Bias and ignorance in demographic perception.

When it comes to knowledge of demographic facts, misinformation appears to be the norm. Americans massively overestimate the proportions of their fellow citizens who are immigrants, Muslim, LGBTQ, and Latino, but underestimate those who are White or Christian. Previous explanations of these estimation errors have invoked topic-specific mechanisms such as xenophobia or media bias. We reconsidered this pattern of errors in the light of more than 30 years of research on the psychological processes involved in proportion estimation and decision-making under uncertainty. In two publicly available datasets featuring demographic estimates from 14 countries, we found that proportion estimates of national demographics correspond closely to what is found in laboratory studies of quantitative estimates more generally. Biases in demographic estimation, therefore, are part of a very general pattern of human psychology-independent of the particular topic or demographic under consideration-that explains most of the error in estimates of the size of politically salient populations. By situating demographic estimates within a broader understanding of general quantity estimation, these results demand reevaluation of both topic-specific misinformation about demographic facts and topic-specific explanations of demographic ignorance, such as media bias and xenophobia.

[Insomnia. Prevalence and treatment of patients in general practice]. / L'insomnie. Prévalence et traitement chez les patients consultant en médecine générale.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the prevalence of insomnia and the treatments used by patients attending general practice clinics. DESIGN: Survey of outpatients. SETTING: Quebec city, Que. metropolitan area. PARTICIPANTS: Two hundred eighteen patients recruited in waiting rooms of general practice clinics. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Participants completed a survey on sleep and use of substances for insomnia, a questionnaire documenting their medical history and use of health care services, and three indices measuring presence of worry and symptoms of anxiety and depression. RESULT: Close to 38% of respondents suffered from insomnia: 26.2% had chronic insomnia and 11.4% had short-term insomnia. Prevalence was higher among women and people 35 to 54 years old. Among respondents who used substances to help them sleep, those 55 years and older consumed more prescription and medications (benzodiazepines); those 35 to 54 years old used mainly natural products; and those 16 to 34 years old consumed mainly over-the-counter medications. Respondents suffering from insomnia made heavier use of health care services and reported more worry and symptoms of anxiety and depression than those who slept well. CONCLUSION: Patients attending general practice clinics have a high prevalence of insomnia. Physicians must be on the lookout for these sleep disturbances so they can offer appropriate treatment.

Some synaptic inputs and ascending projections of lateralis posterior thalamic neurons.

(1) Some synaptic inputs and telencephalic targets of lateralis intermedius-lateralis posterior (LI-LP) thalamic neurons have been investigated in the encéphale isolé cat by recording extracellular unit discharges and focal slow waves following stimulation of cortical areas 5 and 7, center median (CM) thalamic nucleus and mesencephalic reticular formation (RF). (2) Orthodromic and/or antidromic discharges in LI-LP neurons following anterior suprasylvian stimulation are electrophysiological evidence of thalamocortical reciprocal pathway in this "association" system. A few neurons were backfired from several cortical stimulated foci at different latencies, thus suggesting the existence of LI-LP output cells with branching axons. The numerous cases of cortically elicited synaptic excitation in LI-LP cells, taken together with evidence of an unexpectedly high proportion of corticothalamic neurons found in parallel experiments of this laboratory on areas 5 and 7, support the suggestion that complex functions of the "association" cortex partially depend on its downstrem connections with thalamic integrative structures. (3) Monosynaptic and oligosynaptic excitatory projections link the brain stem reticular core with LI-LP nuclear group. For some neurons, this is a high-security pathway as shown by the ability of thalamic cells to follow at short latencies fast repetitive reticular shocks. The RF-elicited phasic excitation is followed by a period of suppressed spontaneous and evoked discharge. The excitatory projections from the upper brain stem RF to the LI-LP nuclei are discussed in relation to disfacilitatory phenomena in thalamocortical systems due to withdrawal of reticulofugal ascending activation at sleep onset.