Search

The central purpose of this research is to clarify the relationship between depression and self-attention. The value in answering this question is that it has significant implications on how specific symptoms of depression could be treated psychologically and where in the brain there may be disordered functioning. The neurocognitive literature exploring ‘self in depression’ has produced contradictory and inconclusive findings in the exploration of the relationship between depression and self-attention. This may be due to research classifying participants as ‘depressed’ with very little attention to the specific depressive symptoms and therefore disorder subtypes. Research on non-clinical populations consistently shows that people have an attentional bias to information about themselves. This is the case even if this information is linked to them tenuously; for example, an arbitrary geometric shape associated with them. Studies have found results indicating that people with depression have higher than average attention to self, lower than average attention to self and no difference from controls. By using detailed psychometric questionnaires in tandem with an experimental design, this project can provide novel and useful insights into how depressive symptoms are related to self-attention bias. One of the ways to evaluate the specific symptomatic expression of depression is to use an index called Beck’s depression inventory (BDI-II). The scores on the BDI-II form two distinct clusters: cognitive and somatic affective. These two clusters have been robustly validated as accurately representing these types of symptoms by several meta-analyses. Gaining insight into the relationship between self-related attention and symptom clusters can help indicate if, for example, aberrant self-attention is predominantly a maladaptive internal self-representation (somatic) or, ‘self’ maladaptively construe in the emotional domain (cognitive). In addition to clarifying this relationship, this research will also provide insight into what aspect of the ‘self’ people with depression focus on (good aspects/bad aspects). The relationship between psychological characteristics and self-referential processing will be analysed using statistical analysis. This project will, however, further implement the use of Machine Learning (ML) to explore the utility of the experimental data in predicting symptoms as a potential diagnostic tool.

Background: Rumination, a tendency to focus on negative self-related thoughts, is a central symptom of depression. Studying the self-related aspect of such symptoms is challenging because of the need to distinguish self effects from the emotional content of task stimuli. This study employed an emotionally neutral self-related paradigm to investigate possible altered self-processing in depression and its link to rumination. Methods: People with major depressive disorder (n = 25) and controls (n = 25) underwent task-based electro-encephalogram recording. We studied late event-related potentials, along with low-frequency oscillatory power. We compared electroencephalogram metrics between groups and correlated them with depressive symptoms and reported rumination. Results: Participants with major depressive disorder displayed a difference in late positive potentials across frontocentral electrodes between self-related and non-self-related conditions. We found no such difference in controls. The magnitude of this difference was positively correlated with depressive symptoms and reported rumination. Participants with major depressive disorder also had elevated theta oscillation power at central electrodes in self-related conditions, a finding that we did not see in controls. Limitations: Patients with major depressive disorder were medicated at the time of the study. The group studied was primarily female, so the observed effects may have been sex-specific. Conclusion: Rumination appears to be linked to altered self-related processing in depression, independent of stimuli-related emotional confounds. This connection between self-related processing and depression may point to a self disorder as a core component of depression.

In this article, we detail the advantages of self-face identification latencies over more traditional tests of mirror self-recognition. Using reaction time latencies (measured in milliseconds) to identify different dimensions of the self, instead of relying on a simple dichotomous pass/fail mirror mark-test outcome, enables investigators to examine individual differences in self-processing time. This is a significant methodological step forward with important implications. The point of departure for our article is to detail research we and others have conducted on latencies for self-face identification, to show how self-processing occurs in the right side of the brain, how schizophrenia is a self-processing disorder, how self-face reaction time latencies implicate the existence of an underlying multiple modal self-processing system, and to explore ideas for future research.

Accepting ownership of an item is an effective way of associating it with self, evoking self-processing biases that enhance memory. This memory advantage occurs even in ownership games, where items are arbitrarily divided between participants to temporarily “own.” The current study tested the educational applications of ownership games across two experiments. In Experiment 1, 7- to 9-year-old children were asked to choose three novel, labeled shapes from an array of nine. The experimenter chose three shapes and three remained “un-owned.” A subsequent free-recall test showed that children reliably learned more self-owned than other-owned or un-owned shapes. Experiment 2 replicated this finding for shapes that were assigned to owners rather than chosen, and showed that ownership enhanced memory more effectively than a control game with no ownership manipulation. Together, these experiments show that ownership games can evoke self-processing biases in children's memory, enhancing learning. Implications for education strategies are discussed.

Depression has long been recognized as one of the leading causes of disability and burden worldwide. In psychology, it is well known that the self is not only the cognitive subject, but also the core of personality. And the high incidence of suicide and pervasive hopelessness in depressed individuals suggested that the self might be abnormal among them. In order to expand the application of the depression detection, we employ classical scientific psychology paradigms on abnormalities of self-related processing in depressed individuals to develop a Chinese depressed speech corpus. Eleven depressed individuals and ten healthy subjects, who are gender-balanced and age-balanced, were recruited to participate in this study. Currently we have preliminarily collected 6 and 2.5 hours of speech data respectively, with the results of preliminary analysis indicating that there exist abnormalities in the depressed speech. The study results will provide a new perspective and strategy for further study on the building and application of Chinese speech corpus in depression.

It is well established that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show impaired understanding of others and deficits within social functioning. However, it is still unknown whether self-processing is related to these impairments and to what extent self impacts social functioning and communication. Using an ownership paradigm, we show that children with ASD and chronological- and verbal-age-matched typically developing (TD) children do show the self-referential effect in memory. In addition, the self-bias was dependent on symptom severity and socio-communicative ability. Children with milder ASD symptoms were more likely to have a high self-bias, consistent with a low attention to others relative to self. In contrast, severe ASD symptoms were associated with reduced self-bias, consistent with an ‘absent-self’ hypothesis. These findings indicate that deficits in self-processing may be related to impairments in social cognition for those on the lower end of the autism spectrum. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Impaired self-processing in autism is linked to social and cognitive deficits. There are discrepancies across the literature, with reports of both intact and impaired self-processing in autism. Ownership tasks are developmentally appropriate and have shown to induce self-memory bias in young children. What does this study add? Using an ownership task, children with autism showed a significant self-memory bias, greater than typical peers. Severity was negatively correlated with level of self-bias, potentially explaining the previous discrepancies. Severe autism symptoms are associated with an ‘absent self’, and mild autism symptoms reduce attention to others.

When cues in the environment are associated with self (e.g., one’s own name, face, or coffee cup), these items trigger processing biases such as increased attentional focus, perceptual prioritization and memorial support. This paper reviews the existing literature on self-processing biases before introducing a series of studies that provide new insight into the influence of the self on cognition. In particular, the studies examine affective and memorial biases for self-relevant stimuli, and their flexible application in response to different task demands. We conclude that self-processing biases function to ensure that self-relevant information is attended to and preferentially processed because this is a perpetual goal of the self-system. However, contrary task-demands or priming can have an attenuating effect on their influence, speaking to the complexity and dynamism of the self-processing system in cognition.

We provide the first high-temporal resolution account of the self-esteem implicit association test (IAT; Greenwald & Farnham, 2000) to highlight important similarities and differences between the cognitive processes corresponding to implicit valenced self-processing in high vs. low self-esteem individuals. We divided individuals into high and low self-esteem groups based on the Rosenberg self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965) and administered the self-esteem IAT while recording electroencephalographic data. We show that the P2 captured group (high vs. low self-esteem) differences, the N250 and the late parietal positivity (LPP) captured differences corresponding to category pairing (self/positive vs. self/negative pairing), and the N1, P2, and P300-400 components captured interactions between self-esteem groups and whether the self was paired with positive or negative categories in the IAT. Overall, both high and low self-esteem groups were sensitive to the distinction between positive and negative information in relation to the self (me/negative generally displayed larger event-related potential amplitudes than me/positive), but for high self-esteem individuals, this difference was generally larger, earlier, and most pronounced over left-hemisphere electrodes. These electrophysiological differences may reflect differences in attentional resources devoted to teasing apart these two oppositely valenced associations. High self-esteem individuals appear to devote more automatic (early) attentional resources to strengthen the distinction between positively or negatively valenced information in relation to the self.

Behavioral studies revealed that people were less likely to endorse negative information as self-descriptive. Neuroimaging studies have tapped on the neural mechanism underlying intentional self-processing of negative information using self-reflection tasks. Given that human self-processing occurring in our daily life is more likely to be captured by tasks involving incidental self-processing (automatic associations between the self- and external stimuli), rather than tasks involving intentional self-processing, it could be presumed that the relationship between self- and negative emotion might be better reflected during incidental self-processing. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study aimed to explore incidental self-processing of negative information. To induce participants' incidental self-processing, we adopted negative and neutral words written by themselves or others as materials. They were scanned during judging whether the handwritten words were negative or neutral (additional non-self-task). Results revealed that incidental self-processing of negative information relied on the activation of left anterior insula, whereas medial prefrontal cortex activity was associated with incidental self-processing of neutral information.

The new photopolymers for holographic applications described herein are based on a cross-linked matrix in which the holographic grating is formed by photopolymerization of guest monomers in an interference pattern of the recording light. Diffusion of monomer, triggered by this photo-polymerization, from the dark to the bright fringes of the interference pattern is the key parameter for creating high modulation in refractive index Δn during hologram recording. This leads to bright visual volume holograms with high diffraction efficiency. The holographic photopolymers are self-processing. After recording the hologram only (incoherent) light exposure is necessary to bleach the final product and fix the hologram. Unlike earlier photopolymers used in holography, these new materials offer the advantages of no chemical or thermal processing combined with low shrinkage and detuning. Additionally, due to good light sensitivity the formation of the holograms is fast and the film obtained after curing is highly transparent, which makes the material suitable for both, reflection and transmission holography.

Reversible chemistry, allowing for chain-forming as well as chain-breaking steps, is important for biological self-organization. In this context, ribozymes, catalyzing both RNA cleavage and ligation, may have significantly contributed to extending the sequence space and length of RNA molecules in early life forms. Here we present an engineered RNA that self-processes by passing through a number of cleavage and ligation steps. Intermolecular reactions compete with intramolecular reactions, resulting in a variety of products. Our results demonstrate that RNA can undergo self-oligomerization, which may have been important for extending the RNA genome size in RNA world scenarios.

Western participants endorse a higher number of positive traits as self-descriptive, but endorse a lower number of negative traits as self-descriptive. They also respond quicker to categorize positive traits as self-descriptive, but respond slower to categorize negative traits as self-descriptive. Is this self-positivity bias qualified by the cultural value of modesty? We induced modesty (vs. punctuality) and assessed self-descriptiveness judgments and response times among Chinese participants. We replicated the self-positivity bias in regards to both self-descriptiveness judgments and response times. In the case of self-descriptiveness judgments, however, the bias was partially qualified by modesty. Relative to control participants, those in the modesty condition endorsed fewer positive traits as self-descriptive and manifested a tendency toward endorsing more negative traits as self-descriptive. In the case of response times, the self-positivity bias was unqualified by modesty. Within both conditions, participants were quicker to categorize positive traits as self-descriptive and were slower to categorize negative traits as self-descriptive. The results speak to the relation between the self-positivity bias and the self-reference effect and illustrate the malleability of self-processing.

Recent work in our laboratory has established methods for the expression and purification of a recombinant form of Drosophila lysyl oxdidase (rDMLOXL-1) [Molnar, J., Ujfaludi, Z., Fong, S. F. T., Bollinger, J. A., Waro, G., Fogelgren, B., Dooley, D. M., Mink, M., and Csiszar, K. (2005) J. Biol. Chem. 280, 22977-22985]. Previous investigations on the expression and purification of recombinant forms of lysyl oxidase [Kagan, H. M., Reddy, V. B., Panchenko, M. V., Nagan, N., Boak, A. M., Gacheru, S. N., and Thomas, K. (1995) J. Cell. Biochem. 59, 329-338] and lysyl oxidase-like proteins [Jung, S. T., Kim, M. S., Seo, J. Y., Kim, H. C., and Kim, Y. (2003) Protein Expression Purif. 31, 240-246] [Molnar, J., Fong, K. S. K., He, Q. P., Hayashi, K., Kim, Y., Fong, S. F. T., Fogelgren, B., Szauter, K. M., Mink, M., and Csiszar, K. (2003) Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1647, 220-224] have been reported in the literature. However, this is the first time that an expression system has been developed yielding sufficient amounts of a recombinant lysyl oxidase for detailed characterization. rDmLOXL-1 is secreted into the medium from S2 cells, and the protein is readily purified by Cibacon blue affinity chromatography yielding 10 mg of protein per liter of medium. The protein, as initially purified, is inactive and has no detectable copper or cofactor present. Following aerobic dialysis against copper, the protein is active and displays an electronic absorption spectrum with lambda(max) at 504 nm, consistent with the presence of an organic cofactor. Addition of phenylhydrazine to the copper-loaded protein produced a high-affinity adduct with lambda(max) at 454 nm. Comparison of the resonance Raman spectra of this adduct and a phenylhydrazine-labeled model compound of lysine tyrosylquinone (LTQ) establishes that the cofactor in the active, copper-containing enzyme is LTQ. Collectively, the data demonstrate that LTQ biogenesis most likely occurs by self-processing chemistry, requiring only the precursor protein, copper, and oxygen. Electron paramagnetic resonance and circular dichroism spectroscopy were used to characterize the Cu(II) site in rDmLOXL-1. The data are consistent with a tetragonal Cu(II) site with nitrogen and oxygen ligands. Recombinant DmLOXL-1 displayed significant activity toward tropoelastin and a wide variety of amines including polyamines and diamines. beta-aminoproprionitrile (betaAPN), a well-known irreversible inhibitor of mammalian lysyl oxidases, is also a potent inhibitor of rDmLOXL-1. Results from this investigation have important implications for the lysyl oxidase family.

Interleukin-12 (IL-12) is a heterodimeric cytokine composed of two disulfide-linked subunits (p40 and p35) encoded by separate genes. We used the apparent autocleavage property of a 2A peptide from the foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) to express bovine (Bo) IL-12 as a self-processing polypeptide (p402Ap35). We demonstrate that 2A will mediate the cleavage of p402Ap35 into two separate subunits in a manner similar to that observed during the processing of the FMDV polypeptide. Furthermore, this 2A polypeptide encoded a functional heterodimer, which elicited activities associated with IL-12 in other species. We propose that this strategy of self-processing polypeptides may be used in many applications where the coordinated and stoichiometric expression of complex proteins is required.

With the development of functional neuroimaging, important progress has been made in identifying the brain regions involved in self-related processing. One of the most consistent findings has been that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC) is activated when people contemplate various aspects of themselves and their life, such their traits, experiences, preferences, abilities, and goals. Recent evidence suggests that this region does not support the act of self-reflection per se, but its precise function in self-processing remains unclear. In this article, I examine the hypothesis that the vMPFC may contribute to assign personal value or significance to self-related contents: stimuli and mental representations that refer or relate to the self tend to be assigned unique value or significance, and the function of the vMPFC may precisely be to evaluate or represent such significance. Although relatively few studies to date have directly tested this hypothesis, several lines of evidence converge to suggest that vMPFC activity during self-processing depends on the personal significance of self-related contents. First, increasing psychological distance from self-representations leads to decreased activation in the vMPFC. Second, the magnitude of vMPFC activation increases linearly with the personal importance attributed to self-representations. Third, the activity of the vMPFC is modulated by individual differences in the interest placed on self-reflection. Finally, the evidence shows that the vMPFC responds to outer aspects of self that have high personal value, such as possessions and close others. By assigning personal value to self-related contents, the vMPFC may play an important role in the construction, stabilization, and modification of self-representations, and ultimately in guiding our choices and decisions.

The third edition of the Handbook of Proteolytic Enzymes aims to be a comprehensive reference work for the enzymes that cleave proteins and peptides, and contains over 800 chapters. Each chapter is organized into sections describing the name and history, activity and specificity, structural chemistry, preparation, biological aspects, and distinguishing features for a specific peptidase. The subject of Chapter 809 is Self-Processing Cysteine-Dependent N-terminal Nucleophile Hydrolases.

The Fourier transform of a binary image for optical correlation was achieved using a self-processing photopolymerizable material as recording medium. A proper choice of the experimental conditions can lead to encouraging results.

Previous studies demonstrated the human ability to implicitly recognize their own body. When submitted to a visual matching task, participants showed the so-called self-advantage, that is, a better performance with self rather than others' body or body parts. Here, we investigated whether the body self-advantage relies upon a motor representation of one's body. Participants were submitted to a laterality judgment of self and others' hands (Experiment 1 and 3), which involves a sensory-motor mental simulation. Moreover, to investigate whether the self-advantage emerges also when an explicit self processing is required, the same participants were submitted to an explicit self-body recognition task (Experiment 2). Participants showed the self-advantage when performing the laterality judgment, but not when self-recognition was explicitly required. Thus, implicit and explicit recognition of the bodily self dissociate and only an implicit recognition of the bodily self, mapped in motor terms, allows the self-advantage to emerge.

The distinctiveness of different self-images was investigated in two studies by comparing the extent of release from proactive inhibition obtained with changes in self-processing orientations. In Experiment 1, significant release effects were found: real/ideal shifts produced least release, real/social shifts produced intermediate release, and ideal/social shifts produced most release. These findings were interpreted in terms of Higgins′ self-discrepancy theory, such that domain shifts (Real/Ideal) are slightly less distinctive than standpoints shifts (Real/Social). The Ideal/Social shifts were interpreted as double shifts (domain + standpoint) which have been found to produce more release than single shifts. Experiment 2 confirmed the findings of Experiment 1 and extended them to the ought self-image. Slightly less release was found for a domain shift (Actual Own/Ought Own) than for a standpoint shift (Actual Own/Actual Other), and most release occurred with a domain + standpoint shift (Actual Own/Ought Other). In both experiments level of recall and buildup in proactive inhibition on Trials 1-3 did not differ across the different self-images.

The use of a highly viscous pentacrylate known to efficiently generate a tridimensional network under photochemical activation in association with a low viscosity oxazolidone acrylate leads to a very promising recording medium. After prepolymerization under homogeneous deep UV exposure this material becomes able to record holographic images without subsequent treatment. Several reactive sensitizers allow its spectral range of sensitivity to extend over the visible and near infrared up to 850 nm. No more than 30 mJ cm-2 are required to record a permanent hologram at 514 nm.

We demonstrated a single-step method for fabricating sub-micron period surface relief gratings. The process consists of illuminating an acrylate-modified silica–titania sol–gel glass through a phase mask with an excimer laser at 193 nm. Since the material is self-processing, no further etching step is necessary to reveal the smooth sinusoidal profile. A Corrugation period of 0.56 μm and groove depth of 115 nm is reported. The resistance of the gratings to temperature or solvents makes them competitive for various applications in micro-optics.

To investigate whether the processing of the visual appearance of one's own body, that is the corporeal self is a unified or modular function we submitted eight right brain-damaged (RBD) patients and a group of fourteen age-matched neurologically healthy subjects, to a visual matching-to-sample task testing for corporeal self processing. If corporeal self processing is a unique function (i.e., body- and face-parts are processed by the same network), patients impaired in self body-parts (i.e., showing no self-advantage) should be impaired also in self face-parts; alternatively, if corporeal self processing is a modular function (i.e., body- and face-parts are processed by different networks), patients impaired in self body-parts should be unimpaired in self face-parts, unless the face-module is also damaged by the lesion. Results showed that healthy participants were more accurate in processing pictures representing their own as compared to other people's body- and face-parts, showing the so-called self-advantage. The patients' findings revealed a simple dissociation, in that patients who were impaired in the processing of self-related body-parts showed a preserved self-advantage when processing self-related face-parts, thus providing initial evidence of a modular representation of the corporeal self.

Faces and self-referential material (eg one's own name) are more likely to capture attention in the inattentional-blindness (IB) paradigm than other stimuli. This effect is presumably due to the meaning of these stimuli rather than to their familiarity [Mack and Rock, 1998 Inattentional Blindness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)]. In previous work, IB has been investigated mostly with schematic stimuli. In the present study, the generalisability of this finding was tested with photographic stimuli. In support of the view that faces constitute a special category of stimuli, pictures of faces were found to resist more to IB than pictures of common objects (experiment1) or than pictures of inverted faces (experiment2). In a third experiment, the influence of face familiarity and identity (the participant's own face, a friend's face, and an unknown face) on IB rates was evaluated. Unexpectedly, no differential resistence to blindness across these three kinds of faces was found. In conclusion, pictures of faces attracted attention more than pictures of objects or inverted faces in the IB paradigm. However, this effect was not dependent on face familiarity or identity. © 2009 a Pion publication.

Over 30 years ago, TV shows from The Jetsons to Star Trek suggested that by the millennium’s end computers would read, talk, recognize, walk, converse, think, and maybe even feel. People do these things easily, so how hard could it be? However, in general we still don’t talk to our computers, cars, or houses, and they still don’t talk to us. The Roomba, a successful household robot, is a functional flat round machine that neither talks to nor recognizes its owner. Its “smart” programming tries mainly to stop it getting “stuck,” which it still frequently does, either by getting jammed somewhere or tangling in things like carpet tassels. The idea that computers are incredibly clever is changing, as when computers enter human specialties like conversation, many people find them more stupid than smart, as any “conversation” with a computer help can illustrate. Computers do easily do calculation tasks that people find hard, but the opposite also applies, for example, people quickly recognize familiar faces but computers still cannot recognize known terrorist faces at airport check-ins. Apparently minor variations, like lighting, facial angle, or expression, accessories like glasses or hat, upset them. Figure 1 shows a Letraset page, which any small child would easily recognize as letter “As” but computers find this extremely difficult. People find such visual tasks easy, so few in artificial intelligence (AI) appreciated the difficulties of computer-vision at first. Initial advances were rapid, but AI has struck a 99% barrier, for example, computer voice recognition is 99% accurate but one error per 100 words is unacceptable. There are no computer controlled “auto-drive” cars because 99% accuracy means an accident every month or so, which is also unacceptable. In contrast, the “mean time between accidents” of competent human drivers is years not months, and good drivers go 10+ years without accidents. Other problems easy for most people but hard for computers are language translation, speech recognition, problem solving, social interaction, and spatial coordination.

Photopolymer materials are practical materials for use as holographic recording media, as they are inexpensive and self processing. By understanding the mechanisms present during recording in these materials their limitations for certain processes can be improved and a more efficient, environmentally stable material can be produced. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to develop material electromagnetic theory, which models these applications. In order to deal with electromagnetic diffraction by the resulting non-uniform slanted grating structures we develop first order analytic expressions governing the replay of such gratings.

There is no consensus about the definition of self, however it istraditionally associated to identity. Many researchers are searching the neural regions thatprocess self related information. Some studies have observed an activation of midline structuresduring the processing of information related to self. Self perturbations are not a part of diagnosticcriteria for schizophrenia, nevertheless they are implicitly considered as part of the clinicalpicture. Some studies have tried to determine its perturbation using psychometric tests, but thereare no studies that assess the association between brain activity and the performance ofschizophrenics in tasks that require self-referential evaluations. The attempt to find a neuralsubstrate for self is polemical. However, this model could be evaluated studying if, inschizophrenic patients, the tasks related to self processing are different from normal subjects at thepsychophysiological and behavioral levels. This line of research could provide new diagnostic toolsfor early diagnosis and prevention in psychiatry (Rev Med Chile 2007; 135: 653-60).(

The methods of sensibilization of self-processing photopolymer for holographic recording in the spectral range 500 - 700 nm have been developed. Two new compositions PPC- 520 and PPC-650 were developed in a result of change of the initiator system and modification of monomer component in the basis PPC-488. New PPC are offered to manufacture of various holographic elements: gratings, lenses and spatial optical filters for the pattern recognition schemes.

Autoscopic phenomena (AP) are rare, illusory visual experiences during which the subject has the impression of seeing a second own body in extrapersonal space. AP consist of out-of-body experience, autoscopic hallucination, and heautoscopy. Recent neurologic reports support the role of multisensory integration deficits of body-related information and vestibular dysfunctions in AP at the temporo-parietal junction. A caveat to test the underlying neurologic and cognitive mechanisms of AP has been their rare and spontaneous occurrence. Recent evidence linked AP to mental own-body imagery engaging brain mechanisms at the temporo-parietal junction. These recent observations open a new avenue for testing AP-related cognitive mechanisms in selected clinical and normal populations. We review evidence on several clinical syndromes (psychosis, depression, anxiety, depersonalization, body dysmorphic disorder), suggesting that some of these syndromes may relate to AP-proneness, thereby leading to testable propositions for future research on body and self processing in addition to AP.