Effects of oral contraceptives and natural menstrual cycling on environmental learning.

BACKGROUND: Endogenous ovarian hormones as well as exogenous oestradiol and progesterone play an important role in cognitive processing. Specifically, these hormones play a role in different aspects of memory, both in terms of storage capacity and temporal duration of the mnemonic track. These hormones also have various effects on different types of memory (i.e., verbal, visuo-spatial, prospective). This study investigated the effects of hormones on topographic memory, a type of memory specifically needed to recall a pathway and to acquire spatial information about locations, distances, and directions. METHODS: We compared 25 naturally cycling women (NCW) in two different cycling phases, the early follicular phase (4th - 5th days) and the mid-luteal phase (20th-21st days), with 26 women taking oral contraceptives (OC) tested in the active pill phase (20th to 21st day of OC cycle) and the inactive pill phase (2nd to 4th day of OC cycle). Both groups performed the Walking Corsi Test to assess topographic memory in their respective cycling phases. Women were instructed to learn an eight-step sequence path and recall the path five minutes later. RESULTS: We found that the two groups differed in terms of learning the 8-step sequence path; OC users were always better (4-5 days vs. 20-21 days) than NCW. No differences emerged in the delayed recall of the same path. CONCLUSIONS: As already observed in other memory domains (i.e., verbal memory, emotional memory), OC users showed an advantage in terms of topographic learning. Our results might be explained by hormonal mechanisms and may suggest the future application of OC in women with topographic disorders or visuo-spatial difficulties.

Effect of professional expertise and exposure to everyday life decision-making on moral choices.

Moral sense is defined as a feeling of fairness or unfairness of an action that knowingly causes harm to people other than the subject. It is crucial in determining human behavior and becomes pivotal in operational environments. Here we assessed whether professional daily life experience in an operational environment affects moral judgment by asking 41 military pilots of the Italian Air Force (P) and 69 controls (C) to solve 40 moral dilemmas. We found that P gave more morally acceptable utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas. Interestingly, men and women in P equally accepted utilitarian resolutions of moral dilemmas, whereas in C women were less prone than men to accept utilitarian responses. We conclude that professional daily life experience of P, in an operational environment, affects moral judgment and mitigates gender predisposition towards moral dilemmas.

Cognitive Reserve in Healthy Aging and Alzheimer's Disease: A Meta-Analysis of fMRI Studies.

Cognitive reserve (CR) has been defined as the ability to optimize or maximize performance through differential recruitment of brain networks. In the present study, we aimed at providing evidence for a consistent brain network underpinning CR in healthy and pathological aging. To pursue this aim, we performed a coordinate-based meta-analysis of 17 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies on CR proxies in healthy aging, Alzheimer's disease (AD), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). We found that different brain areas were associated with CR proxies in healthy and pathological aging. A wide network of areas, including medial and lateral frontal areas, that is, anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, as well as precuneus, was associated with proxies of CR in healthy elderly patients. The CR proxies in patients with AD and amnesic-MCI were associated with activation in the anterior cingulate cortex. These results were discussed hypothesizing the existence of possible compensatory mechanisms in healthy and pathological aging.

Domain-Specific Interference Tests on Navigational Working Memory in Military Pilots.

INTRODUCTION: Human navigation is a very complex ability that encompasses all four stages of human information processing (sensory input, perception/cognition, selection, and execution of an action), involving both cognitive and physical requirements. During flight, the pilot uses all of these stages and one of the most critical aspect is interference. In fact, spatial tasks competing for the same cognitive resource cause greater distraction from a concurrent task than another task that uses different resource modalities. METHODS: Here we compared and contrasted the performance of pilots and nonpilots of both genders performing increasingly complex navigational memory tasks while exposed to various forms of interference. We investigated the effects of four different sources of interference: motor, spatial motor, verbal, and spatial environment, focusing on gender differences. RESULTS: We found that flight experts perform better than controls (Pilots: 6.50 ± 1.29; Nonpilots: 5.45 ± 1.41). Furthermore, in the general population, navigational working memory is compromised only by spatial environmental interference (Nonpilots: 4.52 ± 1.50); female nonpilots were less able than male nonpilots. Also, the flight expert group showed the same interference, even if reduced (Pilots: 5.24 ± 0.92); moreover, we highlighted a complete absence of gender-related effects. DISCUSSION: Spatial environmental interference is the only interference producing a decrease in performance. Nevertheless, pilots are less affected than the general population. This is probably a consequence of the need to commit substantial cognitive resources to process spatial information during flight.