Mindfulness Meditation Improves Musical Aesthetic Emotion Processing in Young Adults

This study explored the behavioral and neural correlates of mindfulness meditation improvement in musical aesthetic emotion processing (MAEP) in young adults, using the revised across-modal priming paradigm. Sixty-two participants were selected from 652 college students who assessed their mindfulness traits using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). According to the 27% ratio of the high and low total scores, participants were divided into two subgroups: high trait group (n =31) and low trait group (n =31). Participants underwent facial recognition and emotional arousal tasks while listening to music, and simultaneously recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). The N400, P3, and late positive component (LPC) were investigated. The behavioral results showed that mindfulness meditation improved executive control abilities in emotional face processing and effectively regulated the emotional arousal of repeated listening to familiar music among young adults. These improvements were associated with positive changes in key neural signatures of facial recognition (smaller P3 and larger LPC effects) and emotional arousal (smaller N400 and larger LPC effects). Our results show that P3, N400, and LPC are important neural markers for the improvement of executive control and regulating emotional arousal in musical aesthetic emotion processing, providing new evidence for exploring attention training and emotional processing. We revised the affecting priming paradigm and E-prime 3.0 procedure to fulfill the simultaneous measurement of music listening and experimental tasks and provide a new experimental paradigm to simultaneously detect the behavioral and neural correlates of mindfulness-based musical aesthetic processing.

Impaired odor identification ability and olfactory hedonic capacity in children with elevated autistic traits

Background: Atypical olfactory function in autism spectrum disorder has been documented in numerous studies, but little is known about its occurrence in individuals with autistic traits. The aim of the current study was to investigate odor identification ability and olfactory hedonic capacity in children with autistic traits. Methods: The study included 91 children in a high autistic trait group, and 128 children in a low autistic trait group, as determined based on Short Autism Spectrum Quotient scores. The Universal Sniff (U-Sniff) test was used to measure odor identification ability and olfactory hedonic capacity. Olfactory hedonic capacity was also measured using the child’s version of the Chemosensory Pleasure Scale (CPS-C). Results: Children in the high autistic trait group exhibited significantly impaired odor identification and olfactory hedonic capacity measured by CPS-C than those in the low autistic trait group, but there was no significant difference in olfactory hedonic capacity measured by U-Sniff between the two groups. Impaired odor identification was significantly correlated with olfactory hedonic capacity measured by CPS-C. Limitations: Only a self-reporting questionnaire was used to screen children for autistic trait. The combination of a self-reporting scale and diagnosis by a clinical expert would result in more accurate screening of individuals for autistic trait.Conclusions: Children with high autistic trait exhibited poorer odor identification ability and olfactory trait hedonic capacity than children without high autistic trait. These results pertaining to odor identification and olfactory hedonic capacity may be the endophenotypic markers for autism spectrum disorder.

Predictability of bee community composition after floral removals differs by floral trait group

Plant–bee visitor communities are complex networks. While studies show that deleting nodes alters network topology, predicting these changes in the field remains difficult. Here, a simple trait-based approach is tested for predicting bee community composition following disturbance. I selected six fields with mixed cover of flower species with shallow (open) and deep (tube) nectar access, and removed all flowers or flower heads of species of each trait in different plots paired with controls, then observed bee foraging and composition. I compared the bee community in each manipulated plot with bees on the same flower species in control plots. The bee morphospecies composition in manipulations with only tube flowers remaining was the same as that in the control plots, while the bee morphospecies on only open flowers were dissimilar from those in control plots. However, the proportion of short- and long-tongued bees on focal flowers did not differ between control and manipulated plots for either manipulation. So, bees within some functional groups are more strongly linked to their floral trait partners than others. And, it may be more fruitful to describe expected bee community compositions in terms of relative proportions of relevant ecological traits than species, particularly in species-diverse communities.

Evaluation of Hungarian Sporthorse mare performance tests

Results of the Hungarian Sporthorse mare performance tests were evaluated. Data from the period of 1993-2009 were used, coveringscores of 618 3-year-old and 310 4-year-old mares, 109 of them were tested at both ages. Seventeen traits were scored on the tests, whichcovered ten conformational, three free jumping performance and four movement analyses traits, respectively. Breeding value estimation wasbased on BLUP animal model. Test year, age and owner were included in the model as fixed effects. Variance components were estimatedwith VCE-6 software package. Heritabilities ranged from 0.32 (frame) to 0.50 (saddle region) for conformation traits, from 0.39 (jumpingstyle) to 0.49 (jumping ability and jumping skill) for free jumping traits and from 0.20 (walk) to 0.48 (canter) for movement analysis traits.Breeding value indexes were constructed for each trait group. Conformation index was computed based on the weighted scores of thebreeding values of conformational traits. The conformational score scales were used as weightings. Free jumping and movement indexescontain the proper breeding values with equal weights. A total index was also constructed using conformation index, two times the freejumping index and two times the movement index. Each breeding values and breeding value indexes were presented with the mean 100 andstandard deviation of 20 for the easier understanding.

Evolution in group-structured populations can resolve the tragedy of the commons

Public goods are the key features of all human societies and are also important in many animal societies. Collaborative hunting and collective defence are but two examples of public goods that have played a crucial role in the development of human societies and still play an important role in many animal societies. Public goods allow societies composed largely of cooperators to outperform societies composed mainly of non-cooperators. However, public goods also provide an incentive for individuals to be selfish by benefiting from the public good without contributing to it. This is the essential paradox of cooperation—known variously as the Tragedy of the Commons, Multi-person Prisoner's Dilemma or Social Dilemma. Here, we show that a new model for evolution in group-structured populations provides a simple and effective mechanism for the emergence and maintenance of cooperation in such a social dilemma. This model does not depend on kin selection, direct or indirect reciprocity, punishment, optional participation or trait-group selection. Since this mechanism depends only on population dynamics and requires no cognitive abilities on the part of the agents concerned, it potentially applies to organisms at all levels of complexity.

The Evolution of Cooperation in an Ecological Context : An Agent-Based Model

The social and behavioral sciences have a long-standing interest in the factors that foster selfish (or individualistic) versus altruistic (or cooperative) behavior. Since the 1960s, evolutionary biologists have also devoted considerable attention to this issue. In the last 25 years, mathematical models (reviewed in Wilson and Sober 1994) have shown that, under particular demographic conditions, natural selection can favor traits that benefit group members as a whole, even when the bearers of those traits experience reduced reproductive success relative to other members of their group. This process, often referred to as "trait group selection" (D. S. Wilson 1975) can occur when the population consists of numerous, relatively small "trait groups," defined as collections of individuals who influence one another's fitness as a result of the trait in question. For example, consider a cooperative trait such as alarm calling, which benefits only individuals near the alarm caller. A trait group would include all individuals whose fitness depends on whether or not a given individual gives an alarm call. If the cooperative trait confers sufficiently large reproductive benefits on the average group member, it can spread. This is because trait groups that happen to include a large proportion of cooperators will send out many more offspring into the population as a whole than will groups containing few, or no cooperators. Thus, even though noncooperators out reproduce cooperators within trait groups (because they experience the benefits of the presence of cooperators without incurring the costs), this advantage can be offset by differences in rates of reproduction between trait groups. Numerous models of group selection (Wilson and Sober 1994) show that whether cooperative traits can spread depends on the relative magnitude of fitness effects at these two levels of selection (within and between trait groups). In addition, there is a growing body of empirical evidence for the operation of group selection in nature (e.g., Colwell 1981; Breden and Wade 1989; Bourke and Pranks 1995; Stevens et al. 1995; Seeley 1996; Miralles et al. 1997; Brookfield 1998) and under experimental conditions (reviewed in Goodnight and Stevens 1997).

Models of evolution

Different ways in which evolution can be modelled will be reviewed. Two asexual models - ‘Muller’s ratchet’ and a model due to Eigen and Schuster - both lead to the conclusion that the accuracy of replication must reach a limiting value, but the details are different. In classic population genetics models, difficulties arise if fitnesses depend on interactions with others. Two approaches - ‘trait group’ methods, and game theory - are discussed. If the interacting individuals are relatives, there is again a choice between the exact ‘neighbour-modulated fitness’ approach and the more intuitive ‘inclusive fitness’ method. A more drastic change in the nature of the model arises if the units of the evolving system are not individual organisms, but either genes or species. There are conceptual difficulties which must be clarified before species selection can be analysed mathematically.