The studies on the cAMP‐requiring mutants and their suppressors in the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, revealed that cAMP‐dependent protein phosphorylation is involved in the G1 phase of the cell cycle, in conjugation, and in the post‐meiotic stage of sporulation, and that inhibition of cAMP‐dependent protein phosphorylation is required to induce meiotic division.

The origins of Japan's medical ideas, which are deeply rooted in its religion, culture and history, are not widely understood in medical societies of other countries. We have taken up the task of summarising this tradition here so that some insight can be gained into the unique issues that characterise the practice of medicine in Japan. We borrow from the sayings of Tohkaku Wada, a medical philosopher of late eighteenth-century Japan, for a look at Japanese medical tradition. Wada's medical thought (...) was very much reflective of the Buddhism, Zen, and swordsmanship that informed eighteenth-century philosophy in Japan. His central concepts were “chu” and “sei”, that is, complete and selfless dedication to the patient and the practice of medicine. This paper explores Wada's thought, explaining it mainly from the standpoint of Japanese traditional culture. (shrink)

Although we have learned much about the neuropsychological control of facial expressions of emotion, there is still much work to do. We suggest that future work integrate advances in our theoretical understanding of the roles of volition and consciousness in the elicitation of emotion and the production of facial expressions with advances in our understanding of its underlying neurophysiology. We first review the facial musculature and the neural paths thought to innervate it, as well as previous attempts at understanding the (...) neural control of facial expressions of emotion, focusing on the voluntary-involuntary dichotomy and studies of hemispheric specialization. In the second section, we discuss four major aspects of the psychology of facial expressions of emotion that have particular import to their neurophysiological substrates. We offer these as a starting point for a better integration of psychological and neurophysiological perspectives in considering the neuropsychological control of facial expressions of emotion. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the problems of ``order in social situations'' using a computer simulation of iterated N -person prisoners' dilemma game. It has been claimed that, in the case of the 2 -person prisoners' dilemma, repetition of games and the reciprocal use of the ``tit-for-tat'' strategy promote the possibility of cooperation. However, in cases of N -person prisoners' dilemma where N is greater than 2, the logic does not work effectively. The most essential problem is so called ``sanctioning (...) problems''. In this paper, firstly, I discuss the ``sanctioning problems'' which were introduced by Axelrod and Keohane in 1986. Based on the model formalized by Axelrod, I propose a new model, in which I added a mechanism of players' payoff changes in the Axelrod's model. I call this mechanism norm-internalization and call our model `` norm-internalization game ''. Second, by using the model, I investigated the relationship between agents' norm-internalization (payoff-alternation) and the possibilities of cooperation. The results of computer simulation indicated that unequal distribution of cooperating norm and uniform distribution of sanctioning norm are more effective in establishing cooperation. I discuss the mathematical features and the implications of the results on social science. (shrink)

Human beings express affinity (Shinwa‐kan in Japanese language) in communicating transactive engagements among healthcare providers, patients and healthcare robots. The appearance of healthcare robots and their language capabilities often feature characteristic and appropriate compassionate dialogical functions in human–robot interactions. Elements of healthcare robot configurations comprising its physiognomy and communication properties are founded on the positivist philosophical perspective of being the summation of composite parts, thereby mimicking human persons. This article reviews Mori's theory of the Uncanny Valley and its consequent debates, (...) and examines "Uncanny" relations with generating healthcare robot conversational content with artificial affective communication (AAC) using natural language processing. With healthcare robots provoking influential physical composition and sensory expressions, the relations in human–healthcare robot transactive engagements are argued as supportive of the design and development in natural language processing. This implies that maintaining human–healthcare robot interaction and assessing the eeriness situations explained in the Uncanny Valley theory are crucial positions for healthcare robot functioning as a valuable commodity in health care. As such, physical features, language capabilities and mobility of healthcare robots establish the primacy of the AAC with natural language processing as integral to healthcare robot–human healthcare practice. (shrink)

BackgroundEmotional regulation is important for adolescents’ adaptive development. Preventive interventions for anxiety and depression are necessary for reducing the development of disorders later in life, and emotional regulation is a potentially relevant factor.ObjectiveWe investigated the effects of a mindfulness-based psychological education and prevention program [the Mindfulness and Awareness Program ] on the mental health of junior high school students in Japan.MethodsOur MAP primarily focused on mindfulness meditation to improve emotional regulation, thereby reducing depression and anxiety. The MAP comprised eight sessions (...) administered by a school counselor in a school setting. All participants were 12–13-year-old adolescents from nine classes in two Japanese schools. The program was provided to the intervention group, wherein students were educated on emotional expression, emotional cognition, and emotional regulation. The control group received regular school counseling services.ResultsCompared with the control group, the intervention group showed significant improvement in emotional regulation and a decrease in depression and generalized anxiety. The effect was greater at the follow-up assessment than at the immediate post-intervention assessment, and greater in female students.ConclusionOur mental health prevention program exhibited efficacy in reducing depression and anxiety and enhancing emotional regulation in early adolescence. Further, it appeared to be more effective for female adolescents. (shrink)

To preserve postoperative brain function, it is important for neurosurgeons to fully understand the brain's structure, vasculature, and function. Intraoperative high-frequency electrical stimulation during awake craniotomy is the gold standard for mapping the function of the cortices and white matter; however, this method can only map the “focal” functions and cannot monitor large-scale cortical networks in real-time. Recently, an in vivo electrophysiological method using cortico-cortical evoked potentials induced by single-pulse electrical cortical stimulation has been developed in an extraoperative setting. By (...) using the CCEP connectivity pattern intraoperatively, mapping and real-time monitoring of the dorsal language pathway is available. This intraoperative CCEP method also allows for mapping of the frontal aslant tract, another language pathway, and detection of connectivity between the primary and supplementary motor areas in the frontal lobe network. Intraoperative CCEP mapping has also demonstrated connectivity between the frontal and temporal lobes, likely via the ventral language pathway. Establishing intraoperative electrophysiological monitoring is clinically useful for preserving brain function, even under general anesthesia. This CCEP technique demonstrates potential clinical applications for mapping and monitoring large-scale cortical networks. (shrink)

如来蔵思想、法華経、中観、唯識、日本仏教等、仏教思想の様々な問題に関する批判的研究23編(和文15編、英文8編)を収録。.

Researchers have been interested in what retrieval process is responsible for overgeneral autobiographical memories (OGM) in depression. Previous cross-sectional studies demonstrated that, for negatively valenced cues, directly retrieved OGM, rather than generatively retrieved OGM, are associated with depression. However, longitudinal evidence of this relationship is still lacking and needs to be tested. We conducted a re-analysis of the online computerised memory specificity training (c-MeST) data to examine whether directly retrieved OGM for negative cues prospectively predicts high levels of depression 1 (...) month later. Participants who met the criteria of current major depressive disorders (N = 116; n = 58 in the c-MeST group and n = 58 in the control group) recalled autobiographical memories for positive and negative cues and judged each retrieval process (i.e. direct or generative). The results supported our prediction, and directly retrieved OGM for negative cues predicted high levels of depressive symptoms 1 month later even after controlling for the group effect, baseline depressive symptoms, executive functioning and rumination. Exploratory analysis showed that direct retrieval of specific memories prospectively predicted low levels of depression. These results support the theory that elevated accessibility of negatively valenced general memory representations is a vulnerability factor for depressive symptoms. (shrink)

Crew Pairing is one of the most important and difficult problems for airline companies. Nets to fuel costs, the crew costs constitute the largest cost of airlines, and the crew costs depend on the quality of the solution to the pairing problem. Conventional systems have been used to solve a daily model, which handles only regular flights with many simplifications, so a lot of corrections are needed to get a feasible solution and the quality of the solution is not so (...) high. A fully dated model, which handles regular flights and irregular flights simultaneously, is extremely hard and has not been solved directly hitherto. The number of irregular flights tend to increase in Europe and Japan, hence the resolution of the practical fully dated pairing system is desired. This paper presents a new approach which solves directly the fully dated crew pairing by Genetic Algorithms. GA is improved with stochastic processes to attack the fully dated model, and many heuristics are included in the decoding mecanism of the GA. For several hundred flights per day for fully dated 2 months scheduling period, the system found better or equivalent solutions to the human scheduler’s without any simplification from 5 to 20 times faster. (shrink)

Although the neural bases of the brain associated with movement disorders in children with developmental coordination disorder are becoming clearer, the information is not sufficient because of the lack of extensive brain function research. Therefore, it is controversial about effective intervention methods focusing on brain function. One of the rehabilitation techniques for movement disorders involves intervention using motor imagery. MI is often used for movement disorders, but most studies involve adults and healthy children, and the MI method for children with (...) DCD has not been studied in detail. Therefore, a review was conducted to clarify the neuroscientific basis of the methodology of intervention using MI for children with DCD. The neuroimaging review included 20 magnetic resonance imaging studies, and the neurorehabilitation review included four MI intervention studies. In addition to previously reported neural bases, our results indicate decreased activity of the bilateral thalamus, decreased connectivity of the sensory-motor cortex and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus, bilateral posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, cerebellum, and basal ganglia, loss of connectivity superiority in the abovementioned areas. Furthermore, reduction of gray matter volume in the right superior frontal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus, lower fractional anisotropy, and axial diffusivity in regions of white matter pathways were found in DCD. As a result of the review, children with DCD had less activation of the left brain, especially those with mirror neurons system and sensory integration functions. On the contrary, the area important for the visual space processing of the right brain was activated. Regarding of characteristic of the MI methods was that children observed a video related to motor skills before the intervention. Also, they performed visual-motor tasks before MI training sessions. Adding action observation during MI activates the MNS, and performing visual-motor tasks activates the basal ganglia. These methods may improve the deactivated brain regions of children with DCD and may be useful as conditioning before starting training. Furthermore, we propose a process for sharing the contents of MI with the therapist in language and determining exercise strategies. (shrink)

CALHM1 was recently demonstrated to be a voltage‐gated ATP‐permeable ion channel and to serve as a bona fide conduit for ATP release from sweet‐, umami‐, and bitter‐sensing type II taste cells. Calhm1 is expressed in taste buds exclusively in type II cells and its product has structural and functional similarities with connexins and pannexins, two families of channel protein candidates for ATP release by type II cells. Calhm1 knockout in mice leads to loss of perception of sweet, umami, and bitter (...) compounds and to impaired gustatory nerve responses to these tastants. These new studies validate the concept of ATP as the primary neurotransmitter from type II cells to gustatory neurons. Furthermore, they identify voltage‐gated ATP release through CALHM1 as an essential molecular mechanism of ATP release in taste buds. We discuss these new findings, as well as unresolved issues in peripheral taste signaling that we hope will stimulate future research. (shrink)

We discuss four methodological issues regarding cross-cultural judgment studies of facial expressions of emotion involving design, sampling, stimuli, and dependent variables. We use examples of relatively recent studies in this area to highlight and discuss these issues. We contend that careful consideration of these, and other, cross-cultural methodological issues can help researchers minimize methodological errors, and can guide the field to address new and different research questions that can continue to facilitate an evolution in the field’s thinking about the nature (...) of culture, emotion, and facial expressions. (shrink)

The origins and consequences of warfare or largescale intergroup violence have been subject of long debate. Based on exhaustive surveys of skeletal remains for prehistoric hunter-gatherers and agriculturists in Japan, the present study examines levels of inferred violence and their implications for two different evolutionary models, i.e., parochial altruism model and subsistence model. The former assumes that frequent warfare played an important role in the evolution of altruism and the latter sees warfare as promoted by social changes induced by agriculture. (...) Our results are inconsistent with the parochial altruism model but consistent with the subsistence model, although the mortality values attributable to violence between hunter-gatherers and agriculturists were comparable. (shrink)

This study considers food commercials featuring the term otona, meaning ‘adult, mature person’. Although the term is not explicitly gendered, this study demonstrates that food advertising using otona becomes a conduit for the construction of gendered lifestyle formulations via consumption practices offering consumers entrance into a range of gendered adult life stage practices. Unlike the socially aspirational consumption practices described by Agha, the consumption of inexpensive otona-marked products, which cost the same as their non-otona-marked counterparts but are intended by commercial (...) producers to be viewed by prospective consumers as more mature, is linked to the process of entering adulthood. However, whereas male performance of otona masculinity is shown in the commercials to be based on psychological maturity and economic and social independence, female performance of otona femininity is determined by the commercial producers and the product manufacturers to be based on successful performance of external beauty, sexuality and support of male social sphere members. This article shows how otona becomes a catch-all for aspirational gendered performance, arguing that terms like otona are particularly suited for normative gendered performance presentations. (shrink)

The geographically inequitable distribution of physicians has long posed a serious social problem in Japan. The government tackled this problem by establishing and managing Jichi Medical University (JMU) and regional quotas (RQs) for medical schools. JMU/RQs recruit local students who hope to work as physicians in rural areas, educate them for 6 years without tuition (JMU) or with scholarship (RQs), and after graduation, assign them to their home prefectures for 9 years, including 4–6 years of rural service. JMU/RQs entrants now (...) occupy 11.6% of all medical school entrants. While JMU/RQs have been shown to be highly effective in securing physicians for rural areas, ethical issues related to these policies have been raised, such as whether the government truly needs to implement these policies using tax money, and whether it is acceptable to limit the personal freedoms of the physicians. In this paper, we discuss these issues from the perspectives of social justice, utilitarianism, luck egalitarianism, liberty, medical professionalism and consistency with national health insurance and the Japanese Constitution. We conclude that JMU/RQs are necessary and ethically valid policies, and also propose some institutional improvements to better secure the integrity and maturity of these systems. (shrink)

According to Wierzbicka, one of the core values of Polish culture is sincerity and emotional frankness, in this study we tested this assumption analyzing display rules operating between friends. 100 respondents completed modified version of the Display Rule Assessment Inventory. Results show that Polish participants endorse more expression with close friends than with acquaintances and strangers. The obtained differences between those groups were quite large and similar to a pattern typical for collectivistic cultures. On the other hand, we reported high (...) level of overall expressivity, typical of individualism. Such a high expressivity was found for all studied emotions, but pride, which is consistent with previous research on self-presentational modesty in Polish culture. (shrink)

We posit a model of emotion and nonverbal behavior (NVB) that incorporates a perspective of consciousness. We leverage an understanding of the neural pathways innervating NVB to describe the complexity of its neural architecture and the links between those pathways and mental states. We suggest that all NVB are activated by both cortical and subcortical structures, allowing for unconscious, coordinated movements across multiple channels as well as conscious, less coordinated movements; that mental states are associated with both cortical and subcortical (...) structures; and thus that NVB will occur in multiple channels, both unconsciously and consciously, and differ across time. We discuss the implications of this model for future theory and research. (shrink)

In recent years, quite a few evolutionary psychologists have come to embrace a heuristic interpretation of the discipline. They claim that, no matter how methodologically incomplete, adaptive thinking works fine as a good heuristic that effectively reduces the hypothesis space by generating novel and promising hypotheses that can eventually be empirically tested. The purpose of this article is to elucidate the use of heuristics in evolutionary psychology, thereby clarifying the role adaptive thinking has to play. To that end, two typical (...) heuristic interpretations—Machery’s "bootstrap strategy" and Goldfinch’s heuristically streamlined evolutionary psychology—are examined, focusing on the relationship between adaptive thinking and heuristics. The article draws two primary conclusions. The first is that the reliability of the heuristic hypothesis generation procedure should count no less than the conclusiveness of the final testing procedure in establishing scientific facts; nature does not always get the last word. Philosophy also counts. The second is that adaptive thinking constitutes a core heuristic in evolutionary psychology that provides the discipline with its raison d'être, but this is only possible when adaptive thinking is substantiated with sufficient historical underpinnings. (shrink)

IntroductionPrevious transcranial magnetic stimulation studies have revealed that the activity of the primary motor cortex ipsilateral to an active hand plays an important role in motor control. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the ipsi-M1 excitability would be influenced by goal-directed movement and laterality during unilateral finger movements.MethodTen healthy right-handed subjects performed four finger tapping tasks with the index finger: simple tapping task, Real-word task, Pseudoword task, and Visually guided tapping task. In the Tap task, the subject (...) performed self-paced simple tapping on a touch screen. In the real-word task, the subject tapped letters displayed on the screen one by one to create a Real-word. Because the action had a specific purpose, this task was considered to be goal-directed as compared to the Tap task. In the Pseudoword task, the subject tapped the letters to create a pseudoword in the same manner as in the Real-word task; however, the word was less meaningful. In the VT task, the subject was required to touch a series of illuminated buttons. This task was considered to be less goal-directed than the Pseudoword task. The tasks were performed with the right and left hand, and a rest condition was added as control. Single- and paired-pulse TMS were applied to the ipsi-M1 to measure corticospinal excitability and short- and long-interval intracortical inhibition in the resting first dorsal interosseous muscle.ResultsWe found the smaller SICI in the ipsi-M1 during the VT task compared with the resting condition. Further, both SICI and LICI were smaller in the right than in the left M1, regardless of the task conditions.DiscussionWe found that SICI in the ipsi-M1 is smaller during visual illumination-guided finger movement than during the resting condition. Our finding provides basic data for designing a rehabilitation program that modulates the M1 ipsilateral to the moving limb, for example, for post-stroke patients with severe hemiparesis. (shrink)