Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
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Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. · Dec 2016
Past-focused environmental comparisons promote proenvironmental outcomes for conservatives.
Conservatives appear more skeptical about climate change and global warming and less willing to act against it than liberals. We propose that this unwillingness could result from fundamental differences in conservatives' and liberals' temporal focus. Conservatives tend to focus more on the past than do liberals. ⋯ Past comparisons largely eliminated the political divide that separated liberal and conservative respondents' attitudes toward and behavior regarding climate change, so that across these studies conservatives and liberals were nearly equally likely to fight climate change. This research demonstrates how psychological processes, such as temporal comparison, underlie the prevalent ideological gap in addressing climate change. It opens up a promising avenue to convince conservatives effectively of the need to address climate change and global warming.
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Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. · Dec 2016
Nicotinic receptors in mouse prefrontal cortex modulate ultraslow fluctuations related to conscious processing.
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays an important role in cognitive processes, including access to consciousness. The PFC receives significant cholinergic innervation and nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) contribute greatly to the effects of acetylcholine signaling. Using in vivo two-photon imaging of both awake and anesthetized mice, we recorded spontaneous, ongoing neuronal activity in layer II/III in the PFC of WT mice and mice deleted for different nAChR subunits. ⋯ The β2 subunit is specifically required for synchronized activity patterns. Furthermore, chronic application of mecamylamine, an antagonist of nAChRs, disrupts the generation of ultraslow fluctuations. Our findings provide new insight into the ongoing spontaneous activity in the awake and anesthetized state, and the role of cholinergic neurotransmission in the orchestration of cognitive functions.