Aggressive MOGAD with bilateral corticospinal tract lesions following infection with Jamestown Canyon virus.

We present a case of a rare viral encephalitis due to Jamestown Canyon virus precipitating a severe phenotype of myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody-associated disease (MOGAD) with novel neuroimaging findings.

Supportive environments during the substance use disorder epidemic in the rural United States: Provider support for interventions and expectations of interactions with providers.

BACKGROUND: Harm reduction interventions, including SSP (Syringe Services Programs) and MAT (Medications for Addiction Treatment) have demonstrated the potential to help stem the epidemic of opioid use disorder. However, for that potential to be realized, people must expect that healthcare providers will be supportive if they ever seek care for substance use. METHODS: This cross-sectional study investigated perceptions of provider support for SSP and MAT in the general population of 14 states selected specifically for 50 percent of the sample to include participants from rural counties with high rates of non-medical opioid use and injection. A survey of 3096 adults in 14 states and 675 counties within the Appalachian and Midwestern regions of the United States (collected between November of 2019 and May of 2020) examined the association between perceptions of provider support for harm reduction interventions, community members' trust of community healthcare providers, and expectations for patient-provider interactions involving disclosure of non-medical drug use. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Path analysis supported the hypothesis that perceptions of provider support for harm reduction interventions predict positive expectations about patient-provider interactions and that trust in providers mediates this association. The model fit well among participants who reported past non-medical use of drugs and those who did not. In contrast to other research suggesting that trust in providers may be inconsequential during the initial stages of care, the current research suggests that trust may shape expectations about patient-provider interactions even before people use drugs. Communication of support for harm reduction interventions by providers may play an important role in promoting health care-seeking in populations that use drugs currently or who may use drugs in the future in high-risk rural areas of the United States.

Intergroup conflict self-perpetuates via meaning: Exposure to intergroup conflict increases meaning and fuels a desire for further conflict.

We investigated whether violent conflict provides individuals with a sense of meaning that they are hesitant to let go of, thus contributing to the perpetuation of intergroup conflict. Across a wide variety of contexts, we found that making intergroup conflict salient increased the meaning people found in conflict and, in turn, increased support for conflict-perpetuating beliefs, ideologies, policies, and behaviors. These effects were detected among participants exposed to reminders of intergroup conflict (the American Revolutionary War and the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS; Studies 1A and 1B), participants living through actual intergroup conflict (the 2014 Israel-Gaza war; Study 2), and participants who perceived actual intergroup conflicts to be larger versus smaller in scope (the November 2015 Paris attacks; Studies 3 and 4). We also found that directly manipulating the perceived meaning in conflict (in the context of the 2014 NYC "hatchet attack"; Study 5) led to greater perceived meaning in life in general and thereby greater support for conflict escalation. Together, these findings suggest that intergroup conflict can serve as a source of meaning that people are motivated to hold on to. We discuss our findings in the context of the meaning making and threat compensation literatures, and consider their implications for perspectives on conflict escalation and resolution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

How School Norms, Peer Norms, and Discrimination Predict Interethnic Experiences Among Ethnic Minority and Majority Youth.

This research tests how perceived school and peer norms predict interethnic experiences among ethnic minority and majority youth. With studies in Chile (654 nonindigenous and 244 Mapuche students, M = 11.20 and 11.31 years) and the United States (468 non-Hispanic White and 126 Latino students, M = 11.66 and 11.68 years), cross-sectional results showed that peer norms predicted greater comfort in intergroup contact, interest in cross-ethnic friendships, and higher contact quality, whereas longitudinal results showed that school norms predicted greater interest in cross-ethnic friendships over time. Distinct effects of school and peer norms were also observed for ethnic minority and majority youth in relation to perceived discrimination, suggesting differences in how they experience cross-ethnic relations within school environments.

On the neural implausibility of the modular mind: Evidence for distributed construction dissolves boundaries between perception, cognition, and emotion.

Firestone & Scholl (F&S) rely on three problematic assumptions about the mind (modularity, reflexiveness, and context-insensitivity) to argue cognition does not fundamentally influence perception. We highlight evidence indicating that perception, cognition, and emotion are constructed through overlapping, distributed brain networks characterized by top-down activity and context-sensitivity. This evidence undermines F&S's ability to generalize from case studies to the nature of perception.

A Behavioral Assay for Mechanosensation of MARCM-based Clones in Drosophila melanogaster.

Because of the structural and functional homology to the hair cells of the mammalian inner ear, the neurons that innervate the Drosophila external sense organs provide an excellent model system for the study of mechanosensation. This protocol describes a simple touch behavior in fruit flies which can be used to identify mutations that interfere with mechanosensation. The tactile stimulation of a macrochaete bristle on the thorax of flies elicits a grooming reflex from either the first or third leg. Mutations that interfere with mechanotransduction (such as NOMPC), or with other aspects of the reflex arc, can inhibit the grooming response. A traditional screen of adult behaviors would have missed mutants that have essential roles during development. Instead, this protocol combines the touch screen with mosaic analysis with a repressible cell marker (MARCM) to allow for only limited regions of homozygous mutant cells to be generated and marked by the expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP). By testing MARCM clones for abnormal behavioral responses, it is possible to screen a collection of lethal p-element mutations to search for new genes involved in mechanosensation that would have been missed by more traditional methods.

Rally effects, threat, and attitude change: an integrative approach to understanding the role of emotion.

Rally 'round the flag effects (J. E. Mueller, 1970) represent sudden and dramatically powerful situation-specific shifts in attitudes toward the American president. However, the extant literature has yet to fully clarify the nature of the psychological dynamics associated with this effect. These ambiguities reflect fundamental differences of opinion among scholars on some very basic questions such as whether overtly experienced emotion should mediate these attitudinal shifts or whether these changes reflect more general shifts in conservative ideology. Across 4 experiments, the authors sought to gain greater clarity on these and other important matters using a multimethod approach in which the authors varied whether participants viewed documentary footage of the 9/11 attacks (Experiments 1-2), generated autobiographical memories of that event (Experiment 3), or retrieved nonpolitical memories from their past (Experiment 4). The authors discuss the relevance of the present findings for theory and research across a variety of different theoretical and methodological paradigms, including social psychological models of threat, emotional appraisal models, and the political science literature.