A Natural History of Skills

International audienceThe dorsal pallium (a.k.a. the cortex in the mammals) makes a large loop circuit with the basal ganglia and the thalamus known to control and adapt behavior but the who's who of the functional roles of these structures is still debated. Influenced by the Triune brain theory that was proposed in the early sixties, many current theories propose a hierarchical organization on the top of which stands the cortex to which the subcortical structures are subordinated. In particular, habits formation has been proposed to reflect a switch from conscious on-line control of behavior by the cortex, to a fully automated subcortical control. In this review, we propose to revalue the function of the network in light of the current experimental evidence concerning the anatomy and physiology of the basal ganglia-cortical circuits in vertebrates. We briefly review the current theories and show that they could be encompassed in a broader framework of skill learning and performance. Then, after reminding the state of the art concerning the anatomical architecture of the network and the underlying dynamic processes, we summarize the evolution of the anatomical and physiological substrate of skill learning and performance among vertebrates. We then lay out our hypothesis that the development of automatized skills relies on the BG teaching cortical circuits and is actually a late feature linked with the development of a specialized cortex or pallium that evolved in parallel in different taxa. We finally propose a minimal computational framework where this hypothesis can be explicitly implemented and tested

Imagined Economies - Real Fictions: New Perspectives on Economic Thinking in Great Britain

The way we conceptualise the economy and ourselves as homo economicus has profound consequences for our lives. The contributions to this anthology take debates about the financial crisis, about recent austerity measures or about the Brexit referendum a step further. A common denominator of these dynamics are underlying ideas of »the economy«. Each author identifies a facet of Britain's imagined economies. They connect seemingly separate fields such as finance and fiction in order to better understand current political changes. In addition, the book offers an urgently needed interdisciplinary view on the performative power of economic thought - and in this respect moves far beyond merely British perspectives

Grassroots Diplomacy and Vernacular Law: The Discourse of Food Sovereignty in Maine

This thesis studies the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine, a coalition of small-scale farmers, consumers, and citizens building an alternative food system based on a distributed form of production, processing, selling, purchasing, and consumption. This distribution occurs at the municipal level through the enactment of ordinances. Using critical-rhetorical field methods, I argue that the discourse of food sovereignty in Maine develops a ‘constitutive’ rhetoric that composes rural society through affective relationships. Advocates engage the industrial food system to both expose its systemic bias against small-scale farming and construct their own discourse of belonging. Based upon agrarian values such as interrelatedness, secular grace, and trust, food sovereignty proposes a vernacular law by which to regulate local food systems. Advocates perform a ‘grassroots diplomacy’ to gain access to the decision-making process and to create space for themselves within the existing regulatory structure

On the Beneficence of Censorship

Lev Loseff (1937), der Leningrad 1976 verlassen musste und seit 1979 in Hannover, New Hampshire am Dartmouth College in den USA als Professor of Russian Language and Literature lehrt, hat u.a. Werke von E. Švarc, N. Olejnikov und M. Bulgakov herausgegeben. In seiner ersten großen Monographie "On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language in Modern Russian Literature" analysiert Loseff an Werken von Švarc, Solženicyn, Evtušenko u.a. die aus der Auseinandersetzung mit der Zensur gebotenen stilistischen - auch bereichernden - Besonderheiten der modernen, in der Sowjetunion entstandenen russischen Literatur und veranschaulicht diese im Kontext von Werk, Autor und Epoche

Commonwealth Times 1986-04-15

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/com/1506/thumbnail.jp

A performer\u27s guide to theatrical elements in selected trombone literature

In the last forty years, many new solo and chamber pieces have been written for the trombone which involve elements of a theatrical nature, including lighting, make-up, costume, stage direction, dialogue/narration, sound effects, props, and audience interaction. It is difficult for a trombonist searching for music to discern a piece\u27s theatrical nature by its listing in most catalogs. This document has attempted to solve that problem by gathering pieces that share these elements into an annotated collection. Nearly 200 pieces were discovered through contacts made with individual trombonists, composers, and publishers around the world. Of these, over sixty were acquired and subsequently analyzed. Each piece analyzed has an individual entry in the body of the paper that does three things: gives a detailed description of all theatrical elements utilized in grid format; gives a general description of each piece and discusses any special considerations necessary for its execution in paragraph format; and assigns a theatricity rating between one and ten to each piece for a comparative perspective to the entire collection. The preface of the document discusses the pedagogical motivation for the project. The introduction discusses the research process and describes in greater detail the format of the individual entries. The main body of the document consists of the entries themselves. The conclusion discusses various commonalties that emerged from close inspection of these compositions. For easy referencing an index devoted to each theatrical element is included so the reader can get a comparative perspective on all the pieces that incorporate that element. An index of publishers is also included to help the reader in locating any desired pieces

Washington University Record, October 13, 1994

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/record/1666/thumbnail.jp