The rubber hand illusion (RHI) makes people feel that a fake hand is their own when they see it stroked in sync with their own hidden hand. This illusion typically causes a sense that their real hand has shifted toward the fake hand (proprioceptive drift). Two experiments show that participants' actual hand, resting on a movable board, physically moved toward the rubber hand during synchronous stroking. Even when the board was fixed, participants unconsciously pushed force toward the rubber hand. These results suggest that awareness of one's body and one's actions are tightly linked, forming a unified sense of self as a single agent.
Mind-wandering is thought to involve perceptual decoupling, where attention shifts away from external tasks. The standard method for studying mind-wandering relies on participants reporting their mental state after a behavior, which may not accurately capture real-time awareness. An alternative approach presented a word before a catch trial; after the trial, participants reported awareness of the word, tried to recognize it, and indicated whether they were on- or off-task. Explicit and implicit awareness of the word were independent of self-reported mind-wandering. This contradicts the idea that mind-wandering reports reflect perceptual decoupling. Instead, such reports may be post-hoc explanations for performance errors.
Ketamine and rapastinel both produce rapid and sustained antidepressant-like effects in mice, despite having opposing actions on the NMDAR. Using a chronic unpredictable mild stress model in 46 male mice, the study found that both drugs restored reduced BDNF concentrations in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus and reduced anhedonia and passive coping behavior. A CaMKII inhibitor, TatCN21, unexpectedly enhanced rapastinel's effects but blocked ketamine's effects, indicating that the CaMKII/CREB pathway plays a differential role in mediating these antidepressant-like actions. The findings suggest distinct mechanisms for these two rapid-acting antidepressants.