While empirical studies have mainly focused on the psychological mechanisms of social learning in individuals, the phenomenon of information propagation within the group has received relatively little attention. This might be due to the fact that formal theories that allow actual testing have not been formulated, or were kept too simple, ignoring the social dynamics of multi-agent societies. We want to propose a network approach to social information transmission that (1) preserves the complexity of the social structure of primate groups and (2)

allows direct application to empirical data. Results from simulation experiments with artificial NU7026 research buy group structures confirm that association patterns of group-members influence the expected speed of information transmission during the propagation

process. Introducing a forgetting rate shows that under certain conditions the proportion of informed individuals will reach a stable rate in some systems while it will drop to zero in others. This suggests that the likelihood to observe temporal stable traditions shall differ between social systems with different structure. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“The FXYD domain containing ion transport regulator 6 (FXYD6) gene is located within a region of chromosome 11 (11q23.3) that has been shown by a number of genome scans to be one of the most well-established Selleck LEE011 linkages to schizophrenia. FXYD6 encodes the protein phosphohippolin, which is primarily expressed in the brain. Phosphohippolin modulates the kinetic activity of Na,K-ATPase and has long-term physiological importance in maintaining cation homeostasis. A recent study reported that FXYD6 was associated with schizophrenia in the United Kingdom samples. Applying the gene-based association concept, we carried out an association study regarding FXYD6 and schizophrenia in a Japanese population, with a sample consisting of 2026 subjects (906 schizophrenics

and 1120 controls). After linkage disequilibrium Selleck VX809 analysis, 23 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped using 5′-exonuclease allelic discrimination assay. We found a significant association of two SNPs (rs11216573; genotypic P value: 0.022 and rs555577; genotypic P value: 0.026, allelic P value: 0.011, uncorrected). Nominal P values did not survive correction for multiple testing (rs11216573; genotypic P value: 0.47 and rs555577; genotypic P value: 0.55, allelic P value: 0.24, after SNPSpD correction). No association was observed between schizophrenia patients and controls in allelic, genotypic and haplotypic analyses. Our findings suggest that FXYD6 is unlikely to be related to the development of schizophrenia in a Japanese population. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.