Priority water research questions as determined by UK practitioners and policy makers.

Several recent studies have emphasised the need for a more integrated process in which researchers, policy makers and practitioners interact to identify research priorities. This paper discusses such a process with respect to the UK water sector, detailing how questions were developed through inter-disciplinary collaboration using online questionnaires and a stakeholder workshop. The paper details the 94 key questions arising, and provides commentary on their scale and scope. Prioritization voting divided the nine research themes into three categories: (1) extreme events (primarily flooding), valuing freshwater services, and water supply, treatment and distribution [each >150/1109 votes]; (2) freshwater pollution and integrated catchment management [100-150 votes] and; (3) freshwater biodiversity, water industry governance, understanding and managing demand and communicating water research [50-100 votes]. The biggest demand was for research to improve understanding of intervention impacts in the water environment, while a need for improved understanding of basic processes was also clearly expressed, particularly with respect to impacts of pollution and aquatic ecosystems. Questions that addressed aspects of appraisal, particularly incorporation of ecological service values into decision making, were also strongly represented. The findings revealed that sustainability has entered the lexicon of the UK water sector, but much remains to be done to embed the concept operationally, with key sustainability issues such as resilience and interaction with related key sectors, such as energy and agriculture, relatively poorly addressed. However, the exercise also revealed that a necessary condition for sustainable development, effective communication between scientists, practitioners and policy makers, already appears to be relatively well established in the UK water sector.

A prospective study of the effects of anterior temporal lobectomy on emotion recognition and theory of mind.

Nineteen patients evaluated facial emotional expressions and performed 'theory of mind' reasoning tasks before and after a temporal lobectomy for medically intractable epilepsy, and results were compared with the performance of 19 healthy controls. Following operation, which in all cases resulted in excision of the entire amygdala, there was no change in the ability to reason about the mental states of others, in line with the suggestion that the anterior temporal lobe is not necessary for theory of mind reasoning. However, following a left anterior temporal lobectomy, patients evaluated fearful facial expressions in a more normative manner. This may reflect the excision of a 'hyper-excitable' amygdala which pre-operatively misinterprets fearful expressions as containing blends of other emotions. Alternatively the results may represent an improvement in function of the right amygdala following the excision of a noxious inhibitory epileptogenic focus on the left. The finding complements earlier demonstrations that damage to the right amygdala is associated with impaired processing of fear; amelioration of right amygdala function may conversely be associated with an improvement.

A critical period for the impact of amygdala damage on the emotional enhancement of memory?

The amygdala is crucial in modulating enhanced memory for emotionally arousing material. The authors provide evidence that unilateral lesions of the human amygdala arising early in development, but not in adulthood, are associated with a loss of the expected superior retrieval of emotionally arousing over neutral material. This adds to evidence for an early critical period in the development of amygdala function.

Emotional memory and perception in temporal lobectomy patients with amygdala damage.

BACKGROUND: The human amygdala is implicated in the formation of emotional memories and the perception of emotional stimuli--particularly fear--across various modalities. OBJECTIVES: To discern the extent to which these functions are related. METHODS: 28 patients who had anterior temporal lobectomy (13 left and 15 right) for intractable epilepsy were recruited. Structural magnetic resonance imaging showed that three of them had atrophy of their remaining amygdala. All participants were given tests of affect perception from facial and vocal expressions and of emotional memory, using a standard narrative test and a novel test of word recognition. The results were standardised against matched healthy controls. RESULTS: Performance on all emotion tasks in patients with unilateral lobectomy ranged from unimpaired to moderately impaired. Perception of emotions in faces and voices was (with exceptions) significantly positively correlated, indicating multimodal emotional processing. However, there was no correlation between the subjects' performance on tests of emotional memory and perception. Several subjects showed strong emotional memory enhancement but poor fear perception. Patients with bilateral amygdala damage had greater impairment, particularly on the narrative test of emotional memory, one showing superior fear recognition but absent memory enhancement. CONCLUSIONS: Bilateral amygdala damage is particularly disruptive of emotional memory processes in comparison with unilateral temporal lobectomy. On a cognitive level, the pattern of results implies that perception of emotional expressions and emotional memory are supported by separate processing systems or streams.

The human amygdala: a systematic review and meta-analysis of volumetric magnetic resonance imaging.

The structure and function of the human amygdala is attracting increasing attention in the scientific literature, particularly since the advent of high resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We carried out a systematic review of the published literature reporting left and right amygdala volumes from MRI in non-clinical subjects. Our aim was to estimate the normal range of the volume of the amygdala and to account for heterogeneity of the measures. The factors we considered included the detail given regarding various subject factors, the plane of scan acquisition, slice thickness and contiguity, magnet strength, positional and volume correction, and the reliability of measurement. Thirty-nine studies with 51 data sets fulfilled selection criteria. The mean+/-95% confidence interval for the left amygdala volume was 1726.7 mm(3)+/-35.1, and right was 1691.7 mm(3)+/-37.2. The left-right difference did not reach statistical significance. The overall range of reported volumes was 1050 mm(3) to 3880 mm(3). The amygdala is significantly larger in men and shows an inverse correlation with age. The main methodological factor found to influence amygdala measurement was anatomical definition. Studies using 'Watson's criteria' (Neurology 42 (1992) 1743) produced significantly larger volumes than the remainder. An index of study quality revealed an inverse relationship with volume-the higher the quality the smaller the volume. This reflected such factors as slice thickness, correction for brain volume, positional correction and number of subjects. We conclude by putting forward a detailed operationalized anatomical delineation of the amygdala, based on Watson's criteria. This work should guide future research in obtaining accurate and reliable amygdala volume measures which in turn will aid comparisons with clinical groups and the specification of structural-functional relationships.