When things get digital and huge

When Things Get Worse before they Get Better: Regulatory Fit and Average- Reward Learning in a Dynamic Decision-Making Environment

This work explores the influence of motivation on choice behavior in a dynamic decision-making environment, where the payoffs from each choice depend on one’s recent choice history. Previous research reveals increased levels of exploratory choice among participants in a regulatory fit. The present study placed promotion and prevention-focused participants in a dynamic environment for which opti...

Rumination and Age: Some Things Get Better

Rumination has been defined as a mode of responding to distress that involves passively focusing one's attention on symptoms of distress without taking action. This dysfunctional response style intensifies depressed mood, impairs interpersonal problem solving, and leads to more pessimistic future perspectives and less social support. As most of these results were obtained from younger people, i...

The things that get measured are the things that get done.

Staying Cool when Things Get Hot: Emotion Regulation Modulates Neural Mechanisms of Memory Encoding

During times of emotional stress, individuals often engage in emotion regulation to reduce the experiential and physiological impact of negative emotions. Interestingly, emotion regulation strategies also influence memory encoding of the event. Cognitive reappraisal is associated with enhanced memory while expressive suppression is associated with impaired explicit memory of the emotional event...

When sparks get old

Sparks are transient local elevations of Ca ion concentration observed in different types of muscle cells. Such local Ca2+ signals can be provoked in skeletal muscle cells by altering the osmotic pressure of the extracellular solution. In this issue, Weisleder et al. (see p. 639) demonstrate that the Ca2+ response to osmotic stress is substantially altered in aged muscle. The study presents evi...