A brief online mindfulness induction improves creative art-making.

OBJECTIVES: Prior research has suggested that mindfulness may enhance people's memory for art, although results have been mixed. Mindfulness may also be beneficial for some art-making tasks. Here we examine the effects of a short mindfulness (vs. control) induction administered online at different times in the procedure (i.e., pre-encoding vs. pre-retrieval) on viewing and making art. METHODS: Adults (N = 303) viewed an art slideshow, completed an art-viewing testing task, and an art-making task (photography) after being exposed to a 5-min focused-attention mindfulness (vs. control) induction. Induction was presented either before or after the art slideshow (pre-encoding vs. pre-retrieval). RESULTS: Participants who were randomly assigned to the mindfulness (vs. control) condition created photographs that were more creative, complex, abstract, expressive, and higher in emotional valence. Furthermore, participants who experienced an induction (regardless of mindfulness or control) at the pre-encoding (vs. pre-retrieval) stage were better at differentiating between old and new artworks at a later memory test. CONCLUSIONS: Results show that mindfulness significantly enhances people's art, in this case their photographs. Findings also suggest that the mindfulness induction may not enhance participants' memory for art. Future studies will need to examine the effect of other types of mindfulness inductions (e.g., open-monitoring) on people's experience of viewing and making art.

Mothers' neural response to valenced infant interactions predicts postpartum depression and anxiety.

It is currently unknown whether differences in neural responsiveness to infant cues observed in postpartum affective disturbance are specific to depression/anxiety or are better attributed to a common component of internalizing distress. It is also unknown whether differences in mothers' brain response can be accounted for by effects of past episodes, or if current neural processing of her child may serve as a risk factor for development of future symptoms. Twenty-four mothers from a community-based sample participated in an fMRI session viewing their 3-month- old infant during tasks evoking positive or negative emotion. They were tracked across the ensuing 15 months to monitor changes in affective symptoms. Past and current episodes of depression and anxiety, as well as future symptoms, were used to predict differences in mothers' hemodynamic response to their infant in positive compared to negative emotion contexts. Lower relative activation in largely overlapping brain regions involving frontal lobe structures to own infant positive vs. negative emotion was associated with concurrent (3-month) depression diagnosis and prospective (3-18 month) depression and anxiety symptoms. There was little evidence for impacts of past psychopathology (more limited effect of past anxiety and nonsignificant effect of past depression). Results suggest biased maternal processing of infant emotions during postpartum depression and anxiety is largely accounted for by a shared source of variance (internalizing distress). Furthermore, differential maternal responsiveness to her infant's emotional cues is specifically associated with the perpetuation of postpartum symptoms, as opposed to more general phenotypic or scarring effects of past psychopathology.

Parametric Cortical Representations of Complexity and Preference for Artistic and Computer-Generated Fractal Patterns Revealed by Single-Trial EEG Power Spectral Analysis.

Fractals are self-similar patterns that repeat at different scales, the complexity of which are expressed as a fractional Euclidean dimension D between 0 (a point) and 2 (a filled plane). The drip paintings of American painter Jackson Pollock (JP) are fractal in nature, and Pollock's most illustrious works are of the high-D (~1.7) category. This would imply that people prefer more complex fractal patterns, but some research has instead suggested people prefer lower-D fractals. Furthermore, research has suggested that parietal and frontal brain activity tracks the complexity of fractal patterns, but previous research has artificially binned fractals depending on fractal dimension, rather than treating fractal dimension as a parametrically varying value. We used white layers extracted from JP artwork as stimuli, and constructed statistically matched 2-dimensional random Cantor sets as control stimuli. We recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG) while participants viewed the JP and matched random Cantor fractal patterns. Participants then rated their subjective preference for each pattern. We used a single-trial analysis to construct within-subject models relating subjective preference to fractal dimension D, as well as relating D and subjective preference to single-trial EEG power spectra. Results indicated that participants preferred higher-D images for both JP and Cantor stimuli. Power spectral analysis showed that, for artistic fractal images, parietal alpha and beta power parametrically tracked complexity of fractal patterns, while for matched mathematical fractals, parietal power tracked complexity of patterns over a range of frequencies, but most prominently in alpha band. Furthermore, parietal alpha power parametrically tracked aesthetic preference for both artistic and matched Cantor patterns. Overall, our results suggest that perception of complexity for artistic and computer-generated fractal images is reflected in parietal-occipital alpha and beta activity, and neural substrates of preference for complex stimuli are reflected in parietal alpha band activity.

Do In-Prison Correctional Programs Affect Postrelease Employment and Earnings?

The objective of this research is to examine the effects of general educational development (GED) attainment in prison and therapeutic community participation on postrelease employment and earnings. The participants are all males released from prisons in Idaho during 2004. The dependent variables are employment and mean quarterly earnings up to 57 months after release. Propensity score matching analysis was used to enhance the equivalence of the comparison groups, with a small percentage of overly influential observations trimmed. Logistic regression was used to examine the effects of programming on employment. GED had no effect on employment. The effect of therapeutic community approached significance. The statistical analyses on earnings used generalized linear models based on the gamma distribution due to the highly skewed distribution of this variable. These analyses found that GED had no effect on earnings and that participation in a therapeutic community had a highly significant effect on mean quarterly earnings.

Maximizing diversity from a kinase screen: identification of novel and selective pan-Trk inhibitors for chronic pain.

We have identified several series of small molecule inhibitors of TrkA with unique binding modes. The starting leads were chosen to maximize the structural and binding mode diversity derived from a high throughput screen of our internal compound collection. These leads were optimized for potency and selectivity employing a structure based drug design approach adhering to the principles of ligand efficiency to maximize binding affinity without overly relying on lipophilic interactions. This endeavor resulted in the identification of several small molecule pan-Trk inhibitor series that exhibit high selectivity for TrkA/B/C versus a diverse panel of kinases. We have also demonstrated efficacy in both inflammatory and neuropathic pain models upon oral dosing. Herein we describe the identification process, hit-to-lead progression, and binding profiles of these selective pan-Trk kinase inhibitors.

To eat or not to eat red meat. A closer look at the relationship between restrained eating and vegetarianism in college females.

Previous research has suggested that vegetarianism may serve as a mask for restrained eating. The purpose of this study was to compare the dietary habits and lifestyle behaviors of vegetarians (n=55), pesco-vegetarians (n=28), semi-vegetarians (n=29), and flexitarians (n=37), to omnivores (n=91), who do not restrict animal products from their diets. A convenience sample of college-age females completed questionnaires about their eating habits, food choice motivations, and personality characteristics. Results indicated that while vegetarians and pesco-vegetarians were more open to new experiences and less food neophobic, they were not more restrained than omnivores. Rather semi-vegetarians; those who restricted only red meat from their diet, and flexitarians; those who occasionally eat red meat, were significantly more restrained than omnivores. Whereas food choices of semi-vegetarians and flexitarians were motivated by weight control, vegetarians and pesco-vegetarians' food choices were motivated by ethical concerns. By focusing specifically on semi-vegetarian and flexitarian subgroups, more effective approaches can be developed to ensure that their concerns about weight loss do not lead to unhealthful or disordered eating patterns.

Discovery of triarylethanolamine inhibitors of the Kv1.5 potassium channel.

A series of triarylethanolamine inhibitors of the Kv1.5 potassium channel have been prepared and evaluated for their effects in vitro and in vivo. The structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies described herein led to the development of potent, selective and orally active inhibitors of Kv1.5.

Basal metabolic rate of aged mice is affected by random genetic drift but not by selective breeding for high early-age locomotor activity or chronic wheel access.

The study of correlated evolution can lead to new insights about the inheritance patterns of complex traits. In order to better understand the evolution of metabolic rate, we tested whether voluntary activity levels and basal metabolic rate are genetically correlated in 90-wk-old mice (Mus domesticus) from replicated lines of the sixteenth generation of an artificial selection experiment for high early-age wheel-running activity. We measured basal rates of oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production and also computed the respiratory exchange ratio. Half of the individuals from both selected and control lines had been allowed free access to running wheels since 4 wk of age, while the other half were in standard cages. This design allowed testing of hypotheses about (1) genetic correlations between voluntary activity and metabolic rate and (2) lifetime training effects on metabolic traits. Selection group did not have a significant effect on metabolic traits; therefore, this study does not support some of the implicit assumptions of the aerobic capacity model for the evolution of vertebrate energetics. Activity group also did not affect metabolic rate, indicating that lifetime training does not alter basal metabolism in these mice. However, strong replicate line-within-selection-group differences were detected, indicating the occurrence of random genetic drift. In females, this divergence in metabolic traits attributable to drift was independent of body mass, but in males it was probably caused by a correlated response to selection involving body mass. This study is the first to show such effects of random genetic drift on metabolic traits.

Differential induction of early response genes by adrenomedullin and transforming growth factor-beta1 in human lung cancer cells.

Adrenomedullin (AM) is a hypotensive polypeptide that has been shown to stimulate cyclic AMP and intracellular free Ca2+ agents that are known to induce expression of proto-oncogenes, in various cell types. Transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-beta1) is a multifunctional polypeptide that regulates proliferation, differentiation and cell cycle progression in both normal and malignant epithelial cells. The diverse biological actions of AM and TGF-beta1 may be related to their capacities to initiate different genomic programs in target cells via the induction of expression of multiple genes including early response genes and proto-oncogenes. AM, TGF-beta1 and phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate (PMA) exert both positive and negative effects on mitogenesis. The effects of AM, TGF-beta1 and PMA were examined in human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. AM caused an increase in its mRNA transcript that peaked by 6 hours and persisted to 24 hours. While expression of TGF-beta1 mRNA was not affected by AM in these cells, the mRNAs for TGF-beta1 and TGF-beta3 decreased by 3 hours. In contrast, TGF-beta1 had no effect on expression of AM mRNA. Interestingly, PMA caused an increase in AM and TGF-beta1 mRNAs in NSCLC cells. While both TGF-beta1 and PMA caused a transient increase in expression of the mRNAs for early response genes including c-fos, c-jun and egr-1 that peaked by 1 hour following treatment, the increase in expression of these mRNAs following treatment with AM peaked only after 3-6 hours. Western blotting analysis showed increases in the levels of c-jun protein following treatment with AM, TGF-beta1 and PMA. The increase in c-jun protein from treatment with AM occurred 10 hours after that from TGF-beta1 and PMA. Activator protein 1 (AP-1) DNA binding activity was also demonstrated to increase following treatment with AM, TGF-beta1 and PMA, with the increase in AP-1 DNA binding activity following AM treatment occurring 10 hours later than that from TGF-beta1 and PMA treatment. These data show that AM can regulate expression of its mRNA transcript in NSCLC cells. Our study suggests that NSCLC cells are important targets of AM and TGF-beta1 and that AM and TGF-beta1 may regulate activities in these malignant lung cells through differential induction of various early response genes.