Fecal transplant allows transmission of the gut microbiota in honey bees.

Unlabelled: The study of the fecal microbiota is crucial for unraveling the pathways through which gut symbionts are acquired and transmitted. While stable gut microbial communities are essential for honey bee health, their modes of acquisition and transmission are yet to be confirmed. The gut of honey bees is colonized by symbiotic bacteria within 5 days after emergence from their wax cells as adults.

Gut microbiota influences onset of foraging-related behavior but not physiological hallmarks of division of labor in honeybees.

Unlabelled: Gut microbes can impact cognition and behavior, but whether they regulate the division of labor in animal societies is unknown. We addressed this question using honeybees since they exhibit division of labor between nurses and foragers and because their gut microbiota can be manipulated. Using automated behavioral tracking and controlling for co-housing effects, we show that gut microbes influence the age at which bees start expressing foraging-like behaviors in the laboratory but have no effects on the time spent in a foraging arena and number of foraging trips.

The Gaze of Schizophrenia Patients Captured by Bottom-up Saliency.

Schizophrenia (SCHZ) notably impacts various human perceptual modalities, including vision. Prior research has identified marked abnormalities in perceptual organization in SCHZ, predominantly attributed to deficits in bottom-up processing. Our study introduces a novel paradigm to differentiate the roles of top-down and bottom-up processes in visual perception in SCHZ.

Targeted treatment of injured nestmates with antimicrobial compounds in an ant society.

Infected wounds pose a major mortality risk in animals. Injuries are common in the ant Megaponera analis, which raids pugnacious prey. Here we show that M.

A hole in a piece of cardboard and predictive brain: the incomprehension of modern art in the light of the predictive coding paradigm.

Incomprehension of and resistance to contemporaneous art have been constant features in the development of modern art. The predictive coding framework can be used to analyse this response by outlining the difference between the misunderstanding of (i) contemporary conceptual/minimalist art and (ii) early modern avant-garde art and by elucidating their underlying cognitive mechanisms. In both of these cases, incomprehension and its behavioural consequences are tied to the failure of the optimal prediction error (PE) minimization that is involved in the perception of such art works.

Untangling the Interactions between Anionic Polystyrene Nanoparticles and Lipid Membranes Using Laurdan Fluorescence Spectroscopy and Molecular Simulations.

Several classes of synthetic nanoparticles (NPs) induce rearrangements of cell membranes that can affect membrane function. This paper describes the investigation of the interactions between polystyrene nanoparticles and liposomes, which serve as model cell membranes, using a combination of laurdan fluorescence spectroscopy and coarse-grained molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The relative intensities of the gel-like and fluid fluorescent peaks of laurdan, which is embedded in the liposome membranes, are quantified from the areas of deconvoluted lognormal laurdan fluorescence peaks.

The gut microbiota affects the social network of honeybees.

The gut microbiota influences animal neurodevelopment and behaviour but has not previously been documented to affect group-level properties of social organisms. Here, we use honeybees to probe the effect of the gut microbiota on host social behaviour. We found that the microbiota increased the rate and specialization of head-to-head interactions between bees.

Impact of a Long Lockdown on Mental Health and the Role of Media Use: Web-Based Survey Study.

Background: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Czech population experienced a second lockdown lasting for about half a year, restricting free movement and imposing social isolation. However, it is not known whether the impact of this long lockdown resulted in habituation to the adverse situation or in the traumatization of the Czech population, and whether the media and specific media use contributed to these effects.

Objective: The aim of this study was to elucidate the effect of the long lockdown on the mental health of the Czech population, and the role of exposure to COVID-19 news reports and specific forms of media news use in mental health.

Global Adversities, the Media, and Mental Health.

Global communities are currently confronted with a number of complex problems and threats, the reality of which is amplified by the media. These environmental and socio-political stressors have been accompanied by the spread of problematic psychological and behavioural tendencies, such as the growing polarisation of opinions and values, online radicalisation and extremism, deepening xenophobia and nationalism, the proliferation of irrational beliefs and conspiracy theories, and resistance to rational public policy measures. Here we argue that although they fall outside the scope of psychopathology, they nevertheless currently constitute a major challenge for psychiatry as a research domain and a clinical practise.

How Neuroimaging Can Aid the Interpretation of Art.

Cognitive neuroscience of art continues to be criticized for failing to provide interesting results about art itself. In particular, results of brain imaging experiments have not yet been utilized in interpretation of particular works of art. Here we revisit a recent study in which we explored the neuronal and behavioral response to painted portraits with a direct versus an averted gaze.

Climate Change Modulates Multitrophic Interactions Between Maize, A Root Herbivore, and Its Enemies.

How climate change will modify belowground tritrophic interactions is poorly understood, despite their importance for agricultural productivity. Here, we manipulated the three major abiotic factors associated with climate change (atmospheric CO, temperature, and soil moisture) and investigated their individual and joint effects on the interaction between maize, the banded cucumber beetle (Diabrotica balteata), and the entomopathogenic nematode (EPN) Heterorhabditis bacteriophora. Changes in individual abiotic parameters had a strong influence on plant biomass, leaf wilting, sugar concentrations, protein levels, and benzoxazinoid contents.

Chemical host-seeking cues of entomopathogenic nematodes.

Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) are obligate parasites that infect a broad range of insect species. Host-seeking is a crucial step for EPN infection success and survival. Yet, the identity and ecological functions of chemicals involved in host-seeking by EPNs remain overlooked.

Fusiform Activity Distinguishes Between Subjects With Low and High Xenophobic Attitudes Toward Refugees.

This study analyzes how people's attitudes to the European refugee crisis (ERC) correspond to selected psychological state and trait measures and impact the neural processing of media images of refugees. From a large pool of respondents, who filled in an online xenophobia questionnaire, we selected two groups (total = 38) with the same socio-demographic background, but with opposite attitudes toward refugees. We found that a negative attitude toward refugees (high xenophobia - HX) was associated with a significantly higher conscientiousness score and with a higher trait aggression and hostility, but there was no group effect connected with empathy, fear, and anxiety measures.

Three challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic represents for psychiatry.

The evolving COVID-19 pandemic and its likely consequences add to the already substantial psychosocial burden caused by global problems, existential threats and heightened uncertainty, which are increasingly confronting communities worldwide. Here we briefly outline three challenges for clinical psychiatry and research, related to coping with the social epidemiology of negative moods, stress and socially mediated traumatic experiences brought on by these adverse developments.

Illuminating Smiles and Frowns: Visual-Affective Cueing Influences Viewer Perceptions of Page Layout Images.

The present research was motivated by the routine digital media practice of producing page layouts as composite images that include several unrelated pictures. We investigated whether or how visually highlighting affective and positional components of pictures in a viewer's field of vision might influence viewer perception and evaluation of the composite image. We examined combinations of visual, spatial, and affective features of cues in composite images to learn whether they affected the viewer's attentional capture of other affective information in the composite image and viewer's affective evaluations.

Effects of Novel Calpain Inhibitors in Transgenic Animal Model of Parkinson's disease/dementia with Lewy bodies.

Parkinson's disease (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) are neurodegenerative disorders of the aging population characterized by the accumulation of α-synuclein (α-syn). The mechanisms triggering α-syn toxicity are not completely understood, however, c-terminus truncation of α-syn by proteases such as calpain may have a role. Therefore, inhibition of calpain may be of value.

Mental Ill-Health and the Epidemiology of Representations.

One of major challenges facing contemporary psychiatry is the insufficient grasp of relationship between individual and collective mental pathologies. A long tradition of diagnosing "mental illness" of society-exemplified by Erich Fromm-stands apart from approach of contemporary social psychiatry and is not perceived as relevant for psychiatric discourse. In this Perspective article, I argue that it is possible to uphold the idea of a supra-individual dimension to mental health, while avoiding the obvious pitfalls involved in categorical diagnosing of society as suffering from mental illness.

Perception of direct vs. averted gaze in portrait paintings: An fMRI and eye-tracking study.

In this study, we use separate eye-tracking measurements and functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neuronal and behavioral response to painted portraits with direct versus averted gaze. We further explored modulatory effects of several painting characteristics (premodern vs modern period, influence of style and pictorial context). In the fMRI experiment, we show that the direct versus averted gaze elicited increased activation in lingual and inferior occipital and the fusiform face area, as well as in several areas involved in attentional and social cognitive processes, especially the theory of mind: angular gyrus/temporo-parietal junction, inferior frontal gyrus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Empathy-Related Responses to Depicted People in Art Works.

Existing theories of empathic response to visual art works postulate the primacy of automatic embodied reaction to images based on mirror neuron mechanisms. Arguing for a more inclusive concept of empathy-related response and integrating four distinct bodies of literature, we discuss contextual, and personal factors which modulate empathic response to depicted people. We then present an integrative model of empathy-related responses to depicted people in art works.

The predictive mind and the experience of visual art work.

Among the main challenges of the predictive brain/mind concept is how to link prediction at the neural level to prediction at the cognitive-psychological level and finding conceptually robust and empirically verifiable ways to harness this theoretical framework toward explaining higher-order mental and cognitive phenomena, including the subjective experience of aesthetic and symbolic forms. Building on the tentative prediction error account of visual art, this article extends the application of the predictive coding framework to the visual arts. It does so by linking this theoretical discussion to a subjective, phenomenological account of how a work of art is experienced.

Epilepsy, behavior, and art (Epilepsy, Brain, and Mind, part 1).

Epilepsy is both a disease of the brain and the mind. Brain diseases, structural and/or functional, underlie the appearance of epilepsy, but the notion of epilepsy is larger and cannot be reduced exclusively to the brain. We can therefore look at epilepsy from two angles.

A novel calpain inhibitor for treatment of transient retinal ischemia in the rat.

After an acute ischemia/reperfusion of the rat retina, the activation of cytotoxic proteases, including calpain, results in necrosis and apoptosis of retinal ganglion cells resulting in their degeneration. Using a systemically administered calpain inhibitor that crosses the blood-retinal barrier would provide for novel systemic intervention that protects the retina from acute injury and loss of function. Herein, we study a novel calpain peptide inhibitor, cysteic-leucyl-argininal (CYLA), in an in-vivo rat model of retinal ischemia to determine functional protection using electroretinography.

Prevention of axonal injury using calpain inhibitor in chronic progressive experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

Axonal injury is the major correlate of permanent disability in neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), especially in secondary-progressive MS which follows relapsing-remitting disease course. Proteolytic enzyme, calpain, is a potential candidate for causing axonal injury. Most current treatment options only target the inflammatory component of MS.