Much of the existing research on disordered eating has centered on the drive for thinness, which is most commonly observed in girls and women. The male standard of bodily attractiveness, however, is bigger, bulkier, and more muscular. Are boys and men motivated to be big and muscular in the same way that girls and women are motivated to be thin? The authors constructed a 15-item survey and administered it to 197 adolescents. The findings showed that the drive for muscularity measure displayed good reliability; that individuals high in the drive were more likely to be boys who were trying to gain both weight and muscle mass; that the drive was related to poor self-esteem and higher levels of depression among boys, but not among girls; and that the drive for muscularity was relatively unrelated to the drive for thinness.

The current study assessed the construct validity of the Drive for Muscularity Scale (DMS; D. R.McCreary & D. K. Sasse, 2000) using both lower and higher order exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In a sample of male and female high school and college students, lower order EFAs showed that a 2-factor structure emerged for men (muscularity attitudes and behaviors), but not for women, although 11 of the 15 items overlapped across gender. A higher order EFA using the male 2-factor structure revealed the presence of a single, higher order DMS factor in both genders. It is argued that the overall DMS score can be used in samples of both men and women. However, the attitude and behavioral DMS subscales can be used validly only in men.

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BMY 21502, a substituted pyrrolidionone, has been found to enhance a simple form of learning in older rabbits. In humans, this simple type of learning, classical conditioning of the eyeblink response, declines in normal aging and is seriously impaired in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We have demonstrated that eyeblink classical conditioning reliably discriminates patients diagnosed with probable AD from non-demented, age-matched elderly subjects. Older organisms can be classically conditioned, but they condition at a much slower rate than younger organisms. Our preliminary analyses indicate age differences in distribution of protein kinase C in the hippocampus. Here we also report that older rabbits that are administered two different doses of BMY 21502 classically condition at a rate approximating that of young rabbits.