To successfully read and understand words one has to master several complex processes. A competent reader not only needs to recognize single letters, he or she must also have knowledge about how these letters are legally combined to larger orthographic units (orthographic processing), how to map these units to sounds (phonological processing) and to associate […]
Archiv der Kategorie 'Psychology'
Specific erasure of fear memory by disrupting reconsolidation
Merel Kindt and her team demonstrated that fear memory can be deleted in humans (Kindt et al. 2009). This was achieved by the oral administration of β-adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol before the reactivation of memory. They propose that their strategy of disrupting the (re-) stabilization of a memory after retrieval (reconsolidation) could pave the way […]
Identification of a genetic cluster influencing memory performance and hippocampal activity in humans
In this study the authors investigated molecular pathways associated with memory formation. They used the behavioral genetics approach to identify genetic variations related to memory performance. An additional fMRI-study was conducted to validate their genetic findings as well as to capture brain activity related to the genotype. Out of 336 healthy subjects that underwent an […]
Variation in the human cannabinoid receptor CNR1 gene modulates gaze duration for happy faces
The authors of the current study (2) investigated the relationship of common genetic variations and gaze patterns. In particular, they tested whether variations in the cannabinoid receptor 1 (CNR1) gene would modulate gaze duration on (happy) faces. To this end, four single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the CNR1 gene were genotyped in 30 healthy subjects (13 […]
Are autism and schizophrenia diametric extremes?
In this focus paper in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Crespi and Badcock argue that the psychiatric disorders autism and schizophrenia are opposite ends of a psychological spectrum. They claim that the natural variations in several factors such as sense of self, gaze, agency, social cognition, local versus global processing and others creates a spectrum at […]
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