They Saw a Debate: Political Polarization Is Associated with Greater Multivariate Neural Synchrony When Viewing the Opposing Candidate Speak.

With rampant polarization in current U.S. politics, it seems as though political partisans with opposing viewpoints are living in parallel realities. Indeed, prior research shows that people's impressions/attitudes toward political candidates are intertwined with their political affiliation. The current study investigated the relationship between political affiliation and intersubject neural synchrony of multivariate patterns of activity during naturalistic viewing of a presidential debate. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 20 individuals varying in political affiliation underwent functional neuroimaging while watching the first debate between candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Pairs of participants with more polarized political affiliations were higher in neural synchrony in a system of brain regions involved in self-referential processing when viewing the opposing candidate speak compared with that candidate's supporters regardless of which extreme of the political spectrum they occupied. Moreover, pairs of political partisans matching in the candidate they supported were higher in neural synchrony when watching the candidate they opposed compared with the one they both supported. These findings suggest that political groups' shared understanding may be driven more by perceptions of outgroups than of their own party/candidates.

Expansion of contracted visual fields following treatment with pentoxifylline in two patients with coexistent peripheral vascular disease--case reports.

Pentoxifylline, a hemorheologic drug reputed to reduce blood viscosity, can be used to improve the microcirculation in peripheral vascular disease. The authors report on 2 patients who were being followed up for possible glaucoma and whose visual field constriction became worse at about the same time as their peripheral vascular symptoms began to increase in severity. Following initiation of treatment with oral pentoxifylline, their peripheral vascular complaints decreased and their visual fields gradually expanded over the next several months. This dual effect seemed more than a coincidence. It may in fact indicate that the same mechanism said to aggravate the peripheral ischemia (ie, increased blood viscosity) in patients with peripheral vascular disease may also have been the basis for the visual field contraction in these 2 patients, possibly by producing retinal ischemia. The reversal of the contracted visual fields would then seem to be due to the ameliorative effect of the pentoxifylline treatment on the blood viscosity.

Change in coronary venous PO2 following myocardial infarction in unanesthetized dogs.

Occlusion of either the anterior descending branch (LAD) or circumflex branch (CB) of the main left coronary artery was carried out in seven conscious dogs. Blood gases in the great cardiac vein and coronary sinus were determined before and after occlusion. The peripheral coronary pressure (PCP) in the occluded branch was also determined to provide an index of collateral blood flow. In dogs In which there occurred both an infarction and a delayed rise in PCP, venous PO2 from the occluded bed rose above the preocclusion value and also above the PO2 values of the nonoccluded bed. The rise in venous PO2 commenced about 18-24 hr after the coronary occlusion and paralleled the increase in PCP. In contrast, in dogs where following coronary occlusion there was either no infraction and a rapid rise in PCP, or infarction with a negligible rise in PCP, the venous PO2 did not change. The most plausible explanation for the rise in PO2 is that it represents the effect of collateral perfusion in an area of infarcted or ischemic myocardium in which oxygen consumption is depressed.