Defensive emotions and evaluative judgements: Sensitivity to anger and fear predicts moral judgements, whereas sensitivity to disgust predicts aesthetic judgements.

Aesthetic and moral evaluations engage appetitive and defensive emotions. While the role played by pleasure in positive aesthetic and moral judgements has been extensively researched, little is known about how defensive emotions influence negative aesthetic and moral judgements. Specifically, it is unknown which defensive emotions such judgements tap into, and whether both kinds of judgement share a common emotional root. Here, we investigated how participants' individual sensitivity to disgust, fear, anger and sadness predicted subjective judgements of aesthetic and moral stimuli. Bayesian modelling revealed that participants who were more sensitive to anger and fear found conventional and moral transgressions more wrong. In contrast, participants who were more sensitive to disgust disliked asymmetrical geometric patterns and untidy rooms more. These findings suggest that aesthetic and moral evaluations engage multiple defensive emotions, not just disgust, and that they may rely on different defensive emotions as part of their computational mechanism.

The role of working memory capacity in evaluative judgments of liking and beauty.

Judgments of liking and beauty appear to be expressions of a common hedonic state, but they differ in how they engage cognitive processes. We hypothesised that beauty judgments place greater demands on limited executive resources than judgments of liking. We tested this hypothesis by asking two groups of participants to judge works of visual art for their beauty or liking while having to remember the location of 1, 3, or 5 dots in a 4 by 4 matrix. We also examined the effect of individual differences in working memory capacity. Our results show that holding information about the location of the dots in working memory delayed judgments of beauty but not of liking. Also, the greater participants' working memory capacity, the faster they completed the working memory task when judging liking, but not when judging beauty. Our study provides evidence that judging beauty draws more on working memory resources than judging liking.

Implicit Attitudes Toward Violence in a Sample of Adolescent Offenders With Conduct Disorder.

Few studies have addressed attitudes toward violence in offender populations using implicit measures. The aim of this study is to test whether implicit attitudes toward two types of violence (physical and relational) differ between two groups of adolescent offenders: one group with conduct disorder (CD; n = 36) and the other group without this condition (No-CD; n = 26). We found that adolescent offenders with CD evidenced less negative implicit attitudes toward physical violence than the No-CD group. No differences between groups were observed in the case of relational violence. Our results suggest that CD modulates implicit attitudes toward violence in adolescent offenders and that the influence of CD is stronger in the case of physical rather than relational acts of violence.

The effects of natural disasters on international tourism: A global analysis.

Tourism is shaped by a wide range of factors and forces, including exogenous ones that have no direct link with the tourism sector. Natural disasters and unexpected events are prime examples of such determining factors, as they have profound effects on individuals and society, and as a result have the potential to affect tourism flows considerably. Several theoretical arguments exist why natural disasters and unexpected events could influence tourist destination choices. However, empirical research to confirm the nature and extent of impacts of disasters on tourism is lacking. To address this gap, this paper incorporates a dataset on natural and man-made disaster events into a model of international tourism flows to evaluate the effect of different types of disasters on international arrivals at the national level. Findings provide evidence that the occurrence of different types of event change tourist flows to varying degrees. Although in some cases a positive effect is estimated, in general the impacts are negative, resulting in reduced tourist arrivals following an event. Understanding the relationship between disaster events and tourism is helpful for destination managers who make critical decisions in relation to recovery, reconstruction and marketing.

Intensive Teenage Activity Is Associated With Greater Muscle Hyperintensity on T1W Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Adults With Dysferlinopathy.

Practice of sports during childhood or adolescence correlates with an earlier onset and more rapidly progressing phenotype in dysferlinopathies. To determine if this correlation relates to greater muscle pathology that persists into adulthood, we investigated the effect of exercise on the degree of muscle fatty replacement measured using muscle MRI. We reviewed pelvic, thigh and leg T1W MRI scans from 160 patients with genetically confirmed dysferlinopathy from the Jain Foundation International clinical outcomes study in dysferlinopathy. Two independent assessors used the Lamminen-Mercuri visual scale to score degree of fat replacement in each muscle. Exercise intensity for each individual was defined as no activity, minimal, moderate, or intensive activity by using metabolic equivalents and patient reported frequency of sports undertaken between the ages of 10 and 18. We used ANCOVA and linear modeling to compare the mean Lamminen-Mercuri score for the pelvis, thigh, and leg between exercise groups, controlling for age at assessment and symptom duration. Intensive exercisers showed greater fatty replacement in the muscles of the pelvis than moderate exercisers, but no significant differences of the thigh or leg. Within the pelvis, Psoas was the muscle most strongly associated with this exercise effect. In patients with a short symptom duration of <15 years there was a trend toward greater fatty replacement in the muscles of the thigh. These findings define key muscles involved in the exercise-phenotype effect that has previously been observed only clinically in dysferlinopathy and support recommendations that pre-symptomatic patients should avoid very intensive exercise.

Identification of serum microRNAs as potential biomarkers in Pompe disease.

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the microRNA profile in serum of patients with Adult Onset Pompe disease (AOPD). METHODS: We analyzed the expression of 185 microRNAs in serum of 15 AOPD patients and five controls using microRNA PCR Panels. The expression levels of microRNAs that were deregulated were further studied in 35 AOPD patients and 10 controls using Real-Time PCR. Additionally, the skeletal muscle expression of microRNAs which showed significant increase levels in serum samples was also studied. Correlations between microRNA serum levels and muscle function test, spirometry, and quantitative muscle MRI were performed (these data correspond to the study NCT01914536 at ClinicalTrials.gov). RESULTS: We identified 14 microRNAs that showed different expression levels in serum samples of AOPD patients compared to controls. We validated these results in a larger cohort of patients and we found increased levels of three microRNAs, the so called dystromirs: miR-1-3p, miR-133a-3p, and miR-206. These microRNAs are involved in muscle regeneration and the expression of these was increased in patients' muscle biopsies. Significant correlations between microRNA levels and muscle function test were found. INTERPRETATION: Serum expression levels of dystromirs may represent additional biomarkers for the follow-up of AOPD patients.

Magnetic Domain Walls and Macroscopic Magnetization-Related Elastic and Anelastic Effects during Premartensitic Transition in Ni2MnGa.

The temperature and field dependences of internal friction and Young´s modulus are studied using a high-resolution ultrasonic (90 kHz) technique in stoichiometric ferromagnetic Ni2MnGa shape memory alloy close to the premartensitic transformation temperature, TPM, in the demagnetized state and under moderate fields. Several new effects observed like an apparent Young´s modulus softening close to TPM under moderate fields, instead of the hardening outside this range, as well as existing controversies in the apparent elastic and anelastic properties of Ni2MnGa close to TPM are explained by microeddy and macroeddy current relaxations that to date have been disregarded.

Infectious disease risk and international tourism demand.

CONTEXT: For some countries, favourable climatic conditions for tourism are often associated with favourable conditions for infectious diseases, with the ensuing development constraints on the tourist sectors of impoverished countries where tourism's economic contribution has a high potential. This paper evaluates the economic implications of eradication of Malaria, Dengue, Yellow Fever and Ebola on the affected destination countries focusing on the tourist expenditures. METHODS: A gravity model for international tourism flows is used to provide an estimation of the impact of each travel-related disease on international tourist arrivals. Next the potential eradication of these diseases in the affected countries is simulated and the impact on tourism expenditures is estimated. FINDINGS: The results show that, in the case of Malaria, Dengue, Yellow Fever and Ebola, the eradication of these diseases in the affected countries would result in an increase of around 10 million of tourist worldwide and a rise in the tourism expenditure of 12 billion dollars. CONCLUSION: By analysing the economic benefits of the eradication of Dengue, Ebola, Malaria, and Yellow Fever for the tourist sector-a strategic economic sector for many of the countries where these TRD are present-this paper explores a new aspect of the quantification of health policies which should be taken into consideration in future international health assessment programmes. It is important to note that the analysis is only made of the direct impact of the diseases' eradication and consequently the potential multiplicative effects of a growth in the GDP, in terms of tourism attractiveness, are not evaluated. Consequently, the economic results can be considered to be skeleton ones.

Effects of Suboptimally Presented Erotic Pictures on Moral Judgments: A Cross-Cultural Comparison.

Previous research has identified a set of core factors that influence moral judgments. The present study addresses the interplay between moral judgments and four factors: (a) incidental affects, (b) sociocultural context, (c) type of dilemma, and (d) participant's sex. We asked participants in two different countries (Colombia and Spain) to judge the acceptability of actions in response to personal and impersonal moral dilemmas. Before each dilemma an affective prime (erotic, pleasant or neutral pictures) was presented suboptimally. Our results show that: a) relative to neutral priming, erotic primes increase the acceptance of harm for a greater good (i.e., more utilitarian judgments), b) relative to Colombians, Spanish participants rated causing harm as less acceptable, c) relative to impersonal dilemmas, personal dilemmas reduced the acceptance of harm, and d) relative to men, women were less likely to consider harm acceptable. Our results are congruent with findings showing that sex is a crucial factor in moral cognition, and they extend previous research by showing the interaction between culture and incidental factors in the making of moral judgments.

The new science of moral cognition: the state of the art / La nueva ciencia de la cognición moral: estado de la cuestión

The need for multidisciplinary approaches to the scientific study of human nature is a widely supported academic claim. This assumption has proved to be especially successful in the field of moral psychology. Although studies of moral topics have been ubiquitous in social psychology, it is not until the integration of different scientific disciplines in the convergent science of moral psychology that the study of morality started its flourishing age. Thus, in the last ten years, a growing body of research from cognitive sciences, experimental philosophy, primatology, clinical and developmental psychology, economy and anthropology have made possible a "new era" on the study of morality. In this paper, we review the most striking findings that constitute the "state of the art" of moral psychology, with the aim to facilitate a better understanding of how the mind functions in the moral domain

La necesidad de realizar aproximaciones multidisciplinares al estudio de la naturaleza humana es ampliamente aceptada. Esta perspectiva se ha manifestado especialmente prolífica en el campo de la psicología moral. A pesar que el estudio de temas morales ha sido materia recurrente de la psicología social, solo la posterior integración de diferentes disciplinas científicas en la ciencia de la "psicología moral" favoreció el desarrollo de este campo de estudio. Así, en los últimos diez años, diversos estudios procedentes de las ciencias cognitivas, la filosofía experimental, la primatología, la psicología clínica y del desarrollo, las ciencias económicas o la antropología han hecho posible una "nueva era" en el estudio de la moralidad. En este artículo, revisamos los hallazgos más importantes que constituyen el "estado del arte" de la psicología moral, con el objetivo de facilitar una mejor comprensión acerca del funcionamiento de la mente moral

Cognitive control and unusual decisions about beauty: an fMRI study.

Studies of visual esthetic preference have shown that people without art training generally prefer representational paintings to abstract paintings. This, however, is not always the case: preferences can sometimes go against this usual tendency. We aimed to explore this issue, investigating the relationship between "unusual responses" and reaction time in an esthetic appreciation task. Results of a behavioral experiment confirmed the trend for laypeople to consider as beautiful mostly representational stimuli and as not beautiful mostly abstract ones ("usual response"). Furthermore, when participants gave unusual responses, they needed longer time, especially when considering abstract stimuli as beautiful. We interpreted this longer time as greater involvement of cognitive mastering and evaluation processes during the unusual responses. Results of an fMRI experiment indicated that the anterior cingulate (ACC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and insula were the main structures involved in this effect. We discuss the possible role of these areas in an esthetic appreciation task.

Affective priming using facial expressions modulates liking for abstract art.

We examined the influence of affective priming on the appreciation of abstract artworks using an evaluative priming task. Facial primes (showing happiness, disgust or no emotion) were presented under brief (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony, SOA = 20 ms) and extended (SOA = 300 ms) conditions. Differences in aesthetic liking for abstract paintings depending on the emotion expressed in the preceding primes provided a measure of the priming effect. The results showed that, for the extended SOA, artworks were liked more when preceded by happiness primes and less when preceded by disgust primes. Facial expressions of happiness, though not of disgust, exerted similar effects in the brief SOA condition. Subjective measures and a forced-choice task revealed no evidence of prime awareness in the suboptimal condition. Our results are congruent with findings showing that the affective transfer elicited by priming biases evaluative judgments, extending previous research to the domain of aesthetic appreciation.

Lateral orbitofrontal cortex involvement in initial negative aesthetic impression formation.

It is well established that aesthetic appreciation is related with activity in several different brain regions. The identification of the neural correlates of beauty or liking ratings has been the focus of most prior studies. Not much attention has been directed towards the fact that humans are surrounded by objects that lead them to experience aesthetic indifference or leave them with a negative aesthetic impression. Here we explore the neural substrate of such experiences. Given the neuroimaging techniques that have been used, little is known about the temporal features of such brain activity. By means of magnetoencephalography we registered the moment at which brain activity differed while participants viewed images they considered to be beautiful or not. Results show that the first differential activity appears between 300 and 400 ms after stimulus onset. During this period activity in right lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) was greater while participants rated visual stimuli as not beautiful than when they rated them as beautiful. We argue that this activity is associated with an initial negative aesthetic impression formation, driven by the relative hedonic value of stimuli regarded as not beautiful. Additionally, our results contribute to the understanding of the nature of the functional roles of the lOFC.

Road accidents and tourism: the case of the Balearic Islands (Spain).

The increase in the number of tourists for many destinations and their increased mobility within host countries or regions has implied a rise in tourism-associated externalities, with vehicle crashes as the most common cause of injury for tourists. Within the transport literature, the number and variation in the amount of accidents has been related to a large set of determining variables, including weather conditions, socio-economic characteristics, exposure, physical characteristics of the road and a variety of dummies that try to capture effects such as safety laws and seasonal variations. However, the presence of tourism has been neglected. Using the case study of the Balearic Islands, the present study estimates the role of tourism in determining the number of accidents in a daily context, using the set of variables suggested by the literature and incorporating a daily measure for the stock of tourists at a host destination. Results show how tourism can be associated with a significant amount of the accidents that take place in the Balearics.

Towards a framework for the study of the neural correlates of aesthetic preference.

Aiming to provide a tentative framework for the study of the neural correlates of aesthetic preference, we review three recent neuroimaging studies carried out with the purpose of locating brain activity associated with decisions about the beauty of visual stimuli (Cela-Conde et al., 2004; Kawabata and Zeki, 2004; Vartanian and Goel, 2004). We find that the results of the three studies are not in line with previous neuropsychological data. Moreover, there are no coincidences among their results. However, when they are mapped on to Chatterjee's (2003) neuropsychological model of aesthetic preference it becomes clear that neuroimaging data are not contradictory, but complementary, and their interpretation is enriched. The results of these studies suggest that affective processes have an important role in aesthetic preference, and that they are integrated with cognitive processes to reach a decision regarding the beauty of visual stimuli. Future studies must aim to clarify whether certain methodological procedures are better suited to study any of the particular cognitive operations involved in aesthetic preference, and ascertain the extent to which the proposed framework is compatible with the aesthetic appreciation of musical stimuli.

Strong P2X4 purinergic receptor-like immunoreactivity is selectively associated with degenerating neurons in transgenic rodent models of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

The distribution of the P2X family of ATP receptors was analyzed in a rat model for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) expressing mutated human superoxide dismutase (mSOD1(G93A)). We showed that strong P2X(4) immunoreactivity was selectively associated with degenerating motoneurons (MNs) in spinal cord ventral horn. Degenerating P2X(4)-positive MNs did not display apoptotic features such as chromatin condensation, positive TUNEL reaction, or active caspase 3 immunostaining. In contrast, these neurons showed other signs of abnormality, such as loss of the neuronal marker NeuN and recruitment of microglial cells with neuronophagic activity. Similar changes were observed in MNs from the cerebral cortex and brainstem in mSOD1(G93A) in both rat and mice. In addition, P2X(4) immunostaining demonstrated the existence of neuronal degeneration in the locus coeruleus, reticular formation, and Purkinje cells of the cerebellar cortex. It is suggested that abnormal trafficking and proteolytic processing of the P2X(4) receptor protein may underlie these changes.

Activation of the prefrontal cortex in the human visual aesthetic perception.

Visual aesthetic perception ("aesthetics") or the capacity to visually perceive a particular attribute added to other features of objects, such as form, color, and movement, was fixed during human evolutionary lineage as a trait not shared with any great ape. Although prefrontal brain expansion is mentioned as responsible for the appearance of such human trait, no current knowledge exists on the role of prefrontal areas in the aesthetic perception. The visual brain consists of "several parallel multistage processing systems, each specialized in a given task such as, color or motion" [Bartels, A. & Zeki, S. (1999) Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B 265, 2327-2332]. Here we report the results of an experiment carried out with magnetoencephalography which shows that the prefrontal area is selectively activated in humans during the perception of objects qualified as "beautiful" by the participants. Therefore, aesthetics can be hypothetically considered as an attribute perceived by means of a particular brain processing system, in which the prefrontal cortex seems to play a key role.

Dimensiones factoriales de la experiencia estética / Factorial dimension of aesthetic experience

El objetivo de este artículo consiste en contrastar la existencia de un factor general subyacente a la percepción estética, analizando mediante la técnica de diferencial semántico las respuestas de los participantes a estímulos de diversa condición artística en las categorías de "bello", "agradable", "interesante" y "original". Dicho análisis se realizó en cuatro tipos de láminas: artísticas figurativas, artísticas abstractas, decorativas figurativas y decorativas abstractas. Los resultados experimentales apoyan, con ciertas matizaciones, la tesis de Eysenck acerca de la existencia de un factor general en la experiencia estética. Discutimos las posibles implicaciones y planteamos futuras líneas de investigación (AU)

The aim of this paper lies in investigate the existence of an underlying general factor in aesthetic perception. Subjects that took part in this research had to categorize, by means of semantic differential method, diverse artistic stimulus in the categories of «beautiful», «pleasant», «interesting» and «original». Subjects’ judgements were made in response to a four types of illustrations: artistic-representational, artistic-abstract, decorative-representational and decorative-abstract. Results support, with certain shades, Eysenck’s thesis about the existence of a general factor in aestethic experience. We discuss some implications and establish possible future research (AU)

El desarrollo de la audición humana / The development of human audition

El estudio del desarrollo de la audición demuestra que el funcionamiento del sistema auditivo se puede descomponer en un amplio abanico de funciones y que cada una de estas funciones puede ser evaluada a partir de diversas medidas. Ello conlleva a resultados dispares cuando, en cada una de estas funciones y medidas, pretendemos establecer el momento evolutivo en el que el niño adquiere una competencia similar al adulto. En el documento se presentan datos y conclusiones de los trabajos experimentales más relevantes en el ámbito de estudio del desarrollo auditivo humano, con el fin de ofrecer un estado de la cuestión que ponga de manifiesto la necesidad de elaborar modelos que integren y acoplen la heterogeneidad de resultados. El documento se ha dividido en cuatro apartados: audición prenatal, una perspectiva psicofisiológica del desarrollo auditivo, una perspectiva psicoacústica (sonoridad, tonalidad y audición espacial) y reconocimiento auditivo (AU)

The study of auditory development shows that the activity of the auditory system may be split into several functions. Each one of these functions can be measured using different techniques. The use of several techniques produces different results when we seek to know when the child achieves a similar competence to an adult. We put forward the most relevant experimental results and conclusions of the study of human auditory development. The aim is to offer an updated exposition evidencing the need for new models that compose and connect the heterogeneous results. The paper is divided in four sections: prenatal audition, a psychophysiological view of auditory development, a psychoacoustic view (loudness, pitch perception and spatial audition), and auditory recognition (AU)