Rhegmatogenous Retinal Detachment in Syphilitic Uveitis: A Case Series and Comprehensive Review of the Literature.

PURPOSE: Uveitis is the most common ocular manifestation of syphilis. However, an association between syphilitic uveitis and rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) is not widely recognized. We report a consecutive series of six new cases of syphilitic uveitis complicated by RRD and describe the typical characteristics, clinical course, and surgical management of such cases. METHODS: Consecutive case series and comprehensive review of the literature. RESULTS: We identified a total of 19 cases (23 eyes) with syphilitic uveitis subsequently complicated by RRD, including six new cases (seven eyes) reported here and 13 cases (16 eyes) previously reported in the literature. Fifteen patients (79%) were positive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and not on combination antiretroviral therapy. Most retinal detachments developed within two months of uveitis presentation; retinal breaks were often found in areas of previous retinitis. Sixteen eyes (70%) were complicated by early proliferative vitreoretinopathy. Twenty-one eyes underwent surgical repair, of which six (26%) suffered re-detachment. Surgical management commonly involved pars-plana vitrectomy and silicone oil tamponade, with or without scleral buckling. Visual outcomes were generally poor: only six eyes (26%) attained visual acuity of 20/40 or better and 11 eyes (48%) remained 20/200 or worse. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with syphilitic uveitis, as with viral retinitis, should be monitored closely for the development of retinal tears and RRD. A combination of pars plana vitrectomy with silicone oil tamponade and/or scleral buckle placement is a prudent surgical approach to most cases of syphilitic RRD, although visual prognosis remains guarded.

Cataract Formation Following Pars Plana Vitrectomy in the Pediatric Population.

PURPOSE: To analyze post-vitrectomy cataract formation in the pediatric population to elucidate the number of phakic children requiring cataract surgery following vitreous surgery and the perioperative factors affecting cataract development in these patients. METHODS: Eyes of pediatric patients that underwent phakic pars plana vitrectomy (PPV) with no prior cataract in a 10-year period were included. Analyses evaluated relationships between patient age and time to cataract surgery, as well as contributing factors for cataract formation. Final visual outcomes were also examined. Outcomes were collected for patient age at first vitrectomy, indication for vitrectomy, use of tamponade agents, history of ocular trauma, cataract status, and time to cataract surgery from first vitrectomy. RESULTS: Of 44 eyes analyzed, 27 (61%) were noted to have some degree of cataract formation. Of these, 15 (56%; 34% of total eyes) underwent cataract surgery. Use of octafluoropropane (P = .04) or silicone oil (P = .03) positively correlated with the need for cataract surgery in the total study group. Patients requiring cataract surgery had worse endpoint visual acuities than those who did not undergo surgery (P = .02), although this difference becomes less significant in follow-up over 2 years (P = .30). Patients who had cataracts but did not need cataract surgery showed an improvement in visual acuity (P = .04), but this was not demonstrated in patients who did need cataract surgery (P = .90). CONCLUSIONS: Pediatric eye care providers should be aware of the significant risk of cataract formation following a phakic PPV. [J Pediatr Ophthalmol Strabismus. 2023;60(6):421-426.].

When the body matches the picture: The influence of physiological arousal on subjective familiarity of novel stimuli.

Numerous studies show that bodily states shape affect and cognition. Here, we investigated whether incidental physiological arousal impacted perceived familiarity for novel images depicting real-world scenes. Participants provided familiarity ratings for a series of high- and low-arousal emotional images, once after a cycling session (to increase heart rate) and once after a relaxation session (to reduce heart rate). We observed a novel match-effect between internal (physiological) and external (stimulus) arousal sources, where participants rated highly arousing images as more familiar when bodily arousal was also high. Interestingly, the match-effect was greater in participants that scored low on self-report measures of interoception, suggesting that these individuals are less able to correctly perceive bodily changes, and thus are more likely to confuse their physiological arousal with an external source. Overall, our findings underscore the importance of interactions between the mind, body, and stimulus, especially when it comes to subjective judgments of familiarity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Outcasts and saboteurs: Intervention strategies to reduce the negative effects of social exclusion on team outcomes.

The experience of social exclusion in the workplace adversely impacts employees' well-being, job satisfaction, and productivity, and no one quite knows what to do about it. In this report, we describe the development and testing of three ostracism interventions, designed to help people cope with the negative effects of being excluded by one's team. Across five studies, participants were assigned to a virtual ball toss game where they were either included or excluded by their teammates. Afterwards, they were given a task where they could earn money for themselves, for their entire team, or for an unrelated group (charity). Excluded participants worked less hard for their teams (even when this meant sacrificing their own earnings). This sabotage effect was specific, meaning that excluded individuals worked less hard on behalf of their teams, but not when they worked for themselves or for charity. We devised three intervention strategies-perspective, mentorship, and empowerment-to combat the negative effects of ostracism on people's willingness to work for their teams. These interventions were successful; each increased people's persistence in a team-based reward task, and in some cases, even raised the outcomes of excluded teammates to levels observed in included teammates. The effectiveness of these interventions also replicated successfully, using preregistered hypotheses, methods, and analyses. These studies add novel insights to a variety of fields that have examined the consequences of social exclusion, including social psychology, organizational behavior, and management science.

Multiple Osteochondromas Comorbid With Enlarged Parietal Foramina, Elongated Styloid Processes, and Tibiofibular Synostosis.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigates a unique case of multiple osteochondromas (MO) comorbid with enlarged parietal foramina and correlates the findings with the existing literature. The aim of this study is to provide a deeper understanding of anatomic variation for physicians. METHODS: A 66-year-old White male donor was examined during a routine cadaveric dissection performed by medical students in an anatomy laboratory. Detailed exploration of the skeleton and organs was performed, and photographs were taken. Tissue samples were obtained from multiple outgrowths, and histopathologic examination was done. RESULTS: Bilateral bony growths were noted rising from the long bones of the upper and lower extremities (femur, tibia, fibula, and radius). An accessory muscle was found to be associated with the left radial bony growth. Histopathologic examination was positive for osteochondroma. Inspection of the skull revealed enlarged parietal foramina. Other findings included tibiofibular synostosis, abnormally shaped vertebral bodies and ribs, and elongated styloid processes of the skull. CONCLUSIONS: In combination with the histopathologic examination, the case report and literature review elucidate a more precise clinical picture for those affected with MO or similar disorders. This report also emphasizes the necessity of further investigation of the pathogenesis of MO and Potocki-Shaffer syndrome.

Dissociable effects of averted "gaze" on the priming of bodily representations and motor actions.

Gaze direction is an important stimulus that signals key details about social (dis)engagement and objects in our physical environment. Here, we explore how gaze direction influences the perceiver's processing of bodily information. Specifically, we examined how averted versus direct gaze modifies the operation of effector-centered representations (i.e., specific fingers) versus movement-centered representations (i.e., finger actions). Study 1 used a stimulus-response compatibility paradigm that tested the priming of a relevant effector or relevant movement, after observing videos of direct or averted gaze. We found a selective priming of relevant effectors, but only after averted gaze videos. Study 2 found similar priming effects with symbolic direction cues (averted arrows). Study 3 found that averted gaze cues do not influence generic spatial compatibility effects, and thus, are specific to body representations. In sum, this research suggests that both human and symbolic averted cues selectively prime relevant body-part representations, highlighting the dynamic interplay between our bodies, minds, and environments.

Stressed connections: cortisol levels following acute psychosocial stress disrupt affiliative mimicry in humans.

Mimicry, and especially spontaneous facial mimicry, is a rudimentary element of social-emotional experience that is well-conserved across numerous species. Although such mimicry is thought to be a relatively automatic process, research indicates that contextual factors can influence mimicry, especially in humans. Here, we extend this work by investigating the effect of acute psychosocial stress on spontaneous facial mimicry. Participants performed a spontaneous facial mimicry task with facial electromyography (fEMG) at baseline and approximately one month later, following an acute psychosocial stressor (Trier Social Stress Test). Results show that the magnitude of the endocrine stress response reduced zygomaticus major reactivity, and specifically spontaneous facial mimicry for positive social stimuli (i.e. smiles). Individuals with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol showed a more blunted fEMG response to smiles, but not to frowns. Conversely, stress had no effect on corrugator supercilii activation (i.e. frowning to frowns). These findings highlight the importance of the biological stress response system in this basic element of social-emotional experience.

Facial expressions of authenticity: Emotion variability increases judgments of trustworthiness and leadership.

People automatically generate first impressions from others' faces, even with limited time and information. Most research on social face evaluation focuses on static morphological features that are embedded "in the face" (e.g., overall average of facial features, masculinity/femininity, cues related to positivity/negativity, etc.). Here, we offer the first investigation of how variability in facial emotion affects social evaluations. Participants evaluated targets that, over time, displayed either high-variability or low-variability distributions of positive (happy) and/or negative (angry/fearful/sad) facial expressions, despite the overall averages of those facial features always being the same across conditions. We found that high-variability led to consistently positive perceptions of authenticity, and thereby, judgments of perceived happiness, trustworthiness, leadership, and team-member desirability. We found these effects were based specifically in variability in emotional displays (not intensity of emotion), and specifically increased the positivity of social judgments (not their extremity). Overall, people do not merely average or summarize over facial expressions to arrive at a judgment, but instead also draw inferences from the variability of those expressions.

Category structure determines the relative attractiveness of global versus local averages.

Stimuli that capture the central tendency of presented exemplars are often preferred-a phenomenon also known as the classic beauty-in-averageness effect. However, recent studies have shown that this effect can reverse under certain conditions. We propose that a key variable for such ugliness-in-averageness effects is the category structure of the presented exemplars. When exemplars cluster into multiple subcategories, the global average should no longer reflect the underlying stimulus distributions, and will thereby become unattractive. In contrast, the subcategory averages (i.e., local averages) should better reflect the stimulus distributions, and become more attractive. In 3 studies, we presented participants with dot patterns belonging to 2 different subcategories. Importantly, across studies, we also manipulated the distinctiveness of the subcategories. We found that participants preferred the local averages over the global average when they first learned to classify the patterns into 2 different subcategories in a contrastive categorization paradigm (Experiment 1). Moreover, participants still preferred local averages when first classifying patterns into a single category (Experiment 2) or when not classifying patterns at all during incidental learning (Experiment 3), as long as the subcategories were sufficiently distinct. Finally, as a proof-of-concept, we mapped our empirical results onto predictions generated by a well-known computational model of category learning (the Generalized Context Model [GCM]). Overall, our findings emphasize the key role of categorization for understanding the nature of preferences, including any effects that emerge from stimulus averaging. (PsycINFO Database Record

Are You Smiling, or Have I Seen You Before? Familiarity Makes Faces Look Happier.

It is clear that unreinforced repetition (familiarization) influences affective responses to social stimuli, but its effects on the perception of facial emotion are unknown. Reporting the results of two experiments, we show for the first time that repeated exposure enhances the perceived happiness of facial expressions. In Experiment 1, using a paradigm in which subjects' responses were orthogonal to happiness in order to avoid response biases, we found that faces of individuals who had previously been shown were deemed happier than novel faces. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect with a rapid "happy or angry" categorization task. Using psychometric function fitting, we found that for subjects to classify a face as happy, they needed less actual happiness to be present in the face if the target was familiar than if it was novel. Critically, our results suggest that familiar faces appear happier than novel faces because familiarity selectively enhances the impact of positive stimulus features.

The ugliness-in-averageness effect: Tempering the warm glow of familiarity.

Mere exposure (i.e., stimulus repetition) and blending (i.e., stimulus averaging) are classic ways to increase social preferences, including facial attractiveness. In both effects, increases in preference involve enhanced familiarity. Prominent memory theories assume that familiarity depends on a match between the target and similar items in memory. These theories predict that when individual items are weakly learned, their blends (morphs) should be relatively familiar, and thus liked-a beauty-in-averageness effect (BiA). However, when individual items are strongly learned, they are also more distinguishable. This "differentiation" hypothesis predicts that with strongly encoded items, familiarity (and thus, preference) for the blend will be relatively lower than individual items-an ugliness-in-averageness effect (UiA). We tested this novel theoretical prediction in 5 experiments. Experiment 1 showed that with weak learning, facial morphs were more attractive than contributing individuals (BiA effect). Experiments 2A and 2B demonstrated that when participants first strongly learned a subset of individual faces (either in a face-name memory task or perceptual-tracking task), morphs of trained individuals were less attractive than the trained individuals (UiA effect). Experiment 3 showed that changes in familiarity for the trained morph (rather than interstimulus conflict) drove the UiA effect. Using a within-subjects design, Experiment 4 mapped out the transition from BiA to UiA solely as a function of memory training. Finally, computational modeling using a well-known memory framework (REM) illustrated the familiarity transition observed in Experiment 4. Overall, these results highlight how memory processes illuminate classic and modern social preference phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record

Is that a human? Categorization (dis)fluency drives evaluations of agents ambiguous on human-likeness.

A fundamental and seemingly unbridgeable psychological boundary divides humans and nonhumans. Essentialism theories suggest that mixing these categories violates "natural kinds." Perceptual theories propose that such mixing creates incompatible cues. Most theories suggest that mixed agents, with both human and nonhuman features, obligatorily elicit discomfort. In contrast, we demonstrate top-down, cognitive control of these effects-such that the discomfort with mixed agents is partially driven by disfluent categorization of ambiguous features that are pertinent to the agent. Three experiments tested this idea. Participants classified 3 different agents (humans, androids, and robots) either on the human-likeness or control dimension and then evaluated them. Classifying on the human-likeness dimensions made the mixed agent (android) more disfluent, and in turn, more disliked. Disfluency also mediated the negative affective reaction. Critically, devaluation only resulted from disfluency on human-likeness-and not from an equally disfluent color dimension. We argue that negative consequences on evaluations of mixed agents arise from integral disfluency (on features that are relevant to the judgment at-hand, like ambiguous human-likeness). In contrast, no negative effects stem from incidental disfluency (on features that do not bear on the current judgment, like ambiguous color backgrounds). Overall, these findings support a top-down account of why, when, and how mixed agents elicit conflict and discomfort. (PsycINFO Database Record

Status and Power Do Not Modulate Automatic Imitation of Intransitive Hand Movements.

The tendency to mimic the behaviour of others is affected by a variety of social factors, and it has been argued that such "mirroring" is often unconsciously deployed as a means of increasing affiliation during interpersonal interactions. However, the relationship between automatic motor imitation and status/power is currently unclear. This paper reports five experiments that investigated whether social status (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) or power (Experiments 4 and 5) had a moderating effect on automatic imitation (AI) in finger-movement tasks, using a series of different manipulations. Experiments 1 and 2 manipulated the social status of the observed person using an associative learning task. Experiment 3 manipulated social status via perceived competence at a simple computer game. Experiment 4 manipulated participants' power (relative to the actors) in a card-choosing task. Finally, Experiment 5 primed participants using a writing task, to induce the sense of being powerful or powerless. No significant interactions were found between congruency and social status/power in any of the studies. Additionally, Bayesian hypothesis testing indicated that the null hypothesis should be favoured over the experimental hypothesis in all five studies. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for AI tasks, social effects on mimicry, and the hypothesis of mimicry as a strategic mechanism to promote affiliation.

Johnny Depp, Reconsidered: How Category-Relative Processing Fluency Determines the Appeal of Gender Ambiguity.

Individuals that combine features of both genders-gender blends-are sometimes appealing and sometimes not. Heretofore, this difference was explained entirely in terms of sexual selection. In contrast, we propose that part of individuals' preference for gender blends is due to the cognitive effort required to classify them, and that such effort depends on the context in which a blend is judged. In two studies, participants judged the attractiveness of male-female morphs. Participants did so after classifying each face in terms of its gender, which was selectively more effortful for gender blends, or classifying faces on a gender-irrelevant dimension, which was equally effortful for gender blends. In both studies, gender blends were disliked when, and only when, the faces were first classified by gender, despite an overall preference for feminine features in all conditions. Critically, the preferences were mediated by the effort of stimulus classification. The results suggest that the variation in attractiveness of gender-ambiguous faces may derive from context-dependent requirements to determine gender membership. More generally, the results show that the difficulty of resolving social category membership-not just attitudes toward a social category-feed into perceivers' overall evaluations toward category members.

Easy moves: Perceptual fluency facilitates approach-related action.

It is well established that processing fluency impacts preference judgments and physiological reactions indicative of affect. Yet, little is known about how fluency influences motivation-related action. Here, we offer a novel demonstration that fluency facilitates action-tendencies related to approach. Four experiments investigated this action effect, its boundary conditions, and concomitant affective responses. Experiment 1 found faster approach movements (reaction times [RTs] to initiate arm flexion) to perceptually fluent stimuli when participants acted to rapidly classify stimuli as either "good" or "bad." Experiment 2 eliminated this fluency effect on action when participants performed nonaffective classifications ("living" or "nonliving"), even though fluency robustly enhanced liking judgments. Experiment 3 demonstrated that fluency can also facilitate approach action that is not immediate, as long as the delayed action involves affective classification. This experiment also found that fluent stimuli elicit genuine hedonic responses, as reflected in facial electromyography (fEMG) activity over zygomaticus "smiling" muscle. Experiment 4 replicated the physiological (fEMG) evidence for hedonic responses to fluent stimuli, but similar to Experiment 2, we observed no fluency effects on actions involving nonaffective classification. The current studies offer the first evidence that perceptual fluency can facilitate approach-related movements, when such movements are embedded in the context of affective decisions. Generally, these results suggest that variations in processing dynamics can flexibly and implicitly shape action-tendencies. (PsycINFO Database Record

Vagal activity is quadratically related to prosocial traits, prosocial emotions, and observer perceptions of prosociality.

In the present article, we introduce the quadratic vagal activity-prosociality hypothesis, a theoretical framework for understanding the vagus nerve's involvement in prosociality. We argue that vagus nerve activity supports prosocial behavior by regulating physiological systems that enable emotional expression, empathy for others' mental and emotional states, the regulation of one's own distress, and the experience of positive emotions. However, we contend that extremely high levels of vagal activity can be detrimental to prosociality. We present 3 studies providing support for our model, finding consistent evidence of a quadratic relationship between respiratory sinus arrhythmia--the degree to which the vagus nerve modulates the heart rate--and prosociality. Individual differences in vagal activity were quadratically related to prosocial traits (Study 1), prosocial emotions (Study 2), and outside ratings of prosociality by complete strangers (Study 3). Thus, too much or too little vagal activity appears to be detrimental to prosociality. The present article provides the 1st theoretical and empirical account of the nonlinear relationship between vagal activity and prosociality.

When mirroring is both simple and "smart": how mimicry can be embodied, adaptive, and non-representational.

The concept of mirroring has become rather ubiquitous. One of the most fundamental empirical and theoretical debates within research on mirroring concerns the role of mental representations: while some models argue that higher-order representational mechanisms underpin most cases of mirroring, other models argue that they only moderate a primarily non-representational process. As such, even though research on mirroring-along with its neural substrates, including the putative mirror neuron system-has grown tremendously, so too has confusion about what it actually means to "mirror". Using recent research on spontaneous imitation, we argue that flexible mirroring effects can be fully embodied and dynamic-even in the absence of higher-order mental representations. We propose that mirroring can simply reflect an adaptive integration and utilization of cues obtained from the brain, body, and environment, which is especially evident within the social context. Such a view offers reconciliation among both representational and non-representational frameworks in cognitive neuroscience, which will facilitate revised interpretations of modern (and seemingly divergent) findings on when and how these embodied mirroring responses are employed.

Transforming the mirror: power fundamentally changes facial responding to emotional expressions.

Major theories propose that spontaneous responding to others' actions involves mirroring, or direct matching. Responding to facial expressions is assumed to follow this matching principle: People smile to smiles and frown to frowns. We demonstrate here that social power fundamentally changes spontaneous facial mimicry of emotional expressions, thereby challenging the direct-matching principle. Participants induced into a high-power (HP), low-power (LP), or neutral state watched dynamic happy and angry expressions from HP and LP targets while we measured facial electromyography (fEMG) over the zygomaticus major ("smiling muscle") and corrugator supercilii ("frowning muscle"). For smiling, LP participants smiled to all targets, regardless of their expression. In contrast, HP participants exhibited standard smile mimicry toward LP targets but did not mimic the smiles of HP targets. Instead, HP participants smiled more when those HP targets expressed anger. For frowning, all participants showed a more intense mimicry pattern to HP targets. These results demonstrate that spontaneous facial responding-detected by sensitive, physiological measures of muscle activation-dynamically adapts to contextual cues of social hierarchy.