Unconscious Integration of Categorical Relationship of Two Subliminal Numbers in Comparison with "5".

Many studies have shown that the brain can process subliminal numerals, i.e., participants can categorize a subliminal number into two categories: greater than 5 or less than 5. In the context of many studies on the unconscious integration of multiple subliminal stimuli, the issue of whether multiple subliminal numbers can be integrated is contentious. The same-different task is regarded as a perfect tool to explore unconscious integration. In the two experiments reported, we used a same-different task in which a pair of masked prime numbers was followed by a pair of target numbers, and participants were asked to decide whether the two target numbers were on the same (both smaller or larger than 5) or different sides (one smaller, the other larger than 5) of 5 in magnitude. The results indicated that the prime numbers could be categorized unconsciously, which was reflected by the category priming effect, and that the unconscious category relationship of the two prime numbers could affect the judgment on the category relationship of the two target numbers, as reflected by the response priming effect. The duration of the prime-to-target interstimulus interval (ISI) was also manipulated, showing a positive compatibility effect (PCE) of category priming and a negative compatibility effect (NCE) of response priming no matter whether the ISI was short (50 ms) or long (150 ms). The NCE, which occurred when the prime-to-target ISI was relatively short in this study, contradicted the conventional view but was consistent with previous results of unconscious integration based on an attention modulation mechanism. Importantly, this study provided evidence for the still-under-debate issue of numerical information integration.

Multiple sources of unconscious-information processing affect a single response: independent unconscious priming effects.

At present there is little knowledge on whether and how multiple pieces of unconscious information can simultaneously affect a single conscious response. In the present study, we manipulated the congruency relation between a masked prime arrow and the target arrow, as well as that between masked flankers and the target arrow. The results demonstrated that the masked prime and flankers produced independent unconscious priming effects on the response to the target. In the process of studying the above phenomenon, two secondary findings were made. First, although the prime congruency effect was obtained, the flanker congruency effect was smaller when the flankers were displayed simultaneously with the target than when they were displayed sequentially before the target. This suggested that priming stimulation required enough time to be processed to a sufficient extent to produce an unconscious priming effect. Second, when the prime stimulus was removed, leaving only the flankers, the flanker priming effect increased, suggesting that the attention attracted to the prime and its conscious mask could also reduce the flanker congruency effect. These results observed across several experiments were replicated in one within-subjects experiment. We proposed an "independent unconscious influence hypothesis" for the phenomenon. This hypothesis was further integrated into a more comprehensive unconscious information processing model. The possible causes of the observed phenomena were discussed.

The Unconscious Tug-of-War: Exploring the Effect of Stimulus Selection Bias on Creative Problem Solving with Multiple Unconscious Stimuli.

Objective: This study innovatively investigated the potential selection bias involved in processing multiple subliminal stimuli during creative problem-solving (CPS). It addresses the existing gap in specialized research on how the handling of multiple unconscious stimuli influences higher-order cognitive processes, particularly creativity. Methods: The study utilized a masked priming paradigm and a remote association task (RAT). Two experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 presented two stimuli simultaneously, with one being the correct answer, to examine whether there was a bias in the location of subliminal stimuli. In Experiment 2, two stimuli were presented sequentially, with one serving as the answer, to investigate whether there was a temporal bias in unconscious processing. Results: Our findings revealed that when solving easy RATs, subliminal stimuli presented on the left side had a negative priming effect compared to the right side. The results revealed that unconscious processing of subliminal stimuli enhanced performance on difficult CPS. Additionally, a temporal bias was observed, with more recent subliminal stimuli having a stronger effect than earlier stimuli. Conclusion: Unconscious processing can improve CPS, especially for difficult tasks, and there is a bias towards processing stimuli on the left and more recently presented stimuli. These findings contribute to our understanding of unconscious processing, particularly the processing of multiple subliminal stimuli in CPS, and provide insights into the biases that exist in unconscious processing.

The application and effect of "Trinity" emergency chain in the management of patients with epidemic respiratory tract infection under the coordination of multi-branches / 中华急诊医学杂志

Objective:To summarize the application and effect of "Trinity" emergency chain in the management of patients with epidemic respiratory tract infection under the cooperation of multiple hospitals and districts, and to provide a reference for medical institutions to improve the risk response ability.Methods:Based on the collaborative management of multi-branches, the "Trinity" emergency chain of pre-hospital-emergency-critical care, identification-triage-treatment, expansion-training-dispatch was implemented to optimize and integrate medical resources.Results:During the two months, 43,000 patients were admitted to the fever clinic, with an increase of 36.08%. The average waiting time for treatment was 19.83 min, and the average admission time to ICU was 25.35 min.Conclusions:The "Trinity" emergency chain treatment scheme under the coordination of multi-branches can effectively deal with the public health events of respiratory tract infectious diseases, improve the efficiency of rescue and treatment, and enhance the risk response ability of medical institutions.

The role of socioeconomic status in different trajectories of depressive symptoms in Chinese college freshmen.

The associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and depressive symptoms have been found in previous studies. However, the role of SES in different trajectories of depressive symptoms in Chinese college freshmen has not been discovered. The present study aims to identify how depressive symptom trajectories are related to SES during the first semester of freshman. Six hundred fifty-two Chinese college freshmen (64.9% female) were followed 4 times across 4 months. The Latent Growth Mixture Model (LGMM) was used to identify trajectories of depressive symptoms. Multinomial Logical Regression was used to identify the influence of family socioeconomic status (FSES), subjective socioeconomic status (SSS), and demographic variables on trajectories of depressive symptoms for freshmen. Results found that college freshmen's depressive symptoms gradually decreased during the four tests, F(2.758, 1795.383) = 52.642, p < 0.001, and there are three trajectories of depressive symptoms: normal group (Class 1, 73.1%), depression risk group (Class 2, 20.7%), and depression deterioration group (Class 3, 6.1%). The decline of SSS predicted increasing depressive symptoms. Age and left-behind experience have significant effects on trajectories of depressive symptoms. FSES, birthplace, and gender had no significant impact on trajectories of depressive symptoms. These results demonstrated that low SSS, age, and left-behind might be risk factors for the development of depressive symptoms.

Contextual Cueing Accelerated and Enhanced by Monetary Reward: Evidence From Event-Related Brain Potentials.

The vital role of reward in guiding visual attention has been supported by previous literatures. Here, we examined the motivational impact of monetary reward feedback stimuli on visual attention selection using an event-related potential (ERP) component called stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) and a standard contextual cueing (CC) paradigm. It has been proposed that SPN reflects affective and motivational processing. We focused on whether incidentally learned context knowledge could be affected by reward. Both behavior and brain data demonstrated that contexts followed by reward feedback not only gave rise to faster implicit learning but also obtained a larger CC effect.

Can unconscious sequential integration of semantic information occur when the prime Chinese characters are displayed from left to right?

Recent studies have investigated whether conscious awareness is necessary for semantic integration. Although results have varied, simultaneous presentation of words have consistently led to greater semantic integration than sequential presentation in a single location. The current studies were designed to investigate whether the disadvantage of sequential presentation for unconscious semantic integration is specific to unfamiliar word-by-word presentation in one location or extends to the more natural reading conditions of viewing items sequentially from left to right. In Experiment 1, when the first three characters of Chinese idioms were presented simultaneously under masked conditions, performance on a separate two-alternative forced-choice recognition task was at chance level. Despite being unaware of the identity of prime characters, participants were faster to indicate that a subsequent item was a Chinese character when it was congruent with the beginning of the idiom, thus providing evidence of semantic integration. In contrast, when the three (Experiment 2) or two (Experiment 3) prime characters were presented sequentially in time from left to right, there was no evidence of semantic integration. These results indicate that unconscious semantic integration is more limited than previously reported, and may require simultaneous visual presentation.

Enhanced Formation of Solvent-Shared Ion Pairs in Aqueous Calcium Perchlorate Solution toward Saturated Concentration or Deep Supercooling Temperature and Its Effects on the Water Structure.

As a candidate of Martian salts, calcium perchlorate [Ca(ClO4)2] has the potential to stabilize liquid water on the Martian surface because of its hygroscopicity and low freezing temperature when forming aqueous solution. These two properties of electrolytes in general have been suggested to result from the specific cation-anion-water interaction (ion pairing) that interrupts the structure of solvent water. To investigate how this concentration-dependent and temperature-dependent ion pairing process in aqueous Ca(ClO4)2 solution leads to its high hygroscopic property and the extreme low eutectic temperature, we have conducted two sets of experiments. First, the effects of concentration on aqueous calcium perchlorate from 3 to 7.86 m on ion pairing were investigated using Raman spectroscopy. Deconvolution of the Raman symmetric stretching band (ν1) of ClO4- showed the enhanced formation of solvent-shared ion pairs upon increasing salt concentration at room temperature. We have confirmed that the low tendency of forming contact ion pairs in concentrated solution contributes to the high hygroscopicity of the salt. Second, the near eutectic samples were studied as a function of temperature by both combined differential scanning calorimetry-Raman spectroscopic experiments and in situ X-ray diffraction. The number of solvent-shared ion pairs was found to increase with decreasing temperature when cooled below the temperature of maximum density of the solution, driven by a change in water toward an ice-like structure in the supercooled regime. The massive presence of solvent-shared ion pairs in turn limits the development of the long-range order in the tetrahedral networks of water molecules, which is responsible for the extremely low eutectic point and deep supercooling effects observed in the Ca(ClO4)2-H2O system.

Automatic Inattention to Attractive Alternative Partners Helps Male Heterosexual Chinese College Students Maintain Romantic Relationships.

Heterosexual individuals may possess evolved psychological mechanisms that help protect their ongoing romantic relationships against external threats from other attractive individuals. The current study used love priming and a dot-probe task to examine the attentional bias associated with long-term relationship maintenance by comparing between 52 single heterosexual men and 57 heterosexual men in exclusive romantic relationships, in the Chinese context. The results showed that single men responded to love priming with greatly increased attention to and difficulty disengaging from attractive women, whereas committed men were largely inattentive to attractive alternatives irrespective of the situation. The present findings provide evidence on the domain of relationship maintenance from a Chinese cultural context, and suggest that Chinese men protect an ongoing relationship by being automatically inattentive in early-stage attentional processing to attractive women who could serve as attractive alternatives.

The Semantic Integration Between Two Subliminally Perceived Words Simultaneously Presented at Different Locations.

In the present study, we showed evidence of an integration between two unconscious semantic representations. In experiment 1, two masked Chinese words of the same or different categories ("orange apple" or "grape hammer") were simultaneously presented in the prime, followed by two Chinese words also of same or different categories in the target. We examined possible prime/target visual feature priming, semantic category priming and motor response priming effects. Moreover, two ISI intervals (53, 163 ms) between the prime and the target words were used to examine the positive and negative priming. The results revealed a negative motor response priming and a positive semantic category priming effect independent of the ISI when the target words were of the same category. Experiment 2 eliminated an alternative interpretation of the effect based on different number of category words changed across the prime and the target. Experiment 3 eliminated a potential confound of unequal numbers of trials for motor congruent and incongruent conditions in Experiment 1. Overall, these results indicated an integration between the meanings of the two subliminally perceived words in the prime. The difference between simultaneous and sequential presentations, and the reason why positive priming was not observed when the interval between the prime and the target was short were discussed in the context of unconscious semantic integration.

Romantic Love and Attentional Biases Toward Attractive Alternatives and Rivals: Long-Term Relationship Maintenance Among Female Chinese College Students.

Studies about heterosexual individuals' long-term relationship maintenance have indicated that committed individuals possess evolved psychological mechanisms that help protect their ongoing romantic relationships against threats from attractive others during early stage attentional processing when mating-related motivation is activated. In this study, two experiments tested the relationship maintenance mechanism among committed female college students in the Chinese cultural context under different love priming conditions. Committed Chinese women displayed inattention to attractive alternatives in positive love-scenario priming (Study 1: 114 female undergraduates, age range = 18-26 years), subliminal semantic love priming (Study 2: 110 female undergraduates, age range = 18-25 years), and baseline conditions (Studies 1 and 2). Those with high levels of chronic jealousy showed significantly increased attention to and difficulty disengaging attention from attractive rivals when subliminally primed with love. This provides further evidence, from an Eastern cultural context, for the existence of attentional biases toward attractive alternatives and rivals in early stage attentional processes for relationship maintenance. This research also illustrates the important role of romantic love in maintaining long-term romantic relationships.

Effects of NO on T lymphocyte subsets in peripheral blood of spontaneously hypertensive rats / 西安交通大学学报(医学版)

Objective To investigate whether NO can relieve hypertensive cerebrovascular and renal injury by regulating the ratio of peripheral blood T lymphocyte subsets and reducing proinflammatory cytokine release . Methods Twelve-week SHR and WKY rats were randomly divided into three groups :WKY group ,SHR group and SHR+NO intervention group ,with 6 rats in each group .Rats in SHR+ NO intervention group were injected intraperitoneally with sodium nitroprusside according to 10 μg/(kg · d) for 4 weeks ,while WKY group and SHR group were injected intraperitoneally with an equal amount of saline for 4 weeks .After measuring the tail artery blood pressure ,basilar artery and renal pathological changes were observed by HE staining ;the rates of CD4+ /CD8+ and CD4+ CD25+ T cells were detected by flow cytometry ;and the expression of TNF-α was detected by ELISA .Results The expressions of CD4+ /CD8+ and TNF-αin SHR group were significantly higher than those in WKY group (P<0 .01) while the rate of CD4+ CD25+ in SHR group was significantly lower than that in WKY group (P<0 .01) .The expressions of CD4+ /CD8+ and TNF-α in SHR+ NO intervention group were significantly lower than those in SHR group whereas the rate of CD4+ CD25+ was significantly higher than that in SHR group (P<0 .05) .Conclusion NO can improve the target organ damage caused by hypertension by regulating the peripheral blood T lymphocyte subsets ratio and reducing the release of proinflammatory factors .

Contextual Cueing Effect in Spatial Layout Defined by Binocular Disparity.

Repeated visual context induces higher search efficiency, revealing a contextual cueing effect, which depends on the association between the target and its visual context. In this study, participants performed a visual search task where search items were presented with depth information defined by binocular disparity. When the 3-dimensional (3D) configurations were repeated over blocks, the contextual cueing effect was obtained (Experiment 1). When depth information was in chaos over repeated configurations, visual search was not facilitated and the contextual cueing effect largely crippled (Experiment 2). However, when we made the search items within a tiny random displacement in the 2-dimentional (2D) plane but maintained the depth information constant, the contextual cueing was preserved (Experiment 3). We concluded that the contextual cueing effect was robust in the context provided by 3D space with stereoscopic information, and more importantly, the visual system prioritized stereoscopic information in learning of spatial information when depth information was available.

Unconscious Processing of Facial Emotional Valence Relation: Behavioral Evidence of Integration between Subliminally Perceived Stimuli.

Although a few studies have investigated the integration between some types of unconscious stimuli, no research has yet explored the integration between unconscious emotional stimuli. This study was designed to provide behavioral evidence for the integration between unconsciously perceived emotional faces (same or different valence relation) using a modified priming paradigm. In two experiments, participants were asked to decide whether two faces in the target, which followed two subliminally presented faces of same or different emotional expressions, were of the same or different emotional valence. The interstimulus interval (ISI) between the prime and the target was manipulated (0, 53, 163 ms). In Experiment 1, prime visibility was assessed post-experiment. In Experiment 2, it was assessed on each trial. Interestingly, in both experiments, unconsciously processed valence relation of the two faces in the prime generated a negative priming effect in the response to the supraliminally presented target, independent of the length of ISI. Further analyses suggested that the negative priming was probably caused by a motor response incongruent relation between the subliminally perceived prime and the supraliminally perceived target. The visual feature incongruent relation across the prime and target was not found to play a role in the negative priming. Because the negative priming was found at short ISI, an attention mechanism as well as a motor inhibition mechanism were proposed in the generation of the negative priming effect. Overall, this study indicated that the subliminal valence relation was processed, and that integration between different unconsciously perceived stimuli could occur.

Attentional Biases toward Attractive Alternatives and Rivals: Mechanisms Involved in Relationship Maintenance among Chinese Women.

A long-term romantic relationship can offer many benefits to committed individuals. Thus, humans possess relationship maintenance mechanisms to protect against threats from those who serve as attractive alternatives or intrasexual rivals. Many studies have indicated that romantic love can act as a commitment device to activate these mechanisms. To examine the attentional bias associated with relationship maintenance among 108 college students (49 single and 59 committed females) in China, we used a semantic priming procedure to activate mental representations associated with romantic love and then asked participants to complete a dot-probe task for the purpose of making a distinction between the engage and disengage components of attention. No significant engaging effects toward attractive faces were observed among committed females, but the following significant disengaging effects were found: when primed with romantic love, single females showed increased attention toward and difficulty in disengaging from attractive male faces, whereas females already in a committed relationship did not alter their attention, remaining as inattentive to attractive alternatives as they were in the baseline condition. In addition, committed females responded to love priming by exhibiting difficulty in disengaging from attractive rivals. The present findings provide evidence in the Chinese cultural context for the existence of early-stage attentional processes in the domain of relationship maintenance that committed Chinese females protected an ongoing relationship by not only being inattentive to attractive males who could serve as attractive alternatives, but also being more attentive to attractive females who could be potential rivals when mental representations associated with romantic love were primed.

The neural mechanisms underlying the acute effect of cigarette smoking on chronic smokers.

Although previous research had related structural changes and impaired cognition to chronic cigarette smoking, recent neuroimaging studies have associated nicotine, which is a main chemical substance in cigarettes, with improvements in cognitive functions (e.g. improved attention performance). However, information about the alterations of whole-brain functional connectivity after acute cigarette smoking is limited. In this study, 22 smokers underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) after abstaining from smoking for 12 hours (state of abstinence, SOA). Subsequently, the smokers were allowed to smoke two cigarettes (state of satisfaction, SOS) before they underwent a second rs-fMRI. Twenty non-smokers were also recruited to undergo rs-fMRI. In addition, high-resolution 3D T1-weighted images were acquired using the same magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)scanner for all participants. The results showed that smokers had structural changes in insula, thalamus, medial frontal cortex and several regions of the default mode network (DMN) compared with non-smokers. Voxel-wise group comparisons of newly developed global brain connectivity (GBC) showed that smokers in the SOA condition had higher GBC in the insula and superior frontal gyrus compared with non-smokers. However, smokers in the SOS condition demonstrated significantly lower GBC in several regions of the DMN, as compared with smokers in the SOA condition. These results suggest that structural integrity combined with dysfunction of the DMN might be involved in relapses after a short period of time among smokers.

Category-selective attention modulates unconscious processes in the middle occipital gyrus.

Many studies have revealed the top-down modulation (spatial attention, attentional load, etc.) on unconscious processing. However, there is little research about how category-selective attention could modulate the unconscious processing. In the present study, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the results showed that category-selective attention modulated unconscious face/tool processing in the middle occipital gyrus (MOG). Interestingly, MOG effects were of opposed direction for face and tool processes. During unconscious face processing, activation in MOG decreased under the face-selective attention compared with tool-selective attention. This result was in line with the predictive coding theory. During unconscious tool processing, however, activation in MOG increased under the tool-selective attention compared with face-selective attention. The different effects might be ascribed to an interaction between top-down category-selective processes and bottom-up processes in the partial awareness level as proposed by Kouider, De Gardelle, Sackur, and Dupoux (2010). Specifically, we suppose an "excessive activation" hypothesis.

Differentiation of stages in joke comprehension: evidence from an ERP study.

This study aimed to investigate the mechanisms underlying joke comprehension using event-related potentials (ERPs). Fourteen healthy college students were presented with the context of a story without its joke or nonjoke ending, and then, when the story ending was presented, they were asked to make a funny/unfunny judgment about these endings. The behavioral results showed that there was no significant difference between funny and unfunny items, which meant that subjects could understand funny items as easily as unfunny ones. However, the ERP results showed that funny items initially elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N350-450) over frontocentral scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generators in the left temporal gyrus and the left medial frontal gyrus; it is suggested that these areas might be involved in detecting the incongruent element in joke comprehension. Between 600 and 800 ms, funny items subsequently elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N600-800) over frontocentral scalp regions and a more positive ERP deflection (P600-800) over posterior scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generator in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area involved in the breaking of mental set/expectation and the forming of novel associations. Finally, funny items elicited a more positive ERP deflection (P1250-1400) over anterior and posterior scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generators in the middle frontal gyrus and the fusiform gyrus, areas that might be related to the affective appreciation stage in joke process. Unlike that of Coulson and Kutas (2001), the present study might support the hypothesis of a three stage model of humor processing (humor detection, resolution of incongruity and humor appreciation).

Effect of sufentanil postconditioning on cardiomyocyte apoptosis during myocardial ischemia-reperfusion in rats / 中华麻醉学杂志

Objective To investigate the effect of sufentanil postconditioning on cardiomyocyte apoptosis during myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) in rats.Methods Thirty-six male Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 250-280 g were randomly divided into 3 groups ( n =12 each):sham operation group (group S),I/R group and sufentanil postconditioning group (group SP).Myocardial I/R was induced by occlusion of the left coronary artery for 30 min followed by 120 min reperfusion.Sufentanil 3.0μg/kg was injected iv at the beginning of reperfusion in group SP.HR and MAP were recorded during I/R.The rats were sacrificed at 120 min of reperfusion and their hearts were removed for determination of infarct size,number of apoptotic cardiomyocytes,and the expression of Bax mRNA and Bcl-2 mRNA,and apoptotic index was caculated.Results There was no significant difference in HR among the 3 groups ( P ＞ 0.05 ).Compared with group S,MAP and Bcl-2 mRNA expression were significantly decreased,apoptotic index and Bax mRNA expression increased in group I/R,and apoptotic index,and the expression of Bax mRNA and Bcl-2 mRNA were increased in group SP (P ＜ 0.05).Compared with group I/R,the infarct size,apoptotic index and Bax mRNA expression were decreased,and Bcl-2 mRNA expression was increased in group SP (P ＜ 0.05).Conclusion Sufentanil postconditioning can attenuate myocardial I/R injury in rats by up-regulating Bcl-2 expression,down-regulating Bax expression and inhibitting cardiomyocyte apoptosis.