Does Sexual and Emotional Behavior Differ Between Sexual Partners That Do Not Disclose HIV Status?

Objective: The objective of the study was to analyze whether the disclosure of HIV serological status among sexual partners is associated with differences in sexual affective behavior. Methods: Cross-sectional study was carried out with 173 participants in a specialized assistance service on the treatment of people with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Data were collected through interviews. Results: Our results show that from the participants who did not disclose their HIV status and who were sexually active, most had multiple sexual partners (44.6%), used combined methods of prevention (75.4%), had casual partners (63.0%), used condoms (66.2%), and had sexual intercourse while under the influence of alcohol (56.9%). The variables i.e., number of partners (p = 0.010) and type of relationship (p <0.001) showed statistical differences. Conclusion: Sexual affective behavior variables influenced the decision about disclosing HIV seropositivity to sexual partners that establish different forms of sexual partnerships.

Influences of Caregiving on Development: A Sensitive Period for Biological Embedding of Predictability and Safety Cues

Across species, caregivers exert a powerful influence on the neural and behavioral development of offspring. Increasingly, both animal and human research has highlighted specific patterns in caregivers’ behavior that may be especially important early in life, as well as neurobiological mechanisms linking early caregiving experiences with long-term affective behavior. Here we delineate evidence for an early sensitive period during infancy and toddlerhood when caregiver inputs that are predictable and associated with safety may become biologically embedded via influences on corticolimbic circuitry involved in emotion regulation. We propose that these caregiver signals prime corticolimbic circuitry to be receptive to later stage-specific caregiver influences, such as caregivers’ external regulation of children’s emotional reactivity. Following adversity that disrupts the predictability and safety associated with caregivers during this sensitive period, accelerated maturation of children’s corticolimbic circuitry may foreshorten the protracted period of plasticity and caregiver influence that is characteristic of humans. This work has implications for both prevention and intervention efforts targeting children exposed to adversity early in life.

Neonatal Anesthesia and dysregulation of the Epigenome

Each year, millions of infants and children are anesthetized for medical and surgical procedures. Yet, a substantial body of preclinical evidence suggests that anesthetics are neurotoxins that cause rapid and widespread apoptotic cell death in the brains of infant rodents and non-human primates. These animals have persistent impairments in cognition and behavior many weeks or months after anesthesia exposure, leading us to hypothesize that anesthetics do more than simply kill brain cells. Indeed, anesthetics cause chronic neuropathology in neurons that survive the insult, which then interferes with major aspects of brain development, synaptic plasticity, and neuronal function. Understanding the phenomenon of anesthesia-induced developmental neurotoxicity is of critical public health importance because clinical studies now report that anesthesia in human infancy is associated with cognitive and behavioral deficits. In our search for mechanistic explanations for why a young and pliable brain cannot fully recover from a relatively brief period of anesthesia, we have accumulated evidence that neonatal anesthesia can dysregulate epigenetic tags that influence gene transcription such as histone acetylation and DNA methylation. In this review, we briefly summarize the phenomenon of anesthesia-induced developmental neurotoxicity. We then discuss chronic neuropathology caused by neonatal anesthesia, including disturbances in cognition, socio-affective behavior, neuronal morphology, and synaptic plasticity. Finally, we present evidence of anesthesia-induced genetic and epigenetic dysregulation within the developing brain that may be transmitted intergenerationally to anesthesia-naïve offspring.

Delineation of an insula-BNST circuit engaged by struggling behavior that regulates avoidance in mice

Active responses to stressors involve motor planning, execution, and feedback. Here we identify an insular cortex to BNST (insula→BNST) circuit recruited during restraint stress-induced active struggling that modulates affective behavior. We demonstrate that activity in this circuit tightly follows struggling behavioral events and that the size of the fluorescent sensor transient reports the duration of the struggle event, an effect that fades with repeated exposure to the homotypic stressor. Struggle events are associated with enhanced glutamatergic- and decreased GABAergic signaling in the insular cortex, indicating the involvement of a larger circuit. We delineate the afferent network for this pathway, identifying substantial input from motor- and premotor cortex, somatosensory cortex, and the amygdala. To begin to dissect these incoming signals, we examine the motor cortex input, and show that the cells projecting from motor regions to insular cortex are engaged shortly before struggle event onset. This study thus demonstrates a role for the insula→BNST pathway in monitoring struggling activity and regulating affective behavior.

Laughter and smiling facial expression modelling for the generation of virtual affective behavior

Laughter and smiling are significant facial expressions used in human to human communication. We present a computational model for the generation of facial expressions associated with laughter and smiling in order to facilitate the synthesis of such facial expressions in virtual characters. In addition, a new method to reproduce these types of laughter is proposed and validated using databases of generic and specific facial smile expressions. In particular, a proprietary database of laugh and smile expressions is also presented. This database lists the different types of classified and generated laughs presented in this work. The generated expressions are validated through a user study with 71 subjects, which concluded that the virtual character expressions built using the presented model are perceptually acceptable in quality and facial expression fidelity. Finally, for generalization purposes, an additional analysis shows that the results are independent of the type of virtual character’s appearance.