Hooking the Self Onto the Past: How Positive Autobiographical Memory Retrieval Benefits People With Social Anxiety.

Do people with social anxiety (SA) benefit from positive memory retrieval that heightens self-relevant meaning? In this preregistered study, an analog sample of 255 participants with self-reported clinically significant symptoms of SA were randomly assigned to retrieve and process a positive social-autobiographical memory by focusing on either its self-relevant meaning (deep processing) or its perceptual features (superficial processing). Participants were then socially excluded and instructed to reimagine their positive memory. Analyses revealed that participants assigned to the deep processing condition experienced significantly greater improvements than participants in the superficial processing condition in positive affect, social safeness, and positive beliefs about others during initial memory retrieval and in negative and positive beliefs about the self following memory reactivation during recovery from exclusion.

Targeting mucosal sites by polymeric immunoglobulin receptor-directed peptides.

Polymeric immunoglobulins provide first line humoral defense at mucosal surfaces to which they are specifically transported by the polymeric immunoglobulin receptor (pIgR) on mucosal and glandular epithelial cells. Previous studies from our laboratory suggested that amino acids 402-410 of the Calpha3 domain of dimeric IgA (dIgA) represented a potential binding site for the pIgR. Here by binding human secretory component to overlapping decapeptides of Calpha3, we confirm these residues and also uncover an additional site.