Using a passive-avoidance task in rats, we found that memory acquisition was enhanced by the FAAH inhibitor URB597 or by the PPAR-alpha agonist WY14643, and these enhancements

were blocked by the PPAR-alpha antagonist MK886. These findings demonstrate novel mechanisms click here for memory enhancement by activation of PPAR-alpha, either directly by administering a PPAR-alpha agonist or indirectly by administering a FAAH inhibitor.”
“Compassion is one of the essential components which enable individuals to enter into and maintain relationships of caring. Compassion tends to motivate us to help people who are emotionally suffering. It is also known that a feeling of intrinsic reward may occur as a result of experiencing compassion for others. this website We conducted this study to understand the neural nature of compassion for other people’s emotional state.

Twenty-one healthy normal volunteers participated in this study. We used a 2 x 2 factorial design in which each subject was asked to assume a compassionate attitude or passive attitude while viewing the sad or neutral

facial affective pictures during functional magnetic imaging.

The main effect of a compassionate attitude was observed in the medial frontal cortex, the subgenual frontal cortex, the inferior frontal cortex and the midbrain regions. A test of the interaction between a compassionate attitude and sad facial affect revealed significant activations in the midbrain-ventral striatum/septal network region.

The results of this study suggest that taking a compassionate attitude towards other www.selleck.co.jp/products/cobimetinib-gdc-0973-rg7420.html people’s sad expressions modulate the

activities of the midbrain-ventral striatum/septal region network, which is known to play a role in the prosocial/social approach motivation and its accompanied rewarding feeling. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Young and nondemented older adults were tested on a continuous recognition memory task requiring visual pattern separation. During the task, some objects were repeated across trials and some objects, referred to as lures, were presented that were similar to previously presented objects. The lures resulted in increased interference and an increased need for pattern separation. For each object, the participant was asked to indicate whether (1) this was the first time the object was seen (new), (2) the object was seen previously (old), or (3) the object was similar to a previous object (similar). Older adults were able to correctly identify objects as old or new as well as young adults; however, older adults were impaired when identifying lures as similar. Therefore, pattern separation may be less efficient in older adults resulting in poorer recognition memory performance when interference is increased.