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The main aim of this study, with two repeated measurements, was to analyze the development of autobiographical memory in a sample of 78 Spanish participants at ages 5 (Time 1; M = 62.43 months, range: 50–74 months) and 12 (Time 2; M = 142.71 months, range: 132–155 months). Data were collected on autobiographical memory and verbal functions. We analyzed the relation between language and autobiographical memory specificity from a longitudinal perspective and assessed the indirect effect of vocabulary in the relationship between age and specific memory at both temporal moments. The results showed that language skills were positively related with autobiographical memory specificity at preschool age, but not at the second measurement. Furthermore, vocabulary scores appear to mediate the relationship between age and autobiographical specificity when children are in the preschool years, but not later. These findings agree with previous research that consider preschool age to be a crucial period for the development of autobiographical memory and its relations with language, but once basic command of language is acquired, linguistic differences impact much less on individual differences in autobiographical specificity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is evidence to support the positive contribution of autobiographical recall based techniques on individuals' quality of life, mood and cognitive functioning. In this review, we analyzed the effects of the use of personal photographs in interventions based on autobiographical memory in older people with and without cognitive impairment. The PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews were followed. The search was carried out in the electronic databases Web of Sciences (WOS), Medline (PubMed), SCIELO and PsycInfo (American Psychological Association). The articles based on clinical trials selected were evaluated using the PEDRo scale, which is specific to this type of article. Of the 1098 articles initially found, 6 met the inclusion criteria. The final articles focused their intervention on the use of autobiographical photographs as a means of stimulation. The results show that the use of photographs in different autobiographical recall stimulation techniques is associated with higher scores on well-being and quality of life, as well as with improvements in personal identity and cognitive functioning. This suggests that using personal photographs shows promise in enhancing the effect of these types of interventions in healthy or cognitively impaired older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retrospective perceptions of parental bonding may be a protective factor for emotional health. These perceptions are grounded in autobiographical memory, which plays a key role in the onset and maintenance of depressive symptomatology. The aim of the present study was to explore whether the emotional valence of autobiographical memories (positive and negative) and the dimensions of parental bonding (care and protection) have an impact on depressive symptomatology, examining the role of depressive rumination and possible age-related differences. A total of 139 young adults (18–28 years) and 124 older adults (65–88 years) completed the Parental Bonding Instrument, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), the Autobiographical Memory Test and the Short Depressive Rumination Scale. Our results show that positive autobiographical memories serve as a protective factor for depressive symptoms in both young and older adults. Additionally, in young adults, high paternal care and protection scores are associated with increased negative autobiographical memories, although this association has no effect on depressive symptomatology. In older adults, high maternal protection scores are directly related to greater depressive symptomatology. Depressive rumination significantly increases depressive symptoms in both young and older adults, with an increase in negative autobiographical memories in young adults, and a decrease in such memories in older adults. Our findings progress the understanding of the relationships between parental bonding and autobiographical memory with respect to emotional disorders, which, in turn, will help in the design of effective prevention measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

trans-Resveratrol ( trans-R) has been reported to be a potential cancer chemopreventive agent. Although its cytotoxic activity against different cancer cell lines has been tested, its effect on human acute leukemia cell lines has scarcely been investigated, and only a few in vitro studies were performed using human breast epithelial cell lines. Due to its potential value for human health, demand for trans-R has rapidly increased, and new biotechnological strategies to obtain it from natural edible sources have been developed. Thus, grapevine cell cultures represent a reliable system of trans-R production since they biosynthesize trans-R constitutively or in response to elicitation. In addition, there are no studies deepen on the inhibitory effect of trans-R, produced by elicited grapevine cell cultures, on growth of human tumor cell lines. In this work, the effect of trans-R extracted from the culture medium, after elicitation of grapevine cell cultures, was tested on two human acute lymphocytic and monocytic leukemia cell lines, and one human breast cancer cell line. The effect of trans-R on cell proliferation was not only dose- and time-dependent but also cell type-dependent, as seen from the different degrees of susceptibility of cancer cell lines tested. As regards the effect of trans-R on cell cycle distribution, low trans-R concentrations increased cells in the S phase whereas a high trans-R concentration increased G/G phase in all cell lines. Perturbation of the cell cycle at low trans-R concentrations did not correlate with the induction of cell death, whereas a high trans-R concentration, cell proliferation decreased as a result of increasing apoptosis in the three cell lines. In leukemia cells, trans-R up-regulated the expression of caspase-3 while trans-R-induced apoptosis in breast cells occur through a caspase-3-independent mechanism mediated by a down-regulation of Bcl-2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NO and HO are important biological messengers in plants. They are formed during xylem differentiation in Zinnia elegans and apparently play important roles during the xylogenesis. To ascertain the responsiveness of the Z. elegans peroxidase (ZePrx) to these endogenous signals, the effects of NO and HO on ZePrx were studied. The results showed that ZePrx is up-regulated by NO and HO, as confirmed by RT-qPCR, and that its promoter contains multiple copies of all the putative cis-elements (ACGT box, OCS box, OPAQ box, L1BX, MYCL box and W box) known to confer regulation by NO and HO. Like other OCS elements, the OCS element of ZePrx contains the sequence TACG that is recognized by OBF5, a highly conserved bZIP transcription factor, and the 10 bp sequence, ACAa TTTTGG, which is recognized by OBP1, a Dof domain protein that binds down-stream the OCS element. Furthermore, the ZePrx OCS element is flanked by two CCAAT-like boxes, and encloses one auxin-responsive ARFAT element and two GA-responsive Pyr boxes. Results also showed that ZePrx may be described as the first protein to be up-regulated by NO and HO, whose mRNA contains several short-longevity conferring elements, such as a down stream (DST) sequence analogous to the DSTs contained in the highly unstable SAUR transcripts. The presence of these regulatory elements strongly suggests that ZePrx is finely regulated, as one may expect from an enzyme that catalyzes the last irreversible step of the formation of lignins, the major irreversible sink for the photosynthetically fixed CO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xylem differentiation in plants is under strict hormonal regulation. Auxins and cytokinins, together with brassinosteroids (BRs), appear to be the main hormones controlling vascular differentiation. In this report, we study the effect of these hormones on the basic peroxidase isoenzyme from Zinnia elegans (ZePrx), an enzyme involved in lignin biosynthesis. Results showed that auxins and cytokinins induce ZePrx, similarly to the way in which they induce seedling secondary growth (in particular, metaxylem differentiation). Likewise, the exogenous application of BR reduces the levels of ZePrx, in a similar way to their capacity to inhibit seedling secondary growth. Consistent with this notion, the exogenous application of BR reverses the auxin/cytokinin-induced ZePrx expression, but has no effect on the auxin/cytokinin-induced secondary growth. This differential hormonal response is supported by the analysis of the ZePrx promoter, which contains (a) cis-elements directly responsive to these hormones and (b) cis-elements targets of the plethora of transcription factors, such as NAC, MYB, AP2, MADS and class III HD Zip, which are up-regulated during the auxin- and cytokinin-induced secondary growth. Taken together, these results suggest that ZePrx is directly and indirectly regulated by the plethora of hormones that control xylem differentiation, supporting the role of ZePrx in xylem lignification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional response in aging is typically studied using the dimensional or the discrete models of emotion. Moreover, it is typically studied using subjective or physiological variables but not using both perspectives simultaneously. Additionally, tenderness is neglected in emotion induction procedures with older adults, with the present work being the first to include the study of physiological tenderness using film clips. This study integrated two separate approaches to emotion research, comparing 68 younger and 39 older adults and using a popular set of film clips to induce tenderness, amusement, anger, fear, sadness and disgust emotions. The direction of subjective emotional patterns was evaluated with self-reports and that of physiological emotional patterns was evaluated with a wearable emotion detection system. The findings suggest a dual-process framework between subjective and physiological responses, manifested differently in young and older adults. In terms of arousal, the older adults exhibited higher levels of subjective arousal in negative emotions and tenderness while young adults showed higher levels of physiological arousal in these emotions. These findings yield information on the multidirectionality of positive and negative emotions, corroborating that emotional changes in the adult lifespan appear to be subject to the relevance of the emotion elicitor to each age group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schizophrenia is characterised by difficulty understanding the thoughts and intentions of other people. Misunderstandings could lead people to attribute hostility to others' actions. Theories suggest that we use our autobiographical memories to inform our understanding of other people but no study has examined the relation between memory and hostile attributions in schizophrenia. People with (n = 42) and without (n = 34) schizophrenia diagnoses completed The Ambiguous Intentions and Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ) to assess their tendency to attribute hostility to other people's actions and the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) to assess their ability to recall specific positive and negative autobiographical memories. In linear regressions the interaction between diagnostic group and the proportion of specific negative memories participants retrieved explained significant variance in each AIHQ index. Follow-up correlation analyses showed that participants with schizophrenia who retrieved more negative memories also attributed greater hostility to other people's actions (r = 0.47) and reported that they would respond with greater aggression (r = 0.59). These correlations were in the opposite direction for controls. People with schizophrenia may use their memories for negative past events to understand the actions and intentions of other people, leading to attributions of hostility for otherwise benign actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sleep is essential for cognitive development and brain maturation during early childhood. Studies focused on preschool populations using objective measures of sleep are still scarce. The objective of this study was to examine the associations between objective measures of sleep duration and quality with executive functioning in a 133 non-clinical sample of Spanish participants (Mage = 60.33 months, SD = 9.04; ages 41–77 months; 51.1% girls). Sleep was assessed for five weeknights using actigraphy; Shape School task was applied to assess inhibition and cognitive flexibility; and Word Span task was used to assess working memory. The results revealed that relation between sleep and executive functioning was significant for inhibition and working memory. Preschoolers with higher sleep efficiency showed better results in executive functioning tasks after controlling for the effect of age. Additionally, age and sleep duration and quality variables were predictive of inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. These results suggest that the different dimensions of sleep could play an important role in the development of executive functions during preschool age. Therefore, improving sleep could lead to an improvement in children’s executive functioning in both clinical and educational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]