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Two experiments examined the role of numerical distance in updating numerical information in working memory. In the first experiment, participants had to memorize a new number only when it was smaller than a previously memorized number. In the second experiment, updating was based on an external signal, which removed the need to perform any numerical comparison. In both experiments, distance between the memorized number and the new one was manipulated. The results showed that smaller distances between the new and the old information led to shorter updating times. This graded facilitation suggests that the process by which information is substituted in the focus of attention involves maintaining the shared features between the new and the old number activated and selecting other new features to be activated. Thus, the updating cost may be related to amount of new features to be activated in the focus of attention. Keywords Working memory . Updating . Numerical distanceUpdating is a process which allows people to replace and modify the content of working memory (WM) in order to hold new information (Morris & Jones, 1990), and it is considered a fundamental executive function in cognitive architecture (Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, & Howerter, 2000). To investigate this process, tasks have been designed which involved simultaneously maintaining different elements in memory, some of which have to be replaced by new information. Many studies have examined the mechanisms involved in the selective access to the content of WM or in replacing outdated information (Garavan, 1998 . However, little study has been given to the possible role played by the relationship between the information maintained in memory and the new information that replaces it. This study aims to address this question by investigating how the numerical distance between the stored and the new numerical information influences the updating process.Updating tasks have been used to study selective access in WM since Garavan (1998) introduced the double counter task. In this task, participants had to keep two counters in memory for two different figures. Participants updated the appropriate mental count by adding one unit when the corresponding figure was presented. Garavan's main finding was that the time used to update the information was longer when there was a switch from one counter to the other, that is, when the counter to be updated was different from the counter previously updated. These results suggest that people do not have simultaneous access to all of the content of WM, but can only attend to one stimulus at a time. This effect fits the theoretical models which conceive WM as a hierarchical system of active representations in long-term memory (Cowan, 1995;Oberauer, 2002). In this system, Oberauer (2002) has proposed the existence of a focus of attention in WM which maintains the representation which a person is aware of at a given moment and on which the next

Título: Ansiedad matemática y su relación con capacidades inhibitorias e inteligencia emocional percibida. Resumen: La ansiedad a las matemáticas es un problema emocional que repercute negativamente en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes en distintos niveles educativos. El presente estudio analiza la relación entre este tipo de ansiedad y ciertos procesos cognitivos y emocionales. En primer lugar se pretendía determinar la relación entre la ansiedad a las matemáticas y ciertas habilidades inhibitorias dirigidas a eliminar o evitar el acceso a la conciencia de pensamientos intrusivos. En segundo lugar, interesaba comprobar la posible relación de la ansiedad a las matemáticas con la propia percepción del estudiante de sus habilidades emocionales. A tal fin se administraron a 187 estudiantes de primer curso del Grado de Psicología diferentes medidas de ansiedad a las matemáticas, a la estadística, de habilidades inhibitorias y de inteligencia emocional percibida. Los resultados mostraron que los estudiantes con puntuaciones más altas en ansiedad a las matemáti-cas presentaban una mayor susceptibilidad a experimentar pensamientos intrusivos, una menor eficacia a la hora de suprimirlos así como puntuaciones inferiores en comprensión y regulación de sus emociones. Los procesos inhibitorios y emocionales estudiados pueden resultar útiles para entender la naturaleza de la ansiedad matemática. Palabras clave: Ansiedad matemática; inhibición; pensamientos intrusivos; inteligencia emocional percibida.Abstract: Math anxiety has been found to be an emotional problem that has a negative effect on students' academic performance across different levels of education. This type of anxiety could be related to certain cognitive and emotional processes. A first objective was to examine the relationship between math anxiety and certain inhibitory abilities responsible of eliminating intrusive thoughts or preventing them access to consciousness. A second aim was to determine the extent in which math anxiety and students' self-perceptions of their own emotional abilities are related. To this end, 187 first-year undergraduate psychology students were administered different measures to assess math anxiety, statistics anxiety, inhibitory abilities, and perceived emotional intelligence. The results showed that students with high math anxiety were more likely to experience intrusive thoughts, were less effective at suppressing these thoughts, and reported lower scores in understanding and regulating their emotions. These cognitive mechanisms and emotional abilities are of relevance to better understand the nature of this type of anxiety.

Endogenous neurogenesis in stroke is insufficient to replace the lost brain tissue, largely due to the lack of a proper biological structure to let new cells dwell in the damaged area. We hypothesized that scaffolds made of hyaluronic acid (HA) biomaterials (BM) could provide a suitable environment to home not only new neurons, but also vessels, glia and neurofilaments. Further, the addition of exogenous cells, such as adipose stem cells (ASC) could increase this effect. Athymic mice were randomly assigned to a one of four group: stroke alone, stroke and implantation of BM, stroke and implantation of BM with ASC, and sham operated animals. Stroke model consisted of middle cerebral artery thrombosis with FeCl3. After 30 days, animals underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and were sacrificed. Proliferation and neurogenesis increased at the subventricular zone ipsilateral to the ventricle and neuroblasts, glial, and endothelial cells forming capillaries were seen inside the BM. Those effects increased when ASC were added, while there was less inflammatory reaction. Three‐dimensional scaffolds made of HA are able to home newly formed neurons, glia, and endothelial cells permitting the growth neurofilaments inside them. The addition of ASC increase these effects and decrease the inflammatory reaction to the implant. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater 107B: 1598–1606, 2019.

The present study investigates the process of updating representations in working memory (WM) and how similarity between the information involved influences this process. In WM updating tasks, the similarity in terms of numerical distance between the number to be substituted and the new one facilitates the updating process. We aimed to disentangle the possible effect of two dimensions of similarity that may contribute to this numerical effect: numerical distance itself and common digits shared between the numbers involved. Three experiments were conducted in which different ranges of distances and the coincidence between the digits of the two numbers involved in updating were manipulated. Results showed that the two dimensions of similarity had an effect on updating times. The greater the similarity between the information maintained in memory and the new information that substituted it, the faster the updating. This is consistent both with the idea of distributed representations based on features, and with a selective updating process based on a feature overwriting mechanism. Thus, updating in WM can be understood as a selective substitution process influenced by similarity in which only certain parts of the representation stored in memory are changed.

Our data suggest that ALS could spread through CSF and that intracerebroventricular administration of cytotoxic ALS-CSF provokes changes similar to those found in sporadic forms of the disease.

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