Blood platelets are best known for their roles in hemostasis and thrombosis, but platelets also make important contributions to inflammation, immunity, and inflammatory resolution. Experiments involving depletion, genetic modification, and live imaging of platelets in animal models have increased our mechanistic understanding of platelet contributions to inflammation. In this minireview, we provide a critical overview of experimental techniques for manipulating and imaging platelets in inflammation models. We then highlight studies using innovative approaches to elucidate molecular mechanisms through which platelet subsets, platelet Fc gamma receptors, and pro-resolution platelet functions influence inflammatory responses. We also propose future technologies and research directions which might move us closer to harnessing of platelet functions for improved therapeutic modulation of inflammatory diseases.

We report the results of two experiments designed to investigate the role of inference in Wason's selection task. In Experiment 1 participants received either a standard one rule problem or a task which contained an additional rule. This additional rule specified an alternative antecedent. Both groups of participants were asked to select those cards they considered necessary to test whether the rule common to both problems was true or false. The results showed a significant suppression of "q" card selections. In addition there was weak evidence for increased "not-q" selection. In Experiment 2 we manipulated number of rules, as before, and the presence or absence of explicit negation on the cards. Once again "q" card selections were suppressed, but there was no evidence of an increase in "not-q" selection. There was also no effect of type of negation. Our results suggest that inferences about the unseen side of the cards underlie participants' selections. We argue firstly that these findings are inconsistent with current views of selection task performance (Oaksford and Chater, 1994, Evans and Over, 1996) and secondly, that they support accounts which emphasise the role of inference in the task.

Lighthouse beams are often perceived as bent rather than straight, and observers sometimes infer that a rotating lighthouse beam originates from a ``phantom lighthouse'' that lies in the opposite direction from the true source of the beam. We argue that both illusions arise as a result of Bayesian inference based on natural scene statistics and support our argument by implementing a formal computational model. In addition to capturing both illusions, our model makes the novel predictions that a beam viewed from the side is perceived to bend towards the observer, and that the phantom lighthouse illusion should only emerge at a critical point at which the observer is located around 75 metres in front of the true source of a rotating lighthouse beam. Our theory therefore motivates a future line of experimental work, and contributes to a broader body of research that explains perceptual phenomena (including visual illusions) in terms of Bayesian inference.

Intensive longitudinal data was collected through theconcurrent use of a passive experience sampling (ES)smartphone application collecting objective measures ofexperience, and an ecological momentary assessment (EMA)app collecting self-reported affect. After a week-longretention interval, participants completed a memory testgenerated from paired ES and EMA data. Participants wereasked to select the GPS location at the time of a paired targetevent from four alternatives. Correct retrieval was notpredicted by self-reports grouped by negative valence/higharousal or negative valence/low arousal. Positivevalence/high arousal reported at encoding predicted greaterprobability of incorrect responses. Conversely, positivevalence/low arousal predicted greater probability of correctidentification of target. At retrieval, choice was predicted bydissimilarities in discrete emotions between target anddistractors, suggesting the use of affect as a contextualmechanism.

Differences in regeneration of sensory and motor nerves were studied in rats to determine the effects of entubulation with collagen conduits. The rat sciatic nerve was repaired either with a 10-mm saline-filled gap or with a no-gap end-to-end repair cuffed within collagen tubules. These repairs were compared with the standard epineurial repairs. The populations of regenerated motor and sensory neurons in the peroneal nerves of all repairs were compared against the populations of normal peroneal neurons using horseradish peroxidase retrograde labeling. The epineurial repair resulted in regeneration of 65 percent (409 +/- 150) of motor neurons and 79 percent (2127 +/- 516) of sensory neurons (n = 6). The no-gap end-to-end repair in a collagen tubule resulted in regeneration of 53 percent (338 +/- 203) of motor and 70 percent (1893 +/- 794) of sensory neurons (n = 7). In the 10-mm gap repair, only 6.2 percent (39 +/- 18) of motor neurons but 63 percent (1710 +/- 557) of sensory neurons regenerated (n = 5). These results show that collagen entubulation supports nerve regeneration in end-to-end nerve repairs comparably to standard epineurial suture repairs. With the 10-mm gap repairs in collagen tubules, sensory neurons regenerated consistently better than motor neurons in the same environment. Therefore, intrinsic differences exist between motor and sensory neuron regeneration in the same nerve.