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This study investigates whether the Disruptive Behaviour Disorders (DBDs) rating scale measures the same constructs in South African as in Western cultures, and explores the differences in scale scores as a function of language, gender and age. Teacher ratings between 1997 and 1999 of the 18 DSM-IV symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in 6 094 primary school children of six language groups in the Limpopo Province of South Africa were collected and analysed. For all language groups, the results were consistent with a two-factor model of ADHD with correlated factors. There were gender and age effects on both scales. The prevalence rates for ADHD sub-types were in line with rates in the United States of America (US) and Europe. Similarities across language groups, as well as to results reported in the US and Europe, were striking. Despite the limitations discussed, teacher ratings of ADHD symptoms on the DBD scale can be used as a screening instrument in South Africa. Separate norms for different language groups are not indicated.

In the UK, the discourse of innocence currently prevails as a major way of understanding children. This article argues that the strength of this discourse lies in its prevalence, its resistance to challenges and the ways in which it connects ideas of innocence and vulnerability. The moral quality of the discourse of innocence works in conjunction with the sacred status of the child, to produce childhood as a moral rhetoric. Children and childhood function to explain and legitimize any practice or opinion as right while removing the necessity to provide reasons: children are the reason. The article also considers how issues around childhood and morality are implicated in the generation of social concern with risks affecting children.

Meyer A, Galizia CG, Nawrot MP. Local interneurons and projection neurons in the antennal lobe from a spiking point of view. J Neurophysiol 110: 2465-2474. First published September 4, 2013 doi:10.1152/jn.00260.2013.-Local computation in microcircuits is an essential feature of distributed information processing in vertebrate and invertebrate brains. The insect antennal lobe represents a spatially confined local network that processes high-dimensional and redundant peripheral input to compute an efficient odor code. Social insects can rely on a particularly rich olfactory receptor repertoire, and they exhibit complex odor-guided behaviors. This corresponds with a high anatomical complexity of their antennal lobe network. In the honeybee, a large number of glomeruli that receive sensory input are interconnected by a dense network of local interneurons (LNs). Uniglomerular projection neurons (PNs) integrate sensory and recurrent local network input into an efficient spatio-temporal odor code. To investigate the specific computational roles of LNs and PNs, we measured several features of sub-and suprathreshold singlecell responses to in vivo odor stimulation. Using a semisupervised cluster analysis, we identified a combination of five characteristic features as sufficient to separate LNs and PNs from each other, independent of the applied odor-stimuli. The two clusters differed significantly in all these five features. PNs showed a higher spontaneous subthreshold activation, assumed higher peak response rates and a more regular spiking pattern. LNs reacted considerably faster to the onset of a stimulus, and their responses were more reliable across stimulus repetitions. We discuss possible mechanisms that can explain our results, and we interpret cell-type-specific characteristics with respect to their functional relevance.honeybee; electrophysiology; cluster analysis; response latency; coefficient of variation; Fano factor; olfaction SENSORY COMPUTATION IN THE nervous systems of both invertebrates and vertebrates is organized in local networks containing microcircuits that integrate local feed-forward and recurrent connections and constitute functional subunits of the global sensory network. Understanding the computational principles of these microcircuits is a key to a deeper understanding of sensory processing and perception (Chou et al. 2010;Shepherd 2010). As a common principle, microcircuits are built from synapses between two general types of neurons, local interneurons (LNs) and projection neurons (PNs). Neurites of LNs are spatially confined to a local brain structure, while PNs connect between brain structures. Both network connectivity and the individual morphological and physiological properties of LNs and PNs define the function and reflect the specific processing demands of a particular sensory system. Primary olfactory centers, the vertebrate olfactory bulb and the analog invertebrate antennal lobe (AL), perform complex local computations ( Riffell et al. 2009;Stopfer et al. 2003). At the heart of t...