The experience of positive emotions is an integral component of quality of life. Research suggests that cognitive deficits in persons with dementia may impede their ability to generate pleasurable moments and hence decrease their positive affect. Therefore, structured recreation activities may have the potential to significantly improve resident affect. However, differences in affect between ordinary time and recreation time are not well known. The present study used previously published structured-observation instruments to measure affect and behaviour among 35 dementia residents at two nursing homes in Japan during ordinary time and during recreation time. A total of 3,854 one-minute observations were coded. Dementia residents expressed happiness over seven times more often during recreation time than during ordinary time. Over 60% of ordinary time was solitary, with 65.72% of all observed affect being 'Null Affect'. A total of 43.75% of residents expressed happiness only during recreation time. In addition 48.9% of all behaviour during 'Ordinary Time' was coded as 'Null Behaviour', which indicated that the resident was sitting and doing nothing. Findings indicate that recreation time is significantly higher in positive affect than ordinary time and that virtually all residents benefited from recreation.

[Purpose] Forest walking may be effective for human health, but little information is available about effects of energy expenditure on blood pressure responses after forest walking. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the activity energy expenditure and changes in blood pressure in individuals after forest walking. [Subjects] The subjects were 54 middle-aged and elderly people. [Methods] All subjects walked in the forest for approximately 90 min. Blood pressure, salivary amylase, and the Profile of Mood States were evaluated before and after forest walking, and activity energy expenditure was monitored throughout forest walking. Subjects were divided into two groups according to mean arterial pressure changes: a responder group (>5% decreases) and a nonresponder group (<5%). [Results] Forest walking significantly reduced the mean arterial pressure and improved the Profile of Mood States in both groups. Activity energy expenditure was related to changes in mean arterial pressure in the responder group, while this relation was not observed in the nonresponder group. Differential activity energy expenditure did not strongly affect improvement of the Profile of Mood States. [Conclusion] Greater walking-related greater activity energy expenditure might be required to accentuate physiological beneficial effects on in middle-aged and aged people. Furthermore, the forest environment per se can attenuate psychological stress.

This study longitudinally compared activity in the frontal cortex during a spatial working memory task between 5-year-old and 7-year-old children using near-infrared spectroscopy. Eight children participated in this study twice, once at 5 years and once at 7 years of age. Behavioral analysis showed that older children performed the working memory task more precisely and more rapidly than younger children. Near-infrared spectroscopy analysis showed that right hemisphere dominance was observed in older children, whereas no hemispheric difference was apparent in younger children. Children with strengthened lateralization showed improved performance from 5 to 7 years. We therefore offer the first demonstration of the developmental changes in frontal cortical activation during spatial working memory tasks during the preschool period.

Our results suggest that the neural response for working memory and selective attention task was impaired by the administration of ketotifen in comparison with that of epinastine and placebo. The sedative effect in the neural response was not observed after epinastine administration.

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NIRS revealed that sedating and nonsedating antihistamines exert differential effects on brain hemodynamic response in young children.

Biological motion point-light displays provide a powerful method for studying motion perception. Nonhuman animals are capable of discriminating point-light displays, but it remains unknown how they perceive biological motion in these displays. We trained two groups of pigeons to discriminate video stimuli using two different classification rules. The motion-congruent group was trained to discriminate full-detail and corresponding point-light displays of pigeons from full-detail and point-light displays of humans. The motion-incongruent group was trained to discriminate full-detail pigeons and point-light humans from the other displays. Both groups acquired the discrimination. When tested with novel displays, pigeons showed good transfer of learning. Transfer was poorest with the point-light displays in the motion-congruent group. The results indicate that the pigeons failed to make the connection between the full-detail displays and their point-light counterparts even when the common motion was available as a cue.

No abstract