scholarly journals Identification of touch neurons underlying dopaminergic pleasurable touch and sexual receptivity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Middleton ◽  
Melanie Schaffler ◽  
Isabella Succi ◽  
William Foster ◽  
Mark Gradwell ◽  
...  

AbstractPleasurable touch during social behavior is the key to building familial bonds and meaningful connections. One form of social touch occurs during sex. Although sexual behavior is initiated in part by touch, and touch is ongoing throughout copulation, the identity and role of sensory neurons that transduce sexual touch remain unknown. A population of sensory neurons labeled by the G-protein coupled receptor Mrgprb4 detect stroking touch in mice1,2. Here, we study the social relevance of this population by genetically engineering mice to allow activation or ablation of Mrgprb4-lineage neurons and reveal that these neurons are required for sexual receptivity and sufficient to activate reward circuitry. Even in social isolation, optogenetic stimulation of Mrgprb4-lineage neurons through the back skin is sufficient to induce a conditioned place preference and a striking dorsoflexion resembling the lordotic copulatory posture in females. In the absence of Mrgprb4-lineage neurons, female mice no longer find male mounts rewarding: sexual receptivity is supplanted by aggression and a coincident decline in dopaminergic release in the mesolimbic reward pathway. In addition to sexual behavior, Mrgprb4-lineage neurons are also required for social postures induced by female-to-female back touch. Together, these findings establish that Mrgprb4-lineage neurons are the first neurons of a skin-to-brain circuit encoding the rewarding quality of social touch.

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Gan N.Yu. ◽  
Ponomareva L.I. ◽  
Obukhova K.A.

Today, worldview, spiritual and moral problems that have always been reflected in education and upbringing come to the fore in society. In this situation, there is a demand for philosophical categories. One of the priority goals of education in modern conditions is the formation of a reasonable, reflexive person who is able to analyze their actions and the actions of other people. Modern science is characterized by an understanding of the absolute value and significance of childhood in the development of the individual, which implies the need for its multilateral study. In the conditions of democratization of all spheres of life, the child ceases to be a passive object of education and training, and becomes an active carrier of their own meanings of being and the subject of world creation. One of the realities of childhood is philosophizing, so it is extremely timely to address the identification of its place and role in the world of childhood. Children's philosophizing is extremely poorly studied, although the need for its analysis is becoming more obvious. Children's philosophizing is one of the forms of philosophical reflection, which has its own qualitative specificity, on the one hand, and commonality with all other forms of philosophizing, on the other. The social relevance of the proposed research lies in the fact that children's philosophizing can be considered as an intellectual indicator of a child's socialization, since the process of reflection involves the adoption and development of culture. Modern society, in contrast to the traditional one, is ready to "accept" a philosophizing child, which means that it is necessary to determine the main characteristics and conditions of children's philosophizing.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cinzia Di Dio ◽  
Federico Manzi ◽  
Giulia Peretti ◽  
Angelo Cangelosi ◽  
Paul L. Harris ◽  
...  

Studying trust within human-robot interaction is of great importance given the social relevance of robotic agents in a variety of contexts. We investigated the acquisition, loss and restoration of trust when preschool and school-age children played with either a human or a humanoid robot in-vivo. The relationship between trust and the quality of attachment relationships, Theory of Mind, and executive function skills was also investigated. No differences were found in children’s trust in the play-partner as a function of agency (human or robot). Nevertheless, 3-years-olds showed a trend toward trusting the human more than the robot, while 7-years-olds displayed the reverse behavioral pattern, thus highlighting the developing interplay between affective and cognitive correlates of trust.


Author(s):  
Susan O’Neill

This chapter examines new materiality perspectives to explore the influence of social media on young people’s music learning lives—their sense of identity, community and connection as they engage in and through music across online and offline life spaces. The aim is to provide an interface between activity, materiality, networks, human agency, and the construction of identities within the social media contexts that render young people’s music learning experiences meaningful. The chapter also emphasizes what nomadic pedagogy looks like at a time of transcultural cosmopolitanism and the positioning of youth-as-musical-resources who “make up” new musical opportunities collaboratively with people/materials/time/space. This involves moving beyond the notion of music learning as an educational outcome to embrace, instead, a nomadic pedagogical framework that values and supports the process of young people deciphering and making meaningful connections with the world around them. It is hoped that implications stemming from this discussion will provide insights for researchers, educators, and policymakers with interests in innovative pedagogical approaches and the creation of new learning and digital cultures in music education.


2021 ◽  
pp. 102831532199849
Author(s):  
Nafsika Alexiadou ◽  
Zoi Kefala ◽  
Linda Rönnberg

This article focuses on “internationalization at home” (IaH) for education students in Swedish Universities and its significance for their professional formation and future practice. We draw on research in two large institutions and explore the perceptions and experiences of internationalization of home students in education. We find that while the “intercultural” understanding of students is well developed, the international and intercultural dimensions of experiencing IaH are limited, due to several institutional and learning environment contexts. This has consequences for the social dimensions of future teaching practice. In addition, the perception of the discipline as “national” is significant in shaping the outlook of students toward international questions and their own future personal and professional mobility. We contextualize these findings using documentary analysis and staff interviews, and argue that to achieve intercultural and international learning environments of quality, social relevance, and long-term social benefit, we need to rethink how internationalization perspectives are integrated in teacher education courses.


Sexes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-59
Author(s):  
Andrea Sansone ◽  
Angelo Cignarelli ◽  
Daniele Mollaioli ◽  
Giacomo Ciocca ◽  
Erika Limoncin ◽  
...  

Sentiment analysis (SA) is a technique aimed at extracting opinions and sentiments through the analysis of text, often used in healthcare research to understand patients’ needs and interests. Data from social networks, such as Twitter, can provide useful insights on sexual behavior. We aimed to assess the perception of Valentine’s Day by performing SA on tweets we collected between 28 January and 13 February 2019. Analysis was done using ad hoc software. A total of 883,615 unique tweets containing the word “valentine” in their text were collected. Geo-localization was available for 48,918 tweets; most the tweets came from the US (36,889, 75.41%), the UK (2605, 5.33%) and Canada (1661, 3.4%). The number of tweets increased approaching February 14. “Love” was the most recurring word, appearing in 111,981 tweets, followed by “gift” (55,136), “special” (34,518) and “happy” (33,913). Overall, 7318 tweets mentioned “sex”: among these tweets, the most recurring words were “sexy” (2317 tweets), “love” (1394) and “gift” (679); words pertaining to intimacy and sexual activity, such as “lingerie”, “porn”, and “date” were less common. In conclusion, tweets about Valentine’s Day mostly focus on the emotions, or on the material aspect of the celebration, and the sexual aspect of Valentine’s Day is rarely mentioned.


2014 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 590-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Connelly ◽  
Yiqun Yu ◽  
Xavier Grosmaitre ◽  
Jue Wang ◽  
Lindsey C. Santarelli ◽  
...  

Mechanosensitive cells are essential for organisms to sense the external and internal environments, and a variety of molecules have been implicated as mechanical sensors. Here we report that odorant receptors (ORs), a large family of G protein-coupled receptors, underlie the responses to both chemical and mechanical stimuli in mouse olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs). Genetic ablation of key signaling proteins in odor transduction or disruption of OR–G protein coupling eliminates mechanical responses. Curiously, OSNs expressing different OR types display significantly different responses to mechanical stimuli. Genetic swap of putatively mechanosensitive ORs abolishes or reduces mechanical responses of OSNs. Furthermore, ectopic expression of an OR restores mechanosensitivity in loss-of-function OSNs. Lastly, heterologous expression of an OR confers mechanosensitivity to its host cells. These results indicate that certain ORs are both necessary and sufficient to cause mechanical responses, revealing a previously unidentified mechanism for mechanotransduction.


i-Perception ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 204166951775017
Author(s):  
Séamas Weech ◽  
Nikolaus F. Troje

Depth-ambiguous point-light walkers are most frequently seen as facing-the-viewer (FTV). It has been argued that the FTV bias depends on recognising the stimulus as a person. Accordingly, reducing the social relevance of biological motion by presenting stimuli upside down has been shown to reduce FTV bias. Here, we replicated the experiment that reported this finding and added stick figure walkers to the task in order to assess the effect of explicit shape information on facing bias for inverted figures. We measured the FTV bias for upright and inverted stick figure walkers and point-light walkers presented in different azimuth orientations. Inversion of the stimuli did not reduce facing direction judgements to chance levels. In fact, we observed a significant facing away bias in the inverted stimulus conditions. In addition, we found no difference in the pattern of data between stick figure and point-light walkers. Although the results are broadly consistent with previous findings, we do not conclude that inverting biological motion simply negates the FTV bias; rather, inversion causes stimuli to be seen facing away from the viewer more often than not. The results support the interpretation that primarily low-level visual processes are responsible for the biases produced by both upright and inverted stimuli.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Ardhian Indra Darmawan ◽  
Shanti Wardhaningsih

Setiap manusia yang ada di dunia memiliki keyakinan yang dianut. Spiritual  adalah dasar dari kehidupan manusia dalam aktivitas kehidupan di dunia. Salah satu peristiwa yang terjadi dalam kehidupan adalah hubungan sosial antar manusia.  Perkembangan manusia dimulai dari bayi, balita, anak-anak, remaja, dewasa sampai lanjut usia. Masa remaja adalah fase transisi yang berada diantara fase anak - anakmenuju fase dewasa. Setiap fase perkembangan manusia dipengaruhi oleh beberapa faktor, salah satunya adalah faktor lingkungankeluarga dan spiritual. Abad 21 memberikan potensi adanya pergeseran nilai emosional dan sosial remaja ke arah negatif, seperti pergaulan bebas yang dilakukan oleh remaja. Data diambil  melalui PubMed, ProQuest, dan Google Cendekia menggunakan kata kunci: spiritual, sikap spiritual orang tua, perilaku sosial dan seksual remaja. Hasil dari delapan artikel yang diperoleh, diidentifikasi sebanyak empat tema, yaitu Spiritual dalam hubungan sosial, spiritual dalam perilaku dan kesehatan mental remaja, perilaku seksual berdasarkan budaya dan yang terkahir yaitu kontrol spiritual dalam perilaku dan pendidikan seksual. Hakekat dari nilai yang sosial yang terkandung dalam spiritual mampu memberikan dampak bagi kehidupan sosial remaja. Peran tingkat pengetahuan dan aplikasi nilai spiritual oleh orang tua dan lingkungan remaja tinggal mampu memberikan dampak bagi perilaku sosial remaja.  Perilaku sosial remaja yang didalamnya terdapat perilaku untuk memenuhi kebutuhan biologisnya yaitu perilaku seksual.  Remaja yang pengalaman hidupnya belum banyak, maka berisiko salah dalam mengambil keputusan untuk memenuhi kebutuhan dalam kehidupannya termasuk hubungan sosialnya. Meningkatnya pemahaman nilai spiritual akan mampu mengontrol perilaku yang dilakukan oleh remaja untuk memenuhi kebutuhan sosialnya. Kata kunci: peran spiritual, perilaku sosial dan seksual, remaja SPIRITUAL ROLE DEALING WITH SOCIAL AND SEXUAL BEHAVIOR OF YOUTH ABSTRACTEvery human being in the world have adopted beliefs. Spirituality is the foundation of human life in the world's life activity. One of the events that happen in life is the social relationships between people. Human development begins from infants, toddlers, children, teenagers, adults to elderly. Adolescence is a transitional phase that is between phases of a child - the child towards the adult phase. Each phase of human development is influenced by several factors, one of which is a spiritual family and environmental factors. The 21st century provides the potential for a shift in adolescent emotional and social values in the negative direction, such as promiscuity conducted by adolescents. Data retrieved via PubMed, ProQuest, and Google Scholar using keywords: spiritual, spiritual attitudes of parents, social behavior and sexual. Results from the eight articles obtained, four themes were identified, namely spiritual in social relationships, spiritual behavior and mental health of adolescents, sexual behavior based on culture and finally spiritual control in sexual behavior and education. The nature of the social values contained in the spiritual can provide an impact on the social life of adolescents. The role of the level of knowledge and application of spiritual values by parents and the environment of adolescents living is able to have an impact on adolescent social behavior. Adolescent social behavior in which there is behavior to meet biological needs, namely sexual behavior. Teenagers, whose life experiences are not many, then risk making the wrong decision to meet the needs in their lives, including social relationships. Increased understanding of spiritual values will be able to control the behavior carried out by adolescents to meet their social needs. Keywords: spiritual behavior, adolescents, adolescent sexual behavior 


Author(s):  
Fatri Hanifah

The reality, premarital sexual behavior almost increased every year in adolescents. The adolescents assumed that do activity of sex with homosexual or heterosexual likes daily activity, thereby they will feel degradation in social norm of adolescent itself. In this case, role of parents are very important to give strong social control through of education, protection, controling, and reinforcement the social norm in order that adolescents were avoided from premarital sexual behavior. Therefore, this research purposed to reveal how the relationship between social control of parents with premarital sex behavior in adolescents. This research used a quantitative of metode with kind the correlational of description. The result in this research was can get a not significant relationship between social control of parents with premarital sexual behavior in adolescents, it means that social control parents was not always influence premarital sexual behavior of adolescents. So that the parents must found the other factor to influence of premarital sexual behavior in adolescents to protected the adolescents from premarital sexual behavior.


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