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This paper introduces a run-and-tumble model with self-reinforcing directionality and rests. We derive a single governing hyperbolic partial differential equation for the probability density of random-walk position, from which we obtain the second moment in the long-time limit. We find the criteria for the transition between superdiffusion and diffusion caused by the addition of a rest state. The emergence of superdiffusion depends on both the parameter representing the strength of self-reinforcement and the ratio between mean running and resting times. The mean running time must be at least 2/3 of the mean resting time for superdiffusion to be possible. Monte Carlo simulations validate this theoretical result. This work demonstrates the possibility of extending the telegrapher's (or Cattaneo) equation by adding self-reinforcing directionality so that superdiffusion occurs even when rests are introduced. © 2022 American Physical Society. S.F. is thankful for the support and hospitality of the Ural Mathematical Center at the Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg. S.F. also acknowledges financial support from RSF Project No. 20-61-46013. D.H. acknowledges the support from Wellcome Trust Grant No. 215189/Z/19/Z, the Medical Research Council, as part of United Kingdom Research and Innovation (also known as UK Research and Innovation) [MC/UP/1201/21] and Churchill College, University of Cambridge. A.O.I. acknowledges financial support from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (Ural Mathematical Center Project No. 075-02-2021-1387). D.H. and M.A.A.S acknowledge financial support from FAPESP/SPRINT Grant No. 18/15308-4. M.A.A.S acknowledges the Brazilian government's research funding agency CNPq (process no. 312667/2018-3).

Step-by-step instructions on how to set up a TicTrainer(R) web server on a PC or laptop.

Faced with a novel task some people enthusiastically embark in it and work with determination, while others soon lose interest and progressively reduce their efforts. Although cognitive neuroscience has explored the behavioural and neural features of apathy, the why's and how's of positive engagement are only starting to be understood. Stemming from the observation that the left hemisphere is commonly associated to a proactive ('do something') disposition, we run a preliminary study exploring the possibility that individual variability in eagerness to engage in cognitive tasks could reflect a preferred left- or right-hemisphere functioning mode. We adapted a task based on response-independent reinforcement and used entropy to characterize the degree of involvement, diversification, and predictability of responses. Entropy was higher in women, who were overall more active, less dependent on instructions, and never reduced their engagement during the task. Conversely, men showed lower entropy, took longer pauses, and became significantly less active by the end of the allotted time, renewing their efforts mainly in response to negative incentives. These findings are discussed in the light of neurobiological data on gender differences in behaviour.

Introduction Neurofeedback (NF) using real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has proven to be a valuable neuroscientific tool for probing cognition and promising therapeutic approach for several psychiatric disorders. Even though learning constitutes an elementary aspect of NF, the question whether certain training schemes might positively influence its dynamics has largely been neglected. Methods To address this issue, participants were trained to exert control on their subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) blood-oxygenation-level-dependent signal, receiving either exclusively positive reinforcement (PR, “positive feedback”) or also positive punishment (PP, “negative feedback”). The temporal dynamics of the learning process were investigated by individually modeling the feedback periods and trends, offering the possibility to assess activation changes within and across blocks, runs and sessions. Results The results show faster initial learning of the PR + PP group by significantly lower deactivations of the sgACC in the first session and stronger regulation trends during the first runs. Independent of the group, significant control over the sgACC could further be shown with but not without feedback. Conclusion The beneficial effect of PP is supported by previous findings of multiple research domains suggesting that error avoidance represents an important motivational factor of learning, which complements the reward spectrum. This hypothesis warrants further investigation with respect to NF, as it could offer a way to generally facilitate the process of gaining volitional control over brain activity.

IntroductionNeurofeedback (NF) using real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has proven to be a valuable neuroscientific tool for probing cognition and promising therapeutic approach for several psychiatric disorders. Even though learning constitutes an elementary aspect of NF, the question whether certain training schemes might positively influence its dynamics has largely been neglected.MethodsTo address this issue, participants were trained to exert control on their subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) blood-oxygenation-level-dependent signal, receiving either exclusively positive reinforcement (PR, “positive feedback”) or also positive punishment (PP, “negative feedback”). The temporal dynamics of the learning process were investigated by individually modeling the feedback periods and trends, offering the possibility to assess activation changes within and across blocks, runs and sessions.ResultsThe results show faster initial learning of the PR + PP group by significantly lower deactivations of the sgACC in the first session and stronger regulation trends during the first runs. Independent of the group, significant control over the sgACC could further be shown with but not without feedback.ConclusionThe beneficial effect of PP is supported by previous findings of multiple research domains suggesting that error avoidance represents an important motivational factor of learning, which complements the reward spectrum. This hypothesis warrants further investigation with respect to NF, as it could offer a way to generally facilitate the process of gaining volitional control over brain activity.

This study focuses on the relationship between reinforcement sensitivity and aggression according to the combination of forms and functions of aggression (i.e. proactive overt, proactive relational, reactive overt and reactive relational), and on the moderating role of gender in this relationship. The survey included 656 adolescents (55.33% male) from the city of Zagreb, Croatia. The results show that reward sensitivity has the highest relation with proactive overt aggression, while punishment sensitivity has the highest relation with reactive relational aggression. A moderator analysis shows that boys with high reward sensitivity manifest higher level of proactive overt aggression than girls with high reward sensitivity. Also, boys with high punishment sensitivity manifest higher level of reactive relational aggression than girls with high punishment sensitivity. The findings can help to improve the treatment of aggressive behaviour in adolescence by focusing on reward sensitivity in relation to punishment sensitivity., peer-reviewed

The prefrontal cortex is implicated in learning the rules of an environment through trial and error. But it is unclear how such learning is related to the prefrontal cortex’s role in short-term memory. Here we ask if the encoding of short-term memory in prefrontal cortex is used by rats learning decision rules in a Y-maze task. We find that a similar pattern of neural ensemble activity is selectively recalled after reinforcement for a correct decision. This reinforcement-selective recall only reliably occurs immediately before the abrupt behavioural transitions indicating successful learning of the current rule, and fades quickly thereafter. We could simultaneously decode multiple, retrospective task events from the ensemble activity, suggesting the recalled ensemble activity has multiplexed encoding of prior events. Our results suggest that successful trial-and-error learning is dependent on reinforcement tagging the relevant features of the environment to maintain in prefrontal cortex short-term memory., Prefrontal cortex is involved in flexibly learning the correct behavioural strategies but the neural correlates of this process are not well understood. Here the authors show that reinforcement for a correct decision at behavioural transitions evokes ensemble firing patterns related to prior events.

A multistage model of drug addiction in which individuals' motivations for use change as they develop problems is widely accepted; however, the evidence for this model comes mostly from animal work and cross-sectional studies. We used longitudinal data to test whether positive and negative reinforcement associated with alcohol consumption differed as a function of alcohol dependence (AD). Specifically, we tested whether (a) positive reinforcement is more strongly associated with alcohol consumption than is negative reinforcement among individuals without AD, (b) negative reinforcement is more strongly associated with AD than is positive reinforcement, and (c) in the presence of AD, the association between positive reinforcement and alcohol consumption becomes weaker, whereas the association with negative reinforcement becomes stronger. We included assessments between Ages 18 and 30 years from participants who indicated they ever had a drink (N = 2,556; 51.6% female) from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism Prospective Study. Results from generalized estimating equations indicated that positive, but not negative, reinforcement was associated with alcohol consumption among individuals without AD. Both positive and negative reinforcement were associated with AD, but the association was stronger with negative reinforcement. Results from the multilevel growth model indicated that the association between negative reinforcement and alcohol consumption became stronger with the presence of AD, whereas the association between positive reinforcement and alcohol consumption did not differ as a function of AD. We provide empirical evidence that positive and negative reinforcement are differentially associated with alcohol consumption as a function of AD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Reading interest is a significant predictor of reading achievement, with effects on both reading comprehension and vocabulary. We measured students’ interest in reading as an estimate of duration of observable reading using whole intervals of silent-reading time. In Experiment 1, we assessed associations among interest in reading (i.e., reinforcement value of reading) and the reading comprehension and vocabulary of 34 second-grade students. There were significant correlations between reading interest and these dependent measures. In Experiment 2, we simultaneously conducted a combined preintervention and postintervention design with multiple probe logic to test the effect of the establishment of a high interest in reading (i.e., conditioned reinforcement for reading) via a collaborative shared reading procedure with a teacher on reading comprehension and vocabulary. This procedure involved periods of reciprocal reading and related collaborative reading activities designed to increase students’ interest in reading. The establishment of a high interest in reading for 7 of the participants resulted in grade-level increases from 0.1 to 2.2 grades on various measures of reading achievement in less than 9 sessions (315 min). In Experiment 3, we implemented a combined small-n experimental-control simultaneous treatment design and a single-case multiple-probe design with multiple-probe logic. We tested and compared the effects of the establishment of conditioned reinforcement for reading, via the collaborative shared reading procedure with a teacher versus a peer, on participants’ gains in reading comprehension and vocabulary. All participants for whom conditioned reinforcement for reading was established in Experiment 3 (n = 7) demonstrated gains in reading achievement after a maximum of nine sessions (412 min), with grade-level increases between 0.2 and 2.5 on measures of reading comprehension and 0.3 to 3.1 on measures of vocabulary. Based on a comparison of the dependent variables included in both Experiments 2 and 3, the modified teacher-yoked collaborative shared reading procedure in Experiment 2 resulted in greatest relative average gains in reading achievement for participants who acquired conditioned reinforcement for reading (n = 3). However, the modified collaborative shared reading procedure with a peer required the least amount of teacher mediation and may be more viable for teachers. This trans-disciplinary effort proposes an account of motivation to read as conditioned reinforcement for reading content and its effects on reading achievement, with the educationally-significant goal of establishing reinforcers for continued learning.

Sosyal hizmet mesleğinin multi-disipliner oluşu diğer meslek dallarından uygulamalar ve kuramlarla besleniyor olması oldukça önemli bir gerçektir. İnsan ve toplum bilimleri bağlamında özellikle psikoloji alanından birçok kuram ve teknik Sosyal hizmete kaynaklık etmiştir. Pozitif psikolojinin bir konusu olan `Akış kuramı` birçok farklı alana destek sağlamaktadır. Bu kuramın sosyal hizmet disiplininde uygulanabilirliği ve sosyal hizmet uzmanlarının akış deneyimlerini etkileyen faktörlerin tespit edilmesi sosyal hizmet mesleğinin güçlenmesi, uzmanların farkındalık kazanması, uzmanlar tarafından aktarıcı bir role dönüşebilmesi amacı ile gelecek için önemli bir çalışmadır. Bu çalışmanın amacı Akış kuramını sosyal hizmet disiplininde tartışmaya açmak ve sosyal hizmet uzmanlarının akış deneyimlerini etkileyen faktörlerin niteliksel olarak incelenmesi ile sosyal hizmet mesleğine ve uygulayıcılarına bir perspektif kazandırmaktır.Bu araştırma için öncelikle 18 sorudan oluşan derinlemesine görüşme için yarı yapılandırılmış mülakat formu düzenlenmiştir. Aynı zamanda 29 sorudan oluşan Oxford Mutluluk Ölçeği kullanılmıştır. Aktif olarak çalışan `Sosyal Hizmet Uzmanı` unvanına sahip bireylere uygulanmıştır. Elde edilen mutluluk puanı ve derinlemesine görüşmede verilen cevaplar akış literatüründe elde edilen bilgilerle karşılaştırılarak yorumlanmıştır. Araştırmanın örneklemi İstanbul ilinde bulunan rasgele seçilmiş kurumlarda aktif olarak çalışan Sosyal hizmet uzmanları oluşturmaktadır. Araştırmanın sonuçlarına göre Sosyal hizmet mesleği akış deneyimi yaşamak için uygun ortamı sağlamamaktadır. Bunun dışında uzmanların işi anlamlı bulmaları göre değişkenlik göstermektedir. Mesleki deneyim yılı yüksek olan uzmanların mutluluk düzeyleri mesleğe yeni başlayan uzmanlara göre daha yüksektir. Bireysel yeteneklerini vakalarda kullanabilen uzmanların daha fazla akış yaşadığı tespit edilmiştir. Eşit statüde çalışan insanların yeteneklerini daha iyi kullanabildiği tespit edilmiştir. Vaka yoğunluğuna göre anda kalma ve iş doyumlarının değişkenlik gösterdiği bulgusuna ulaşılmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Akış, Akış kuramı, Sosyal hizmet, Mutluluk, Güçlendirme, Hedonik Adaptasyon ABSTRACTIt is a very important fact that the social work profession is multi-disciplinary and fed by the practices and theories from other profession. In the context of humanities and social sciences, many theories and techniques, especially from the field of psychology, have been the source of social work. ''Flow theory'', which is a subject of positive psychology, supports many different fields. The applicability of this theory in the discipline of social work and the determination of the factors affecting the flow experiences is an important work for the future with the aim of strengthening the social work profession, gaining awareness of the experts and turning them into a transmissive role by the experts. The aim of this study is to open the discussion of flow theory in the discipline of social work and to provide a perspective to the social work profession and its practitioners by qualitative analysis of the factors affecting the flow experiences of social workers. For this research, primarily a semi-structured interview form was prepared for in-depth interview consisting of 18 questions. The Oxford Happiness Scale, which consists of 29 questions, was also used. It has been applied to individuals who work actively as `Social Workers`. The happiness score obtained and the answers given in the in-depth interview were compared with the information obtained in the flow literature.The sample of the research is composed of social workers who work actively in randomly selected institutions in Istanbul province.According to the results of the research, the social work profession does not provide the appropriate environment to flow experience. Apart from this, it varies according to the fact that experts find the job meaningful. The happiness scale of workers with professional experience is higher than those who have just started the profession. It was found that experts who could use their individual abilities in cases experienced more flow. The research proved that workers who believe in equality are able to use their talents in betterways.According to the case density, it was found that staying in the moment and job satisfaction were variable.Keywords: Flow, Flow theory, Social work, Happiness, Empowerment, Hedonic Adaptation 78

Background Habits (learned automatic responses to contextual cues) are considered important in sustaining health behaviour change. While habit formation is promoted by repeating behaviour in a stable context, little is known about what other variables may contribute, and whether there are variables which may accelerate the habit formation process. The aim of this study was to explore variables relating to the perceived reward value of behaviour – pleasure, perceived utility, perceived benefits, and intrinsic motivation. The paper tests whether reward has an impact on habit formation which is mediated by behavioural repetition, and whether reward moderates the relationship between repetition and habit formation. Methods Habit formation for flossing and vitamin C tablet adherence was investigated in the general public following an intervention, using a longitudinal, single-group design. Of a total sample of 118 participants, 80 received an online vitamin C intervention at baseline, and all 118 received a face-to-face flossing intervention four weeks later. Behaviour, habit, intention, context stability (whether the behaviour was conducted in the same place and point in routine every time), and reward variables were self-reported every four weeks, for sixteen weeks. Structured equation modelling was used to model reward-related variables as predictors of intention, repetition, and habit, and as moderators of the repetition-habit relationship. Results Habit strength and behaviour increased for both target behaviours. Intrinsic motivation and pleasure moderated the relationship between behavioural repetition and habit. Neither perceived utility nor perceived benefits predicted behaviour nor interacted with repetition. Limited support was obtained for the mediation hypothesis. Strong intentions unexpectedly weakened the repetition-habit relationship. Context stability mediated and for vitamin C, also moderated the repetition-habit relationship. Conclusions Pleasure and intrinsic motivation can aid habit formation through promoting greater increase in habit strength per behaviour repetition. Perceived reward can therefore reinforce habits, beyond the impact of reward upon repetition. Habit-formation interventions may be most successful where target behaviours are pleasurable or intrinsically valued. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s40359-018-0270-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Woods and Himle developed a standardized tic suppression paradigm (TSP) for the experimental setting, to quantify the effects of intentional tic suppression in Tourette syndrome. We previously provided a computer program to facilitate recording tic occurrence and to automate reward delivery during the several experimental conditions of the TSP. The present article describes a web-based program that performs the same functions. Implementing this program on the web allows research sessions to be performed remotely, in tandem with a video calling program. Relevant data for each session, such as the timing of tics and dispensed rewards, are stored in plain text files for later analysis. Expected applications include research on Tourette syndrome and related disorders.

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. This study examined whether trained variability would generalize across dimensions of the target response. Two experiments used a computerized rectangle drawing task that required participants to click and drag a mouse cursor to create rectangles on a computer screen. In Experiment 1, one group received points when successive rectangles varied in their size, shape and location (VAR), another group were yoked to the VAR group and received points that were allocated to them using a yoking procedure (YOKE), regardless of the variability in the size, shape or location of the rectangle drawn. Variability was higher for a dimension when variability on that dimension was directly reinforced. In Experiment 2, three groups of participants received points when rectangles varied on two dimensions; each group differed in the two dimensions that required variation. Variability was again higher for the reinforced dimensions for two of the three groups. Comparison with the YOKE group showed that the variability on those dimensions where variability was not directly reinforced was affected by reinforcement for variability on the other dimensions. Specifically, the variability in Shape and Location was significantly higher when these two dimensions occurred with other dimensions where variability was reinforced (as in Experiment 2) compared to when they were not required to vary (as in the YOKE group). This suggests that, for these two groups, the reinforced variability on the other two dimensions generalized to the third dimension. Implications of this finding to our understanding of factors that promote behavioral variability are discussed.

A variety of evidence suggests that bipolar disorder is associated with disruptions of reward related processes, although the properties, and scope of these changes are not well understood. In the present study, we aimed to address this question by examining performance of patients with bipolar disorder (30 depressed bipolar; 35 euthymic bipolar) on a motivated choice reaction time task. We compared performance with a group of healthy control individuals (n = 44) and a group of patients with unipolar depression (n = 41), who were matched on several demographic variables. The task consists of an "odd-one-out" discrimination, in the presence of a cue signaling the probability of reward on a given trial (10, 50, or 90%) given a sufficiently fast response. All groups showed similar reaction time (RT) performance, and similar shortening of RT following the presentation of a reward predictive cue. However, compared to healthy individuals, the euthymic bipolar group showed a relative increase in commission errors during the high reward compared to low condition. Further correlational analysis revealed that in the healthy control and unipolar depression groups, participants tended either to shorten RTs for the high rather than low reward cue a relatively large amount with an increase in error rate, or to shorten RTs to a lesser extent but without increasing errors to the same degree. By contrast, reward-related speeding and reward-related increase in errors were less well coupled in the bipolar groups, significantly so in the BPD group. These findings suggest that although RT performance on the present task is relatively well matched, there may be a specific failure of individuals with bipolar disorder to calibrate RT speed and accuracy in a strategic way in the presence of reward-related stimuli.

Evidence increasingly suggests that neural structures that respond to primary and secondary rewards are also implicated in the processing of social rewards. The ‘Like’—a popular feature on social media—shares features with both monetary and social rewards as a means of feedback that shapes reinforcement learning. Despite the ubiquity of the Like, little is known about the neural correlates of providing this feedback to others. In this study, we mapped the neural correlates of providing Likes to others on social media. Fifty-eight adolescents and young adults completed a task in the MRI scanner designed to mimic the social photo-sharing app Instagram. We examined neural responses when participants provided positive feedback to others. The experience of providing Likes to others on social media related to activation in brain circuity implicated in reward, including the striatum and ventral tegmental area, regions also implicated in the experience of receiving Likes from others. Providing Likes was also associated with activation in brain regions involved in salience processing and executive function. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of the neural processing of social rewards, as well as the neural processes underlying social media use.

A functional analysis of prosociality considers how predispositions for prosocial behavior prompt, reinforce, and propagate kind behaviors in the real world. To examine the effects of practicing, receiving, and observing everyday prosociality-as well as the mechanisms underlying these effects-we randomly assigned employees in a Spanish corporate workplace (N = 111) to be Givers, Receivers, and Controls. Givers practiced 5 acts of kindness for a personalized list of Receivers over 4 weeks. We found that Givers and Receivers mutually benefited in well-being in both the short-term (e.g., on weekly measures of competence and autonomy) and the long-term (e.g., Receivers became happier after 2 months, and Givers became less depressed and more satisfied with their lives and jobs). In addition, Givers' prosocial acts inspired others to act: Receivers paid their acts of kindness forward with 278% more prosocial behaviors than Controls. Our results reveal that practicing everyday prosociality is both emotionally reinforcing and contagious (inspiring kindness and generating hedonic rewards in others) and that receiving everyday prosociality is an unequivocally positive experience (which may further reinforce Givers' actions). Prosociality's benefits shed light on its surprising ubiquity in humanity compared with our closest evolutionary cousins. (PsycINFO Database Record

Şizofreni hastalığı, hem hastanın hem de ailesinin yaşamını derinden etkilemektedir. Türkiye'de şizofreni hastası bireylerin genellikle ailesinin yanında yaşamını sürdürmesi, aile ve ebeveynler açısından ciddi sorunlara neden olabilmektedir. Bu araştırmanın genel amacı, şizofreni hastası çocuğu olan ebeveynlerin hastalık öncesi süreçten hastalık sürecine uzanan yaşantılarının fiziksel, sosyal, bilişsel, duyuşsal ve tinsel alanda belirlenmesi ve güçlendirme yaklaşımının temel kavramlarıyla değerlendirilmesidir. Araştırmada ebeveynlerin fiziksel, sosyal, bilişsel, duyuşsal ve tinsel alanda yaşadığı güçlüklerin, ihtiyaçların, ebeveynlerin kendi anlatılarıyla belirlenmesi amaçlanmıştır. Bununla birlikte ebeveynleri bu beş alanda güçlü ve güçsüz kılan, yani güçlenme sürecini etkileyen unsurların neler olduğu saptanmaya çalışılmıştır. Ebeveynlerin sorunlarına ve ihtiyaçlarına yönelik, güçlendirme yaklaşımının temel kavramları dikkate alınarak bir model önerisinde bulunulmuştur.Araştırma, nitel araştırma yöntemi kullanılarak gerçekleştirilmiştir. 2016-2017 yılları arasında, 15 anne ve 15 baba olmak üzere toplamda 30 ebeveynle, yarı yapılandırılmış görüşme formu kullanılarak derinlemesine görüşmeler gerçekleştirilmiştir. Araştırma verilerinin analizinde Maxqda2018 programı kullanılmıştır.Araştırma sonuçlarına göre, ebeveynlerin fiziksel, sosyal, bilişsel, duyuşsal ve tinsel alanda hastalık sürecinden, toplumsal cinsiyet bakış açısı ve rollerinden, aile içi işlevsellikten, sosyal çevreden, toplum algısından ve hizmetlerle ilgili konulardan kaynaklanan güçlükler yaşadığı belirlenmiştir. Özellikle toplumsal cinsiyet bakış açısı ve rollerinden kaynaklanan sorunların hastalık sürecini önemli derecede etkilediği belirlenmiştir. Toplumun erkeği ve erkekliği `güç` ile ilişkilendirmesi, bireyi `güçsüz` kılan ruhsal hastalığın, çoğu baba tarafından kabullenilmesini güçleştirmiştir. Bu durumun annelerin daha fazla sorumluluk almasına ve güçsüzleşmesine neden olduğu saptanmıştır. Ebeveynlerin fiziksel, sosyal, bilişsel, duyuşsal ve tinsel alanlarda güçlenme sürecini etkileyen unsurların, ebeveynlerin tüm yaşam seyrini etkilediği görülmüştür. Hastalık sürecinde annelerin ve babaların hastalığa, hastalık sürecine ve olaylara ilişkin algılama ve anlamlandırmasının farklı olmasının eşler arasında çatışmayı arttırdığı sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Bireylerin tinsel alandaki, `yaşamın anlamı`, `hastalığın anlamı` ve `güç ve güçsüzlük` üzerine sorgulamalarının ebeveynlerin güçlenme sürecine olumlu şekilde yansıdığı belirlenmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Ebeveyn, Güçlendirme Yaklaşımı, Şizofreni Hastalığı, Yaşantı Schizophrenia deeply affects both the lives of patients and their families. The fact that schizophrenic patients in Turkey generally maintain their lives with their families may lead to serious problems for families and parents. The main purposes of this research are to determine the physical, social, cognitive, emotional and moral lives of parents of children with schizophrenia extending from pre-illness process to illness process and to evaluate their lives with the main concepts of the empowerment approach. In the research, it is aimed at determining physical, social, cognitive, emotional and moral difficulties and needs of the parents with their own words. Furthermore, it is also attempted to determine what kind of factors empower and disempower the parents in these five fields, i.e. what kind of factors affect the empowerment process. A model is proposed for the problems and needs of the parents by taking into consideration the main concepts of the empowerment approach. The research was carried out with qualitative research method. In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 parents in total, i.e. 15 mothers and 15 fathers, through semi-structure interview form. Maxqda 2018 was used for the analysis of the research data.According to research result, it is determined that the parents have problems due to physical, social, cognitive, emotional and moral illness process, gender perspective and roles, domestic functionality, social environment, social perception and issues related to services. In particular, it has been determined that the problems arising from gender perspective and roles have a significant effect on the disease process. As society has associated men and menhood with `power`; fathers find hard to accept the mental disease which weakened the individual. It has been found that this situation causes mothers to take more responsibility and become weaker. It was observed that the factors affecting the process of parental empowerment in the physical, social, cognitive, affective and spiritual domains affected the life course of the parents. It has been concluded that mothers and fathers have different perception of meaning of disease, disease process and events in the disease process, increase the conflict between spouses. It has been determined that the questioning of the meaning of life, the meaning of the disease and the powerlessness and power of individuals in the spiritual field positively reflect the empowerment process of the parents.Keywords: Empowerment Approach, Life, Parent, Schizophrenia 337

Araştırma Tip 2 diyabetik hastalarda engel algısı ve psikososyal öz yeterlilik ilişkisini incelemek amacıyla tanımlayıcı olarak yapıldı. Araştırmanın örneklemini Artvin Devlet Hastanesi'nde Dahiliye Polikliniğine gelen 186 diyabet hastası oluşturdu. Veriler ''Hasta Bilgi Formu'', ''Diyabet Güçlendirme Ölçeği'' ve ''Çok Boyutlu Diyabet Anketi'nin Engel Algısı Alt Ölçeği'' kullanılarak toplandı. Verilerin değerlendirilmesinde Spearman korelasyon analizi, Man Whitney-U Testi, Kruskall Wallis Testi ve Shapiro Wilk Testi kullanıldı. Araştırmaya katılan hastaların yaş ortalaması 57.74±8.96 yıl , %56.5'i erkektir. Hastaların Güçlendirme Ölçeği ve Engel Algısı Alt Ölçeği toplam puan ortalaması sırasıyla 3.59±0.61ve 2.25±1.65 olarak bulundu. Yaş, medeni durum, eğitim düzeyi, çalışma durumu, tedavi şekli, diyabet süresi, glikolize hemoglobin düzeyi, insülin kullanma yılı, günlük kullanılan insülin sayısı, diyabete bağlı komplikasyon yaşama, psikolojik sorun yaşama, diyabetin günlük faaliyetlere izin vermesi, uyum sağlama başarısı, ilaç kullanımı, egzersiz ve sağlık kontrollerinde zorluk yaşama durumunun, hastaların engel algısı ve psikososyal öz yeterliliklerini etkilediği saptandı (p

Drug use is a choice with immediate positive outcomes, but long-term negative consequences. Thus, the repeated use of drugs in the face of negative consequences suggests dysfunction in the cognitive mechanisms underpinning decision-making. This cognitive dysfunction can be mapped into three stages: the formation of preferences involving valuation of decision options; choice implementation including motivation, self-regulation and inhibitory processes; and feedback processing implicating reinforcement learning. This article reviews behavioral studies that have examined alterations in these three stages of decision-making in people with substance use disorders. Relative to healthy individuals, those with alcohol, cannabis, stimulant and opioid use disorders value risky options more highly during the formation of preferences; have a greater appetite for superficially attractive rewards during choice implementation; and are both more efficient in learning from rewards and less efficient in learning from losses during feedback processing. These observed decision-making deficits are most likely due to both premorbid factors and drug-induced effects. Because decision-making deficits have been prospectively associated with a greater risk of drug relapse, we advocate for greater research on modulating the component stages that give rise to dysfunctional decision-making in disorders of addiction.

This study reports a cross-cultural comparison of the vocal pitch patterns of 15 Mexican Spanish-speaking and 15 Belgian Flemish-speaking dyads, recorded during 5min of free-play in a laboratory setting. Both cultures have a tradition of dyadic face-to-face interaction but differ in language origins (i.e., Romanic versus Germanic). In total, 374 Mexican and 558 Flemish vocal exchanges were identified, analyzed and compared for their incidence of tonal synchrony (harmonic/pentatonic series), non-tonal synchrony (with/without imitations) and pitch and/or interval imitations. The main findings revealed that dyads in both cultures rely on tonal synchrony using similar pitch ratios and timing patterns. However, there were significant differences in the infants' vocal pitch imitation behavior. Additional video-analyzes on the contingency patterns involved in pitch imitation showed a cross-cultural difference in the maternal selective reinforcement of pitch imitation. The results are interpreted with regard to linguistic, developmental and cultural aspects and the 'musilanguage' model.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: We argue that the stimuli used in traditional fear conditioning paradigms are too simple to model the learning and unlearning of complex fear memories. We therefore developed and tested an adapted fear conditioning paradigm, specifically designed for the study of complex associative memories. Second, we explored whether manipulating the meaning and complexity of the CS-UCS association strengthened the learned fear association.METHODS: In a two-day differential fear conditioning study, participants were randomly assigned to two experimental conditions. All participants were subjected to the same CSs (i.e., pictures) and UCS (i.e., 3 s film clip) during fear conditioning. However, in one of the conditions (negative-relevant context), the reinforced CS and UCS were meaningfully connected to each other by a 12 min aversive film clip presented prior to fear acquisition. Participants in the other condition (neutral context) were not able to make such meaningful connection between these stimuli, as they viewed a neutral film clip.RESULTS: Fear learning and unlearning were observed on fear-potentiated startle data and distress ratings within the adapted paradigm. Moreover, several group differences on these measures indicated increased UCS valence and enhanced associative memory strength in the negative-relevant context condition compared to the neutral context condition.LIMITATIONS: Due to technical equipment failure, skin conductance data could not be interpreted.CONCLUSIONS: The fear conditioning paradigm as presented in the negative-relevant context condition holds considerable promise for the study of complex associative fear memories and therapeutic interventions for such memories.

Oscillatory activity has been proposed as a key mechanism in the integration of brain activity of distant structures. Particularly, high frequency brain oscillatory activity in the beta and gamma range has received increasing interest in the domains of attention and memory. In addition, a number of recent studies have revealed an increase of beta gamma activity (20-35 Hz) after unexpected or relevant positive reward outcomes. In the present manuscript we review the literature on this phenomenon and we propose that this activity is a brain signature elicited by unexpected positive outcomes in order to transmit a fast motivational value signal to the reward network. In addition, we hypothesize that beta-gamma oscillatory activity indexes the interaction between attentional and emotional systems, and that it directly reflects the appearance of unexpected positive rewards in learning-related contexts.

Gesture comprehension remains understudied, particularly in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who have difficulties in gesture production. Using a novel gesture comprehension task, Study 1 examined how 2- to 4-year-old typically-developing (TD) children comprehend types of gestures and gesture-speech combinations, and showed better comprehension of deictic gestures and reinforcing gesture-speech combinations than iconic/conventional gestures and supplementary gesture-speech combinations at each age. Study 2 compared verbal children with ASD to TD children, comparable in receptive language ability, and showed similar patterns of comprehension in each group. Our results suggest that children comprehend deictic gestures and reinforcing gesture-speech combinations better than iconic/conventional gestures and supplementary combinations-a pattern that remains robust across different ages within TD children and children with ASD.

How we perceive, attend to, or remember the stimuli in our environment depends on our preferences for them. Here we argue that this dependence is reciprocal: pleasures and displeasures are heavily dependent on cognitive processing, namely, on our ability to predict the world correctly. We propose that prediction errors, inversely weighted with prior probabilities of predictions, yield subjective experiences of positive or negative affect. In this way, we link affect to predictions within a predictive coding framework. We discuss how three key factors - uncertainty, expectations, and conflict - influence prediction accuracy and show how they shape our affective response. We demonstrate that predictable stimuli are, in general, preferred to unpredictable ones, though too much predictability may decrease this liking effect. Furthermore, the account successfully overcomes the "dark-room" problem, explaining why we do not avoid stimulation to minimize prediction error. We further discuss the implications of our approach for art perception and the utility of affect as feedback for predictions within a prediction-testing architecture of cognition.

This review addresses the biological factors that influence (i) the acquisition of alcohol intake, (ii) the maintenance of chronic alcohol intake and (iii) alcohol relapse-like drinking behavior in animals bred for their high-ethanol intake. Data from several rat strains/lines strongly suggest that catalase-mediated brain oxidation of ethanol into acetaldehyde is an absolute requirement (up 80-95%) for rats to display ethanol’s reinforcing effects and to initiate chronic ethanol intake. Acetaldehyde binds non-enzymatically to dopamine forming salsolinol, a compound that is self-administered. In UChB rats, salsolinol (a) generates marked sensitization to the motivational effects of ethanol and (b) strongly promotes binge-like drinking. The specificity of salsolinol actions is shown by the finding that only the R-salsolinol enantiomer but not S-salsolinol accounted for the latter effects. Inhibition of brain acetaldehyde synthesis does not influence the maintenance of chronic ethanol intake. However, a prolonged ethanol withdrawal partly returns the requirement for acetaldehyde synthesis/levels both on chronic ethanol intake and on alcohol relapse-like drinking. Chronic ethanol intake, involving the action of lipopolysaccharide diffusing from the gut, and likely oxygen radical generated upon catechol/salsolinol oxidation, leads to oxidative stress and neuro-inflammation, known to potentiate each other. Data show that the administration of N-acetyl cysteine a strong antioxidant inhibits chronic ethanol maintenance by 60-70%, without inhibiting its initial intake. Intra-cerebroventricular administration of mesenchymal stem cells, known to release anti-inflammatory cytokines, to elevate superoxide dismutase levels and to reverse ethanol-induced hippocampal injury and cognitive deficits, also inhibited chronic ethanol maintenance; further, relapse-like ethanol drinking was inhibited up to 85% for 40 days following intracerebral stem cell administration. Thus: (i) ethanol must be metabolized intracerebrally into acetaldehyde, and further into salsolinol, which appear responsible for promoting the acquisition of the early reinforcing effects of ethanol; (ii) acetaldehyde is not responsible for the maintenance of chronic ethanol intake, while other mechanisms are indicated; (iii) the systemic administration of N-acetyl cysteine, a strong antioxidant markedly inhibits the maintenance of chronic ethanol intake; (iv) the intra-cerebroventricular administration of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant mesenchymal stem cells inhibit both the maintenance of chronic ethanol intake and relapse-like drinking.

How does experience inform decisions? In episodic sampling, decisions are guided by a few episodic memories of past choices. This process can yield choice patterns similar to model-free reinforcement learning; however, samples can vary from trial to trial, causing decisions to vary. Here we show that context retrieved during episodic sampling can cause choice behavior to deviate sharply from the predictions of reinforcement learning. Specifically, we show that, when a given memory is sampled, choices (in the present) are influenced by the properties of other decisions made in the same context as the sampled event. This effect is mediated by fMRI measures of context retrieval on each trial, suggesting a mechanism whereby cues trigger retrieval of context, which then triggers retrieval of other decisions from that context. This result establishes a new avenue by which experience can guide choice and, as such, has broad implications for the study of decisions.

Students with intellectual disabilities may, at times, have difficulty being successful in a class-wide behavior management system. They may need a more specific system of rewards. Using a functional assessment in conjunction with group reinforcement contingencies may be helpful in determining appropriate rewards for students with intellectual disabilities who are not responding well to a group reward system.

Social support is associated with positive health outcomes, and research has demonstrated that the presence, or even just a reminder, of a social-support figure can reduce psychological and physiological responses to threats. However, the mechanisms underlying this effect are unclear, and no previous work has examined the impact of social support on basic fear learning processes, which have implications for threat responding. This study examined whether social support inhibits the formation of fear associations. After conducting a fear-conditioning procedure in which social-support stimuli were paired with conditional stimuli during fear acquisition, we found that the threat of shock was not associated with conditional stimuli paired with images of social-support figures, but was associated with stimuli paired with images of strangers. These findings indicate that social support prevents the formation of fear associations, reducing the amount of learned fears people acquire as they navigate the world, consequently reducing threat-related stress.

BackgroundChronic methamphetamine use may lead to changes in reward-related function of the ventral striatum and caudate nucleus. Whether methamphetamine-dependent individuals show heightened reactivity to positively valenced stimuli (i.e. positive reinforcement mechanisms), or an exaggerated response to negatively valenced stimuli (i.e. driven by negative reinforcement mechanisms) remains unclear. This study investigated neural functioning of expectancy and receipt for gains and losses in adults with (METH+) and without (METH-) histories of methamphetamine dependence.MethodsParticipants (17 METH+; 23 METH-) performed a probabilistic feedback expectancy task during blood-oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants were given visual cues probabilistically associated with monetary gain, loss, or neutral outcomes. General linear models examined the BOLD response to: (1) anticipation of gains and losses, and (2) gain and loss monetary outcomes.ResultsMETH+ had less BOLD response to loss anticipation than METH- in the ventral striatum and posterior caudate. METH+ also showed more BOLD response to loss outcomes than to gain outcomes in the anterior and posterior caudate, whereas METH- did not show differential responses to the valence of outcomes.DiscussionMETH+ individuals showed attenuated neural response to anticipated gains and losses, but their response to loss outcomes was greater than to gain outcomes. A decreased response to loss anticipation, along with a greater response to loss outcomes, suggests an altered ability to evaluate future risks and benefits based upon prior experience, which may underlie suboptimal decision-making in METH+ individuals that increases the likelihood of risky behavior.

Methylphenidate (MPH), introduced more than 60 years ago, accounts for two-thirds of current prescriptions for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Although many studies have modeled MPH's effect on executive function, almost none have directly modeled its effect on long-term memory (LTM), even though improvement in LTM is a critical target of therapeutic intervention in ADHD. We examined the effects of a wide range of doses of MPH (0.01-10 mg/kg, i.p.) on Pavlovian fear learning, a leading model of memory. MPH's effects were then compared to those of atomoxetine (0.1-10 mg/kg, i.p.), bupropion (0.5-20 mg/kg, i.p.), and citalopram (0.01-10 mg/kg, i.p.). At low, clinically relevant doses, MPH enhanced fear memory; at high doses it impaired memory. MPH's memory-enhancing effects were not confounded by its effects on locomotion or anxiety. Further, MPH-induced memory enhancement seemed to require both dopamine and norepinephrine transporter inhibition. Finally, the addictive potential of MPH (1 mg/kg and 10 mg/kg) was compared to those of two other psychostimulants, amphetamine (0.005 mg/kg and 1.5 mg/kg) and cocaine (0.15 mg/kg and 15 mg/kg), using a conditioned place preference and behavioral sensitization paradigm. We found that memory-enhancing effects of psychostimulants observed at low doses are readily dissociable from their reinforcing and locomotor activating effects at high doses. Together, our data suggest that fear conditioning will be an especially fruitful platform for modeling the effects of psychostimulants on LTM in drug development. © 2014 Carmack et al.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) patients present profound disturbances in affect regulation and impulse control which could reflect a dysfunction in reward-related processes. The current study investigated these processes in a sample of 18 BPD patients and 18 matched healthy controls, using an event-related brain potentials methodology. Results revealed a reduction in the amplitude of the Feedback-Related Negativity of BPD patients, which is a neurophysiological index of the impact of negative feedback in reward-related tasks. This reduction, in the effect of negative feedback in BPD patients, was accompanied by a different behavioral pattern of risk choice compared to healthy participants. These findings confirm a dysfunctional reward system in BDP patients, which might compromise their capacity to build positive expectations of future rewards and decision making.

Adolescents are notorious for engaging in reward-seeking behaviors, a tendency attributed to heightened activity in the brain's reward systems during adolescence. It has been suggested that reward sensitivity in adolescence might be adaptive, but evidence of an adaptive role has been scarce. Using a probabilistic reinforcement learning task combined with reinforcement learning models and fMRI, we found that adolescents showed better reinforcement learning and a stronger link between reinforcement learning and episodic memory for rewarding outcomes. This behavioral benefit was related to heightened prediction error-related BOLD activity in the hippocampus and to stronger functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the striatum at the time of reinforcement. These findings reveal an important role for the hippocampus in reinforcement learning in adolescence and suggest that reward sensitivity in adolescence is related to adaptive differences in how adolescents learn from experience.

Reinforcement learning requires the dynamic interplay of several specialized networks distributed across the brain. A potential mechanism to establish accurate temporal coordination among these paths is through the synchronization of neuronal activity to a common rhythm of neuronal firing. Previous EEG studies have suggested that theta oscillatory activity might be crucial in the integration of information from motivational and attentional paths that converge into the medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC) during reward-guided learning. However, due to the low spatial resolution of EEG, this hypothesis has not been directly tested. Here, by combining EEG and fMRI, we show that theta oscillations serve as common substrate for the engagement of separated sub-regions within the mPFC (the pre-Supplementary Motor Area and the dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex), underlying different cognitive operations (encoding of outcome valence and unsigned prediction errors) through separate functional paths (the Salience and the Central Executive Networks).

Early binge-like alcohol drinking may promote the development of hazardous intake. However, the enduring cellular alterations following the first experience with alcohol consumption are not fully understood. We found that the first binge-drinking alcohol session produced enduring enhancement of excitatory synaptic transmission onto dopamine D1 receptor-expressing neurons (D1+ neurons) in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) shell but not the core in mice, which required D1 receptors (D1Rs) and mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1). Furthermore, inhibition of mTORC1 activity during the first alcohol drinking session reduced alcohol consumption and preference of a subsequent drinking session. mTORC1 is critically involved in RNA-to-protein translation, and we found that the first alcohol session rapidly activated mTORC1 in NAc shell D1+ neurons and increased synaptic expression of the AMPAR subunit GluA1 and the scaffolding protein Homer. Finally, D1R stimulation alone was sufficient to activate mTORC1 in the NAc to promote mTORC1-dependent translation of the synaptic proteins GluA1 and Homer. Together, our results indicate that the first alcohol drinking session induces synaptic plasticity in NAc D1+ neurons via enhanced mTORC1-dependent translation of proteins involved in excitatory synaptic transmission that in turn drives the reinforcement learning associated with the first alcohol experience. Thus, the alcohol-dependent D1R/mTORC1-mediated increase in synaptic function in the NAc may reflect a neural imprint of alcohol's reinforcing properties, which could promote subsequent alcohol intake.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTConsuming alcohol for the first time is a learning event that drives further drinking. Here, we identified a mechanism that may underlie the reinforcing learning associated with the initial alcohol experience. We show that the first alcohol experience induces a persistent enhancement of excitatory synaptic transmission on NAc shell D1+ neurons, which is dependent on D1R and mTORC1. We also find that mTORC1 is necessary for the sustained alcohol consumption and preference across the initial drinking sessions. The first alcohol binge activates mTORC1 in NAc D1+ neurons and increases levels of synaptic proteins involved in glutamatergic signaling. Thus, the D1R/mTORC1-dependent plasticity following the first alcohol exposure may be a critical cellular component of reinforcement learning.

A central question in artificial intelligence is how to design agents capable of switching between different behaviors in response to environmental changes. Taking inspiration from neuroscience, we address this problem by utilizing artificial neural networks (NNs) as agent controllers, and mechanisms such as neuromodulation and synaptic gating. The novel aspect of this work is the introduction of a type of artificial neuron we call "switch neuron". A switch neuron regulates the flow of information in NNs by selectively gating all but one of its incoming synaptic connections, effectively allowing only one signal to propagate forward. The allowed connection is determined by the switch neuron's level of modulatory activation which is affected by modulatory signals, such as signals that encode some information about the reward received by the agent. An important aspect of the switch neuron is that it can be used in appropriate "switch modules" in order to modulate other switch neurons. As we show, the introduction of the switch modules enables the creation of sequences of gating events. This is achieved through the design of a modulatory pathway capable of exploring in a principled manner all permutations of the connections arriving on the switch neurons. We test the model by presenting appropriate architectures in nonstationary binary association problems and T-maze tasks. The results show that for all tasks, the switch neuron architectures generate optimal adaptive behaviors, providing evidence that the switch neuron model could be a valuable tool in simulations where behavioral plasticity is required. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. 74 35 51 Cited By :1

I used an alternating treatments design and a delayed multiple probe across participants design to conduct a functional analysis of the effects of a social condition on the direct reinforcement value of writing and indirect conditioned reinforcement for writing. I defined the direct reinforcement value of writing as writing taking place under conditions where the natural contingencies of writing resulted in the participant emitting the behavior. That is, writing automatically or implicitly reinforced the participant’s behavior and the reinforcement was intrinsic to the stimulus. I defined indirect conditioned reinforcement for writing as changes in performance (the emission of behaviors already in repertoire) or learning (acquisition of new repertoires) when opportunities to write were the consequence for responding. I conducted a functional analysis of indirect conditioned reinforcement for emitting performance behaviors through analyzing changes in rate of writing the letters A-Z. Two treatment conditions were implemented in which green tickets (access to a preferred activity) or red tickets (opportunities to write) were delivered upon responding to the performance task. I tested indirect conditioned reinforcement for learning new operants through analyzing correct responding when participants were given opportunities to learn new chemical element names. For this dependent variable, participants were given immediate access to an opportunity to write upon correct responses to learning presentations. Lastly, I measured the direct reinforcement value of writing in 5-minute observations of responding to writing tasks, where I collected data on whole, 5 s intervals of writing. After establishing that participants’ behaviors were not directly or indirectly reinforced by writing, I exposed participants to a social condition where he or she was deprived of opportunities to write. I chose participants because their rate of writing was slow and writing was not a preferred activity. I conducted 2 experiments, with the second as a replication and expansion of the first. Experiment 1 results showed writing was not an indirect reinforcer for emitting performance behaviors and learning new operants, and writing was not a direct reinforcer. Following the social condition, direct reinforcement for writing increased for all participants and opportunities to write were indirect reinforcers for performance behaviors and acquisition of new operants for 2 participants, with marginal increases for 1 participant. Experiment 2 was a replication of Experiment 1, with 4 added dependent variables including number of letters written, number of words written, a statistical analysis of naïve readers’ scores of permanent products, and numbers of correct structural and technical components. Results showed increases in direct reinforcement for all participants, and increases in indirect reinforcement for emitting performance behaviors for 2 out of 4 participants. Indirect reinforcement for learning new behaviors increased for 3 participants. Results are discussed in terms of the onset of the demonstration of the ability to acquire new reinforcers via social conditions as a prerequisite for some verbal developmental cusps, different kinds of reinforcement, and writing in the context of today’s educational practices.

More than 80% of obese adolescents will become obese adults, and it is therefore important to enhance insight into characteristics that underlie the development and maintenance of overweight and obesity at a young age. The current study is the first to focus on attentional biases towards rewarding and punishing cues as potentially important factors. Participants were young adolescents (N = 607) who were followed from the age of 13 until the age of 19, and completed a motivational game indexing the attentional bias to general cues of reward and punishment. Additionally, self-reported reward and punishment sensitivity was measured. This study showed that attentional biases to cues that signal reward or punishment and self-reported reward and punishment sensitivity were not related to body mass index or the change in body mass index over six years in adolescents. Thus, attentional bias to cues of reward and cues of punishment, and self-reported reward and punishment sensitivity, do not seem to be crucial factors in the development and maintenance of overweight and obesity in adolescents. Exploratory analyses of the current study suggest that the amount of effort to gain reward and to avoid punishment may play a role in the development and maintenance of overweight and obesity. However, since the effort measure was a construct based on face validity and has not been properly validated, more studies are necessary before firm conclusions can be drawn.

Compulsive behaviors are driven by repetitive urges and typically involve the experience of limited voluntary control over these urges, a diminished ability to delay or inhibit these behaviors, and a tendency to perform repetitive acts in a habitual or stereotyped manner. Compulsivity is not only a central characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) but is also crucial to addiction. Based on this analogy, OCD has been proposed to be part of the concept of behavioral addiction along with other non-drug-related disorders that share compulsivity, such as pathological gambling, skin-picking, trichotillomania and compulsive eating. In this review, we investigate the neurobiological overlap between compulsivity in substance-use disorders, OCD and behavioral addictions as a validation for the construct of compulsivity that could be adopted in the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). The reviewed data suggest that compulsivity in OCD and addictions is related to impaired reward and punishment processing with attenuated dopamine release in the ventral striatum, negative reinforcement in limbic systems, cognitive and behavioral inflexibility with diminished serotonergic prefrontal control, and habitual responding with imbalances between ventral and dorsal frontostriatal recruitment. Frontostriatal abnormalities of compulsivity are promising targets for neuromodulation and other interventions for OCD and addictions. We conclude that compulsivity encompasses many of the RDoC constructs in a trans-diagnostic fashion with a common brain circuit dysfunction that can help identifying appropriate prevention and treatment targets., This work was supported in part by the NIH (P20 DA027844), the Connecticut State Department of Mental Health and Addictions Services, and the Yale Gambling Center of Research Excellence grant from the National Center for Responsible Gaming.

Both cognitive conflict (e.g. Verguts & Notebaert, 2009) and reward signals (e.g. Waszak & Pholulamdeth, 2009) have been proposed to enhance task-relevant associations. Bringing these two notions together, we predicted that reward modulates conflict-based sequential adaptations in cognitive control. This was tested combining either a single flanker task (Experiment 1) or a task-switch paradigm (Experiment 2) with performance-related rewards. Both experiments confirmed that adaptations after conflict were modulated by reward. In the flanker task, this resulted in increased conflict adaptation after rewarded trials. In the task-switching experiment, reward increased the conflict-modulated switch cost. Interestingly, both adaptations to conflict disappeared after no-reward trials. Moreover, individual differences in participants' sensitivity to reward predicted these reward modulations of trial-to-trial adaptations. These findings shed new light on the exact role of cognitive conflict in shaping subsequent behavior.

In general, it appears that the suicidal act is highly unpredictable with the current scientific means available. In this article, the author submits the hypothesis that predicting suicide is complex because it results in predicting a choice, in itself unpredictable. The article proposes a Reinforcement learning model-based analysis. In this model, we integrate on the one hand, four ascending modulatory neurotransmitter systems (acetylcholine, noradrenalin, serotonin, and dopamine) with their regions of respective projections and afferences, and on the other hand, various observations of brain imaging identified until now in the suicidal process.

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was 2-fold, first, to compare decision making in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) patients and healthy adults using the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART), and, second, to identify the regions of gray matter atrophy associated with bvFTD patients' BART performance. BACKGROUND: Stimulus-reinforcement learning is required to evaluate the results of previously chosen actions to improve future decisions. Although there is a well established literature suggesting altered decision making in FTD patients and data from lesion studies suggest orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) involvement in decision making, there is very little research looking at the brain correlates of decision making in FTD populations specifically. METHOD: Twenty-seven bvFTD patients and 19 age-matched and education-matched normal controls completed the BART. Voxel-based morphometry analysis was performed on the magnetic resonance imaging scans of a subset of patients. RESULTS: Compared with healthy controls, the bvFTD patients did not learn and pumped less to inflate a balloon to receive a reward, indicating altered stimulus-reinforcement learning. The voxel-based morphometry analysis indicated that bvFTD patients' impaired BART performance was related to atrophy in the right lateral OFC. CONCLUSIONS: The right lateral OFC is crucial for stimulus-reinforcement learning required for the adjustment of behavior under changing reward contingencies.

School bullying has become an explicit, burgeoning problem challenging the healthy development of children and adolescents in Hong Kong. Many bullying prevention and intervention programs focus on victims and bullies, with bystanders treated as either nonexistent or irrelevant. This paper asserts that bystanders actually play pivotal roles in deciding whether the bullying process and dynamics are benign or adversarial. Bystanders' own abilities and characteristics often influence how they respond to victims and bullies. P.A.T.H.S. to Adulthood: A Jockey Club Youth Enhancement Scheme (P.A.T.H.S. = Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social Programmes) is an evidence-based positive youth development program which shows that primary intervention programs have constructive impacts on junior secondary school students' beliefs and behavior. This paper asserts that intrapsychic qualities, namely identity, self-efficacy, and self-determination, greatly influence how bystanders react in school bullying situations. The paper also explains how classroom-based educational programs based on the P.A.T.H.S. model have been designed to help junior secondary school students strengthen these characteristics, so that they can be constructive bystanders when they encounter school bullying. © 2011 Sandra K. M. Tsang et al., published_or_final_version

Objective.To increase and sustain hospital-wide compliance with hand hygiene through a long-term ongoing multidimensional improvement program emphasizing behavioral factors.Design.Quasi-experimental short study (August 2000-November 2001) and descriptive time series (April 2003-December 2006).Setting.A 450-bed teaching tertiary-care hospital.Interventions.An initial intervention bundle was introduced in pilot locations that addressed cognitive behavioral factors, which included access to alcohol sanitizer, education, and ongoing audit and feedback. The bundle was subsequently disseminated hospital-wide, along with a novel approach focused on behavior modification through positive reinforcement and annually changing incentives.Results.A total of 36,123 hand hygiene opportunities involving all categories of healthcare workers from 12 inpatient units were observed from October 2000 to October 2006. The rate of compliance with hand hygiene significantly improved after the intervention in 2 cohorts over the first year (from 40% to 64% of opportunities and from 34% to 49% of opportunities;P< .001, compared with the control group). Mean compliance rates ranged from 19% to 41% of 4174 opportunities (at baseline), increased to the highest levels of 73%–84% of 6,420 opportunities 2 years after hospital-wide dissemination, and remained improved at 59%–81% of 4,990 opportunities during year 6 of the program.Conclusion.This interventional cohort study used a behavioral change approach and is one of the earliest and largest institution-wide programs promoting alcohol sanitizer from the United States that has shown significant and sustained improvements in hand hygiene compliance. This creative campaign used ongoing frequent audit and feedback with novel use of immediate positive reinforcement at an acceptable cost to the institution.

Self-control can be defined as choosing a large delayed reward over a small immediate reward, while precommitment is the making of a choice with the specific aim of denying oneself future choices. Humans recognise that they have self-control problems and attempt to overcome them by applying precommitment. Problems in exercising self-control, suggest a conflict between cognition and motivation, which has been linked to competition between higher and lower brain functions (representing the frontal lobes and the limbic system respectively). This premise of an internal process conflict, lead to a behavioural model being proposed, based on which, we implemented a computational model for studying and explaining self-control through precommitment behaviour. Our model consists of two neural networks, initially non-spiking and then spiking ones, representing the higher and lower brain systems viewed as cooperating for the benefit of the organism. The non-spiking neural networks are of simple feed forward multilayer type with reinforcement learning, one with selective bootstrap weight update rule, which is seen as myopic, representing the lower brain and the other with the temporal difference weight update rule, which is seen as far-sighted, representing the higher brain. The spiking neural networks are implemented with leaky integrate-and-fire neurons with learning based on stochastic synaptic transmission. The differentiating element between the two brain centres in this implementation is based on the memory of past actions determined by an eligibility trace time constant. As the structure of the self-control problem can be likened to the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) game in that cooperation is to defection what self-control is to impulsiveness or what compromising is to insisting, we implemented the neural networks as two players, learning simultaneously but independently, competing in the IPD game. With a technique resembling the precommitment effect, whereby the payoffs for the dilemma cases in the IPD payoff matrix are differentially biased (increased or decreased), it is shown that increasing the precommitment effect (through increasing the differential bias) increases the probability of cooperating with oneself in the future, irrespective of whether the implementation is with spiking or non-spiking neural networks. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. 104 3-4 108 117 Cited By :6

The dynamic evaluation of experience is existentially essential. Assigning value to events and objects drives neural development and plasticity and impacts our changing perceptual interpretations of the world and future behaviors (Nelson et al., 2014). The affective foundation of behavior provides more than a mere phenomenological “coloring” of experience. In fact, affect may be an inseparable component of sensation and cognition instead of an oft-considered byproduct (Inzlicht et al., 2015), and translational neuroanatomical evidence suggests that the major brain areas and tracts involved appear largely conserved across species (Panksepp, 2011). Less clear are the neural underpinnings of valuative processing which give rise to positive and negative affective experience, appetitive/aversive encoding, reward/punishment-related reinforced behaviors, and feelings/emotions. There are many outstanding questions in this field—in addition to contention about precise definitions of terms such as emotion (Izard, 2009; Madan, 2013). Are appetitive and aversive stimuli encoded in similar brain areas? If so, do they share neural circuits and mechanisms? Do they function independently, in parallel, or is their cross-talk more complicated than this? In this Research Topic, a number of authors have explored themes related to these fundamental questions at very different levels. Chris Madan uses a broad psychological-conceptual perspective with his presentation of the SIMON framework, which considers the interplay between the constructs of affect, reward, and motivation (Madan, 2013). This interplay could help contextualize findings showing that prior exposure to unpleasant images, inducing negative affect, can reduce reward-related responding in a reaction time task, even when motivation to perform is high. This framework also underscores how narrowly-focused experimental designs can advance our understanding of a given concept while also hindering a full appreciation of its real-world relevance. Cross-conceptual thinking also helps elucidate the context-dependence of affective experience. Stimuli that follow painful events, and signal relief, can share neurophysiological characteristics with rewards but be reported as unpleasant. Andreatta et al. (2013) showed that the prediction of a painful stimulus differentially modulated a person's physiological output and behavioral reports. Both predictable and unpredictable conditioned stimuli following a painful shock acquired implicitly positive valences (i.e., skin responses consistent with relief), but only the predictable stimulus was reported as pleasant, while the unpredictable stimulus was said to be highly unpleasant. This speaks to the subjectivity and malleability of pain experience, and also to the context-dependence and interplay of affect, value and motivation alluded to by Madan. Authors here have also explored biological mechanisms associated with valuative processing in simpler animals. Sinakevitch et al. (2013) looked at octopamine receptor, AmOA1, distribution in honey bee and fruit fly neurons, as octopamine-containing neurons (a homolog of dopamine) are involved in reinforcement and neural plasticity. In clever cross-species experiments, they revealed similar expression patterns and highlighted the importance of octopamine on the modulation of local GABAergic interneurons, which could help to clarify the mechanisms underlying food-odor reinforcement. Ducrot et al. (2013) underscored the involvement of glutamatergic AMPA and NMDA receptors in electrical brain self-stimulation reinforced behavior in rats. Blocking AMPA receptor function in the anterior ventral tegmental area decreased appetitive responding, perhaps related to reduced excitatory input to dopaminergic cells, while NMDA receptor blockade in more posterior areas increased appetitive responding, which likely reflects GABAergic disinhibition. Hayes' (2015) work echoes that of Sinakevitch and Ducrot by proposing that GABA-containing cells play a central role in valuative processing and suggests that long- and short-range GABAergic circuitry likely contributes to both the integration/cross-talk and differentiation of appetitive and aversive signals. Human neuroimaging studies asked questions about emotional responsivity, behavioral control, and substance abuse at the whole-brain level. Lee et al. (2013) showed that a vasopressin V1a receptor antagonist could reverse the effects of vasopressin-induced amygdalar BOLD deactivations associated with the presentation of aversive faces. The antagonist also resulted in reduced activation to angry faces in the right temporoparietal junction, precuneus, putamen and medial prefrontal cortex. Nakao et al. (2013) used near-infrared spectroscopy to show that resting state signals in the dorsal portion of the medial prefrontal cortex (which contains the area identified by Lee et al. above) are negatively correlated with harm avoidance (a personality trait characterized by increases in aversive states such as worrying and pessimism), while novelty seeking (a trait reflecting exploratory behavior, impulsivity, and increased substance abuse risk) was reflected in a more ventral area. Brown et al.'s (2015a,b) behavioral-fMRI findings suggest that one must be careful not to conflate high-risk behavior with impulsivity, even if the two are behaviorally correlated, as brain responses associated with each do not largely overlap. Young adults who reported high-risk behaviors showed reduced activations during response inhibition in right orbitofrontal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, while impulsive people showed reduced activity in right posterior orbitofrontal, dorsomedial prefrontal, and perigenual anterior cingulate cortices. This group also showed increased lateral prefrontal cortex activation for aversive NoGo vs. aversive Go trials, irrespective of impulsivity or high-risk scores. Adolescents, however, showed very similar BOLD correlations with risk- and impulsivity-related scores although greater activation was noted in the lateral prefrontal cortices for neutral vs. aversive distractors—suggesting some differences in emotional-motor processing as a function of age. Stewart et al. (2013) compared those with problem (n = 18) or stopped (n = 15) drug use and healthy controls in an fMRI study combining a two-choice affective prediction task with interoceptive challenges. Blunted frontocingulate activations during aversive interoceptive stimuli, and increased inferior frontal gyrus activation during punished feedback trials, in those with problem drug use may reflect goal-directed impairments in the face of negative external and internal challenges. Lominac et al. (2014) looked at stimulant-induced neural changes in biobehavioral experiments in mice. They showed that low subchronic doses of methamphetamine are capable of inducing changes within the mesocorticolimbic system, and that pre-existing differences in accumbens dopaminergic signaling—as seen in mice bred for high vs. low consumption—may predict a resistance to addiction. Two final papers provide a more holistic view by reviewing the literature on valuative processing from a basic and psychiatric translational perspective. Bissonette et al. (2014) piece together the few animal and human studies employing both appetitive and aversive stimuli to help distinguish value- and salience-related neural mechanisms, finding a cross-species network of cortical (e.g., orbitofrontal to parietal) and subcortical (e.g., ventral tegmental area to substantia nigra pars compacta) regions which show preferences for each. Griffiths et al. (2014) used a similar translational approach, but instead considered that dysfunctional value-related decision making circuits may be the lynchpin to common psychiatric symptoms. They raise concerns about considering “decision-making” as a unified concept, and suggest that the strongest findings are from studies with translatable processes, such as those involving associative learning and goal-directed action tasks. Advancements about “reward” and “fear” circuits, which have dominated the literature, have gradually paved the way for a more nuanced conceptualization of valuation in the brain. The mesocorticolimbic system can no longer be categorized as a “reward” or a “dopaminergic” circuit, nor can the amygdala be deemed the “fear center.” Importantly, identification of the interplay between positive and negative affective brain circuits, noted here and elsewhere (Vickery et al., 2011; Hayes et al., 2014; Lindquist et al., 2015), is highlighting the complexity of such networks. The primary goal of this Research Topic was to help identify some of the strengths of this approach and to help generate new hypotheses about how to better apprehend affective circuits.

It is proposed that mediodorsal thalamus contributes to cognition via interactions with prefrontal cortex. However, there is relatively little evidence detailing the interactions between mediodorsal thalamus and prefrontal cortex linked to cognition in primates. This study investigated these interactions during learning, memory, and decision-making tasks in rhesus monkeys using a disconnection lesion approach. Preoperatively, monkeys learned object-in-place scene discriminations embedded within colorful visual backgrounds. Unilateral neurotoxic lesions to magnocellular mediodorsal thalamus (MDmc) impaired the ability to learn new object-in-place scene discriminations. In contrast, unilateral ablations to ventrolateral and orbital prefrontal cortex (PFv+o) left learning intact. A second unilateral MDmc or PFv+o lesion in the contralateral hemisphere to the first operation, causing functional MDmc-PFv+o disconnection across hemispheres, further impaired learning object-in-place scene discriminations, although object discrimination learning remained intact. Adaptive decision-making after reward satiety devaluation was also reduced. These data highlight the functional importance of interactions between MDmc and PFv+o during learning object-in-place scene discriminations and adaptive decision-making but not object discrimination learning. Moreover, learning deficits observed after unilateral removal of MDmc but not PFv+o provide direct behavioral evidence of the MDmc role influencing more widespread regions of the frontal lobes in cognition.

Jeffrey Gray's Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) represents one of the most influential biologically-based personality theories describing individual differences in approach and avoidance tendencies. The most prominent self-report inventory to measure individual differences in approach and avoidance behavior to date is the BIS/BAS scale by Carver and White (1994). As Gray and McNaughton (2000) revised the RST after its initial formulation in the 1970/80s, and given the Carver and White measure is based on the initial conceptualization of RST, there is a growing need for self-report inventories measuring individual differences in the revised behavioral inhibition system (BIS), behavioral activation system (BAS) and the fight, flight, freezing system (FFFS). Therefore, in this paper we present a new questionnaire measuring individual differences in the revised constructs of the BIS, BAS and FFFS in N = 1814 participants (German sample). An English translated version of the new measure is also presented and tested in N = 299 English language participants. A large number of German participants (N = 1090) also filled in the BIS/BAS scales by Carver and White (1994) and the correlations between these measures are presented. Finally, this same subgroup of participants provided buccal swaps for the investigation of the arginine vasopressin receptor 1a (AVPR1a) gene. Here, a functional genetic polymorphism (rs11174811) on the AVPR1a gene was shown to be associated with individual differences in both the revised BIS and classic BIS dimensions.

Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Several hypotheses about influences on college drinking derived from the social learning theory of deviance were tested and confirmed. The effect of ethnicity on alcohol use was completely mediated by differential association and differential reinforcement, whereas the effect of biological sex on alcohol use was partially mediated. Higher net positive reinforcements to costs for alcohol use predicted increased general use, more underage use, and more frequent binge drinking. Two unexpected finding were the negative relationship between negative expectations and negative experiences, and the substantive difference between nondrinkers and general drinkers compared with illegal or binge drinkers. The discussion considers implications for future campaigns based on Akers's deterrence theory.

© 2015 Levenson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Pathologists and radiologists spend years acquiring and refining their medically essential visual skills, so it is of considerable interest to understand how this process actually unfolds and what image features and properties are critical for accurate diagnostic performance. Key insights into human behavioral tasks can often be obtained by using appropriate animal models. We report here that pigeons (Columba livia) - which share many visual system properties with humans - can serve as promising surrogate observers of medical images, a capability not previously documented. The birds proved to have a remarkable ability to distinguish benign from malignant human breast histopathology after training with differential food reinforcement; even more importantly, the pigeons were able to generalize what they had learned when confronted with novel image sets. The birds' histological accuracy, like that of humans, was modestly affected by the presence or absence of color as well as by degrees of image compression, but these impacts could be ameliorated with further training. Turning to radiology, the birds proved to be similarly capable of detecting cancer-relevant microcalcifications on mammogram images. However, when given a different (and for humans quite difficult) task - namely, classification of suspicious mammographic densities (masses) - the pigeons proved to be capable only of image memorization and were unable to successfully generalize when shown novel examples. The birds' successes and difficulties suggest that pigeons are well-suited to help us better understand human medical image perception, and may also prove useful in performance assessment and development of medical imaging hardware, image processing, and image analysis tools.

Previous research has identified a component of the event-related brain potential (ERP), the feedback-related negativity, that is elicited by feedback stimuli associated with unfavourable outcomes. In the present research we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings to test the common hypothesis that this component is generated in the caudal anterior cingulate cortex. The EEG results indicated that our paradigm, a time estimation task with trial-to-trial performance feedback, elicited a large feedback-related negativity (FRN). Nevertheless, the fMRI results did not reveal any area in the caudal anterior cingulate cortex that was differentially activated by positive and negative performance feedback, casting doubt on the notion that the FRN is generated in this brain region. In contrast, we found a number of brain areas outside the posterior medial frontal cortex that were activated more strongly by positive feedback than by negative feedback. These included areas in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, right superior frontal gyrus, and striatum. An anatomically constrained source model assuming equivalent dipole generators in the rostral anterior cingulate, posterior cingulate, and right superior frontal gyrus produced a simulated scalp distribution that corresponded closely to the observed scalp distribution of the FRN. These results support a new hypothesis regarding the neural generators of the FRN, and have important implications for the use of this component as an electrophysiological index of performance monitoring and reward processing.