Evaluation of Biopesticides for Management of Middle East-Asia Minor 1 (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) in Florida.

The sweetpotato whitefly, MEAM1, is a pest known to significantly impact tomato development and yields through direct damage and virus transmission. To manage this pest, the current study compared the effectiveness of various insecticide rotations. Field trials included rotations involving synthetic insecticides, biochemicals, and microbial agents, applied according to their highest labeled concentrations.

Monitoring the susceptibility of Bemisia tabaci Middle East-Asia Minor 1 (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) to afidopyropen, cyantraniliprole, dinotefuran, and flupyradifurone in south Florida vegetable fields.

Bemisia tabaci Middle East-Asia Minor 1 (MEAM1) is a significant pest that damages a wide range of high-value vegetable crops in south Florida. This pest has demonstrated the ability to develop resistance to various insecticide groups worldwide. Monitoring the resistance levels of MEAM1 populations and maintaining baseline susceptibility data are crucial for the long-term effectiveness of insecticide management strategies.

Effect of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Prefrontal Inhibition in Schizophrenia Patients with Persistent Auditory Hallucinations: A Study on Antisaccade Task Performance.

Background: Deficient prefrontal cortex inhibitory control is of particular interest with regard to the pathogenesis of auditory hallucinations (AHs) in schizophrenia. Antisaccade task performance is a sensitive index of prefrontal inhibitory function and has been consistently found to be abnormal in schizophrenia.

Methods: This study investigated the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on antisaccade performance in 13 schizophrenia patients.

What's good for the goose is not good for the gander: Age and gender differences in scanning emotion faces.

Objectives: Research indicates that older adults' (≥60 years) emotion recognition is worse than that of young adults, young and older men's emotion recognition is worse than that of young and older women (respectively), older adults' looking at mouths compared with eyes is greater than that of young adults. Nevertheless, previous research has not compared older men's and women's looking at emotion faces so the present study had two aims: (a) to examine whether the tendency to look at mouths is stronger amongst older men compared with older women and (b) to examine whether men's mouth looking correlates with better emotion recognition.

Method: We examined the emotion recognition abilities and spontaneous gaze patterns of young (n = 60) and older (n = 58) males and females as they labelled emotion faces.

Visual exploration in Parkinson's disease and Parkinson's disease dementia.

Parkinson's disease, typically thought of as a movement disorder, is increasingly recognized as causing cognitive impairment and dementia. Eye movement abnormalities are also described, including impairment of rapid eye movements (saccades) and the fixations interspersed between them. Such movements are under the influence of cortical and subcortical networks commonly targeted by the neurodegeneration seen in Parkinson's disease and, as such, may provide a marker for cognitive decline.

Understanding hypnosis metacognitively: rTMS applied to left DLPFC increases hypnotic suggestibility.

Introduction: According to the cold control theory of hypnosis (Dienes and Perner, 2007), hypnotic response occurs because of inaccurate higher order thoughts of intending. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is a region likely involved in constructing accurate higher order thoughts. Thus, disrupting DLPFC with low frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) should make it harder to be aware of intending to perform an action.

The role of the temporal lobe in contextual sentence integration: A single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation study.

Neuroimaging studies have shown the left temporal lobe to be important for contextual sentence integration. This study used single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to establish stronger causal evidence for the role of this brain region and also explored the involvement of the same cortical region in the right hemisphere (RH). In a semantic decision task, sentences with different cloze probability endings (highly expected, unexpected, and semantically anomalous) were presented to 59 participants.

Visuo-spatial representations of the alphabet in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes.

Visuo-spatial representations of the alphabet (so-called 'alphabet forms') may be as common as other types of sequence-space synaesthesia, but little is known about them or the way they relate to implicit spatial associations in the general population. In the first study, we describe the characteristics of a large sample of alphabet forms visualized by synaesthetes. They most often run from left to right and have salient features (e.

Keeping an eye on the truth? Pupil size changes associated with recognition memory.

During recognition memory tests participants' pupils dilate more when they view old items compared to novel items. We sought to replicate this "pupil old/new effect" and to determine its relationship to participants' responses. We compared changes in pupil size during recognition when participants were given standard recognition memory instructions, instructions to feign amnesia, and instructions to report all items as new.

Hypnotic suggestibility, cognitive inhibition, and dissociation.

We examined two potential correlates of hypnotic suggestibility: dissociation and cognitive inhibition. Dissociation is the foundation of two of the major theories of hypnosis and other theories commonly postulate that hypnotic responding is a result of attentional abilities (including inhibition). Participants were administered the Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C.

The effects of task instructions on pro and antisaccade performance.

In the antisaccade task participants are required to overcome the strong tendency to saccade towards a sudden onset target, and instead make a saccade to the mirror image location. The task thus provides a powerful tool with which to study the cognitive processes underlying goal directed behaviour, and has become a widely used index of "disinhibition" in a range of clinical populations. Across two experiments we explored the role of top-down strategic influences on antisaccade performance by varying the instructions that participants received.

IQ as a predictor of functional outcome in schizophrenia: a longitudinal, four-year study of first-episode psychosis.

Studies of established schizophrenia have consistently found that cognitive function predicts social and clinical outcomes. The findings from first-episode studies have been more variable, with only some studies reporting predictive relationships. We tested the possibility that an index of general cognitive ability, IQ, may be a more sensitive and reliable predictor of outcome in first-episode schizophrenia than specific measures of memory and executive function.

Duration of untreated psychosis and social function: 1-year follow-up study of first-episode schizophrenia.

Background: In first-episode schizophrenia, longer duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) predicts poorer outcomes.

Aims: To address whether the relationship between DUP and outcome is a direct causal one or the result of association between symptoms and/or cognitive functioning and social functioning at the same time point.

Method: Symptoms, social function and cognitive function were assessed in 98 patients with first-episode schizphrenia at presentation and 1 year later.

Age differences in emotion recognition skills and the visual scanning of emotion faces.

Research suggests that a person's emotion recognition declines with advancing years. We examined whether or not this age-related decline was attributable to a tendency to overlook emotion information in the eyes. In Experiment 1, younger adults were significantly better than older adults at inferring emotions from full faces and eyes, though not from mouths.

Relationship between insight, cognitive function, social function and symptomatology in schizophrenia: the West London first episode study.

Objective: To examine the nature and clinical correlates of insight in first-episode schizophrenia, and how these differ from findings in established schizophrenia.

Method: Insight (and insight dimensions), clinical symptoms, neurocognitive function and social function were assessed in 94 patients with first-episode schizophrenia or schizophreniform disorder according to DSM-IV criteria.

Results: Greater global insight was associated with more severe depression.

Contingency knowledge is necessary for learned motivated behaviour in humans: relevance for addictive behaviour.

Aims: Many forms of human conditioned behaviour depend upon explicit knowledge of the predictive contingency between stimuli, responses and the reinforcer. However, it remains uncertain whether the conditioning of three key behaviours in drug addiction-selective attention, instrumental drug-seeking behaviour and emotional state--are dependent upon contingency knowledge. To test this possibility, we employed an avoidance procedure to generate rapidly these three forms of conditioned behaviour without incurring the methodological problems of drug conditioning.

Drug expectancy is necessary for stimulus control of human attention, instrumental drug-seeking behaviour and subjective pleasure.

Background: It has been suggested that drug-paired stimuli (S+) control addictive behaviour by eliciting an explicit mental representation or expectation of drug availability.

Aims: The aim of the present study was to test this hypothesis by determining whether the behavioural control exerted by a tobacco-paired S+ in human smokers would depend upon the S+ eliciting an explicit expectation of tobacco.

Design: In each trial, human smokers (n=16) were presented with stimuli for which attention was measured with an eyetracker.

Comorbid substance use and age at onset of schizophrenia.

Background: Substance use may be a risk factor for the onset of schizophrenia.

Aims: To examine the association between substance use and age at onset in substance use and age at onset in a UK, inner-city sample of people with recent-onset schizophrenia.

Method: The study sample consisted of 152 people recruited to the West London First-Episode Schizophrenia Study.

Cognitive heterogeneity in first-episode schizophrenia.

Background: Studies of chronic schizophrenia suggest that there are subgroups with different profiles of cognitive impairment.

Aims: To determine whether such heterogeneity is present at illness onset and any relationship to clinical variables.

Method: Ninety-three community patients with first-episode schizophrenia and 50 healthy volunteers were assessed for premorbid (Revised National Adult Reading Test) and current IQ, memory and executive function.

Risk-taking on tests sensitive to ventromedial prefrontal cortex dysfunction predicts early relapse in alcohol dependency: a pilot study.

Twenty one patients in a residential rehabilitation program fulfilling International Classification of Diseases-10 (ICD) criteria for alcohol dependence syndrome were recruited. On neuropsychological tests, alcohol dependent patients relapsed early if they made choices governed by immediate gain irrespective of later outcome, which is consistent with dysfunctional ventromedial-prefrontal cortex mediating the inability to resist the impulse to drink despite ultimately deleterious effects. The authors suggest that the use of neuropsychological tasks of decision making may have several advantages over more conventional strategies for studying alcoholism.

Does hormone therapy for the treatment of breast cancer have a detrimental effect on memory and cognition? A pilot study.

This pilot study examines whether hormone therapy for breast cancer affects cognition. Patients participating in a randomised trial of anastrozole, tamoxifen alone or combined (ATAC) (n=94) and a group of women without breast cancer (n=35) completed a battery of neuropsychological measures. Compared with the control group, the patients were impaired on a processing speed task (p=0.

Executive dysfunction in first-episode schizophrenia and relationship to duration of untreated psychosis: the West London Study.

Background: Many studies have demonstrated early generalised cognitive impairment in schizophrenia.

Aims: To examine executive function in first-episode schizophrenia, characterise the nature of the impairment and specify any relationships with symptoms and duration of untreated psychosis (DUP).

Method: Patients (n = 136) and normal controls (n = 81) were assessed with the Cambridge Automated Neuropsychological Test Battery, National Adult Reading Test IQ, and Scales for the Assessment of Positive and Negative Symptoms.