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Objective To study the value of point-of-care blood gas analyzer for evaluation of blood loss and the effect of resuscitation following limb fracture in rabbits and explore the feasibility of using the device for injury assessment and guiding resuscitation measures in the scenario of evacuation of combat casualties with limb fractures. Methods Fifteen rabbits were randomized equally into simple fracture group, fracture with massive hemorrhage group, and fracture with hemorrhage resuscitation group (n=5). Models of tibial fracture were established in all the rabbits by cutting the middle part of tibia with a circular saw. Twenty percent of the total blood volume was extracted from the femoral artery in the fracture with hemorrhage group, and in the resuscitation group, the extracted blood was transfused back 30 min after the injury. The level of lactate, base excess value and pH value of the rabbits were measured at 0 and 30 min, and 1 and 2 h using a point-of-care blood gas analyzer. Results The point-of-care blood gas analyzer detected significant changes in base excess value in the rabbits as early as 30 min after tibial fracture with massive hemorrhage, as compared with 2 h following a simple tibial fracture; significant changes in base excess value occurred 2 h after resuscitation for fracture with massive hemorrhage. Significant changes in lactate level were observed 30 min after fracture with massive hemorrhage and 2 h after simple fracture, but not found following resuscitation in the case of fracture with massive hemorrhage. pH value did not show significant variations after the injuries. Conclusion Lactate level and base excess value measured by point-of-care blood gas analysis can be indicative of the severity of limb fracture and blood loss in the course of patient evacuation, and the base excess value following resuscitation before admission can reflect the effect of injury control and resuscitation.

Objective To design and prepare a platform for the explosion injury of large animals, and to establish a controllable surgical model for controlling the explosive injury in pigs in order to observe the effect of damage control operation. Methods Firstly, based on the needs of this study, a platform for explosive injury of large animals was designed and produced, including injury site and injury protection device. A total of 30 pigs were randomly divided into groups A, B and C, and then fixed in the self-made device, with the distance from the abdominal wall to the explosion source 1.6, 1.2 and 0.8 m respectively. The explosive fragments of explosive weapons were simulated with high-speed steel balls, and the abdominal explosive injury model was established. The changes of physiological indexes before and after injury were detected and recorded. The injury condition of pigs was explored and the corresponding damage control operations were completed. The damage control was observed after operation and observed for 6 h. The survival rate of pigs at different time points was recorded. Pig abdominal injuries and the efficacy of damage control operation were observed and statistically analyzed. Results A protective device for explosive injury of large animals was designed and manufactured. All the physiological indexes of each pig were abnormal after explosion injury, with statistical difference when compared with those before explosion (P < 0.05). The blood pressure was decreased, heart rate was slowed down, and the platelet and hemoglobin levels and other indicators were also obviously reduced, with symptoms of shock at different severities. At the same explosive equivalence, the survival rates of group A and group B were 100%. One pig in group A died of excessive anesthesia, and no animals died during the operation. One pig in group B died of massive bleeding during operation. In group C, 2 pigs died immediately after the explosion, 2 pigs died during the operation, and 1 died within 30 min after operation, with an overall mortality rate of 50%. In group A, the injuries were generally mild, with 30% pigs having 3 or less wounds in 2 or less sites, including the liver, spleen, stomach, and intestines. For the pigs from group B, 90% of them had 4 or more wounds in above 3 sites. The conditions in group C were more severe, and 40% pigs had more than 8 wounds in 4 or over sites. Statistically difference was seen in the severity of injuries among the 3 groups (P=0.011). Finally, there were 27 pigs successfully resuscitated at early period, and undergoing damage control surgery. Except for 1 pig died of multiple organ failure due to infection, the other survived within 6 h of observation. Conclusion Under the given distance and explosive equivalent, a repeatable and stable model for abdominal explosive injury control operation is established by our self-designed large animal explosive injury platform. It is suitable for experimental research or simulated operation training. The model has good effect on damage control operation and can be popularized and applied.

Receiving a favor from another person may induce a negative feeling of indebtedness for the beneficiary. In this study, we explore these hidden costs by developing and validating a conceptual model of indebtedness across three studies that combine a large-scale online questionnaire, an interpersonal game, computational modeling, and neuroimaging. Our model captures how individuals perceive the altruistic and strategic intentions of the benefactor. These inferences produce distinct feelings of guilt and obligation that together comprise indebtedness and motivate reciprocity. Perceived altruistic intentions convey care and communal concern and are associated with activity in insula, ventromedial prefrontal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, while inferred strategic intentions convey expectations of future reciprocity and are associated with activation in temporal parietal junction and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. We further develop a neural utility model of indebtedness using multivariate patterns of brain activity that captures the tradeoff between these feelings and reliably predicts reciprocity behavior.

Two behavioral motivations coexist in transgressors following an interpersonal transgression-approaching and compensating the victim and avoiding the victim. Little is known about how these motivations arise, compete, and drive transgressors decisions. The present study adopted a social interaction task to manipulate participants (i.e., the transgressor) responsibility for anothers (i.e., the victim) monetary loss and measure the participants tradeoff between compensating the victim and avoiding face-to-face interactions with the victim. Following each transgression, participants used a computer mouse to choose between two options differing in the amount of compensation to the victim and the probability of face-to-face contact with the victim. Results showed that as participants responsibility increased, 1) the decision weights on contact avoidance relative to compensation increased, and 2) the onset of the contact-avoidance attribute was expedited and that of the compensation attribute was delayed. These results demonstrate how competing social motivations following transgression evolve and determine social decision-making and shed light on how social-affective state modulates the dynamics of decision-making in general.

Extant research has demonstrated the positive intrapersonal effects of mindfulness training. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying the effects of mindfulness training on interpersonal processes are less clear. Here, we combined a randomized control mindfulness training design with computational approach to moral decision-making and moral judgments. Participants were randomly assigned to a Training group (N = 32) who received an 8-week mindfulness training or a Control group (N = 26) who waited for the same period of time. Before and after the 8-week period, participants completed a moral decision-making task, where they made tradeoff between money for themselves and unpleasant electric shocks to another person, and a moral judgment task, where they evaluated the blameworthiness of someone else's choices in the same moral decision-making task. Trait mindfulness, as measured by the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, significantly increased from the pre- to post-training session for the Training group, but not the Control group, demonstrating the effectiveness of the mindfulness manipulation. For the Control group, participants' moral preference in both the decision-making task and the judgment task declined over time, exhibiting a "slippery slope" effect. In contrast, for the Training group, mindfulness training prevented moral preferences from declining. Computational modeling revealed that mindfulness training specifically reduced the increase in the weights of money over time in both the decision-making and judgment tasks, thereby curbing the "slippery slope" effects. These findings provide a cognitive account of the prosocial effects of mindfulness training on moral decision-making and moral judgments.

Abstract Background Previous research showed that individuals have a natural tendency to conform to others. This study investigated the temporal characteristics of neural processing involved in social conformity by recording participants’ brain potentials in performing a line judgment task. After making his initial choice, a participant was presented with the choices of four same-sex group members, which could be congruent or highly or moderately incongruent with the participant’s own choice. The participant was then immediately given a second opportunity to respond to the same stimulus. Results Participants were more likely to conform to the group members by changing their initial choices when these choices were in conflict with the group’s choices, and this behavioral adjustment occurred more often as the level of incongruence increased. Electrophysiologically, group choices that were incongruent with the participant’s choice elicited more negative-going medial frontal negativity (MFN), a component associated with processing expectancy violation, than those that were congruent with the participant’s choice, and the size of this effect increased as the level of incongruence increased. Moreover, at both levels of incongruence, the MFN responses were more negative-going for incongruent trials in which participants subsequently performed behavioral adjustment than for trials in which they stuck to their initial choices. Furthermore, over individual participants, participants who were more likely to conform to others (i.e., changing their initial choices) exhibited stronger MFN effect than individuals who were more independent. Conclusions These findings suggest that incongruence with group choices or opinions can elicit brain responses that are similar to those elicited by violation of non-social expectancy in outcome evaluation and performance monitoring, and these brain signals are utilized in the following behavioral adjustment. The present research complements recent brain imaging studies by showing the temporal characteristics of neural processing involved in social conformity and by suggesting common mechanisms for reinforcement learning in social and non-social situations.

A major source of social stress in the Chinese society is losing face. Inspired by the roles of cortisol functions in stress-coping, we investigated whether cortisol functions (e.g., cortisol level and glucocorticoid receptor gene) are related to social face in Chinese. Study 1 examined the association between salivary cortisol level and social face among 134 college students; and Study 2 investigated associations between the polymorphisms (i.e., rs41423247 and rs10052957) of glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1) and social face among 688 college students. Results from Study 1 indicated that salivary cortisol level was positively correlated to the scores on social face; and results from Study 2 showed that the GG genotype of rs41423247, which is related to higher receptor expression, was related to higher social face score as compared with the C allele. Moreover, the association between rs41423247 and social face was mediated by public self-consciousness. These findings highlight the importance of cortisol functions to social face and demonstrate a link between genetic polymorphism, social face and public self-consciousness., Author(s): Pingyuan Gong [sup.1] [sup.2] [sup.3] , Wenxuan Guo [sup.1] , Xia Zhang [sup.1] , Keqing Cao [sup.1] , Quanhe Wang [sup.1] , Mengfei Zhang [sup.1] , Jinting Liu [sup.4] [...]

Guilt is a quintessential emotion in interpersonal interactions and moral cognition. Detecting the presence and measuring the intensity of guilt-related neurocognitive processes is crucial to understanding the mechanisms of social and moral phenomena. Existing neuroscience research on guilt has been focused on the neural correlates of guilt states induced by various types of stimuli. While valuable in their own right, these studies have not provided a sensitive and specific bio-marker of guilt suitable for use as an indicator of guilt-related neurocognitive processes in novel experimental settings. In a recent study, we identified a distributed Guilt-Related Brain Signature (GRBS) based on 2 independent functional MRI datasets. We demonstrated the sensitivity of GRBS in detecting a critical cognitive antecedent of guilt, namely one's responsibility in causing harm to another person, across participant populations from 2 distinct cultures (ie, Chinese and Swiss). We also showed that the sensitivity of GRBS did not generalize to other types of negative affective states (eg, physical and vicarious pain). In this commentary, we discuss the relevance of guilt in the broader scope of social and moral phenomena, and discuss how guilt-related biomarkers can be useful in understanding their psychological and neurocognitive mechanisms underlying these phenomena.