Cognitive Science

Exposure to cigarette smoke is a major risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). We tested the hypothesis that nicotine increases expression of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) subunits alpha7 and beta2 in a piglet model. Piglets exposed to 2mg/kg/day nicotine for 14 days postnatally (n=14) were compared to non-exposed controls (n=14), (equal gender proportions). Immunohistochemistry was performed to identify and quantify changes in, alpha7 and beta2 nAChR subunits in 8 nuclei of the medulla at both the rostral and caudal levels. Compared to controls, nicotine exposed piglets had decreased alpha7 in the rostral dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus (rDMNV) (p=0.01), and increased beta2 in the caudal DMNV (cDMNV) (p=0.05), caudal nucleus of the spinal trigeminal tract (cNSTT) (p=0.03) and caudal nucleus of the solitary tract (cNTS) (p=0.04). Analysis by gender showed that in the control group, compared to males, females had higher beta2 in the caudal hypoglossal (c...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is one of the most threatening neurodegenerative disease since it causes muscular paralysis for the loss of Motor Neurons in the spinal cord, brainstem and motor cortex. Up until now, no effective pharmacological treatment is available. Two forms of ALS have been described so far: 90% of the cases presents the sporadic form (sALS) whereas the remaining 10% of the cases displays the familiar form (fALS). Approximately 20% of fALS is associated with inherited mutations in the Cu, Zn-superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) gene. In the last decade, ionic homeostasis dysregulation has been proposed as the main trigger of the pathological cascade that brings to motor-neurons loss. In the light of these premises, the present review will analyze the involvement in ALS pathophysiology of the most well studied metal ions, i.e., calcium, sodium, iron, copper and zinc, with particular focus to the role of ionic channels and transporters able to contribute in the regul...

Mindfulness training was evaluated as a new treatment for attention and impulsivity problems in adolescents with a variety of different externalizing disorders: attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, oppositional-defiant and/or conduct disorder, and autism spectrum disorder if characterized by externalizing problem behaviour. It was argued that the large overlap between these three disorders may be partially explained by common underlying attention and behaviour control deficits. Fourteen clinically referred adolescents suffering from externalizing disorders followed mindfulness training in a group format. Parallel, their parents received mindful parenting training. Adolescents and their parents were measured before and after waitlist, after 8-week training, and at 8-week follow-up. No improvement occurred during waitlist on most variables. After mindfulness training, children self-reported substantial improvement on personal goals, internalizing and externalizing complaints, att...

Keadaan rongga mulut yang tidak sehat pada anak-anak dapat menyebabkan karies pada gigi. Penyakit karies pada gigi dapat dicegah dengan peningkatan pendidikan anak melalui penyuluhan kesehatan gigi. Keberhasilan proses pendidikan tidak terlepas  dari peran besar para guru, sehingga perlu melibatkan guru sebagai salah satu pemberi edukasi kesehatan. Tujuan pengabdian masyarakat ini adalah untuk meningkatkan pengetahuan dalam memelihara kesehatan gigi dan mulut, meningkatkan keterampilan menyikat gigi dan menilai keberhasilan menyikat gigi pada sasaran. Pengabdian masyarakat dilaksanakan di SLBN Muaro Jambi tanggal 23 April 2022 dan 14 Mei 2022 dengan jumlah sasaran langsung sebanyak 45 orang yang terdiri dari 33 orang Guru dan 12 orang kader kesehatan Desa Bukit Baling. Sasaran tidak langsung terdiri dari 102 orang siswa SLBN Muaro Jambi. Pelatihan ini meliputi penyuluhan kesehatan gigi dan mulut, praktik keterampilan menyikat gigi, dan praktik evaluasi keberhasilan menyikat gigi den...

This study examined the association between reward processing, as measured by performance on the probabilistic reversal learning (PRL) task and avoidance/rumination in depressed older adults treated with Engage, a psychotherapy that uses "reward exposure" to increase behavioral activation. Thirty older adults with major depression received 9 weeks of Engage treatment. At baseline and treatment end, the 24-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) was used to assess depression severity and the Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale (BADS) to assess behavioral activation and avoidance/rumination. Participants completed the PRL task at baseline and at treatment end. The PRL requires participants to learn stimulus-reward contingencies through trial and error, and switch strategies when the contingencies unexpectedly change. At the end of Engage treatment, the severity of depression was lower (HAM-D: t(19) = -7.67, P < .001) and behavioral activation was higher (BADS...

Previous studies considered the possibility that individuals with impaired stereoacuity can be identified by estimating the perceived depth of a target with a suprathreshold retinal image disparity. These studies showed that perceived suprathreshold depth is reduced when the image presented to one eye is blurred, but they did not address whether a similar reduction of perceived depth occurs when the stereothreshold is elevated using other manipulations. Stereothresholds were measured in six adult observers for a pair of bright 1-degree vertical lines during normal viewing and under five conditions that elevated the stereothreshold: monocular dioptric blur, monocular glare, binocular luminance reduction, monocular luminance reduction, and imposed disjunctive image motion. The observers subsequently matched the perceived depth of degraded targets presented with crossed or uncrossed disparities corresponding to two, four, and six times the elevated stereothreshold for each stimulus con...

Serotonergic innervation of sensory areas is found ubiquitously across the central nervous system of vertebrates. Here, we used a system’s level approach to investigate the role of serotonin on processing motion stimuli in the electrosensory system of the weakly electric fishApteronotus albifrons. We found that exogenous serotonin application increased the firing activity of pyramidal neural responses to both looming and receding motion. Separating spikes belonging to bursts from those that were isolated revealed that this effect was primarily due to increased burst firing. Moreover, when investigating whether firing activity during stimulation could be discriminated from baseline (i.e., in the absence of stimulation), we found that serotonin increased stimulus discriminability only for some stimuli. This is because increased burst firing was most prominent for these. Further, the effects of serotonin were highly heterogeneous, with some neurons displaying large while others instead...

This article attempts to delineate the Greco-Roman history of rhetoric in light of the concept of ‘substance’. It examines how Greco-Roman Rhetoric, while traveling from Plato to Aristotle to Cicero to Quintilian, encounters debates and dialogues regarding the issues of essence, meaning, and purpose of rhetoric. Therefore, this article does a qualitative textual analysis of five texts: Phaedrusorgias by Plato (2002, 1864), On Rhetoric by Aristotle (n.d.), Oratory and Orators by Cicero (1875), and Institutio Oratoria by Quintilian (2013). In order to unravel the journey of Greco-Roman rhetorical substance, these texts have been analysed and interpreted from three different points of view: substance in rhetoric/oratory, substance in the language of rhetoric/oratory, and substance in rhetoricians/rhetor/orator. The article concludes that in the history of Greco-Roman rhetoric, Plato nullifies substance, Aristotle adds substance, Cicero amplifies substance, and Quintilian multiplies sub...

The study aims at proving the effectiveness of the PQ4R and Mind-Mapping strategies in helping students to achieve higher reading comprehension score. The study involved two groups of Electrical Engineering department of UMM which were drawn using random sampling technique. The experimental group was taught using PQ4R (Preview, Question, Read, Reflect, Recite, Review) and Mind-Mapping strategies meanwhile the control group was taught using Direct Reading Activity (DRA) strategy. it was proven that PQ4R and Mind-Mapping strategies were more effective in helping students achieve higher literal comprehension score in reading since the different marginal means of post-test between control and experimental groups was 33.67 and the students were trained to be more active learners.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) conversion prediction is a vital challenge in the area of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as it could determine possible treatment pathways for AD patients. In this work, we presented a robust MCI conversion prediction framework based on the 3D-Zernike Moment (3D-ZM) method that generates statistical features (e.g., shape, texture, and symmetry information) from 3D-MRI scans and improved dynamic particle swarm optimization (IDPSO) that finds an informative sub-set of Zernike features for MCI conversion prediction. We quantified the efficiency of the proposed prediction framework on a large sample of MCI patients including 105 progressive-MCI (pMCI) and 121 stable-MCI (sMCI) at the baseline from the ADNI dataset. Using the proposed MCI conversion prediction framework, pMCI patients were distinguished from sMCI patients with an accuracy exceeding 75% (sensitivity, 83%, and specificity, 68%), which is well comparable with the state-of-the-art MCI conversion pre...

Automation in every part of life has become a frequent situation because of the rapid advancement of technology, mostly driven by AI technology, and has helped facilitate improved decision-making. Machine learning and the deep learning subset of AI provide machines with the capacity to make judgments on their own through a continuous learning process from vast amounts of data. To decrease human mistakes while making critical choices and to improve knowledge of the game, AI-based technologies are now being implemented in numerous sports, including cricket, football, basketball, and others. Out of the most globally popular games in the world, cricket has a stronghold on the hearts of its fans. A broad range of technologies are being discovered and employed in cricket by the grace of AI to make fair choices as a method of helping on-field umpires because cricket is an unpredictable game, anything may happen in an instant, and a bad judgment can dramatically shift the game. Hence, a sma...

In "hybrid" search tasks, observers hold multiple possible targets in memory while searching for those targets among distractor items in visual displays. Wolfe (2012) found that, if the target set is held constant over a block of trials, reaction times (RTs) in such tasks were a linear function of the number of items in the visual display and a linear function of the log of the number of items held in memory. However, in such tasks, the targets can become far more familiar than the distractors. Does this "familiarity"- operationalized here as the frequency and recency with which an item has appeared-influence performance in hybrid tasks In Experiment 1, we compared searches where distractors appeared with the same frequency as the targets to searches where all distractors were novel. Distractor familiarity did not have any reliable effect on search. In Experiment 2, most distractors were novel but some critical distractors were as common as the targets while othe...

This study is entitled Compound Word Formation in “The Old Man and The Sea”. This study focuses on two problems; types of compound words found in the novel and the semantic transparency theypossess. The aims of this study are to find out the types of compound words and also to find and describe the semantic transparency of the compound words found in the novel.The data source used in this study is a novel written by Ernest Hemmingway entitled The Old Man and The Sea. The data which were compound words were collected by using documentation method whereas to analyze the data by using descriptive qualitative method. There were three theories used in this study. The main theories are proposed by O’Grady (1996) about the types of the compound and by Katamba (1993) about classifying the data. The theory proposed by Libben (1998) was used to describe the semantic transparency of the compound words. The results show that the types of compound words found in the novel are endocentric compoun...

Predictors for Passing the Psychology License Exam by Edith Chaparro MSW, New York University, 2003 BA, St. John’s University, 2001 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Psychology Walden University August 2020 Abstract Psychology license exam takers who do not pass the exam cannot practice psychology independently, have difficulty securing employment, and may lose current jobs. Despite the increased number of psychologists entering the field and the increase in ethnic minority students in doctoral-level psychology programs, there is scarce recent research on predictors of license exam pass rates. The purpose of this quantitative nonexperimental study was to examine whether APA internship match rates, GRE scores, percentage of ethnic minority students, gender, program type, rate of admittance, and years to completion predict license exam pass rates. The triarchic theory of intelligence served as the framework. Archiv...

Menjadi mahasiswa tidak terlepas dari tugas yang harus diselesaikan. Namun, dalam penyelesaiannya terdapat kendala yang sering dialami salah satunya yakni prokrastinasi. Hal tersebut menjadi hambatan dalam proses perkuliahan. Oleh karena itu tujuan dari penelitian untuk melihat efektivitas Islamic Time Management terhadap penurunan prokrastinasi mahasiswa. Hipotesis dari penelitian ini ialah islamic time management berpengaruh terhadap penurunan prokrastinasi mahasiswa. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini ialah one-group pretest-postest design dengan teknik random sampling. Intervensi dilakukan selama 3 kali dengan durasi waktu 30-70 menit setiap sesi. Berdasarkan data yang di dapatkan, terdapat penurunan skor sebelum dan sesudah diberikan intervensi, subjek P dengan skor 144 menjadi 140 dan subjek I dengan skor 112 menjadi 103. Selain itu, peneliti juga menggunakan data kualitatif berupa dokumentasi dari tugas-tugas yang diberikan selama pelatihan yakni: membuat daftar tugas...

The PFC and extended frontostriatal circuitry support higher cognitive processes that guide goal-directed behavior. PFC-dependent cognitive dysfunction is a core feature of multiple psychiatric disorders. Unfortunately, a major limiting factor in the development of treatments for PFC cognitive dysfunction is our limited understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying PFC-dependent cognition. We recently demonstrated that activation of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) receptors in the caudal dorsomedial PFC (dmPFC) impairs higher cognitive function, as measured in a working memory task. Currently, there remains much unknown about CRF-dependent regulation of cognition, including the source of CRF for cognition-modulating receptors and the output pathways modulated by these receptors. To address these issues, the current studies used a viral vector-based approach to chemogenetically activate or inhibit PFC CRF neurons in working memory-tested male rats. Chemogenetic activation of...

The Covid-19 pandemic requires people to implement social distancing (activity restrictions) to anticipate the spread of Covid-19. This study aims to determine the moral development of children during the Covid-19 pandemic and to determine the role of adults in the formation of children's moral development during the pandemic. The subjects of this study amounted to 104 people who are parents or siblings who are in the same house with children in Pandemic. This study uses a quantitative approach with survey methods and data collection techniques used are questionnaires through Google Form. The survey results show that only 75% of parents or siblings of children make regulations related to social distancing, while 25% do not make regulations related to social distancing. Basically, the attitude shown by adults will have a big influence on the children moral’s reasoning about social distancing. In addition, children aged 0-5 years have not obeyed the rules made, but children aged a...

The helicopter dynamic includes nonlinearities, parametric uncertainties and is subject to unknown external disturbances. Such complicated dynamics involve designing sophisticated control algorithms that can deal with these difficulties. In this paper, a type 2 fuzzy logic PID controller is proposed for TRMS (twin rotor mimo system) control problem. Using triangular membership functions and based on a human operator experience, two controllers are designed to control the position of the yaw and the pitch angles of the TRMS. Simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

Neonatal sepsis is one of the most common causes of neonatal death worldwide, affecting up to 3 million neonates each year. Deaths related to neonatal sepsis are more common in developing countries with lower middle incomes. This study aims to find a relationship between APGAR scores at the 1st, 5th, and 10th minutes and delivery mode on the incidence of neonatal sepsis. This research is a retrospective study with a cross-sectional approach at High-Risk Neonatal Installation (INRiT) of Ulin Regional Hospital Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, conducted from January to December 2022. The total sample was 200 babies divided into the sepsis and the control group. APGAR score data at the 1st, 5th, and 10th minutes and delivery mode were taken through medical records. In this study, the average APGAR score at 1st minute in the sepsis group was 5.11; at 5th minute was 6.56; and at 10th minute was 7.65. The results of APGAR score analysis at the 1st, 5th, and 10th minutes in the sepsis and con...

Compassion science has been shaped and guided by Mahāyāna Buddhist conceptions of compassion, including the potential for compassion to be cultivated through contemplative practices and training. Despite these influences, important Buddhist perspectives and ideas about compassion are still underrepresented in the scientific literature. This Special Issue focuses on initiating a body of literature on skillful means, a foundational idea from Mahāyāna Buddhism pertaining to the enactment of compassion joined with wisdom. Arising from a seminal Think Tank centered around compassion and skillful means, scholars and trainers representing diverse perspectives were invited to contribute to a Special Issue introducing a variety of perspectives, insights, and approaches that may help to advance contemporary understanding, research, and training of compassion. This includes papers that examine skillful means within Buddhism and Christianity, empirical studies that draw on skillful means to motivate or frame tractable questions, theoretical papers that reflect on skillful means in relation to other topics in psychological science, and how common compassion practices may themselves serve as skillful means. Considered together, we believe the variety evident throughout this Special Issue highlights the potential of skillful means to serve as a broad and flexible concept that can inspire many new ideas and directions for the field.