This article is part of a Special Issue entitled ‘Cognitive Enhancers’. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Aging has been shown to increase sensory thresholds for a variety of exteroceptive and proprioceptive
stimuli However, the influence of aging on interoceptive awareness has received relatively little empirical attention. Here we report an inverse association between aging and interoception, as indexed by the ability to sense the heartbeat at rest In a group of 59 participants ranging in age from 22 to 63, years, age inversely predicted heartbeat detection ability, both within and across several
measurement sessions On learn more average, age accounted for 30% of the variance in heartbeat detection accuracy. Other attribute variables including body mass index and sex were not related to heartbeat detection ability These findings provide clear selleck chemicals llc empirical evidence that interoception, much like exteroception and proprioception, declines with age”
“In this multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, four way cross-over proof-of-mechanism study, we tested the effect of the positive allosteric alpha 7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) modulator JNJ-39393406 in a key translational assay (sensory P50 gating) in 39 regularly smoking male patients with schizophrenia. All patients were clinically stable and JNJ-39393406 was administered as an adjunct treatment to antipsychotics. No indication was found that JNJ-39393406 has the potential to reverse basic deficits of information processing in schizophrenia (sensory P50 gating) or has a significant
effect on other tested electrophysiological markers selleck chemical (MMN. P300 and quantitative resting EEG). Sensitivity analyses including severity of disease, baseline P50 gating, medication and gene variants of the CHRNA7 gene did not reveal any subgroups with consistent significant effects. It is discussed that potential positive effects in subgroups not present or not large enough in the current study or upon chronic dosing are possible, but unlikely to be developed.
This article is part of a Special Issue entitled ‘Cognitive Enhancers’. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.