Do contemplative practices make us more moral?

Contemplative practices are a staple of modern life and have historically been intertwined with morality. However, do these practices in fact improve our morality? The answer remains unclear because the science of contemplative practices has focused on unidimensional aspects of morality, which do not align with the type of interdependent moral functioning these practices aspire to cultivate. Here, we appeal to a multifactor construct, which allows the assessment of outcomes from a contemplative intervention across multiple dimensions of moral cognition and behavior. This offers an open-minded and empirically rigorous investigation into the impact of contemplative practices on moral actions. Using this framework, we gain insight into the effect of mindfulness meditation on morality, which we show does indeed have positive influences, but also some negative influences, distributed across our moral functioning.

Estimating statistical power for ERP studies using the auditory N1, Tb, and P2 components.

The N1, Tb, and P2 components of the event-related potential (ERP) are thought to reflect the sequential processing of auditory stimuli in the human brain. Despite their extensive use in biological, cognitive, and clinical neuroscience, there are no guidelines for how to appropriately power ERP studies using these components. In the present study, we investigated how the number of trials, number of participants, effect magnitude, and study design influenced statistical power. Using Monte Carlo simulations of ERP data from a passive listening task, we determined the probability of finding a statistically significant effect in 58,900 experiments repeated 1,000 times each. We found that as the number of trials, number of participants, and effect magnitude increased, so did statistical power. We also found that increasing the number of trials had a bigger effect on statistical power for within-subject designs than for between-subject designs, and that within-subject designs required a smaller number of trials and participants to provide the same level of statistical power for a given effect magnitude than between-subject designs. These results show that it is important to carefully consider these factors when designing ERP studies, rather than relying on tradition or anecdotal evidence. To improve the robustness and reproducibility of ERP research, we have built an online statistical power calculator (https://bradleynjack.shinyapps.io/ErpPowerCalculator), which we hope will allow researchers to estimate the statistical power of previous studies, as well as help them design appropriately-powered studies in the future.

Motivational and cognitive pathways to medical help-seeking for Alzheimer's disease: a cognitive impairment response model.

OBJECTIVES: Relationships among cognitive and motivational factors in predicting medical help-seeking for Alzheimer's disease (AD) symptoms were tested. METHOD: Community residents awaiting jury service (N = 280) completed questionnaires, including responses to a vignette depicting prototypical early symptoms of AD in a hypothetical mother. Cognitive responses to the vignette included AD symptom identification and AD attribution. Affective-motivational responses to vignettes were symptom impact and behavior appraisals. General knowledge of AD was assessed. Intention to seek medical help was the dependent variable. RESULTS: The impact and identification of AD symptoms, appraisals of risk, and attribution of the scenario to AD were modest, yet all contributed to prediction of medical-help-seeking intentions. The best fitting model had distinct but interrelated cognitive and motivational paths explaining 49% of the variability in medical help-seeking. Motivational variables had particularly important direct and indirect effects on help-seeking. DISCUSSION: Findings are interpreted as evidence of the importance of motivational as well as cognitive aspects of perceptions of illness behavior in another person. The substantial impact of the tested variables on the desired outcome of medical help-seeking may suggest options for public health efforts to enhance early medical help-seeking for AD that sets the stage for early intervention.

Use of raw glycerol to produce oil rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids by a thraustochytrid.

Glucose is the typical carbon source for producing microbial polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) with single cell microorganisms such as thraustochytrids. We assessed the use of a fish oil derived glycerol by-product (raw glycerol), produced by a fish oil processing plant, as a carbon source to produce single cell oil rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), notably docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). These results were compared to those obtained when using analytical grade glycerol, and glucose. The thraustochytrid strain tested produced similar amounts of oil and PUFA when grown with both types of glycerol, and results were also similar to those obtained using glucose. After 6 days of fermentation, approximately 320 mg/g of oil, and 145 mg/g of PUFA were produced with all carbon sources tested. All oils produced by our strain were 99.95% in the triacylglycerol form. To date, this is the first report of using raw glycerol derived from fish oil for producing microbial triglyceride oil rich in PUFA.