Emotional communication in the context of joint attention for food stimuli: effects on attentional and affective processing.

Guided by distinct theoretical frameworks (the embodiment theories, shared-signal hypothesis, and appraisal theories), we examined the effects of gaze direction and emotional expressions (joy, disgust, and neutral) of virtual characters on attention orienting and affective reactivity of participants while they were engaged in joint attention for food stimuli contrasted by preference (disliked, moderately liked, and liked). The participants were exposed to videos of avatars looking at food and displaying facial expressions with their gaze directed either toward the food only or toward the food and participants consecutively. We recorded eye-tracking responses, heart rate, facial electromyography (zygomatic, corrugator, and levator labii regions), and food wanting/liking. The avatars' joy faces increased the participants' zygomatic reactions and food liking, with mutual eye contact boosting attentional responses. Eye contact also fostered disgust reactions to disliked food, regardless of the avatars' expressions. The findings show that joint attention for food accompanied by face-to-face emotional communication elicits differential attentional and affective responses. The findings appear consistent with the appraisal theories of emotion.

Children's reward responses to picture- and odor-cued food stimuli: a developmental analysis between 6 and 11years.

The reward system is largely involved in the control of food intake. Whether components of this system (i.e., wanting and liking) change during development remains understudied, as well as how proximate factors (sensory cues, motivational state) modulate reward reactivity across development. We examined the developmental pattern of wanting and liking for sensorily-cued food stimuli in 6-11year old children as a function of the child's motivational state (hunger/satiety), gender, and the nature of foods. School children were exposed before or after their lunch on alternative days to visual and odor stimuli representing different categories of familiar foods. Their task was to rate wanting and liking of pictures and odorants of pizza, meat, vegetables, fruits, and chocolate. The following results were found: (1) While liking appeared to be stable from age 6 to 11, more particularly for visually-cued foods, wanting decreased, as well as did subjective hunger perception; (2) there were smaller or absent state-effects in 7-to-9-year-olds; (3) reward ratings were higher in boys than in girls; (4) reward ratings of vegetables were the lowest at all ages. These results suggest that wanting, but not liking, is developmentally variable over childhood, and that this variation depends on age, gender, motivational state (hunger/satiety), the nature of the food and the modality of the sensory cue representing it. Such developmental changes are discussed in relation to biological (adiposity rebound) and cognitive (dietary restraint) factors influencing the motivation to eat during middle (6-7years) and late (9-11years) childhood.

Orofacial reactivity to the sight and smell of food stimuli. Evidence for anticipatory liking related to food reward cues in overweight children.

Whether food liking may be a risk factor of overconsumption and overweight/obesity remains a controversial issue. So far, most studies used subjective reports to assess consummatory behavior, approaches that might overlook subtle or implicit hedonic changes to sensory properties of foods. Therefore, we used a cue-exposure approach by recording different measures of hedonic processes (orofacial reactivity, self-rated pleasantness, food preference) in 6-11 years old overweight (n=20) and normal-weight (n=20) children. Children were exposed to the smell and sight of high and low-energy density food stimuli and to non-food stimuli during pre- and post-prandial states. Their facial and verbal responses were videotaped and parent's reports of children's eating styles and appetitive traits were collected using the Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ). Results showed that orofacial reactivity, as an objective measure of anticipatory liking, was more discriminative than self reports, with overweight children displaying more lip sucking than normal-weight children when exposed to high energy food pictures and to food odorants. Orofacial reactivity to food cues was also associated with BMI and children's eating styles (food responsiveness, emotional overeating, and desire to drink). Finally, overweight children classified more frequently non-food odorants as members of the food category during the pre-prandial state than during the post-prandial state, suggesting a possible influence of affective/motivational bias on odor categorization. Our findings suggest that orofacial responsiveness may be relevant to assess the sensitivity to energy-dense food reward cues in overweight children and for signaling, as an index of anticipatory liking, a potential risk for the development of overweight/obesity.

Effects of nitric oxide on bovine polymorphonuclear functions.

The effects of nitric oxide (NO) on the functionality of polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs) in bovine milk or blood were investigated. In 2 experiments, mastitis was induced by infusing both hind quarters with saline containing Escherichia coli endotoxins. In addition, the left hind quarter was infused with aminoguanidine, an inhibitor of the inducible form of NO synthase (iNOS). At various times after infusion, somatic cells were isolated from milk samples, and superoxide (O2-) production induced by phorbol myristate acetate was evaluated. In both experiments, the addition of aminoguanidine had no inhibitory effect on the number of milk somatic cells or on their O2- production. The effect of NO and iNOS inhibitors on the functionality of bovine PMNs isolated from blood was investigated in vitro. The neutrophils did not produce NO. A neutrophil:monocyte co-culture system was used to study the effect of NO derived from monocytes on O2- production by bovine neutrophils. Neither NO derived from activated monocytes nor the iNOS inhibitors aminoguanidine and L-N6-(1-iminoethyl)lysine had an effect on the ability of bovine neutrophils to release O2-. Moreover, aminoguanidine did not affect the ability of bovine neutrophils to phagocytose bacteria. These results suggest that inhibition of NO release during inflammation does not interfere with the migration of immune cells to the site of infection or the ability of these cells to destroy pathogens. Thus, NO does not appear to play a major role in the control of the functions of bovine neutrophils.

Synthesis and evaluation of 4-(1-aminoalkyl)-N-(4-pyridyl)cyclohexanecarboxamides as Rho kinase inhibitors and neurite outgrowth promoters.

The influence of stereochemistry and alkyl side chain length on the bioactivity of the Rho kinase inhibitor Y-27632 [(+)-1, R=Me] was examined by the synthesis of (+)- and (-)-1, and two alkyl chain analogs (+)- and (-)-2 (R=n-propyl) and (-)-3 (R=n-octyl) as well as their evaluation in enzymatic and neurite outgrowth assays.