems for the IST. First, differences between expected and realized indemnification levels can lead to significant mismatches between expected and real costs of the IST. Second, indemnity levels that do not reflect farm-level income losses do not allow achieving the actual purpose of the IST of securing farm incomes. Our analysis shows that a regression-based approach to specify reference income levels can contribute to bound potential biases in cases of decreasing or increasing income levels