This essay aims to provide an overview of some key theories and frameworks regarding moral cognition and its neural correlates, in order to examine the possibilities of enhancement of moral cognition. Moral cognition arises from the functional integration of several distinct brain regions and networks. These neural systems correspond to different socioaffective abilities, such as empathy and compassion, as well as sociocognitive abilities, such as theory of mind. Due to this neural distinction, these moral abilities, behaviors, and emotions can be targeted and trained separately. Recent research suggests that training sociocognitive and socioaffective abilities increases cortical thickness in corresponding brain regions and networks, hence providing support for adult neural plasticity in relation to moral cognition. Increased cortical thickness also corresponds to enhanced performance in socioaffective and sociocognitive abilities. Training compassion and empathy induce enhanced abilities to pick up emotional cues, as well as strengthen the motivation to alleviate others’ distress. Practicing theory of mind allows for a better understanding of the perspective of others, which has been indicated to reduce biases between individuals or societal groups. Thus, enhanced moral cognition can contribute to an increase in consideration for those affected by our choices and behavior, which may yield more compassionate, just, and safe societies.

No description available.

Research on well-being is in its infancy and the term lacks a clear definition, yet it is an increasingly popular matter. The neurology underlying well-being is important in such research in order to understand what brain mechanisms are correlated with mental health. Even though objective measures such as brain imaging are increasingly used assessments in well-being and neuroscience studies, self-reports are widely used. Articles viewing such research often state that self-reports could be biased because the subjects may be affected by the weather the day of the self-report. No further explanations are however provided as to why or how those individuals would be affected by the weather, or by which weather conditions. The aim of this thesis is thus to find neurological explanations for how weather can affect well-being. Constituents of well-being will be reviewed together with brain bases of mental health in an attempt to find neural correlations of weather and well-being. How humans are affected by the weather is a limited research area and the findings are diverse on all aspects but the solar influence over the brain and mind. Man-made light was however found to be a substitute for the effect of sunlight on the brain. No strong relationship between weather and well-being were found based on existing literature. No significant neural correlations between mental well-being and different weather conditions was found either.

Magister Public Health - MPH / Aim: To obtain baseline data on adherence levels and the major determinants of adherence among patients on HAART at Rundu Hospital, Namibia. Results: Seventy-eight percent of the 97 participants included in the study were female, resulting in a female to male ratio of 4 :1. The mean age of the participants was 36.7 (SD: 9.00) years with 80% of the participants being in the 20-44 age group. The mean duration on ART treatment was 20 (SD: 10.3) months with 76% of the participants being on ART for 24 or less months. The average adherence rate reported by mean composite of the three measures was 95.1%, while the proportion of patients who achieved adherence levels of 95% and above was 64%. The main barriers to adherence to HAART reported by participants were forgetfulness (28%), lack of food (13%) and being away from the pills (11%): facilitators reported included counselling (19%) and treatment supporters (11%). Having knowledge of the consequences of failing to take HAART as prescribed was significantly associated with adherence (p = 0.03), as was being female (p = 0.04) while living further than 6 km from the hospital was significantly associated with non adherence (p = 0.018).

Un pilier d'une vie sociale fructueuse est la capacité de prédire correctement les actions des autres et de percevoir leurs états émotionnels. Des études d'interaction sociale chez les primates ont montré qu'ils sont capables de déduire ce que les autres peuvent entendre ou voir, et de prédire leurs émotions et intentions. Il a été montré qu'ils peuvent manifester différents degrés de comportements prosociaux, allant de la coopération jusqu'à des comportements altruistes et empathiques. Des études d'imageries fonctionnelles chez l'homme ont identifié l'insula antérieur (AI) comme une région cérébrale clé dans le traitement de l'empathie.Spécifiquement, cette région apparait comme l'aire intégratrice des activités liées à la douleur ressentie et observée, suggérant que l'empathie pourrait impliquer un modèle « miroir » des propriétés affectives et sensorielles de la douleur d'autrui. Cependant, les bases neuronales de ce processus n'ont pas encore été découvertes. Dans le but d'examiner le rôle de l'AI dans le traitement de l'empathie, nous avons enregistré l'activité des neurones dans l'AI de deux singes pendant qu'ils sont engagés dans une tâche sociale leur permettant de délivrer un stimulus aversif ou appétitif à leur partenaire, à lui-même ou à personne. Les résultats comportementaux ont montré que les singes prennent en compte le bien-être de leur partenaire. Les données neuronales rapportent différentes populations neuronales répondant aux stimuli aversif ou appétitif et ceux délivrés à soi ou à autrui. Notamment, la population neuronale répondant au stimulus aversif a montré trois profils d'activité : une représentation neuronale de l'expérience désagréable du partenaire, une représentation neuronale de sa propre sensation désagréable et une minorité de neurones montrant des propriétés miroirs entre soi et autrui. Nos résultats suggèrent un modèle neuronal de l'empathie représentant des propriétés distinctes entre l'expérience vécue et observée / A cornerstone of a successful social life is the ability to correctly predict others’ actions and empathically perceive their emotional states. Studies on primates’ social interaction have shown that thanks to their keen cognitive abilities monkeys are able to deduce what others can hear or see, and to predict others’ emotions and intentions. It has been shown that primates are able to display different degrees of prosocial behavior, from cooperation to even altruism and empathically driven behavior. Studies using fMRI techniques inhumans have identified the anterior insula (AI) as a key brain region in the processing of empathy. More precisely, this region emerged as the overlapping area activated for both experienced and observed pain,leading to the idea that empathy for pain may involve a mirror-matching model of the affective and sensory features of others' pain. However, the neuronal basis of this process has yet to be uncovered. In an attempt toextend and to investigate the role of the AI in the process of empathy we have recorded single cell activity inthe AI of two monkeys while they were engaged in a social task where based on the performed trials positiveor negative reinforcements could be delivered to self, another monkey, or nobody. Behavioral results showed that monkeys take into account the welfare of their partners even when this has no impact on their ownwelfare. Our neuronal findings report that distinct population of neurons respond differentially to outcomesfor self and other, and to appetitive and aversive outcomes. Interestingly the neuronal population responding to the aversive outcome showed mainly three profiles of activity: neuronal representation of conspecifics’unpleasant experience, neuronal representation of own unpleasant experience and a minority of neurons showing mirroring properties between self and other. Thus, our results suggest a neuronal model of empathy that accounts for the distinctive features between feeling and empathizing

Despite the recent decreasing trend of most traditional types of crime, online property crime (OPC), referring to crime committed online with a financial orientation such as online frauds, scams, and phishing, continues to increase. According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, the number of reported complaints about OPC have increased by approximately sixteen fold from 16,838 cases in 2000 to 288,012 cases in 2015, and referred financial losses have also increased about sixty times from $17.8 million in 2001 to $1 billion in 2015. The increase in OPC might be directly related to advanced online accessibility due to the accelerated progress of information and communication technology (ICT). Since the progress of ICT continues forward and the advanced ICT infrastructure can affect our routine activities more significantly, issues regarding OPC may become more various and prevalent. The present study aims to explore a macro-social criminogenic structure of OPC perpetration. Specifically, this study focused on exploring probable macro-social predictors of OPC rates and examining how effectively these possible macro-social predictors account for variance in OPC perpetration rates. In addition, this study explored possible predictors of macro-level online opportunity structure, which is expected to have a direct relationship with OPC rates. It also examined how much variance in online opportunity structure was explained by the included possible predictors. With these research purposes, the current study analyzed state-level data of the fifty states in the U.S. by applying a partial least square regression (PLSR) approach. The results indicated that predictors related to macro-social economic conditions such as economic inequality, poverty, economic social support, and unemployment had a significant association with OPC. As expected, indicators in the domain of economic inequality predicted greater OPC rates and those in the domain of economic social support were related to lower OPC rates. However, poverty and unemployment predictors were negatively associated with OPC, which is the opposite direction of the relationships between these predictors and traditional street crime. In addition, indicators of online opportunity structure were found to have a significantly positive relationship to OPC as expected. The PLSR model for predicting OPC applied in the current study accounted for approximately 50% of variance in OPC rates across states. For predictors of online opportunity structure, the results indicated that online opportunity was associated with state-level economic and socio-demographic characteristics. States with less poverty, more urban population, and more working age adults were more likely to report more online opportunities. The PLSR model for predicting online opportunity structure explained about 80% of variance in measured online opportunity. These results may imply that some types of macro-social conditions may have an indirect effect on OPC through online opportunity structure as well as their direct effects on OPC. Future study should pay more attention to examining structural relationships of macro-social contexts, online opportunity structure, and OPC to understand macro-level criminogenic mechanism of OPC.

Declarative memory is characterized as a conscious, explicit memory. Declarative memory consists of two essential systems, semantic memory and episodic memory. Episodic memory enables us to recall specific past events. A simplified model, so called Episodic-like memory is often used to study episodic memory mechanisms. According to this model, all events are stored in a contextual framework consisting of three basic components: identity of the object ('what' happened), temporal information ('when' it occurred) and spatial information ('where' did it happen). This type of memory is testable not only in humans but also in animal models. Aim of this diploma thesis is to study the neuronal substrate of individual components of episodic memory in healthy volunteers by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and ecologically valid tasks designed in virtual reality environment. Results obtained in the fMRI paradigm show that apart from common neuronal substrate of episodic memory, additional brain structures are responsible for recollection of individual components of the episodic-like memory. Behavioral data indicate that the demands of the recollection of individual components is not equivalent. Additional analyses with parcellation of the brain to individual structures and consecutive...

Microclimates associated with environmental and geographic factors directly affect the ability of an organism to survive in a particular area. Survival is affected by: predator/prey abundance, temperature, relative humidity. A group of organisms that are particularly prone to habitat sensitivity are web-building spiders, because building the web commits them to a particular site for a period of time. Anelosimus studiosus is a small (~8 mm) Theridiid spider that exhibits varying degrees of sociality: a subsocial phenotype and a social phenotype. Population densities of A. studiosus vary significantly among seemingly suitable habitats within its range in east Tennessee. I conducted a large-scale survey of east Tennessee lake systems to establish connections between spider presence and geographic features such as aspect, slope and elevation. These geographic features were shown to have a strong impact on overall spider density.

Because event-related potentials (ERPs) can reflect individual differences in intellectual ability, individual differences in college grade-point average (GPA) may be associated with specific individual ERP waves, such as the P300. However, P300 amplitude is higher in women than in men and varies across the menstrual cycle, factors that could confound the association between GPA and ERPs. In this regard, our objective was to determine whether differences in GPA are reflected in ERPs while standardling for sex and menstrual phase. After participants provided informed consent, we obtained GPAs from 22 right-handed college students (11 male, age range 22 to 26 and 10 female, age range 17 to 24) at a university with high admission and retention standards. We assessed menstrual phase by measuring luteinizing hormone levels across the cycle. We then obtained ERPs for each male participant and ERPs during each phase of the menstrual cycle for each female participant in an object-recognition visual pop-out protocol using Net Station Software (Electrical Geodesics, Inc., Eugene, Oregon) and E-prime Software (Psychology Software Tools, Inc., Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania). Males had larger P300s than females. The male and female high GPA was significantly different from the low GPA male and female groups. High GPA in females and males were associated with a positive peak at approximately 689 ms that was not present in the low-GPA male group and was significantly diminished in low-GPA females. Electro-cortical processing of cognitive stimuli differs between college students with high and low GPAs.

No description available.