Institute of Psychology,Chinese Academy Of Sciences
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The effect of stress and personality on dangerous driving behavior among Chinese drivers
The relationship between stress and road safety has been studied for many years, but the effect of global stress and its joint effect with personality on driving behavior have received little attention in previous studies. This study aimed to elucidate the impact of global stress and various personality traits on driving behavior. 242 drivers completed the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10), the Dula Dangerous Driving Index (DDDI), and several personality trait scales related to anger, sensation seeking, and altruism. The results showed that perceived stress and sensation seeking were significantly correlated with the four subcategories of dangerous driving behavior, namely, negative cognitive/emotional driving (NCED), aggressive driving (AD), risky driving (RD), and drunk driving (DD). Moreover, anger was positively correlated with negative cognitive/emotional driving, aggressive driving, and risky driving, and altruism was negatively correlated with aggressive driving and drunk driving. Hierarchical multiple regressions were applied to analyze the mediating effect of personality traits, and the results showed that anger mediated the relationship between stress and dangerous driving behavior and that this mediating role was especially strong for negative cognitive/emotional driving and aggressive driving. Collectively, the results showed that stress is an important factor that can affect people's driving behavior but that personality traits mediate the effect of stress on driving behavior. The findings from this study regarding the relationship among stress, anger, and dangerous driving behavior could be applied in the development of intervention programs for stress and anger management in order to improve drivers' ability to manage emotional thoughts and adjust their behavior on the road. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Common Variants on Xq28 Conferring Risk of Schizophrenia in Han Chinese
Schizophrenia is a highly heritable, severe psychiatric disorder affecting approximately 1% of the world population. A substantial portion of heritability is still unexplained and the pathophysiology of schizophrenia remains to be elucidated. To identify more schizophrenia susceptibility loci, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on 498 patients with schizophrenia and 2025 controls from the Han Chinese population, and a follow-up study on 1027 cases and 1005 controls. In the follow-up study, we included 384 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which were selected from the top hits in our GWAS (130 SNPs) and from previously implicated loci for schizophrenia based on the SZGene database, NHGRI GWAS Catalog, copy number variation studies, GWAS meta-analysis results from the international Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) and candidate genes from plausible biological pathways (254 SNPs)
gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase 1 specifically suppresses green-light avoidance via GABA(A) receptors in Drosophila
Drosophila larvae innately show light avoidance behavior. Compared with robust blue-light avoidance, larvae exhibit relatively weaker green-light responses. In our previous screening for genes involved in larval light avoidance, compared with control w(1118) larvae, larvae with gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase 1 (Ggt-1) knockdown or Ggt-1 mutation were found to exhibit higher percentage of green-light avoidance which was mediated by Rhodopsin6 (Rh6) photoreceptors. However, their responses to blue light did not change significantly. By adjusting the expression level of Ggt-1 in different tissues, we found that Ggt-1 in malpighian tubules was both necessary and sufficient for green-light avoidance. Our results showed that glutamate levels were lower in Ggt-1 null mutants compared with controls. Feeding Ggt-1 null mutants glutamate can normalize green-light avoidance, indicating that high glutamate concentrations suppressed larval green-light avoidance. However, rather than directly, glutamate affected green-light avoidance indirectly through GABA, the level of which was also lower in Ggt-1 mutants compared with controls. Mutants in glutamate decarboxylase 1, which encodes GABA synthase, and knockdown lines of the GABA(A) receptor, both exhibit elevated levels of green-light avoidance. Thus, our results elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms mediating green-light avoidance, which was inhibited in wild-type larvae
A Twin Study of Problematic Internet Use: Its Heritability and Genetic Association With Effortful Control
Our goal was to estimate genetic and environmental sources of influence on adolescent problematic internet use, and whether these individual differences can be explained by effortful control, an important aspect of self-regulation. A sample of 825 pairs of Chinese adolescent twins and their parents provided reports of problematic internet use and effortful control. Univariate analysis revealed that genetic factors explained 58-66% of variance in problematic internet use, with the rest explained by non-shared environmental factors. Sex difference was found, suggesting boys' problematic internet use was more influenced by genetic influences than girls' problematic internet use. Bivariate analysis indicated that effortful control accounted for a modest portion of the genetic and non-shared environmental variance in problematic internet use among girls. In contrast, among boys, effortful control explained between 6% (parent report) and 20% (self-report) of variance in problematic internet use through overlapping genetic pathways. Adolescent problematic internet use is heritable, and poor effortful control can partly explain adolescent problematic internet use, with effects stronger for boys. Implications for future research are discussed
Smelling directions: Olfaction modulates ambiguous visual motion perception
Senses of smells are often accompanied by simultaneous visual sensations. Previous studies have documented enhanced olfactory performance with concurrent presence of congruent color- or shape-related visual cues, and facilitated visual object perception when congruent smells are simultaneously present. These visual object-olfaction interactions suggest the existences of couplings between the olfactory pathway and the visual ventral processing stream. However, it is not known if olfaction can modulate visual motion perception, a function that is related to the visual dorsal stream. We tested this possibility by examining the influence of olfactory cues on the perceptions of ambiguous visual motion signals. We showed that, after introducing an association between motion directions and olfactory cues, olfaction could indeed bias ambiguous visual motion perceptions. Our result that olfaction modulates visual motion processing adds to the current knowledge of cross-modal interactions and implies a possible functional linkage between the olfactory system and the visual dorsal pathway
The Neural Response to Maternal Stimuli: An ERP Study
Mothers are important to all humans. Research has established that maternal information affects individuals' cognition, emotion, and behavior. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine attentional and evaluative processing of maternal stimuli while participants completed a Go/No-go Association Task that paired mother or others words with good or bad evaluative words. Behavioral data showed that participants responded faster to mother words paired with good than the mother words paired with bad but showed no difference in response to these others across conditions, reflecting a positive evaluation of mother. ERPs showed larger P200 and N200 in response to mother than in response to others, suggesting that mother attracted more attention than others. In the subsequent time window, mother in the mother + bad condition elicited a later and larger late positive potential (LPP) than it did in the mother + good condition, but this was not true for others, also suggesting a positive evaluation of mother. These results suggest that people differentiate mother from others during initial attentional stage, and evaluative mother positively during later stage
Impaired social decision making in patients with major depressive disorder
Background: Abnormal decision-making processes have been observed in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). However, it is unresolved whether MDD patients show abnormalities in decision making in a social interaction context, in which decisions have actual influences on both the self-interests of the decision makers per se and those of their partners
Peritraumatic startle response predicts the vulnerability to develop PTSD-like behaviors in rats: a model for peritraumatic dissociation
Peritraumatic dissociation, a state characterized by alteration in perception and reduced awareness of surroundings, is considered to be a risk factor for the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, the predictive ability of peritraumatic dissociation is questioned for the inconsistent results in different time points of assessment. The startle reflex is an objective behavioral measurement of defensive response to abrupt and intense sensory stimulus of surroundings, with potentials to be used as an assessment on the dissociative status in both humans and rodents. The present study examined the predictive effect of acoustic startle response (ASR) in different time points around the traumatic event in an animal model of PTSD. The PTSD-like symptoms, including hyperarousal, avoidance, and contextual fear, were assessed 2-3 weeks post-trauma. The results showed that (1) the startle amplitude attenuated immediate after intense footshock in almost half of the stress animals, and (2) the attenuated startle responses at 1 h but not 24 h after stress predicted the development of severe PTSD-like symptoms. These data indicate that the startle alteration at the immediate period after trauma, including 1 h, is more important in PTSD prediction than 24 h after trauma. Our study also suggests that the startle attenuation immediate after intense stress may serve as an objective measurement of peritraumatic dissociation in rats
The 4th Schizophrenia International Research Society Conference, 5-9 April 2014, Florence, Italy: A summary of topics and trends
The 4th Schizophrenia International Research Society Conference was held in Florence, Italy, April 5-9, 2014 and this year had as its emphasis, "Fostering Collaboration in Schizophrenia Research". Student travel awardees served as rapporteurs for each oral session, summarized the important contributions of each session and then each report was integrated into a final summary of data discussed at the entire conference by topic. It is hoped that by combining data from different presentations, patterns of interest will emerge and thus lead to new progress for the future. In addition, the following report provides an overview of the conference for those who were present, but could not participate in all sessions, and those who did not have the opportunity to attend, but who would be interested in an update on current investigations ongoing in the field of schizophrenia research. Published by Elsevier B.V
Protective Effect of Agaricus brasiliensis on STZ-Induced Diabetic Neuropathic Pain in Rats
Objective. The present investigation examined the neuroprotective effect of Agaricus brasiliensis (AbS) against STZ-induced diabetic neuropathic pain in laboratory rats. STZ-induced diabetic rats were administered orally with AbS. Body weight, serum glucose, and behavioral parameters were measured before and at the end of the experiment to see the effect of AbS on these parameters. After 6 weeks of treatments, all animals were sacrificed to study various biochemical parameters. Treatment with AbS 80 mg/kg in diabetic animals showed significant increase in body weight, pain threshold, and paw withdrawal threshold and significant decrease in serum glucose, LPO and NO level, Na-K-ATPase level, and TNF-alpha. and IL-1 beta. level as compared to vehicle treated diabetic animals in dose and time dependent manner. AbS can offer pain relief in PDN. This may be of potential benefit in clinical practice for the management of diabetic neuropathy