Associative meaning may be assessed with prototype methodology, which yields a list of features of the concept ordered according to their rated importance. Volasertib Our theory concerns individual differences in a concept’s associative meaning:

A personal template reveals a person’s idiosyncratic associative meaning. It is possible to assess the degree to which a personal template matches the corresponding prototype. The theory distinguishes among three types of concepts. One type, for example, specifies a particular behavior to be predicted, for example, a person who is likely to commit suicide, and features of the prototype would include predictors of suicidal behavior. According to the theory, the most prototypical features are (under specifiable conditions) valid predictors,

and people with a strong template-to-prototype match possess more valid knowledge about the concept than do people with a weak template-to-prototype match. Other types of concepts cannot be validated (e.g., those describing subjective experiences). In that case, a strong template-to-prototype match does not reflect a person’s degree of valid knowledge. The authors provide three applications of the theory.”
“Asthma and chronic sinusitis are inexplicably common airway diseases that are linked to atopy and allergic inflammation. T helper type 2 (Th2) cells and the associated cytokines are believed to play crucial pathogenic roles in asthma, but Dichloromethane dehalogenase the environmental factors that instigate allergic selleck screening library airway disease remain poorly understood. Environmental proteinases are highly allergenic and are candidate inducers of airway Th2 responses. Determining the proteinases and their sources that are relevant to airway disease, however, remains challenging. In this Opinion, we summarize the evidence that implicates fungi as both a relevant source of allergenic proteinases and a potential cause of asthma, atopy and chronic sinusitis through airway infection. Clarification of the extrinsic causes

of these processes will markedly improve diagnosis, prognosis and therapy.”
“Using exposure to morphine- and saline-paired sides alternatively as the extinction training procedure, we find that post-retrieval extinction training enhances or hinders the extinction of morphine-induced conditioned place preference (CPP) dependent on the retrieval-extinction training intervals. Here, we examine the influence of post-retrieval extinction training with repeated paired testing on extinction of morphine-induced CPP of rats. Our results demonstrate that paired-testing with a 10-min inter-test interval does not influence the extinction of CPP, while post-retrieval extinction training blocks the extinction of CPP with a 3-h retrieval-extinction interval. These results strongly indicate that the interval between exposure trials influences the outcome of exposure therapy in addiction treatment. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.