Action affordances and visuo-spatial complexity in motor imagery: An fMRI study.

Imagining a complex action requires not only motor-related processing but also visuo-spatial imagery. In the current study, we examined visuo-spatial complexity and action affordances in motor imagery (MI). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the neural activity in MI of reach-to-grasp movements of the right hand in five conditions. Thirty participants were scanned while imagining grasping an everyday object, grasping a geometrical shape, grasping next to an everyday object, grasping next to a geometrical shape, and grasping at nothing (no object involved). We found that MI of grasping next to an object recruited the visuo-spatial cognition network including posterior parietal and premotor regions more strongly than MI of grasping an object. This indicates that grasping next to an object requires additional processing resources rendering MI more complex. MI of a grasping movement involving a familiar everyday object compared to a geometrical shape yielded stronger activation in motor-related regions, including the bilateral supplementary motor area. This activation might be due to inhibitory processes preventing motor execution of motor scripts evoked by everyday objects (action affordances). Our results indicate that visuo-spatial cognition plays a significant role in MI.

The origins of inquiry: inductive inference and exploration in early childhood.

Analogies between scientific theories and children's folk theories have been central to the study of cognitive development for decades. In support of the comparison, numerous studies have shown that children have abstract, ontologically committed causal beliefs across a range of content domains. However, recent research suggests that the comparison with science is informative not only about how children represent knowledge but also how they acquire it: many of the epistemic practices essential to and characteristic of scientific inquiry emerge in infancy and early childhood.

Adsorption of tetracycline on kaolinite with pH-dependent surface charges.

Kaolinite is a major type of clay minerals in soils of warm and humid climate. Although it has a much lower cation exchange capacity (CEC) and specific surface area compared to swelling clays, its ubiquitous existence as well as its pH-dependent surface charge makes it an important component to study the interactions between contaminants and soils. Tetracycline (TC) is a group of broad spectrum antibiotics used extensively in human and veterinary medicine. It has a high aqueous solubility and a long environmental half-life. In this study, the interactions between TC and kaolinite in aqueous solution were investigated in batch tests and supplemented by FTIR analyses. The adsorption of TC on kaolinite was mainly on the external surfaces via cation exchange as confirmed by stoichiometric desorption of exchangeable cations and simultaneous adsorption of H(+) rather than due to complexation. Under acidic conditions, a reduction in surface charge, thus the CEC, resulted in more desorption of exchangeable cations compared to TC adsorption. Fitting of the experimental data to the adsorption of different species revealed that TC(+) accounted for 4/5 of the total TC adsorbed with the remaining by zwitterion TC(0), possible via hydrogen bonding. At higher temperature, the pKa2 and pKa3 values seem to shift a pH unit lower. Due to its pH-dependent charge of kaolinite, TC adsorption is more pH dependent. The TC adsorption capacity on kaolinite was much lower compared to that on swelling clays. However, the adsorption rate constant was faster than that on swelling clays owing to surface adsorption instead of intercalation. Despite its low TC adsorption capacity, the ubiquitous existence of kaolinite in soils of warm climate may play a vital role in the fate and transport of TC in these soils.