Oxytocin, Cortisol, and Cognitive Control During Acute and Naturalistic Stress

Although stress is a strong risk factor for poor health, especially for women, it remains unclear how stress affects the key neurohormones cortisol and oxytocin, which influence stress-related risk and resilience. Whereas cortisol mediates energy mobilization during stress, oxytocin has anti-inflammatory, anxiolytic, and analgesic effects that support social connection and survival across the lifespan. However, how these neurohormones interrelate and are associated with cognitive control of emotional information during stress remains unclear. To address these issues, we recruited 37 college-aged women (Mage = 19.19, SD = 1.58) and randomly assigned each to a one-hour experimental session consisting of either an acute stress (emotionally stressful video) or control (non-stressful video) condition in a cross-sectional manner across the semester. Salivary cortisol and oxytocin samples were collected at baseline and after the video, at which point participants also completed measures assessing affect and an emotional Stroop task. As hypothesized, the emotional stressor induced negative emotions that were associated with significant elevations in cortisol and faster Stroop reaction times. Moreover, higher baseline oxytocin predicted greater positive affect after the stressor and also better cognitive accuracy on the Stroop. Analyses examining the naturalistic stress effects revealed that basal oxytocin levels rose steeply three weeks before the semester’s end, followed by rising cortisol levels one week later, with both neurohormones remaining elevated through the very stressful final exam period. Considered together, these data suggest that women’s collective experiences of stress may be potentially buffered by a synchronous oxytocin surge that enhances cognitive accuracy and reduces stress “when the going gets tough”

Identification of functional elements and regulatory circuits by Drosophila modENCODE

To gain insight into how genomic information is translated into cellular and developmental programs, the Drosophila model organism Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (modENCODE) project is comprehensively mapping transcripts, histone modifications, chromosomal proteins, transcription factors, replication proteins and intermediates, and nucleosome properties across a developmental time course and in multiple cell lines. We have generated more than 700 data sets and discovered protein-coding, noncoding, RNA regulatory, replication, and chromatin elements, more than tripling the annotated portion of the Drosophila genome. Correlated activity patterns of these elements reveal a functional regulatory network, which predicts putative new functions for genes, reveals stage- and tissue-specific regulators, and enables gene-expression prediction. Our results provide a foundation for directed experimental and computational studies in Drosophila and related species and also a model for systematic data integration toward comprehensive genomic and functional annotation

Blinding Evaluations of Scientific Evidence Reveals and Reduces Partisan Biases

Do political partisans evaluate new information in a biased way? Despite decades of research, this question has been difficult for psychologists to resolve. Proponents of rationalist accounts claim that ostensible biases can be solely explained by impartial, accuracy-motivated processes; in contrast, proponents of motivated accounts contend that partisans’ evaluations are often influenced by biased, directionally-motivated processes. Embracing the logic of blinding that underlies many scientific practices, I designed and deployed a novel experimental paradigm across four preregistered experiments (N = 4010) to critically test these two accounts. Participants were randomly assigned to evaluate the methodological quality of scientific evidence either before they knew its results (blinded evaluations) or after they knew its results (unblinded evaluations). The critical assumption underlying this design was that blinded participants provided purely impartial, accuracy-motivated evaluations. Unblinded participants, on the other hand, may or may not have been biased by their prior political beliefs when evaluating the new information. Indeed, in every study, unblinded participants were unduly influenced by their prior beliefs compared to their attitudinally-similar counterparts who made blinded evaluations. Partisans’ feelings and expectations produced independent, yet highly intertwined, biasing effects on their evaluations. These biases were most evident in unblinded participants’ denigration of politically-unfriendly information, rather than their veneration of politically-friendly information. Additionally, I found that blinding partisans’ quality evaluations influenced how credible they found politically-unfriendly information and how they updated their beliefs in response to that information. I discuss how these findings can be integrated into existing theoretical models—including Bayesian models of belief updating—to provide more accurate descriptions of political cognition. Ultimately, these results disconfirmed strong rationalist accounts of partisan evaluations and supported the existence of partisan biases

The Valorization of Effort

Effort is valued in human societies, but is it valued beyond what one’s efforts produce? In two experiments, I tested whether or not effort serves as a signal of one’s moral character, even in situations where greater effort did not lead to greater productivity. Participants read short vignettes about a high-effort and low-effort worker in randomized order and evaluated each target on a variety of person perception measures. In both studies, and in both between- and within-subjects analyses, participants perceived the high-effort worker as more moral than the low-effort worker, even when controlling for perceived warmth, competence, and productivity. In the second experiment, participants were also willing to pay the high-effort worker around $1000 more per year than the low-effort worker doing the exact same amount of work. These effects were not moderated by participants’ political orientation or Protestant Work Ethic scores. These results support a cognitive evolutionary account of effort valorization that may transcend cultural boundaries. Future directions and implications for research on effort valorization are discussed

DittoSupplemental_figure_1_copy – Supplemental material for At Least Bias Is Bipartisan: A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Partisan Bias in Liberals and Conservatives

<p>Supplemental material, DittoSupplemental_figure_1_copy for At Least Bias Is Bipartisan: A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Partisan Bias in Liberals and Conservatives by Peter H. Ditto, Brittany S. Liu, Cory J. Clark, Sean P. Wojcik, Eric E. Chen, Rebecca H. Grady, Jared B. Celniker, and Joanne F. Zinger in Perspectives on Psychological Science</p

A new platform for ultra-high dose rate radiobiological research using the BELLA PW laser proton beamline.

Radiotherapy is the current standard of care for more than 50% of all cancer patients. Improvements in radiotherapy (RT) technology have increased tumor targeting and normal tissue sparing. Radiations at ultra-high dose rates required for FLASH-RT effects have sparked interest in potentially providing additional differential therapeutic benefits. We present a new experimental platform that is the first one to deliver petawatt laser-driven proton pulses of 2&nbsp;MeV energy at 0.2&nbsp;Hz repetition rate by means of a compact, tunable active plasma lens beamline to biological samples. Cell monolayers grown over a 10&nbsp;mm diameter field were exposed to clinically relevant proton doses ranging from 7 to 35&nbsp;Gy at ultra-high instantaneous dose rates of 107&nbsp;Gy/s. Dose-dependent cell survival measurements of human normal and tumor cells exposed to LD protons showed significantly higher cell survival of normal-cells compared to tumor-cells for total doses of 7&nbsp;Gy and higher, which was not observed to the same extent for X-ray reference irradiations at clinical dose rates. These findings provide preliminary evidence that compact LD proton sources enable a new and promising platform for investigating the physical, chemical and biological mechanisms underlying the FLASH effect