"Eu pensei que ia sair daqui falando inglês": um estudo sistêmico-funcional sobre papéis sociais atribuídos por alunos de um curso de Letras/Inglês

Research in the area of teacher training in English as a Foreign Language (CELANI, 2003, 2004, 2010; PAIVA, 2000, 2003, 2005; VIEIRA-ABRAHÃO, 2010) articulates the complexity of beginning teachers classroom contexts aligned with teaching language as a social and professional practice of the teacher in training. To better understand this relationship, the present study is based on a corpus of transcribed interviews and questionnaires applied to 28 undergraduate students majoring in Letters/English emphasis, at a public university located in the interior of the Western Amazon region, soliciting their opinions about the reforms made in the curriculum of this Major. Interviews and questionnaires were used as data collection instruments to trace a profile of the students organized in Group 1, with freshmen and sophomore undergraduates who are following the 2009 curriculum, and Group 2, with junior and senior undergraduates who are following the 2006 curriculum. The objectives are to identify, to characterize and to analyze the types of pronouns, roles and social actors represented in the opinions of these students in relation to their teacher training curriculum. The theoretical support focuses on the challenge of historical and contemporary routes from English teachers initial education programs (MAGALHÃES; LIBERALLI, 2009; PAVAN; SILVA, 2010; ALVAREZ, 2010; VIANA, 2011; PAVAN, 2012). Our theoretical perspective is based on the Systemic Functional Grammar of Halliday (1994), Halliday and Hasan (1989), Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), Eggins (1994; 2004) and Thompson (2004). We focus on the concept of the Interpersonal meaning, specifically regarding the roles articulated in the studies by Delu (1991), Thompson and Thetela (1995), and in the Portuguese language such as Ramos (1997), Silva (2006) and Cabral (2009). Moreover, we ascribe van Leeuwen s (1997; 2003) theory of Representation of Social Actors as a theoretical framework in order to identify the sociological aspect of social actors represented in the students discourse. Within this scenario, the analysis unfolds on three levels: grammatical (pronouns), semantic (roles), and discursive (social actors). For the analysis of interpersonal realizations present in the students opinions, we use the computational program WordSmith Tools (SCOTT, 2010) and its applications Wordlist and Concord to quantify the occurrences of the pronouns I, You and They, which characterize the roles and social actors of the corpus. The results show that the students assigned the following roles to themselves: (i) apprentice to express their initial process of English language learning; (ii) freshman to reveal their choice of Major in Letters/English emphasis; (iii) future teacher to relate their expectations towards a practicing professional. To assign the roles to professors in the major, the students used the metaphor of modality (I think) to indicate the relationship of teacher training, while they are in the role of a student and as a future teacher. From these evidences the representation of the students as social actors emerges in roles such as: (i) active roles; (ii) passive roles and (iii) personalized roles. The social actors represented in the opinions of the students reflect the inclusion of these roles assigned to the actions expressed about their experiences and expectations derived from their teacher training classroom

O desenvolvimento da interlíngua na aprendizagem da escrita em inglês em uma escola bilíngue: um estudo exploratório

The aim of this study is to investigate the development of written Interlanguage in English as an Additional Language (AL) by students in the 2nd grade of Ensino Fundamental I in a bilingual school in the city of Natal-RN. For this purpose two research questions guided this study: (a) which hypotheses could be inferred from the writing development of the bilingual learners of English as AL? and, (b) what is the impact of the type of input monomodal or multimodal in the Interlanguage development in the AL of bilingual learners? The 38 learners were divided into a control group, with 21 learners exposed to monomodal input, and an experimental group, with 17 learners exposed to multimodal input, and pre and post-tests were applied to both groups. A mixed methods research design was conducted (DÖRNYEI, 2007) to involve both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. The qualitative aspect comprehended descriptive characteristics that interpreted the central cognitive processes in the acquisition of writing in AL by the learners. Through these interpretations, it was possible to understand the constitution of written Interlanguage (SELINKER, 1972) according to the data generated by the learners. The quantitative data were presented as the results generated from the experimental design. Thus, they narrowed the relations between the dependent variable the writing development, that is, how close it is to the target form which was modified throughout the process by the independent variable the quality of input (VAN PATTEN, 2002, GASS, 1997, SCHMIDT, 1986, PARADIS, 2009; 2010, ELLIS, 1995), which, being monomodal or multimodal, its function was possibly to alter the route of acquisition. The quantitative results pointed towards significant gains by the experimental group, which had multimodality present, suggesting that the learners in this group seem to have been more able to cognitively register (SCHIMDT, 1990) aspects of learning than the learners in the control group

Estratégias midiáticas na aprendizagem do tema DST/AIDS: ações em rede para reduzir vulnerabilidades de adolescentes e jovens da comunidade de Mãe Luiza, Natal-RN

Youngsters and teenagers are still a very vulnerable group of DST/AIDS. In order to combat this vulnerability the community intervention project being developed in Mãe Luiza neighborhood in the city of Natal-RN, entitled Strengthening Community Action Network for Prevention in HIV/AIDS: knowledge and Intervene emerged, popularly known as Project Viva Mãe Luiza. The project develops workshops of educomunication whose approach involves the DST/AIDS subject with the following media: video, photography, and theater playbook. This research integrates the activities of the project and has as main objective to investigate how strategies and practices of media communication developed in Project Viva Mãe Luiza through workshops of educomunication, assisted learning for the prevention of DST/AIDS and contributed to the reduction of vulnerability to DST/AIDS among adolescents and young participants of the project residents of Mãe Luiza community. The methodological basis was based on intervention research, with the technique of gathering daily field data, literature and documentary, in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation. The qualitative analysis was based on the monitoring of video workshops, photography, theater and primer, respectively, crossed by transverse to the prevention of DST/AIDS, conducted between June 2012 and December 2013 issues. Interviews with eight multipliers, aiming to understand their perceptions of vulnerability, prevention, multiplication and use of media that were part of the project were conducted. The analyzes show that learning workshops educomunication community health repercussions both in the development of individual skills in communication as changing perceptions about the vulnerabilities to which they are exposed, the awareness about prevention at the individual and differentiated actions multiplication in the community

Tí estin Anámnesis? uma análise da anámnesis no mênon de Platão

Cette thèse a pour objectif principal examiner comment les Mênon, Platon listes l'anámnesis avec les autres théories qui sont abordés dans ce dialogue et, par conséquent, essayer de comprendre ce que c'est. Cette recherche vise dans un premier temps situées dans d'autres dialogues de Platon la survenance du terme anamnésis à veifique les points qui relient ces oeuvres à clarifier la compréhension d'un plus approprié dans le Mênon. Jetez-y aussi, quels sont les éléments de la platonicienne théorie de la connaissance sera reliant le dialogue afin de prouver que le Mênon, qui est la question centrale areté, garde un conflit dans la sophistique et la philosophie. Ce choc entre ce qui se passe papapep indirectement par l'intermédiaire de son Mênon enseigné, et Socrates qui conteste la thèse de l'éthique et le relativisme épistémologique. Nous voyons aussi, de quelle manière le dialogue est donnée de prendre une voie d'accès au savoir qui est configuré comme sûrs, à savoir anámnésis. L'interrogatoire de Mênon depuis le début dans les appels d'enquêter éristique cet intérêt, que lorsqu'ils sont confrontés à des intérêts les amènerait à l'état aporétique initial et qui est progressivement remplacé par l'aporie fondamental de connaissance, ce n'est point pour aporie la compréhension de anámnesis. En prenant la dialectique comme méthode d'enquête dans le dialogue, il est nécessaire de la part de Socrates et Mênon, de quitter le didaskein et en profiter pour mathésis que la construction des connaissances. Il ouvre de manière un des principaux enjeux dans ce travail examine si le anámnesis permettre l'accès aux moyens et si elle a un statut similaire à mnéme. À un moment où Socrate explique dans le dialogue qui est le anámnesis par monstration monstration fait avec esclave de Mênon il est l'utilisation d'éléments mythiques que, selon notre analyse, permettre à comprendre le sens de dialogue les connaissances qui montre l'opportunité d'apprendre, qui est la anámnesis

Funcionalidade em pacientes após acidente vascular encefálico: relação com o sono e ritmo de atividade-repouso

It is known that sleep plays an important role in the process of motor learning. Recent studies have shown that the presence of sleep between training a motor task and retention test promotes a learning task so than the presence of only awake between training and testing. These findings also have been reported in stroke patients, however, there are few studies that investigate the results of this relationship on the functionality itself in this population. The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship between functionality and sleep in patients in the chronic stage of stroke. A cross-sectional observational study was conducted. The sample was composed of 30 stroke individuals in chronic phase, between 6 and 60 months after injury and aged between 55 and 75 years. The volunteers were initially evaluated for clinical data of disease and personal history, severity of stroke, through the National Institute of Health Stroke Scale, and mental status, the Mini-Mental State Examination. Sleep assessment tools were Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the Questionnaire of Horne and Ostberg, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, the Berlin questionnaire and actigraphy, which measures were: real time of sleep, waking after sleep onset, percentage of waking after sleep onset, sleep efficiency, sleep latency, sleep fragmentation index, mean activity score. Other actigraphy measures were intraday variability, stability interdiária, a 5-hour period with minimum level of activity (L5) and 10-hour period with maximum activity (M10), obtained to evaluate the activity-rest rhythm. The Functional Independence Measure (FIM) and the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) were the instruments used to evaluate the functional status of participants. The Spearman correlation coefficient and comparison tests (Student's t and Mann-Whitney) were used to analyze the relationship of sleep assessment tools and rest-activity rhythm to measures of functional assessment. The SPSS 16.0 was used for analysis, adopting a significance level of 5%. The main results observed were a negative correlation between sleepiness and balance and a negative correlation between the level of activity (M10) and sleep fragmentation. No measurement of sleep or rhythm was associated with functional independence measure. These findings suggest that there may be an association between sleepiness and xii balance in patients in the chronic stage of stroke, and that obtaining a higher level of activity may be associated with a better sleep pattern and rhythm more stable and less fragmented. Future studies should evaluate the cause-effect relationship between these parameters

Conjuntos numéricos

In this work, we present a text on the Sets Numerical using the human social needs as a tool for construction new numbers. This material is intended to present a text that reconciles the correct teaching of mathmatics and clarity needed for a good learning

A cafeína exerce efeitos positivos sobre a memória tipo episódica em ratos adultos sem influenciar a sobrevivência neural no giro dentado

The caffeine is a mild psychostimulant that has positive cognitive effects at low doses, while promotes detrimental effects on these processes at higher doses. The episodic-like memory can be evaluated in rodents through hippocampus-dependent tasks. The dentate gyrus is a hippocampal subregion in which neurogenesis occurs in adults, and it is believed that this process is related to the function of patterns separation, such as the identification of spatial and temporal patterns when discriminating events. Furthermore, neurogenesis is influenced spatial and contextual learning tasks. Our goal was to evaluate the performance of male Wistar rats in episodic-like tasks after acute or chronic caffeine treatment (15mg/kg or 30mg/kg). Moreover, we assessed the chronic effect of the caffeine treatment, as well as the influence of the hippocampus-dependent learning tasks, on the survival of new-born neurons at the beginning of treatment. For this purpose, we used BrdU to label the new cells generated in the dentate gyrus. Regarding the acute treatment, we found that the saline group presented a tendency to have better spatial and temporal discrimination than caffeine groups. The chronic caffeine group 15 mg/kg (low dose) showed the best discrimination of the temporal aspect of episodic-like memory, whereas the chronic caffeine group 30mg/kg (high dose) was able to discriminate temporal order, only in a condition of greater difficulty. Assessment of neurogenesis using immunohistochemistry for evaluating survival of new-born neurons generated in the dentate gyrus revealed no difference among groups of chronic treatment. Thus, the positive mnemonic effects of the chronic caffeine treatment were not related to neuronal survival. However, another plastic mechanism could explain the positive mnemonic effect, given that there was no improvement in the acute caffeine groups

Efeitos dos esteroides anabólicos androgênicos sobre funções cognitivas de ratos

The use and the demand for substances that enhance masculinity, strength and sexual power are not novel. Over the years, this search has assisted the research directions in this area, leading to the discovery of the primary male sex hormone testosterone in 1935. Since then, numerous testosterone analogue compounds were synthesized, which are generically called Anabolic Androgenic Steroids (AAS). The AAS were produced for therapeutic purposes, but an increase in the use of these compounds for other purposes occurred over time. Initially they were used mainly to improve performance in athletes. However, recent studies have shown that the use of AAS by non-athletes with aesthetical purposes have been increasing as well. The abuse of AAS with non-clinical purposes can promote a number of physiological alterations, such as heart, liver, respiratory and psychological problems such as changes in mood, levels of anxiety and aggression. Exposure to supraphysiological doses of AAS is associated with behavioral changes, however, little is known about the effects of AAS on cognitive functions. In this work, we aimed to mimic the AAS abuse in humans with intramuscular administration of a supraphysiological dose of testosterone propionate (TP) in rats. We investigated the effects of this treatment on different aspects of cognitive function, specifically learning, memory and anxiety. Adult male Wistar rats were tested in the spontaneous alternation, novel object recognition and plus-maze discriminative avoidance tasks. The control group received intramuscular injections of vegetable oil (vehicle), and the TP group received injections of TP (10 mg/kg, i.m.). The injections were administered for 40 days, with intervals of 48 hours (chronic treatment) or in a single injection (acute treatment). In addition to the behavioral assessments, we performed biochemical analyzes as indicators of the endocrine effects of the treatment. Our results show that chronic treatment with a supraphysiological dose of TP caused memory impairments in the novel object recognition and the discriminative avoidance tasks. The spatial working memory (evaluated by spontaneous alternation task) was not affected. Also, we did not observe changes in anxiety levels. Regarding the biochemical parameters, chronic treatment increased serum levels of glutamicpyruvic transaminase, an indicator of hepatic and pancreatic lesions (as those observed after chronic use of these substances in humans). On the other hand, acute treatment with PT did not promote significant changes in any of these parameters when compared to the control group. In summary, we conclude that chronic treatment with a supraphysiological dose of testosterone propionate produces memory deficits in novel object recognition and retrieval of the discriminative avoidance task in adult male rats

Expressão de zif-268 durante a aquisição, evocação e extinção de uma memória aversiva

In the behavioral paradigm of discriminative avoidance task, both short and long-term memories have been extensively investigated with behavioral and pharmacological approaches. The aim of the present study was to evaluate, using the abovementioned model, the hippocampal expression of zif-268 - a calcium-dependent immediate early gene involved with synaptic plasticity process - throughout several steps of memory formation, such as acquisition, evocation and extiction. The behavioral apparatus consisted of a modified elevaated plus-maze, with their enclosed arms disposed in "L". A pre-exposure to the maze was made with the animal using all arms enclosed, for 30 minutes, followed by training and test, during 10 minutes each. The between sections interval was 24h. During training, aversive stimuli (bright light and loud noise) were actived whenever the animals entered one of the enclosed armas (aversive arm). Memory acquisiton, retention and extinction were evaluated by the percentage of the total time spent exploring the aversive arm. The parameters evaluated (time spent in the arms and total distance traveled) were estimated with an animal tracking software (Anymaze, Stoelting, USA). Learning during training was estimated by the decrease of the time spent exploring the aversive arm. One hour after the beginning of each section, animals were anaesthetized with sodium-thiopental (i.p.) and perfused with 0.9% heparinized saline solution followed by 4% paraformaldehyde. Brains were cryoprotected with 20% sucrose, separeted in three blocks and frozen. The middle block, containing the hippocampus, was sectioned at 20 micro meters in the coronal plane and the resutant sections were submitted to zif-268 immunohistochemistry. Our results show an increased expression of zif-268 in the dentate gyrus (DG) during the evocation and extinction stages. There is a distinct participation of the DG during the memory evocation, but not during its acquisition. Inaddition, all hippocampal regions (CA1, CA3 and DG) presented an increased zif-268 expression during the process of extinction.

Neurofisiologia hipocampal durante sessões de sono intercaladas por exploração espacial: Reverberação do passado ou predição do futuro?

The ability to predict future rewards or threats is crucial for survival. Recent studies have addressed future event prediction by the hippocampus. Hippocampal neurons exhibit robust selectivity for spatial location. Thus, the activity of hippocampal neurons represents a cognitive map of space during navigation as well as during planning and recall. Spatial selectivity allows the hippocampus to be involved in the formation of spatial and episodic memories, including the sequential ordering of events. On the other hand, the discovery of reverberatory activity in multiple forebrain areas during slow wave and REM sleep underscored the role of sleep on the consolidation of recently acquired memory traces. To this date, there are no studies addressing whether neuronal activity in the hippocampus during sleep can predict regular environmental shifts. The aim of the present study was to investigate the activity of neuronal populations in the hippocampus during sleep sessions intercalated by spatial exploration periods, in which the location of reward changed in a predictable way. To this end, we performed the chronic implantation of 32-channel multielectrode arrays in the CA1 regions of the hippocampus in three male rats of the Wistar strain. In order to activate different neuronal subgroups at each cycle of the task, we exposed the animals to four spatial exploration sessions in a 4-arm elevated maze in which reward was delivered in a single arm per session. Reward location changed regularly at every session in a clockwise manner, traversing all the arms at the end of the daily recordings. Animals were recorded from 2-12 consecutive days. During spatial exploration of the 4-arm elevated maze, 67,5% of the recorded neurons showed firing rate differences across the maze arms. Furthermore, an average of 42% of the neurons showed increased correlation (R>0.3) between neuronal pairs in each arm. This allowed us to sort representative neuronal subgroups for each maze arm, and to analyze the activity of these subgroups across sleep sessions. We found that neuronal subgroups sorted by firing rate differences during spatial exploration sustained these differences across sleep sessions. This was not the case with neuronal subgroups sorted according to synchrony (correlation). In addition, the correlation levels between sleep sessions and waking patterns sampled in each arm were larger for the entire population of neurons than for the rate or synchrony subgroups. Neuronal activity during sleep of the entire neuronal population or subgroups did not show different correlations among the four arm mazes. On the other hand, we verified that neuronal activity during pre-exploration sleep sessions was significantly more similar to the activity patterns of the target arm than neuronal activity during pre-exploration sleep sessions. In other words, neuronal activity during sleep that precedes the task reflects more strongly the location of reward than neuronal activity during sleep that follows the task. Our results suggest that neuronal activity during sleep can predict regular environmental changes

Antidepressivos modificam a extinção de uma memória aversiva em ratas

Treatment of major depression, posttraumatic stress disorder and other psychopathologies with antidepressants can be associated with improvement of the cognitive deficits related to these disorders. Although the mechanisms of these effects are not completely elucidated, alterations in extinction of aversive memories are believed to be present in these psychopathologies. Moreover, researches with laboratory animals usually focus on male subjects, and we have recently verified that extinction of an aversive task is reduced in female rats when compared to males. In the present study, female rats were long-term treated with clinically used antidepressants (fluoxetine, nortriptyline or mirtazapine) and tested in the plus-maze discriminative avoidance and forced swimming tests in order to evaluate learning, memory, extinction, anxiety and depression-related behaviors. All groups learned the task, but learning was somewhat faster in nortriptyline and mirtazapine-treated animals . Task retrieval was also showed by all experimental groups. Chronic treatment with fluoxetine, but not with the other antidepressants, increased extinction of the discriminative task. In the forced swimming test, animals treated with fluoxetine and mirtazapine showed decreased immobility duration. In conclusion, antidepressants interfere with learning and female rats treated with fluoxetine presented increased extinction of the aversive memory task. On the other hand, both fluoxetine and mirtazapine were effective in the forced swimming test, suggesting dissociation between the antidepressant effects and the extinction of aversive memories

Influência do ciclo estral no efeito do diazepam na ansiedade e memória de ratas

Memory and anxiety are related phenomena. Several evidences suggest that anxiety is fundamental for learnining and may facilitate or impair the memory formation process depending of the context. The majority of animal studies of anxiety and fear use only males as experimental subjects, while studies with females are rare in the literature. However, the prevalence in phobic and anxiety disorders is greater in women than in men. Moreover, it is known that gender maybe influence benzodiazepine effects, the classic drugs used for anxiety disorders treatment. In this respect, to further investigate if fear/anxiety aspects related to learning in female subjects would contribute to the study of phobic and anxiety disorders and their relationship with learning/memory processes, the present work investigates (a) the effects of benzodiazepine diazepam on female rats performance in a aversive memory task that assess concomitantly anxiety/emotionality, as the interaction between both; (b) the influence of estrous cycle phases of female rats on diazepam effects at aversive memory and anxiety/emotionality, and the interaction between both and (c) the role of hormonal fluctuations during estrous cycle phases in absence of diazepam effects in proestrus, because female rats in this phase received or not mifepristone, the antagonist of progesterone receptor, previously to the diazepam treatment. For this purpose, the plus maze discriminative avoidance task, previously validated for studies of anxiety concomitantly to learning/memory, was used. The apparatus employed is an adaptation of a conventional plus maze, with two opens arms and two closed arms, one of which presenting aversive stimulation (noise and light). The parameters used were: time in non-aversive arm compared to time in aversive and percentage of time in aversive arm on several temporal divisions, in order to evaluate memory; percentage of time in open arms, risk assessment, head dipping and end exploring to evaluate anxiety ; and distance traveled for locomotion. In experiment I, we found anxiolytic effect of diazepam only for 4 mg/kg dose, however the amnestic effect appear at a dose of 2 mg/kg. In second experiment, rats were divided in groups according estrous cycle phase (metaestrus/diestrus, proestrus e estrus). In this experiment, when we considered estrous cycle phase or diazepam treatment, the results did not demonstrate any differences in anxiety/emotionality parameters. The amnestic effects of diazepam occur in female rats in metestrus/diestrus and estrus and is absent in proestrous rats. Proestrous female rats that received mifepristone exhibited the amnestic effect of diazepam and also anxiolytic effects, that it was not previously observed in this dose. The results have demonstrated dissociation of anxiolytic and amnestic diazepam effects, not previously observed in males; the absence of amnestic effect of diazepam in proestrous phase; and the possible role of progesterone in aversive memory over diazepam effect, because the mifepristone, associated with diazepam, caused amnestic effect in proestrus

Avaliação dos efeitos do biperideno, diazepam e neuropeptídeos S sobre a memória e a ansiedade na tarefa do labirinto em T elevado em camundongos

Anxiety is an emotional phenomenon, and normally it is interpreted as an adaptative behavior front to adversities. In its pathological form, anxiety can severely affect aspects related to the personal and professional life. Studies have shown a close relationship between anxiety disorders and aversive memory processing. Considering that the pharmacotherapy of anxiety disorders is still limited, innovative anxiolytic agents are needed. In this regard, neuropeptides systems are interesting therapeutic targets to the treatment of psychopathologies. Neuropeptide S (NPS), a 20-aminoacid peptide, is the endogenous ligand of a G-protein coupled receptor (NPSR), which has been reported to evoke hyperlocomotion, awakefull states, besides anxiolysis and memory improvements in rodents. This study aimed to investigate the effects of biperiden (BPR; an amnesic drug), diazepam (DZP; an anxiolytic drug) and NPS at three distinct times: pre-training, post-training, and pre-test, in order to assess anxiety and memory process in the same animal model. The elevated Tmaze (ETM) is an apparatus derived from the elevated plus-maze test, which consists of one enclosed and two open arms. The procedure is based on the avoidance of open spaces learned during training session, in which mice were exposed to the enclosed arm as many times as needed to stay 300 s. In the test session, memory is assessed by re-exposing the mouse to the enclosed arm and the latency to enter an open arm was recorded. When injected pre-training, BPR (1 mg/kg) impaired learning and memory processing; DZP (1 and 2 mg/kg) evoked anxiolysis, but only at the dose of 2 mg/kg impaired memory; and NPS 0.1 nmol induced anxiolysis without affecting memory. Post-training injection of DZP (2 mg/kg) or BPR (1 and 3 mg/kg) did not affect memory consolidation, while the post-trainning administration of NPS 1 nmol, but not 0.1 nmol, improved memory in mice. Indeed, pre-trainning administration of NPS 1 nmol did not prevent memory impairment elicited by BPR (2 mg/kg, injected before training). In the open field test, BPR 1 mg/kg and NPS 1 nmol induced hyperlocomotion in mice. In conclusion, the proposed ETM task is practical for the detection of the anxiolytic and amnesic effects of drugs. The anxiolytic and memory enhancement effects of NPS were detected in the ETM task, and reinforce the role of NPS system as an interesting therapeutic target to the treatment of anxiety disorders

Alterações na evocação de uma memória aversiva ao liongo do ciclo estral de ratas: influências da transmissão gabaérgica na amígdala

GABAergic neurotransmission has been implicated in many aspects of learning and memory, as well as mood and anxiety disorders. The amygdala has been one of the major focuses in this area, given its essential role in modulating emotionally relevant memories. However, studies with male subjects are still predominant in the field. Here we investigated the consequences for an aversive memory of enhancing or decreasing GABAergic transmission in the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala (BLA). Wistar female rats were trained in the plus-maze discriminative avoidance task, in which they had to learn to avoid one of the enclosed arms where an aversive stimulus consisting of a bright light and a loud noise was given (day 1). Fifteen minutes before the test session (day 2) animals received 0,2 μL infusions of either saline solution, the GABAergic agonist muscimol (0,05 mg/ml), or the GABAergic antagonist bicuculine (0,025 mg/ml) bilaterally intra-BLA. On the test day, females in proestrous or estrous presented adequate retrieval and did not extinguish the task, while females in metestrous or diestrous presented impaired retrieval. In the first group, muscimol infusion impaired retrieval and bicuculline had no effect, suggesting naturally low levels of GABAergic transmission in the BLA of proestrous and estrous females. In the second group, muscimol infusion had no effect and bicuculline reversed retrieval impairment, suggesting naturally high levels of GABAergic transmission in the BLA of metestrous and diestous females. Additionally, proestrous and estrous females presented higher anxiety levels compared to metestrous and diestrous females, which could explain better performance of this group. On the other hand, BLA GABAergic system did not interfere with the innate fear response because drug infusions had no effect in anxiety. Thus, retrieval alterations caused by the GABAergic drugs were probably related specifically to memory processes

Investigação da influência do cochilo na aprendizagem escolar

There is a known positive effect of nocturnal sleep for brain plasticity and the consolidation of declarative and procedural memories, as well as for the facilitation of insight in problem solving. However, a possible pro-mnemonic effect of daytime naps after learning is yet to be properly characterized. The goal of this project was to evaluate the influence of daytime naps on learning among elementary and middleschool students, measuring the one-day (acute), and semester-long (chronic) effects of post-learning naps on performance. In the Acute Day-Nap condition, the elementary students were exposed to a class and then randomly divided into three groups: Nap (N), Game-based English Class (GBEC) and Traditional English Class (TEC). There were 2 multiple-choice follow-up tests to evaluate students performance in the short and long runs. In the short run, the N group outperformed the other two groups; and such tendency was maintained in the long run. In the chronic condition, the middle-school students were randomly separated into two groups: Nap (N) and Class (C) and were observed during one academic term. The N group had increased school performance in relation to the C group. In the statistical analyses, independent t-tests were applied considering the scores significant when p<0,05, expressed in terms of average ± average standard error. Results can be interpreted as an indication that a single daytime nap opportunity is not enough to ensure learning benefits. Therefore, more research is needed in order to advocate in favor of a daytime nap as a pedagogical means of promoting enhanced school performance