Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Psychological resilience refers to the process of effective and flexible adaptation in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, and other significant sources of stress. It helps the organism restore to a normal physiological and psychological status. Psychological resilience plays a major mediating role in the development of post-traumatic mental illness in individuals. It can predict the negative emotions after stress and determine the adaptation to stress. It has a significant influence on physical and mental health. Previous studies have shown that the hippocampus plays an important role in psychological resilience, and oxytocin may promote psychological resilience by modulating the hippocampus. However, the specific regulation mechanisms of them have not yet been systematically researched and elucidated. This review focuses on the role of oxytocin in the hippocampus on regulating psychological resilience and try to clarify the underlying mechanisms. It can help to further understand the mechanisms of psychological resilience and help to reduce the incidence of post-traumatic mental illness. Hippocampus regulates psychological resilience through the internal and external projection circuits. On the internal circuit of the hippocampus, studies suggest that “entorhinal cortex-dentate gyrus-CA3” circus in the hippocampus may improve psychological resilience by reducing the generalization or promoting the extinction of stress-related memory. On the external circuit of the hippocampus, the “dentate gyrus-amygdala-nucleus accumbens” circuit and the “hippocampus-nucleus accumbens” circuit may enhance or reduce psychological resilience by promoting reward and disgust, respectively. There is a opposite effect on psychological resilience from the projection of the hippocampus to nucleus accumbens directly or indirectly. The basolateral amygdala may play a key role. Studies have shown that stress can cause complex interactions among basolateral amygdala, hippocampus and nucleus accumbens, so more research is necessary conducted to better understand its specific mechanisms. Oxytocin may regulate the hippocampus through four ways to improve psychological resilience. First, oxytocin promotes the neurogenesis of the hippocampus under stress by acting on the oxytocin receptor at the hippocampal CA3 pyramidal neurons. This can reduce the stress-induced harm. Second, oxytocin reduces the sensitivity of mature neurons in ventral hippocampus to stress by stimulating dentate gyrus neurogenesis. This can enhance the function of “pattern separation” in the dentate gyrus–CA3 circuit and reduce the generalization of stress-associated memory. Third, oxytocin increases the synaptic cell signaling pathway kinase levels on the CA3-CA1 pathway and promotes the ability of adaptation to stress by rescuing stress-induced impairments in NMDA receptor-dependent long-term potentiation of hippocampal Schaffer collateral-CA1 synapses. At last, oxytocin interacts with glucocorticoids and catecholamine systems to increase oxytocin release. The oxytocin release can inhibit the function of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and reduce hippocampal glucocorticoid receptor levels. This protects the structure and function of the hippocampus from glucocorticoid damage and re-establishes brain homeostasis. So, oxytocin can further adjust the stress-related memory and enhance psychological resilience. At the same time, research suggests that oxytocin regulates psychological resilience by affecting the structure and function of the hippocampus, which might differ among individuals of different genders or experiences. In terms of individual diagnosis and treatment, it is necessary to combine these factors for reasonable treatment. Besides, the interaction between genes and the environment is also needed to be considered. To improve psychological resilience in a targeted manner, individual characteristics, interpersonal relationships, and emotional support needs to be considered in the treatment of stress-related mental illness. Finally, exploring the neural mechanisms of psychological resilience should be closely integrated with human research and animal research to make up for the deficiencies of each research. Future research should combine various technologies such as human brain imaging and animal neural circuits technologies to determine the fine brain structures and circuits that regulate psychological resilience.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Language is a complex lifelong faculty supported by the general cognitive system as well as the dynamic interactions between comprehension and production processes within the language system. Studies reported that while normal aging impairs important aspects of language production, most core processes of comprehension are robust. However, accumulating evidence suggests a decline in comprehension when comparing older adults with young ones. Thus it is plausible to assume that there might be a general degradation in older adults’ language capacity. The information-universal theories assume that the aging of language is contributed by the declines in general cognitive abilities including processing speed, working memory and inhibitory function, while the information-specific theories highlight the unique changes of linguistic representations and their connections in the brain, which may result in decreased interplay between comprehension and production. The current study investigated the relationships among language comprehension capacity, production capacity, and general cognitive abilities, and explored the factors that influence the aging of language processing. We employed two groups of participants (103 young adults and 114 older adults), and measured their general cognitive abilities and language capacities with different tasks. General cognitive abilities were assessed in three dimensions: processing speed by color judgment and numerical judgment tasks, working memory by digit span forward and backward tasks, and inhibitory function by STROOP color-word judgment task. Language comprehension and production capacities were measured at word, sentence and discourse processing levels, respectively. We first compared the performance between the two age groups, and then conducted hierarchical regression analyses to examine the contributions of information-universal and information-specific factors to language performance. Results showed lower scores in older adults than their young counterparts on all measures. The first hierarchical regression analyses revealed that there were differences between the older and the young groups, which presented not only in the contributions of general cognitive abilities to language capacities but also in the contributions of comprehension and production capacities to each other. For word processing, young adults’ performance was predicted by both general cognitive abilities and the other language capacities, while the former did not predict older adults’ performance; for sentence processing, young adults’ performance was predicted by general cognitive abilities (only in comprehension) and the other language capacities, while neither of them explained older adults’ performance; for discourse processing, young adults’ comprehension scores were predicted by their production capacity, while older adults’ scores of comprehension and production were predicted by their general cognitive abilities and comprehension capacity respectively. Results of the second hierarchical regression analyses indicated that both general cognitive abilities and the other language capacities contributed to the group differences in language performance, and the contributions of the former were larger than those of the latter. In sum, older adults show an overall age-related decline in general cognitive abilities, language comprehension and production capacities. We suggest that the aging of language processing is subject to both the information- universal factor as well as the information-specific factor, with the former reflected as the general degradation in cognitive abilities and the latter related to specific changes in the architecture of language system.
Subjects: Psychology >> Physiological Psychology submitted time 2020-10-17
Abstract： Psychological resilience refers to the process of effective and flexible adaptation in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats and other significant sources of stress. It helps the organism restore to a normal physiological and psychological status. Previous studies have shown that the hippocampus plays an important role in psychological resilience, and oxytocin may promote psychological resilience by modulating the hippocampus. Studies suggest that entorhinal cortex- dentate gyrus- CA3 circus in the hippocampus may improve resilience by reducing the generalization and regression of stress; dentate gyrus- amygdala- nucleus accumbens and hippocampus- nucleus accumbens circuits may enhance or reduce resilience by promoting reward and disgust respectively. Oxytocin regulates the hippocampus in four ways to improve psychological resilience. In ventral hippocampus, oxytocin reduces the sensitivity of mature neurons in ventral hippocampus to stress by stimulating dentate gyrus neurogenesis; Oxytocin stimulates hippocampal neurogenesis to enhance the function of “pattern separation” in the dentate gyrus–CA3 circuit and reduce the generalization of stress-associated memory; Oxytocin promotes the ability of adaptation to stress by rescuing stress-induced impairments in NMDAR-dependent LTP of hippocampal Schaffer collateral-CA1 synapses; Oxytocin decreases the expression of glucocorticoid receptor in hippocampus to re-establish homeostasis." " "
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2019-12-13
Abstract： Languages may differ in terms of the proximate units of phonological encoding in spoken word production. It is widely accepted that phonemes are the primary units used in Indo-European languages. However, it is controversial what the functional units (syllables or phonemes) are in Chinese spoken word production. In the framework of proximate unit principle hypothesis for Mandarin Chinese spoken word production, phonological content is activated in a syllable while its syllabic frame is retrieved. Both syllabic content and frame are linked sequentially and tone is also specified at this point. Crucially, syllables are retrieved at an early stage of word form encoding, and then the phonemes of the syllable are retrieved in parallel and linked to their position in the syllable frame. The present study investigated the temporal courses of syllables and phonemes in word production using an implicit priming paradigm, and electrophysiological signals were measured concurrently. Specifically, participants were young native Chinese speakers with low level of English ability for excluding the influence of the second language. In an implicit priming paradigm, four sets of word pairs served as experimental stimuli. Each set consisted of four pairs, and the first word of a pair was the cue word, while the second was the response word. In the homogeneous conditions, four response words in a set shared certain phonological properties. For instance, the four response words in a set were危机(/wei1ji1/, crisis), 围墙 (/wei2qiang2/, bounding wall), 尾巴 (/wei3ba/, tail), and 卫星(/wei4xing1/, satellite), which share the first syllable but not tone. The heterogeneous conditions used the same word pairs, but assigned them to sets in which they didn’t share any properties. Two homogeneous conditions (syllable shared and initial phoneme shared) were used in the study. Participants were asked to memorize the sets of four pairs of associate words, after which they were presented with the cue words, and were required to produce the response words. Behavioral results didn’t show any syllable or phoneme effects. EEG results revealed that syllable overlap conditions elicited significant effects in the time window of 100~400 ms, and the effect firstly showed up in the left and right anterior regions, following in the middle anterior region, and finally in the left and right anterior regions, right and middle posterior regions. While the phoneme effects only appeared between 500~600 ms after the cue words were presented, and were distributed in the right anterior and posterior regions. Both the syllabically and phonemically homogeneous conditions were characterized by more positive ERP waveforms when compared to the heterogeneous conditions. We suggested that syllable overlap effect arises at the early stage of phonological encoding, whereas the phoneme overlap effect possibly arises at the later stage of phonological encoding, or phonetic encoding in Chinese spoken word production. Our findings provide support for the assumption of the proximate unit principle. "
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