Three decades of research into the "chemical imbalance" theory of mental disorders failed to pan out. The biological causes of most mental disorders remain unknown. However, it is now well understood that psychiatric drugs work by perturbing neurotransmitter systems, and that the brain, in response to this blocking of normal function, undergoes a…

Neurogranin (Ng), a PKC substrate, is abundantly expressed in brain regions important for cognitive functions. Deletion of Ng caused severe deficits in spatial learning and LTP in the hippocampal CA1 region of mice. These Ng-/- mice also exhibit deficits in the amplification of their hippocampal signaling pathways critical for learning and memory.…

An object that moves is spotted almost effortlessly; it "pops out." When the observer is stationary, a moving object is uniquely identified by retinal motion. This is not so when the observer is also moving; as the eye travels through space all scene objects change position relative to the eye producing a complicated field of retinal motion.…

This study explored the relations among ritualistic and compulsive-like behavior, fears, and neuropsychological performance in typically developing children between the ages of four and eight years. Forty-two children were administered a battery of neuropsychological tasks assessing response inhibition and set-shifting. Two parent-report…

This study investigates brain responses to violations of information structure in wh-question-answer pairs, with particular emphasis on violations of focus assignment in it-clefts (It was the queen that silenced the banker). Two types of ERP responses in answers to wh-questions were found. First, all words in the focus-marking (cleft) position…

Models of interhemispheric interference have been proposed as an explanation for the cause and maintenance of stuttering. One component of this model is attentional functioning and allocation. This study examined attentional functioning in 19 children who stuttered and 19 children who did not stutter using a standardized, commercially available…

Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) refers to the finding that retrieving a memory can impair subsequent recall of related memories. Here, the authors present a new model of how the brain gives rise to RIF in both semantic and episodic memory. The core of the model is a recently developed neural network learning algorithm that leverages regular…

In recent years there has been growing interest across the world in ways of developing children's thinking and learning skills. This interest has been fed by new knowledge about how the brain works and how people learn, and evidence that specific interventions can improve children's thinking and intelligence. Thinking skills are important because…

An unresolved issue in the study of sentence comprehension is whether the process of gap-filling is mediated by the construction of empty categories (traces), or whether the parser relates fillers directly to the associated verb's argument structure. We conducted an event-related potentials (ERP) study that used the violation paradigm to examine…

Children, Play, and Development, Fourth Edition, discusses the relationship of play to the physical, social, intellectual, and emotional growth of the child. Author Fergus P. Hughes focuses on the historical, sociocultural, and ethological context of play; the role of development in play; and the wide range of theories that provide a framework for…

Sectoral levelling funds are an arrangement aimed at alleviating a well-known theoretical problem of underinvestment in worker training because of free-rider behaviour of firms. In the Netherlands, collective agreements require firms to participate in such funds in a number of sectors. Using a comprehensive dataset of Dutch firms, we attempt to…

Elena has a psychiatric disability: bipolar (manic/depressive) disorder. Daniele suffers from depression. Both are serious cognitive disorders that have significant effects on learning, especially learning online. One of the problems students with psychiatric disabilities encounter is finding support in online environments, especially when 10, 50,…

Things are not going so well in small-town America. While the so-called "Great Recession" of the moment has focused considerable attention on the travails of Main Street and Middle America, the truth is that the troubles that plague such places have been a long time in the making. For the past 30 years, nonmetropolitan counties and the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ways second grade children signaled the meanings they made from pictures and print and to identify ways they signaled new meanings when transmediations between these two semiotic systems took place. The study was a mixed methods study using qualitative methods in a case study format for the first…

The purpose of the study was to make a qualitative assessment of the impact of school consolidation on several rural Nebraska communities that have recently lost their schools. This research uses a multiple-case study design with interviews conducted in three Nebraska communities. The data from this research fell into four broad themes: social…