Disparities in healthcare for underrepresented and stigmatized groups are well documented. Current understanding is that these inequalities arise, at least in part, from psychosocial factors such as stereotypes and in-group/out-group categorization. Pain management, perhaps because of the subjective nature of pain, is one area of research that has spearheaded these efforts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe European flat oyster ( L.) is a bivalve naturally distributed across Europe, which was an integral part of human diets for centuries, until anthropogenic activities and disease outbreaks severely reduced wild populations. Despite a growing interest in genetic applications to support population management and aquaculture, a reference genome for this species is lacking to date.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis volume of Evolutionary Applications sees the publication of two genomes for the European native flat oyster , a species of significant evolutionary, ecological and commercial value. Each is a highly contiguous chromosome-level assembly from individuals of different genetic backgrounds, which have been benchmarked against one another. This situation has resulted from the serendipitous discovery that two independent research groups were both deep into the process of building, annotating and investigating separately produced assemblies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExpected effects on marine biota of the ongoing elevation of water temperature and high latitudes is of major concern when considering the reliability of coastal ecosystem production. To compare the capacity of coastal organisms to cope with a temperature increase depending on their environmental history, responses of adult blue mussels (Mytilus spp.) taken from two sites differentially exposed to chemical pollution were investigated during an experimental exposure to a thermal stress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCogn Res Princ Implic
July 2021
Background: Face-identity processing declines with age. Few studies have examined whether face-identity processing abilities can be measured independently from general cognitive abilities in older adults (OA). This question has practical implications for the assessment of face-identity processing abilities in OA and theoretical implications for the notion of face processing as a specific ability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Kerguelen Islands (49°26'S, 69°50'E) represent a unique environment due to their geographical isolation, which protects them from anthropogenic pollution. The ability of the endemic mussel, part of the Mytilus complex, to cope with moderate heat stress was explored using omic tools. Transcripts involved in six major metabolic functions were selected and the qRT-PCR data indicated mainly changes in aerobic and anaerobic energy metabolism and stress response.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHolistic processing, which includes the integration of facial features and analysis of their relations to one another, is a hallmark of what makes faces 'special'. Various experimental paradigms purport to measure holistic processing but these have often produced inconsistent results. This has led researchers to question the nature and structure of the mechanism(s) underlying holistic processing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn
January 2021
Healthy aging is associated with impairments in face recognition. While earlier research suggests that these impairments arise during memory retrieval, more recent findings suggest that earlier mechanisms, at the perceptual stage, may also be at play. However, results are often inconsistent and very few studies have included a non-face control stimulus to facilitate interpretation of results with respect to the implication of specialized face mechanisms vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOlder adults consistently show elevated rates of false recognition of new items that are related to studied items. This finding has been largely attributed to a greater tendency for older adults to rely on conceptual gist during memory recognition tasks. However, perceptual factors may also be implicated considering that related items are not only conceptually but also perceptually similar.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo generate meaningful information, translational research must employ paradigms that allow extrapolation from animal models to humans. However, few studies have evaluated translational paradigms on the basis of defined validation criteria. We outline three criteria for validating translational paradigms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
August 2019
Objectives: We simultaneously investigated the role of three hypotheses regarding age-related differences in face processing: perceptual degradation, impaired holistic processing, and an interaction between the two.
Methods: Young adults (YA) aged 20-33-year olds, middle-age adults (MA) aged 50-64-year olds, and older adults (OA) aged 65-82-year olds were tested on the context congruency paradigm, which allows measurement of face-specific holistic processing across the life span (Meinhardt-Injac, Persike & Meinhardt, 2014. Acta Psychologica, 151, 155-163).
Atten Percept Psychophys
May 2017
Few published reports examine the development of holistic face processing across the lifespan such that face-specific processes are adequately differentiated from general developmental effects. To address this gap in the literature, we used the complete design of the composite paradigm (Richler & Gauthier, 2014) with faces and non-face control objects (watches) to investigate holistic processing in children (8-10years), young adults (20-32years) and older adults (65-78years). Several modifications to past research designs were introduced to improve the ability to draw conclusions about the development of holistic processing in terms of face-specificity, response bias, and age-related differences in attention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAge-related face recognition deficits are characterized by high false alarms to unfamiliar faces, are not as pronounced for other complex stimuli, and are only partially related to general age-related impairments in cognition. This paper reviews some of the underlying processes likely to be implicated in theses deficits by focusing on areas where contradictions abound as a means to highlight avenues for future research. Research pertaining to the three following hypotheses is presented: (i) perceptual deterioration, (ii) encoding of configural information, and (iii) difficulties in recollecting contextual information.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHydrothermal vent mussels belonging to the genus Bathymodiolus dominate communities at hydrothermal sites of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The mussel Bathymodiolus azoricus harbors thiotrophic and methanotrophic symbiotic bacteria in its gills and evolves in naturally highly metal contaminated environments. In the context of investigations on metal tolerance/effect in B.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious work has shown mixed results regarding the role of different spatial frequency (SF) ranges in featural and configural processing of faces. Some studies suggest no special role of any given band for either type of processing, while others suggest that low SFs principally support configural analysis. Here we attempt to put this issue on a more rigorous footing by comparing human performance when making featural and configural discriminations with that of a model observer algorithm carrying out the same task.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe thermal limit for metazoan life, expected to be around 50°C, has been debated since the discovery of the Pompeii worm Alvinella pompejana, which colonizes black smoker chimney walls at deep-sea vents. While indirect evidence predicts body temperatures lower than 50°C, repeated in situ temperature measurements depict an animal thriving at temperatures of 60°C and more. This controversy was to remain as long as this species escaped in vivo investigations, due to irremediable mortalities upon non-isobaric sampling.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTaking advantage of the massive genome sequencing effort made on thermophilic prokaryotes, thermal adaptation has been extensively studied by analysing amino acid replacements and codon usage in these unicellular organisms. In most cases, adaptation to thermophily is associated with greater residue hydrophobicity and more charged residues. Both of these characteristics are positively correlated with the optimal growth temperature of prokaryotes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The deep-sea hydrothermal vent mussel Bathymodiolus azoricus harbors thiotrophic and methanotrophic symbiotic bacteria in its gills. While the symbiotic relationship between this hydrothermal mussel and these chemoautotrophic bacteria has been described, the molecular processes involved in the cross-talking between symbionts and host, in the maintenance of the symbiois, in the influence of environmental parameters on gene expression, and in transcriptome variation across individuals remain poorly understood. In an attempt to understand how, and to what extent, this double symbiosis affects host gene expression, we used a transcriptomic approach to identify genes potentially regulated by symbiont characteristics, environmental conditions or both.
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