Impaired judgments of sadness but not happiness following bilateral amygdala damage

Although the amygdala's role in processing facial expressions of fear has been well established, its role in the processing of other emotions is unclear. In particular, evidence for the amygdala's involvement in processing expressions of happiness and sadness remains controversial. To clarify this issue, we constructed a series of morphed stimuli whose emotional expression varied gradually from very faint to more pronounced. Five morphs each of sadness and happiness, as well as neutral faces, were shown to 27 subjects with unilateral amygdala damage and 5 with complete bilateral amygdala damage, whose data were compared to those from 12 brain-damaged and 26 normal controls. Subjects were asked to rate the intensity and to label the stimuli. Subjects with unilateral amygdala damage performed very comparably to controls. By contrast, subjects with bilateral amygdala damage showed a specific impairment in rating sad faces, but performed normally in rating happy faces. Furthermore, subjects with right unilateral amygdala damage performed somewhat worse than subjects with left unilateral amygdala damage. The findings suggest that the amygdala's role in processing of emotional facial expressions encompasses multiple negatively valenced emotions, including fear and sadness

Dominance attributions following damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Damage to the human ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VM) can result in dramatic and maladaptive changes in social behavior despite preservation of most other cognitive abilities. One important aspect of social cognition is the ability to detect social dominance, a process of attributing from particular social signals another person's relative standing in the social world. To test the role of the VM in making attributions of social dominance, we designed two experiments: one requiring dominance judgments from static pictures of faces, the second requiring dominance judgments from film clips. We tested three demographically matched groups of subjects: subjects with focal lesions in the VM (n=15), brain-damaged comparison subjects with lesions excluding the VM (n=11), and a reference group of normal individuals with no history of neurological disease (n=32). Contrary to our expectation, we found that subjects with VM lesions gave dominance judgments on both tasks that did not differ significantly from those given by the other groups. Despite their grossly normal performance, however, subjects with VM lesions showed more subtle impairments specifically when judging static faces: They were less discriminative in their dominance judgments, and did not appear to make normal use of gender and age of the faces in forming their judgments. The findings suggest that, in the laboratory tasks we used, damage to the VM does not necessarily impair judgments of social dominance, although it appears to result in alterations in strategy that might translate into behavioral impairments in real life

Impaired recognition of social emotions following amygdala damage

Lesion, functional imaging, and single-unit studies in human and nonhuman animals have demonstrated a role for the amygdala in processing stimuli with emotional and social significance. We investigated the recognition of a wide variety of facial expressions, including basic emotions (e.g., happiness, anger) and social emotions (e.g., guilt, admiration, flirtatiousness). Prior findings with a standardized set of stimuli indicated that recognition of social emotions can be signaled by the eye region of the face and is disproportionately impaired in autism (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, & Jolliffe, 1997). To test the hypothesis that the recognition of social emotions depends on the amygdala, we administered the same stimuli to 30 subjects with unilateral amygdala damage (16 left, 14 right), 2 with bilateral amygdala damage, 47 brain-damaged controls, and 19 normal controls. Compared with controls, subjects with unilateral or bilateral amygdala damage were impaired when recognizing social emotions; moreover, they were more impaired in recognition of social emotions than in recognition of basic emotions, and, like previously described patients with autism, they were impaired also when asked to recognize social emotions from the eye region of the face alone. The findings suggest that the human amygdala is relatively specialized to process stimuli with complex social significance. The results also provide further support for the idea that some of the impairments in social cognition seen in patients with autism may result from dysfunction of the amygdala

FACTORS INFLUENCING PERIPHERAL SKIN TEMPERATURE CIRCADIAN RHYTHM IN YOUNG ADULT MALES

Periodic cues, including scheduled exercise, social interactions, sleep habits, and feeding time, have been shown to alter the circadian system. A disruption in circadian rhythms has been shown to have negative effects on health. Frequent skin temperature measures have been shown to be a valid method of assessing circadian rhythm parameters. The purpose of this study was to determine group mean differences in temperature amplitude, stability and lag measures among groups of young men of varying (optimal, fair and poor) adiposities. The strength of the association among the temperatures parameters and measures of body composition, physical fitness and activity, nutritional intake, lipid concentrations, and sleep were also examined. Findings indicated that men with poor adiposity had significantly lower mean amplitude and stability than the optimal or fair groups; with no significant differences in lag among the groups. Factors including physical fitness, physical activity and late night eating contributed to the variance in amplitude; physical activity, time spent in moderate to vigorous activity, late night snacking, and fat mass to stability; and sleep hours and lipid ratios to lag. These findings contribute to the identification of targeted intervention strategies that may improve the circadian synchrony and health of young men

“Luther Ely Smith: Father of the Gateway Arch”

Eero Saarinen’s Arch may be among the most recognized works of public art, but the vision that led to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial was that of Luther Ely Smith. Mark Tranel looks at Smith’s tireless work to have the warehouse district razed and a national memorial built on the St. Louis riverfront

Organic Dairy Performance in 2015

Organic dairying in 2015 provedto be a pretty profitable method to produce milk that is very competitive with the best of dairy systems. Iowa State University Extension and Outreach teamed up with CROPP Cooperative/Organic Valley to analyze the 2015 profits on 44 organic dairy farms

Economics of Conventional and Hybrid Grazing Dairies Relative to Organic and Organic No-Grain Dairies

The economics of various dairy production systems is a topic of frequent conversation in Extension’s work with Iowa dairy producers and industry professionals. This article attempts to shed further light on the economics of four dairy systems: 1) Conventional/Confinement dairy (CONV) 2) Hybrid Grazing dairy (HGRAZ) 3) Organic dairy (ORG) 4) Organic No-Grain dairy (ORG-NG) This study uses the “Millionaire Model Dairy Farm Performance in Iowa” publications and data from both 2015 and 2016 to compare relative profitability of these systems. Bottom line is that depending on manager skills and desires, all the systems studied have merit for the future of the Iowa dairy industry. The most profitable system depends on the milk prices; maintaining high levels of labor efficiency; producing decent volumes of milk production per cow and per farm relative to their system; ability to secure quality feed resources; and managing acceptable levels of capital efficiency (depreciation and interest/equity charges). It is hoped this study will assist current and aspiring dairy producers, in any of the systems, to analyze and benchmark their dairy operations to better plan for future profits

Increasing Dairy Base with Millionaire Model Dairy Farms

Those in the dairy industry need to recognize and promote dairy’s importance to the rest of the economy as each cow generates approximately $13,000 in economic activity in the form of jobs, goods and services created by a cow, along with paying taxes on the profits generated. Few recognize the ability of young producers especially to profit strongly with dairy as a career. For example, families in NE Iowa in 2000 and 2002 garnered approximately$100,000 net return to labor after an equity charge milking 100-140 cows with low/mediocre milk prices. In 2004, with much higher milk prices, the five model farms averaged $153,314 net return to labor with a decent quality of life as well, while one family, a seasonal dairy, achieved$244,141 net return to labor. Thus, it is quite possible to milk the dairy industry for high levels of profit