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ISSN 1671-3710
CN 11-4766/R
主办:中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

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    2008, Volume 16 Issue 3 Previous Issue    Next Issue

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    Effects of Stress on Health from the View of Evolution
    CHENG Qi;YAN Jin
    2008, 16 (3):  355-362. 
    Abstract ( 1425 )   PDF (668KB) ( 2193 )  
    Abstract: From the view of evolution, this paper introduced that different organisms adopt different behavioral strategies to cope with stress and have different underlying physiological foundation inducing different vulnerability to stress-related diseases. The differences in behavioral strategies and physiological foundation induced the different benefits and costs (allostatic load) of allostasis in stress. The benefits and costs of allostasis lead to the balance of health and disease. Aggressive individual, due to inefficient management of mediators of allostasis, is prone to impulse control disorders, hypertension, autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue states, etc. In contrast, passive individual, due to the greater release of mediators of allostasis, is more susceptible to anxiety disorders, depression, metabolic syndromes, etc
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    Specificity and Non-Specificity of Stressful Responses
    YAN Jin
    2008, 16 (3):  363-370. 
    Abstract ( 1201 )   PDF (1122KB) ( 2352 )  
    The modern stress theory includes many developmental concepts and new views. This paper reviewed the literatures on specificity and non-specificity of stressful responses and described brain regions involved in neuroendocrine responses to stress, stressor-specific neuronal circuits and clinical relevance of stressor specificity and future perspectives
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    The Animal Models and Neurobiological Mechanisms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

    AN Xian-Li;ZHENG Xi-Geng
    2008, 16 (3):  371-377. 
    Abstract ( 2265 )   PDF (653KB) ( 2081 )  
    Abstract: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a kind of mental disorder that usually occurs in a delayed manner and lasts long after life-threatened traumas. Studies on animal models of fear conditioning and sensitization show that the symptoms of this disorder, such as fear memory and hyperarousal closely related to the aberrant activities of amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. Increased activity of amygdala is critical for acquisition, consolidation and expression of conditioned fear. In addition, decreased inhibition of medial prefrontal cortex on amygdala and the input of threatened information from hippocampus to amygdala facilitate the development of this disorder. The upregulation of glucocorticoid receptors and increased dopaminergic activities after traumas are main neurochemical mechanisms of PTSD. Studies on drug treatment of this disorder show that dopamine D2 receptors are important, but the specific neurobiological underpinnings of PTSD awaits for more explorations
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    Application of Endophenotype Approach in Psychiatric Research
    CHAN Raymond CK;YANG Bin-Rang;WANG Ya
    2008, 16 (3):  378-391. 
    Abstract ( 2723 )   PDF (712KB) ( 2416 )  
    Abstract The identification of genes that contribute to a susceptibility to psychiatric disorders has been elusive using conventional genetic approaches. One problem to gene finding is that we cannot identify carriers of genes in the absence of manifest symptoms. Also, psychiatric diagnoses are likely to be heterogeneous in that not all people with the same diagnosis carry the same susceptibility genes. A new direction that appears encouraging is the identification of neurobiological or neurobehavioral characteristics associated with schizophrenia, or endophenotypes, that may be more closely linked to gene expression. Endophenotypes are internal phenotypes discovered by a "biochemical test or microscopic examination", they are not the obvious and external but the microscopic and internal, endophenotypes are more approach the biological basis than the external manifestations, less affected by other factors, so it has obvious advantages in studying the genetics of psychiatric disease. And the present diagnostic and classification systems are based on clinical manifestations and behavioral descriptions, lack of biological basis, the endophenotype approach is of great importance in establishing the neurobiological basis of diagnostic and classification systems. Endophenotypes can be neurophysiologic, biochemical, neuroanatomical, cognitive, and neuropsychological measures. To be an endophenotype, it must fulfill some criteria: associate with the disease, heritable, stable or state-independent, cosegragate in the family, endophenotypes should have a higher rate in nonpsychotic relatives than in general population. The paper introduced the concept of endophenotype, illustrated its rational, advantages and usefulness, and the criteria that must be fulfilled, then take three common psychiatric diseases as examples to demonstrate the research development of endophenotypes, e.g., response inhibition and working memory as endophenotypes of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, attention, verbal memory and working memory as endophenotypes of schizophrenia and depression. At last, it points out the future directions of endophenotype research
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    Latent Inhibition as an Animal Model of Schizophrenia
    SHAO Feng;WANG Wei-Wen;LIU Mei;JIN Jian
    2008, 16 (3):  392-398. 
    Abstract ( 1511 )   PDF (643KB) ( 1639 )  
    Abstract: Establishment of animal models of schizophrenia was critical for both understanding the mechanisms underlying this severe mental disease and developing new antipsychotics. This review thoroughly described the theory and neural substrate of the latent inhibition model of schizophrenia. The main methods for inducing latent inhibition abnormality in experimental animals included (1) modulations of neurotransmissions that were closely associated with schizophrenia, (2) focal lesions or pharmacological manipulations of brain structures in the meso-nucleus accumbens neural circuit, and (3) immune stimulus or isolated stress during early development.
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    Establishing New Animal Models for Studying Schizophrenia
    LI Liang;LI Nan-Xin
    2008, 16 (3):  399-403. 
    Abstract ( 1285 )   PDF (638KB) ( 1349 )  
    Abstract: Establishing appropriate animal models is critical for studying schizophrenia. Based on the Processing-Protection Theory, schizophrenia is mainly caused by deficits in gating of signal processing. Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is the reduction of the startle reflex when the startling stimulus is shortly preceded by a non-startling stimulus, and has been used as a model for studying sensorimotor gating. In humans, PPI can be enhanced by both attention and emotion. Our recent studies have shown that PPI in rats can be enhanced by auditory fear conditioning (AFC) but weakened by isolation rearing. Moreover, our recent studies have further shown that isolation rearing affects the effect of AFC on PPI. This paper reviews this line of studies and suggests that AFC-modulation of PPI is useful for advancing animal models for investigating both neural bases and cognitive features of schizophrenia
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    Depression Research of Psychoneuroimmunology: the Role of Cytokines
    LIN Wen-Juan;WANG Dong-Lin;PAN Yu-Qin
    2008, 16 (3):  404-410. 
    Abstract ( 2480 )   PDF (666KB) ( 2175 )  
    Abstract: There has been increasing interest in the putative involvement of the immune system in mental disorders. Depression is suggested to be caused by the immune dysfunction. Psychological and physiological stress can activate immune function, resulting in production of cytokines which exert effects on metabolism of neurotrasmitters, neuroendocrine function, and the neuron plasticity. Although most cytokines are secreted by the immune cells, recent data demonstrate that astrocytes and/or microglia, even neurons, can also produce cytokines. "Cytokine hypothesis of depression", which proposes that cytokines play an important role in depressive disorder, provide a new perspective in the study of depression pathogenesis and the new treatment approach of Psychoneuroimmunology for the clinical depression therapy
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    Early-onset Depression and Its Neural Basis
    WANG Wei-Wen ;XIE Xi ;SHAO Feng
    2008, 16 (3):  411-417. 
    Abstract ( 2152 )   PDF (663KB) ( 1745 )  
    Childhood and adolescent depression (early-onset depression) has been found to differ from adult depression in terms of clinical features, neurobiological response and efficacy of antidepressants. The neurobiological mechanisms underlying the differences were poorly understood. Developmental transformations in brain, especially, discrepancy of the maturation of the adrenergic and serotonergic neurotransmitter systems during childhood and adolescence maybe involve in pathophysiology of early-onset depression. The establishment of depression model in childhood and adolescence animals was critical to understand the neural basis of early-onset depression and to develop successful treatment and intervention strategies
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    Effect of Central Cholingeric System on Addiction of Morphine
    LI Xin-Wang;YU Ping
    2008, 16 (3):  418-423. 
    Abstract ( 1256 )   PDF (661KB) ( 1525 )  
    his article reviews the effects of the central cholinergic system on the addiction of the morphine and the related mechanisms. A considerable amount of research results show that morphine induces changes in release of extracellular acetylcholine in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and other brain areas. It was also reported that cholinergic cell ablation in the NAc or the striatum enhances the addiction of morphine by using immunotoxin-mediated cell targeting. The cholinergic agonists and antagonists can both interfere with the addiction of morphine but the mechanism may be different. The former probably exerts addiction of morphine through the interaction of the cholinergic system and the dopaminergic system. The latter perhaps works in the way of blocking the memory or accelerating the metabolism of morphine. Cholinergic receptor plays a important role in the addiction of morphine
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    Epigenetics: A Mechanism of Addictive Memory
    LI Yong-Hui;HAN Jin;SUI Nan
    2008, 16 (3):  424-429. 
    Abstract ( 1729 )   PDF (658KB) ( 1649 )  
    Abstract: Persistent addictive memory has been one of the potential reasons to relapse. But the molecular mechanism of addictive memory is not clear. Epigenetic mechanism may be one of the potential substrates to keep the addictive memory persistent. And it has been established that drug of abuse can modify the chromatin structures through histone acetylation and DNA methylation, and further modulate gene expression underlying long-term neural plasticity. And the epigenetic mechanism of memory reconsolidation involved memory promoting and suppressing genes will be an attractive field in the future
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    Progress in Research on Social Cognitive Neuroscience
    LUO Yue-Jia ;GU Ruo-Lei;CHEN Hua;HUANG Miao
    2008, 16 (3):  430-434. 
    Abstract ( 2787 )   PDF (666KB) ( 3750 )  
    Abstract: Social cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary subject using cognitive neuroscience technology to research social cognitive phenomena, and it has become a hotspot in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and psychophysiology. This article reviewed studies on the brain mechanism concerning some relative aspects in recent years as follows: The universality and particularity of the expression and identification of the basic emotions like fear, disgust, angry, surprise, happiness and sadness, which the clinical research and brain imaging studies had revealed. The diagnostic relevance of autism and the “male brain”, and the therapeutic effects of Pazoc in child depression. The research on self-concept is focusing on the location of the self-concept in the brain, the self-image of the primates, and the variance of the self-concept in patients with mental illness. The studies on economic decision-making attracted many cognitive neuroscientists in the field, which consists of strong reciprocity, risk decision-making, intertemporal choice and brand preference. The research of brain mechanism of morality is mainly on the neural basis of moral judgment and donation behavior. The end of the article was a vista of the development of social cognitive neuroscience in China
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    Event-related Oscillations within Oscillatory Brain Network
    ZHOU Shu
    2008, 16 (3):  435-440. 
    Abstract ( 1222 )   PDF (663KB) ( 1594 )  
    Abstract: Both methodology and experimental researches of event-related oscillations (ERO) are reviewed. Phenomena of frequency, amplitude and phase modulations at the meso- and macroscale were observed from ERO. ERO affects both average firing rate and timing pattern of neurons (microscale). As well as neuronal spike, ERO may involve in various aspects of neural information processing including coding, representation, communication and control. Combined with brain theory of dynamical cell assembly that hypotheses cognitive functions result from synchronization and/or desynchronization of oscillatory neural ensembles, investigations on ERO of cross-frequency, cross-region and cross-scale may further disclose the working principles of brain
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    Visual Word Form Processing: From Brain Areas to Neural Pathways
    SHAN Chun-Lei ;LI Jing-Wei;WENG Xu-Chu
    2008, 16 (3):  441-445. 
    Abstract ( 2176 )   PDF (831KB) ( 1874 )  
    Abstract: Visual word form processing is one of essential stages in reading. The neural pathway of visual word form processing was implicated in the neurological model of reading, which was based on early studies in patients with acquired reading disorders. With the development of functional neuroimaging techniques and discovery of visual word form area in left mid-fusiform gyrus, the researchers have modified the construction of the neural pathway underlying visual word form processing and proposed the advanced version of reading model. In this article, neuropsychological studies on pure alexia and functional neuroimaging of neural mechanisms of visual word form processing in normal subjects are reviewed. The limitations of the existing studies and future research directions in the field are discussed
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    Mental Calculation: Studies from Cognitive Neuroscience
    LIU Chang;WANG Cui-Yan
    2008, 16 (3):  446-452. 
    Abstract ( 1579 )   PDF (644KB) ( 1900 )  
    Abstract: Mental calculation is complex cognitive procedure, which includes three tightly related processing stages: converting the stimulus into the appropriate internal codes, retrieving or calculating the answer, and producing the answer. Different numbers in different input formats are represented in different areas of the parietal lobe. The left intraparietal sulcus is mainly involved in arithmetic facts retrieval, moreover, and the left inferior frontal lobe is additionally involved in actual computation when mental arithmetic problems become more difficult. While the prefrontal cortex and the occipito-temporo-parietal regions are generally involved in mental arithmetic, predominant activation is typically found in the left hemisphere. It is also shown that approximate arithmetic, abacus mental calculation and mental calculation in a prodigy are more dependent on visual-spatial representation, involving the right prefrontal cortex and precuneus
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    The Relationship Between Brain Acetylcholine Release And Cognitive Activity
    YU Ping;QU Chun-Huan;LI Xin-Wang;GUO Chun-Yan
    2008, 16 (3):  453-457. 
    Abstract ( 1809 )   PDF (655KB) ( 2406 )  
    Abstract: Changes in acetylcholine extracellular levels correlate the activity of the cholinergic nerve endings in the brain. Extracellular acetylcholine in both cortex and hippocampus is mainly originated from the afferent basal forebrain cholinergic neurons. Acetylcholine release is detected during cognitive processes in awake and free moving animals in vivo by ways of microdialysis technique, to investigate the relationship between brain acetylcholine release and specific cognitive activity. Activation of the forebrain cholinergic system and enhancement of acetylcholine release has been demonstrated in conditions in which the animals are required to analyze novel stimuli and during performance of learning and memory, spatial working memory, attention, motor activity and exploratory behavior. These results suggest that central cholinergic system activity be closely involved in cognitive procedure
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    The Neural Basis of the Emotional Memory
    WU Run-Guo;; LUO Yue-Jia
    2008, 16 (3):  458-463. 
    Abstract ( 1467 )   PDF (659KB) ( 3157 )  
    Abstract: The emotional memory is intense and long lasting,which provides the prominent status to it in the memory. Amygadala is a critical brain area involving the emotional memory, and the lateral nuclei of amygadala is regarded as the central body of establishing of the emotional circuits. Fear conditioning is an effective way to research the emotional memory, especially the emotional circuits. Encoding, consolidaton and retrieval of the emotional memory are influenced by the interaction of amygdala and other relational areas, and hormonal regulation play an important role in these processes. Recent research advances will be referred to discuss the neural basis of the emotional memory
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    Structure and Pharmacology Properties of NMDA Receptor
    HAN Tai-Zhen ;LI Yan-Hai
    2008, 16 (3):  464-474. 
    Abstract ( 2834 )   PDF (835KB) ( 2502 )  
    Abstract: Within the large family of excitatory ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs), N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) constitute a subfamily which involved in refinement of the neural circuits during development and various forms of synaptic plasticity. In recent years, increasing evidence indicates that different NMDA receptor subunits confer complex physiological and pharmacological properties. The number, distribution and subunit composition of NMDA receptors are not static but dynamic in a cell-specific and synaptic specific change during development and neuronal activities. The bi-directional changes in NMDA receptors are the basis of synaptic plasticity remodeling, and the abnormal regulation can lead to the occurrence of nerve - mental illness, such as cocaine addiction and schizophrenia
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    The Study on Brain Impairment from Exposure to Fluoride
    and the Intervention of Selenium
    ZHANG Zi-Gui
    2008, 16 (3):  475-479. 
    Abstract ( 1370 )   PDF (657KB) ( 1597 )  
    College Of Chemistry and Life Science, Zhe jiang Normal University, Jinhua 321004, China
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    Neural Mechanism at the Self-Others Coordination in Theory of Mind
    ZHANG Hui;SU Yan-Jie
    2008, 16 (3):  480-485. 
    Abstract ( 2314 )   PDF (656KB) ( 2086 )  
    Abstract: The neural mechanism in Theory of Mind has not yet led to a consensus. However, if we examine it from the self-others coordination, we could regard it as a systematical functions on multiple brain areas. As egocentrism bias is a default mode of the human cognition, inhibition would be necessary for appropriate attribution to the others’ mental state. Hence, at least the following four processes are needed: a) simulation would be made by the mirror neuron system when the mental state between the self and the others is consistent; b) representation generated about the mental state which based on the others-objects dyadic relationship is responded to the temporoparietal junction; c) the inhibition to simulation would be functioned by the dorsolateral frontal lobe; d) and the coordination of all above processes would be purposed by the medial prefrontal cortex
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    Perceptual Interference Effect in Memory
    WANG Yuan-Yuan;WANG Quan-Hong;LI Hui
    2008, 16 (3):  486-490. 
    Abstract ( 2770 )   PDF (654KB) ( 2002 )  
    Abstract: The perceptual interference effect is a phenomenon that a study word is better remembered later on if presented briefly and followed by a backward mask. Affecting factors of the perceptual interference, such as testing modes, experimental design, and properties of materials, were summarized. There were six major hypotheses for the perceptual interference effect: Elaboration Account, Spatio-Temporal Context, Westerman & Greene Account, Compensatory-Processing Account, Selective Rehearsal Hypothesis and Item-Specific-Relation Framework. In conclusion, further research in this field should be focused on extending research areas and experimental materials, and on the impact of subjective factors
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    Numerical and Arithmetical Cognition in Developmental Dyscalculia
    LIU Song
    2008, 16 (3):  491-496. 
    Abstract ( 1475 )   PDF (639KB) ( 1676 )  
    Abstract: Developmental dyscalculia (DD), as a specific type of learning disabilities, has pervasive effects on children’s mathematical achievement and perception of mathematical learning. It has become a focus of many research disciplines during recent years. This article reviewed current progress in numerical and arithmetical cognition in DD, explored some issues as followed, the performance and characteristics of numerical and arithmetical cognition in DD, the cognition performance of subtypes, general cognition deficit and numerical processing module deficit as possible causes for DD. It’s suggested future research topics are to examine the complicated relationships between different numerical and arithmetical cognitive deficits, the characteristics of subtypes, and the interactions and mechanisms between possible causes
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    Controversy in Visual Magnocellular Deficit theory Associated with Dyslexia
    LUO Yan-Lin ;Andrew CN CHEN;PENG Dan-Ling
    2008, 16 (3):  497-503. 
    Abstract ( 1960 )   PDF (663KB) ( 1631 )  
    Abstract: It has been claimed by quite a few researchers that dyslexia results from magnocellular deficits in the visual system. Main evidences came from studies of visual contrast sensitivity, magnocellular suppress function and visual motion perception. The present paper reviewed these studies both in support of and in opposition to this claim. It is showed that both the advocate and the opponent for the magnocellular deficit theory could provide evidences in spatial contrast sensitivity, motion perception and magnocellular suppress function. Furthermore, the paper also cited more evidences in support of the magnocellular deficit theory from physiology studies and language reading studies, which showed the relationship between reading and magnocellular deficit and the practical value of the magnocellular system deficit theory. It was suggested that uniform criterion for experiment methods in visual contrast sensitivity research should be set up to validate the magnocellular system deficit theory and new methods to differentiated parvocellular system from magnocellular system should be developed
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    The Means-End Chain Model Focused on Consumer Values
    HU Jie;ZHANG Jin-Fu
    2008, 16 (3):  504-512. 
    Abstract ( 965 )   PDF (681KB) ( 3690 )  

    School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China

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