Relative saliency affects attentional capture and suppression of color and face singleton distractors: evidence from event-related potential studies.

Prior research has yet to fully elucidate the impact of varying relative saliency between target and distractor on attentional capture and suppression, along with their underlying neural mechanisms, especially when social (e.g. face) and perceptual (e.g. color) information interchangeably serve as singleton targets or distractors, competing for attention in a search array. Here, we employed an additional singleton paradigm to investigate the effects of relative saliency on attentional capture (as assessed by N2pc) and suppression (as assessed by PD) of color or face singleton distractors in a visual search task by recording event-related potentials. We found that face singleton distractors with higher relative saliency induced stronger attentional processing. Furthermore, enhancing the physical salience of colors using a bold color ring could enhance attentional processing toward color singleton distractors. Reducing the physical salience of facial stimuli by blurring weakened attentional processing toward face singleton distractors; however, blurring enhanced attentional processing toward color singleton distractors because of the change in relative saliency. In conclusion, the attentional processes of singleton distractors are affected by their relative saliency to singleton targets, with higher relative saliency of singleton distractors resulting in stronger attentional capture and suppression; faces, however, exhibit some specificity in attentional capture and suppression due to high social saliency.

An effector of 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' manipulates autophagy to promote bacterial infection.

Autophagy functions in plant host immunity responses to pathogen infection. The molecular mechanisms and functions used by the citrus Huanglongbing (HLB)-associated intracellular bacterium 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' (CLas) to manipulate autophagy are unknown. We identified a CLas effector, SDE4405 (CLIBASIA_04405), which contributes to HLB progression. 'Wanjincheng' orange (Citrus sinensis) transgenic plants expressing SDE4405 promotes CLas proliferation and symptom expression via suppressing host immunity responses. SDE4405 interacts with the ATG8-family of proteins (ATG8s), and their interactions activate autophagy in Nicotiana benthamiana. The occurrence of autophagy is also significantly enhanced in SDE4405-transgenic citrus plants. Interrupting NbATG8s-SDE4405 interaction by silencing of NbATG8c reduces Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato strain DC3000ΔhopQ1-1 (Pst DC3000ΔhopQ1-1) proliferation in N. benthamiana, and transient overexpression of CsATG8c and SDE4405 in citrus promotes Xanthomonas citri subsp. citri (Xcc) multiplication, suggesting that SDE4405-ATG8s interaction negatively regulates plant defense. These results demonstrate the role of the CLas effector protein in manipulating autophagy, and provide new molecular insights into the interaction between CLas and citrus hosts.

The Role of Attentional Bias Toward Negative Emotional Information and Social Anxiety in Problematic Social Media Use.

The current study aimed to analyze whether individuals with problematic social media use (PSMU) demonstrate attentional bias (AB) toward negative emotional information and determine the relationships among the severity of PSMU, social anxiety, and negative AB. Sixty participants were divided into problematic and normal use groups according to their scores on the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS). The BSMAS and Interaction Anxiety Scale were adopted to measure the severity of PSMU and social anxiety, respectively. An emotional Stroop task and a visual dot-probe task (DPT) were used to assess AB toward negative emotional expressions. Relationships among the severity of PSMU, social anxiety, and negative AB were investigated using Pearson's correlation coefficient. Results showed that individuals with PSMU demonstrated AB toward negative emotional information in the emotional DPT but not in the emotional Stroop task. AB toward negative emotional information was positively correlated with the severity of PSMU and social anxiety in the emotional DPT. Findings support the key role of negative AB and social anxiety in individuals with PSMU, suggesting that more attention be paid to negative AB and social anxiety for the prevention and treatment of PSMU. [Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 61(6), 33-42.].

The application of artificial intelligence technology in education influences Chinese adolescent's emotional perception.

Humans need to accurately infer the intentions and feelings of others to engage in successful social interaction. However, the application of artificial intelligence technology in Education (AIEd) forms a human-machine collaborative environment which changed the interaction relationship of individuals, it may have an affect on them. This study aimed to explore whether AIEd affects adolescents' emotional perception. Combined with the actual teaching situation and the result of the questionnaire, 1332 students recruited through random sampling from AI Curriculum Reform Demonstration Schools in Guangzhou participated in this study. Different emotional priming stimulative materials (sentences and situational pictures) were used in the experiments. The task was designed to investigate adolescents' reaction time to emotional faces (positive, negative). After eliminating blank data and invalid data with response time greater than 150 ms, 977 and 962 valid data were included in the statistical analysis in experiment 1 and experiment 2 respectively. Results show that AIEd has a negative effect on adolescents' emotional perception. Prior research has focused on theory to the exclusion of practical applications and the psychological impact of AIEd, thus this study makes an innovative contribution in exploring the impact of the application of artificial intelligence technology in education on adolescents' physical and mental development by using empirical research methods.

Two processing stages of the SNARC effect.

The spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect showed that small/large numbers represented in the left/right space facilitated left/right responses, respectively. However, the processing stage (semantic representation or response selection) of the SNARC effect is still controversial. To investigate this issue, we adopted a modified magnitude comparison task in which the effects of SNARC, Stroop (semantic-representation stage), and Simon (response-selection stage) could be simultaneously induced. The processing stages of the SNARC effect were investigated by examining the interactions among these effects. According to the additive factor logic, if two effects are interactive, then they occur in the same stage; if two effects are additive, then they occur in different stages. Across two experiments, the SNARC effect interacted with the Stroop effect and with the Simon effect. These results suggested that the SNARC effect occurred in both the semantic-representation and response-selection stages and provided insight into that the SNARC effect might have two originating sources.

Population Diversity of 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' and Diaphorina citri in Sichuan: A Case Study for Huanglongbing Monitoring and Interception.

Citrus huanglongbing (HLB) is present in 10 provinces in China and is associated with 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' (CLas), which is transmitted by the Asian citrus psyllid (Diaphorina citri, ACP). To date, HLB and ACP have expanded to Yibin city of Sichuan Province, posing an imminent threat to the citrus belt of the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, an important late-maturing citrus-producing area in China. To understand the epidemiological route of CLas and ACP in newly invaded regions of Sichuan and thereby better establish an HLB interception zone ranging from Leibo to Yibin, we evaluated the molecular variability of 19 CLas draft genomes from citrus or dodder (Cuscuta campestris). They include three type-specific prophage loci, three variable number tandem repeat loci, a miniature inverted-repeat transposable element, and population diversity of 44 ACP mitochondrial genomes. The results indicated that CLas isolates in the newly invaded area (Pingshan) were more diverse than those in the HLB endemic areas (Leibo and Ningnan). Phylogenetic analysis based on mitochondrial genomes demonstrated that ACPs in Leibo, Pingshan, and Xuzhou (rural areas) represent a new mitochondrial group (MG4), distinguished by the three unique single-nucleotide polymorphisms in cox1, nad4, and cytb. However, the ACPs sampled from the urban areas of Cuiping and Xuzhou belonged to the southeastern China group (MG2-1). Altogether, our study revealed multiple sources of ACP and CLas in the HLB interception zone and proposed their transmission route. This study contributes to the formulation of precise HLB prevention and control strategies in the HLB interception zone in Sichuan and could be useful for HLB management efforts in other regions.

Transcriptomic analyses reveal physiological changes in sweet orange roots affected by citrus blight.

BACKGROUND: Citrus blight is a very important progressive decline disease of commercial citrus. The etiology is unknown, although the disease can be transmitted by root grafts, suggesting a viral etiology. Diagnosis is made by demonstrating physical blockage of xylem cells that prevents the movement of water. This test was used to identify symptomatic trees from four commercial groves in Florida. Total RNA extracts of phloem-enriched scaffold root tissues were prepared from seven trees that failed to take up water and from one healthy tree. These RNA extracts were used for transcriptomic analyses using paired end RNA-Seq from an Illumina 2500 system. The expression of transcripts annotated as polyprotein of citrus endogenous pararetrovirus were estimated by both RT-qPCR and RNA-Seq. RESULTS: Transcripts from seven RNA-Seq libraries from trees affected by citrus blight were compared to a control tree. 129-148 million RNA fragments (two paired-end reads/fragment) were generated per library and were mapped to the sweet orange reference genome. In response to citrus blight stress, genes encoding aquaporins, proteins with water channel activity and several cellulose synthase genes were down-regulated, whereas genes involved in lignin and glucosinolate biosynthesis were up-regulated. Transcripts encoding proteins in pathways of carbohydrate metabolism, nucleotide synthesis, signaling, hormone metabolism, secondary metabolism, transport, and biotic stress pathways were overwhelmingly down regulated in all libraries. CONCLUSION: Reduced water intake and xylem plugging were observed in the trees tested and the changes in their transcriptome were analyzed. Plants adapted to reduced water flow by regulating primary and secondary metabolism, nuclear transport and hormone associated pathways. The patterns of energy generation, transcription, translation and protein degradation were consistent with irreversible decline. The down regulation of cellulose synthase transcripts and up regulation of transcripts related to lignin production likely lead to an imbalance in the pathways leading to wood formation, and may lead to the blockage of the xylem vessels seen as the cardinal symptom of citrus blight. Transcripts of a pararetrovirus were elevated in the transcriptome of roots used in this study.

Transcriptional analysis of sweet orange trees co-infected with 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' and mild or severe strains of Citrus tristeza virus.

BACKGROUND: Citrus worldwide is threatened by huanglongbing (HLB) and tristeza diseases caused by 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' (CaLas) and Citrus tristeza virus (CTV). Although the pathogens are members of the α-proteobacteria and Closteroviridae, respectively, both are restricted to phloem cells in infected citrus and are transmitted by insect vectors. The response of sweet orange to single infection by either of these two pathogens has been characterized previously by global gene expression analysis. But because of the ubiquity of these pathogens where the diseases occur, co-infection by both pathogens is very common and could lead to increased disease severity based on synergism. We therefore co-inoculated sweet orange trees with CaLas and either a mild or a severe strain of CTV, and measured changes of gene expression in host plants. RESULTS: In plants infected with CaLas-B232, the overall alteration in gene expression was much greater in plants co-inoculated with the severe strain of CTV, B6, than when co-infected with the mild strain of CTV, B2. Plants co-infected with CaLas-B232 and either strain of CTV died but trees co-infected with CTV-B2 survived much longer than those co-infected with CTV-B6. Many important pathways were perturbed by both CTV-B2/CaLas-B232 and/or CTV-B6/CaLas-B232, but always more severely by CTV-B6/CaLas-B232. Genes related to cell wall modification and metal transport responded differently to infection by the pathogens in combination than by the same pathogens singly. The expressions of genes encoding phloem proteins and sucrose loading proteins were also differentially altered in response to CTV-B2 or CTV-B6 in combination with CaLas-B232, leading to different phloem environments in plants co-infected by CaLas and mild or severe CTV. CONCLUSIONS: Many host genes were expressed differently in response to dual infection as compared to single infections with the same pathogens. Interactions of the pathogens within the host may lead to a better or worse result for the host plant. CTV-B6 may exert a synergistic effect with CaLas-B232 in weakening the plant; on the other hand, the responses activated by the mild strain CTV-B2 may provide some beneficial effects against CaLas-B232 by increasing the defense response of the host.

Invisible own- and other-race faces presented under continuous flash suppression produce affective response biases.

One triumph of the human mind is the ability to place the multitudinous array of people we encounter into in- and out-group members based on racial characteristics. One fundamental question that remains to be answered is whether invisible own- and other-race faces can nevertheless influence subsequent affective judgments. Here, we employed continuous flash suppression (CFS) to render own- and other-race faces unperceivable in an affective priming task. Both on-line and off-line awareness checks were employed to provide more stringent control of partial awareness. Results revealed that relative to own-race faces, imperceptible other-race faces significantly facilitated participants' identification of negative words, suggesting an other-race derogation bias. When faces were presented consciously, we found that not only other-race faces facilitated detection of negative words, but also own-race faces facilitated detection of positive words. These findings together provide novel and strong evidence suggesting that invisible racial faces can bias affective responses.

Transcriptome analysis of sweet orange trees infected with 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' and two strains of Citrus Tristeza Virus.

BACKGROUND: Huanglongbing (HLB) and tristeza, are diseases of citrus caused by a member of the α-proteobacteria, 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' (CaLas), and Citrus tristeza virus (CTV) respectively. HLB is a devastating disease, but CTV strains vary from very severe to very mild. Both CaLas and CTV are phloem-restricted. The CaLas-B232 strain and CTV-B6 cause a wide range of severe and similar symptoms. The mild strain CTV-B2 doesn't induce significant symptoms or damage to plants. RESULTS: Transcriptome profiles obtained through RNA-seq revealed 611, 404 and 285 differentially expressed transcripts (DETs) after infection with CaLas-B232, CTV-B6 and CTV-B2. These DETs were components of a wide range of pathways involved in circadian rhythm, cell wall modification and cell organization, as well as transcription factors, transport, hormone response and secondary metabolism, signaling and stress response. The number of transcripts that responded to both CTV-B6 and CaLas-B232 was much larger than the number of transcripts that responded to both strains of CTV or to both CTV-B2 and CaLas-B232. A total of 38 genes were assayed by RT-qPCR and the correlation coefficients between Gfold and RT-qPCR were 0.82, 0.69, 0.81 for sweet orange plants infected with CTV-B2, CTV-B6 and CaLas-B232, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The number and composition of DETs reflected the complexity of symptoms caused by the pathogens in established infections, although the leaf tissues sampled were asymptomatic. There were greater similarities between the sweet orange in response to CTV-B6 and CaLas-B232 than between the two CTV strains, reflecting the similar physiological changes caused by both CTV-B6 and CaLas-B232. The circadian rhythm system of plants was perturbed by all three pathogens, especially by CTV-B6, and the ion balance was also disrupted by all three pathogens, especially by CaLas-B232. Defense responses related to cell wall modification, transcriptional regulation, hormones, secondary metabolites, kinases and stress were activated by all three pathogens but with different patterns. The transcriptome profiles of Citrus sinensis identified host genes whose expression is affected by the presence of a pathogen in the phloem without producing symptoms (CTV-B2), and host genes whose expression leads to induction of symptoms in the plant (CTV-B6, CaLas-B232).

History and Diversity of Citrus leprosis virus Recorded in Herbarium Specimens.

Leprosis refers to two diseases of citrus that present similar necrotic local lesions, often surrounded by chlorotic haloes on citrus. Two distinct viruses are associated with this disease, one that produces particles primarily in the nucleus of infected plant cells (Citrus leprosis virus nuclear type [CiLV-N]; Dichorhavirus) and another type that produces particles in the cytoplasm of infected plant cells (Citrus leprosis virus cytoplasmic type [CiLV-C]; Cilevirus). Both forms are transmitted by Brevipalpid mites and have bipartite, single-stranded, RNA genomes. CiLV-C and CiLV-N are present in South and Central America and as far north as parts of Mexico. Although leprosis disease was originally described from Florida, it disappeared from there in the 1960s. The United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service maintains preserved citrus specimens identified at inspection stations 50 or more years ago with symptoms of citrus leprosis. We isolated RNA from these samples and performed degradome sequencing. We obtained nearly full-length genome sequences of both a typical CiLV-C isolate intercepted from Argentina in 1967 and a distinct CiLV-N isolate obtained in Florida in 1948. The latter is a novel form of CiLV-N, not known to exist anywhere in the world today. We have also documented the previously unreported presence of CiLV-N in Mexico in the mid-20th century.

Suppression on the basis of template for rejection is reactive: Evidence from human electrophysiology.

According to most theories of attention, the selection of task-relevant visual information can be enhanced by holding them in visual working memory (VWM). However, there has been a long-standing debate concerning whether similar optimization can also be achieved for task-irrelevant information, known as a "template for rejection". The present study aimed to explore this issue by examining the consequence of cue distractors before visual search tasks. For this endeavor, we manipulated the display heterogeneity by using two distractor conditions, salient and non-salient, to explore the extent to which holding the distractor color in VWM might affect attentional selection. We measured the reaction times of participants while their EEG activity was recorded. The results showed that WM-matched distractors did not improve reaction times but rather slowed them down in both tasks. Event-related potential (ERP) results showed that the display heterogeneity had no modulatory effect on the degree of distractor suppression. Even in the salient distractor condition, the WM-matched distractor received no greater suppression. Furthermore, the WM-matched distractor but not the neutral distractor elicited an N2pc before the PD in salient distractor conditions. This suggests that the template for rejection operates reactively since suppression occurs after extra attentional processes to the distractor. Moreover, the presence of WM-matched distractors led to a reduction of P3b, indicating a competition between target processing and WM-matched distractor rejection. Our findings provide insights into the mechanisms underlying the optimization of attentional selection, and have implications for future studies aimed at understanding the role of VWM in cognition.

Impact of Charlson Comorbidity Index on in-hospital mortality of patients with hyperglycemic crises: A propensity score matching analysis.

AIM: This study was designed to investigate the association between Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) and in-hospital mortality and other clinical outcomes among patients with hyperglycemic crises. METHOD: This retrospective cohort study was conducted using data from electric medical records. A total of 1668 diabetic patients with hyperglycemic crises from six tertiary hospitals met the inclusion criteria. CCI < 4 was defined as low CCI and CCI ≥ 4 was defined as high CCI. Propensity score matching (PSM) with the 1:1 nearest neighbour matching method and the caliper value of 0.02 was used to match the baseline characteristics of patients with high CCI and low CCI to reduce the confounding bias. In-hospital mortality, ICU admission, hypoglycemia, hypokalemia, acute kidney injury, length of stay (LOS), and hospitalisation expense between low CCI and high CCI were compared and assessed. Univariate and multivariate regression were applied to estimate the impact of CCI on in-hospital and other clinical outcomes. OUTCOME: One hundred twenty-one hyperglycemic crisis (HC) patients died with a mortality rate of 7.3%. After PSM, compared with low CCI, patients with high CCI suffered higher in-hospital mortality, ICU admission, LOS, and hospitalisation expenses. After multivariate regression, age (aOR: 1.12, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.06-1.18, p < 0.001), CCI(aOR: 4.42, 95% CI: 1.56-12.53, p = 0.005), uninsured (aOR: 22.32, 95% CI: 4.26-116.94, p < 0.001), shock (aOR: 10.57, 95% CI: 1.41-79.09, p = 0.022), mechanical ventilation (aOR: 75.29, 95% CI: 12.37-458.28, p < 0.001), and hypertension (aOR: 4.34, 95% CI: 1.37-13.82, p = 0.013) were independent risk factors of in-hospital mortality of HC patients. Besides, high CCI was an independent risk factor for higher ICU Admission (aOR: 5.91, 95% CI: 2.31-15.08, p < 0.001), hypoglycemia (aOR: 2.19, 95% CI:1.01-4.08, p = 0.049), longer LOS (aOR: 1.23, 95% CI: 1.19-2.27, p = 0.021), and higher hospitalisation expense (aOR: 2089.97, 95% CI: 193.33-3988.61, p = 0.031) of HC patients. CONCLUSION: CCI is associated with in-hospital mortality, ICU admission, hypoglycemia, LOS, and hospitalisation expense of HC patients. CCI could be an ideal indicator to identify, monitor, and manage chronic comorbidities among HC patients.

Contextual uncertainty of visual scene modulates object-based attention.

Contextual information involves invariant properties that are critical in selective attention. There is no direct evidence showing the effect of contextual information on object-based selective attention. The current study aimed to investigate the role of contextual uncertainty on object-based effect using a flanker task and to clarify the contradictory results obtained in previous studies. Herein, contextual uncertainty specifically referred to the configurations of the stimuli presented randomly as vertical or horizontal displays (high contextual uncertainty) that was reduced by showing consistent configurations within a block, via implicit learning of configuration (low contextual uncertainty). In Experiment 1, the object-based effect was observed under the high uncertainty condition and disappeared under the low uncertainty condition, demonstrating that contextual uncertainty modulated object-based attention. Experiment 2 provided explicit knowledge of the configural orientations, which can be utilised to sufficiently guide subsequent perception with increase in cueing interval, and therefore, affected contextual uncertainty. Relative to a short cueing interval, the long cueing interval enabled the participants to utilise the contextual knowledge for guiding visual attention and reducing uncertainty. Consistent with the finding in Experiment 1, the explicit manipulation of contextual uncertainty affected the object-based effect. The results proved that the contextual uncertainty played an important role in prioritisation in the object-based attentional selection. The mechanism of the interplay between contextual uncertainty and object-based attention was discussed.

Faces do not guide attention in an object-based facilitation manner.

Numerous studies on face processing have revealed their special ability to affect attention, but relatively little research has been done on how faces guide spatial attention allocation. To enrich this field, this study resorted to the object-based attention (OBA) effect in a modified double-rectangle paradigm where the rectangles were replaced with human faces and mosaic patterns (non-face objects). Experiment 1 replicated the typical OBA effect in the non-face objects, but this effect was absent in Asian and Caucasian faces. Experiment 2 removed the eye region from Asian faces, but still found no object-based facilitation in the faces without eyes. In Experiment 3, the OBA effect was also observed for faces when the faces disappear a short period before the responses. Overall, these results revealed that when two faces are presented together, they do not exert object-based facilitation regardless of their facial features such as race and the presence of eyes. We argue that the lack of a typical OBA effect is due to the filtering cost induced by the entire face content. This cost slows down the response when attention shifts within a face and results in the absence of object-based facilitation.

Saliency affects attentional capture and suppression of abrupt-onset and color singleton distractors: Evidence from event-related potential studies.

Attention is the process of selecting relevant information and suppressing irrelevant information. However, it is still controversial whether attentional capture by salient but task-irrelevant stimuli operates in a bottom-up fashion (stimulus-driven theory) or a top-down fashion (goal-driven theory) or if even salient distractors can be suppressed before capturing attention (signal suppression theory). In the present study, we investigated how saliency affects attentional capture (indexed by N2-posterior-contralateral [N2pc]) and suppression (indexed by distractor positivity [PD ]) of abrupt-onset and color singleton distractors in a visual search task. Experiment 1 showed that an abrupt-onset distractor elicited both N2pc and PD , while a color singleton distractor elicited only PD . Moreover, the abrupt-onset distractor elicited a larger N2pc and a larger PD relative to the color singleton distractor. In addition, both distractors elicited an early positive component, the positivity posterior contralateral (Ppc), which was also larger for abrupt onsets than for color singletons. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that when both the abrupt onset and color singleton were designed as targets, and thus required no attentional suppression, Ppc was elicited, but PD was not. This corroborated the finding in Experiment 1 that the later PD , not the early Ppc, reflected attentional suppression. Therefore, a more salient distractor demonstrates stronger early perceptual processing, can capture attention better and needs more attentional resources to be suppressed later. Based on these results, a three-stage hypothesis is proposed, in which the saliency of a distractor modulates processing at early perception, attentional capture, and suppression stages.

Influence of artificial intelligence in education on adolescents' social adaptability: The mediatory role of social support.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely used in the field of education at present, but people know little about its possible impacts, especially on the physical and mental development of the educated. It is important to explore the possible impacts of the application of artificial intelligence in education (AIEd) in order to avoid the possible adverse effects. Prior research has focused on theory to the exclusion of the psychological impact of AIEd, and the empirical research was relatively lacking. This study aimed to identify the influence of AIEd on adolescents' social adaptability via social support. A total of 1332 students were recruited using random sampling from 13 Artificial Intelligence Curriculum Reform Experimental Schools in Guangzhou, Southern China, completed the survey. There were 342 primary school students (Meanage = 10.6), 351 junior high school students (Meanage = 13.1), and 639 senior high school students (Meanage = 15.8). Results showed that AIEd has a negative impact on adolescents' social adaptability, and is significantly negatively correlated with social adaptability and family support, but there is no significant correlation with school support. AIEd could not only affect social adaptability directly, but also could affected it through the family support.

Neural correlates of conscious processing of emotional faces: Evidence from event-related potentials.

There is a theoretical debate between the early and late neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs). Previous studies using neutral face stimuli supported an early NCC and suggested that visual awareness negativity (VAN) is associated with consciousness, while late positivity (LP) reflects post-perceptual activity. However, emotional faces may help to examine the relationship between LP and consciousness due to the differences in late processing between emotional and neutral faces. To explore the effects of facial emotional information on NCCs, the present study manipulated consciousness with the inattentional blindness paradigm and used happy, fearful, and neutral faces as visual stimuli. The results showed that the conscious processing of emotional faces was correlated with VAN and LP, while the conscious processing of neutral faces was associated with VAN. First, the results suggest that VAN is an NCC, and the relationship between LP and consciousness is affected by facial emotional information. Second, VAN reflects the early perceptual experience of emotional faces, whereas LP may reflect the late conscious processing of emotional faces. Furthermore, source localization analysis showed that the LPs of emotional faces were mainly located in the frontal and parietal lobes, whereas those of neutral faces showed no significant activation. This suggests that facial emotional information may affect the brain regions associated with conscious processing. Time-frequency analysis showed that conscious processing is related to the enhancement of alpha and theta oscillation, indicating that conscious processing may be associated with the suppression of irrelevant stimuli. Overall, the present study suggests that the integration of the theories that support early and late NCCs helps explain the conscious processing of emotional faces.

Different prioritization states of working memory representations affect visual searches: Evidence from an event-related potential study.

Previous evidence has shown that the contents of working memory (WM) can bias visual selection. However, not much is known about how WM effects change when the WM representation is held in different prioritization states. Here, we investigated this problem using event-related potentials. Subjects maintained two colors in WM while performing a search task. One of the colors was retro-cued, indicating that it was 80 % likely to be the target of the memory test. During the search display, one of the distractors was a salient color singleton, and this singleton distractor could carry the same color as the cued WM representation, the uncued WM representation, or be irrelevant to the memory content. Behaviorally, the memory test performance was found to be better for the cued color than for the uncued color, and we observed lower search accuracy (ACC) and longer search reaction time (RT) when the singleton distractor matched the cued WM representation than when it matched an uncued or an irrelevant WM representation. Event-related potential (ERP) data showed that the P3 amplitude of cue-color distractor conditions was smaller than that of uncued-color distractor conditions and irrelevant-color distractor conditions. These findings clearly indicate that prioritizing an item for enhanced representational quality enables the item to bias attention to a greater extent.

A Sec-dependent effector, CLIBASIA_04425, contributes to virulence in 'Candidatus Liberibater asiaticus'.

Citrus Huanglongbing (HLB) is the most destructive citrus disease worldwide, mainly caused by 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' (CLas). It encodes a large number of Sec-dependent effectors that contribute to HLB progression. In this study, an elicitor triggering ROS burst and cell death in Nicotiana benthamiana, CLIBASIA_04425 (CLas4425), was identified. Of particular interest, its cell death-inducing activity is associated with its subcellular localization and the cytoplasmic receptor Botrytis-induced kinase 1 (BIK1). Compared with CLas infected psyllids, CLas4425 showed higher expression level in planta. The transient expression of CLas4425 in N. benthamiana and its overexpression in Citrus sinensis enhanced plant susceptibility to Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 ΔhopQ1-1 and CLas, respectively. Furthermore, the salicylic acid (SA) level along with the expression of genes NPR1/EDS1/NDR1/PRs in SA signal transduction was repressed in CLas4425 transgenic citrus plants. Taken together, CLas4425 is a virulence factor that promotes CLas proliferation, likely by interfering with SA-mediated plant immunity. The results obtained facilitate our understanding of CLas pathogenesis.