A biomechanical explanation for convergent head movements evoked by stimulation of the primate supplementary eye fields

Cortical microstimulation has played an important role in the investigation of movement coding in the frontal and supplementary eye fields (FEF and SEF). Recent evidence has shown that microstimulation of the SEF produces eye head gaze shifts whose kinematics depend on initial position. Across different stimulation sites in the SEF, evoked movements converge in a variety of reference frames, possibly reflecting the SEF’s role in complex sensory-motor transformations. Here, we examine neck muscle activity evoked by SEF stimulation while monkeys attained a range of different initial positions through electromyographic (EMG) recordings of the neck muscles. A similar approach targeting the FEF and superior colliculus (SC) has revealed a counter-intuitive trend where increasing levels of agonist (contralateral) neck muscle activity are associated with the smallest evoked movements. Monkeys were trained to look to one of nine different fixation points prior to SEF microstimulation (100 pA, 300 Hz, 200 ms) with stimulation was passed on half of all trials. SEF stimulation evoked a rapid facilitation (18 ± 5.5 ms ms) of EMG activity on contralateral agonist neck muscles and a simultaneous suppression of EMG activity on the antagonist neck muscles. Importantly, the expression of this generic evoked response depended on the positionally-dependent level of background EMG activity attained prior to stimulation. As in the SC and FEF, we observed a counter-intuitive trend where the smallest amplitude movements, which occurred for initial positions contralateral to the side of stimulation, were associated with the largest increases in evoked neck muscle activity. Our results suggest that the apparent convergence of the head following stimulation in a variety of oculomotor areas may result more because of biomechanical considerations consequent to the initial positions, as opposed to a centrally-programmed strategy reflective of reference frame coding

Stars in their eyes: What eye-tracking reveal about multimedia perceptual quality

Perceptual multimedia quality is of paramount importance to the continued take-up and proliferation of multimedia applications: users will not use and pay for applications if they are perceived to be of low quality. Whilst traditionally distributed multimedia quality has been characterised by Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, these neglect the user perspective of the issue of quality. In order to redress this shortcoming, we characterise the user multimedia perspective using the Quality of Perception (QoP) metric, which encompasses not only a user’s satisfaction with the quality of a multimedia presentation, but also his/her ability to analyse, synthesise and assimilate informational content of multimedia. In recognition of the fact that monitoring eye movements offers insights into visual perception, as well as the associated attention mechanisms and cognitive processes, this paper reports on the results of a study investigating the impact of differing multimedia presentation frame rates on user QoP and eye path data. Our results show that provision of higher frame rates, usually assumed to provide better multimedia presentation quality, do not significantly impact upon the median coordinate value of eye path data. Moreover, higher frame rates do not significantly increase level of participant information assimilation, although they do significantly improve overall user enjoyment and quality perception of the multimedia content being shown

Human values in curating a human rights media archive

Cultural institutions, such as museums, often curate politically and ethically sensitive materials. Increasingly, Internet-enabled, digital technology intersects with these curatorial practices offering new opportunities for public and scholarly engagement. We report on a case study of human rights media archiving at a genocide memorial centre in Rwanda, motivated by interests in ICT support to memorialisation practices. Through an analysis of our discussions with staff about their work, we report on how accounts of the Rwandan Genocide are being captured and curated to support the centre's humanitarian agenda and associated values. We identify transferable curatorial concerns for human rights media communication amongst scholarly networks and public audiences worldwide, elucidating interaction design challenges for supportive ICT and contributing to HCI discourses on value sensitive design and cultural engagement with sensitive materials

Representational unification in cognitive science: Is embodied cognition a unifying perspective?

In this paper, we defend a novel, multidimensional account of representational unification, which we distinguish from integration. The dimensions of unity are simplicity, generality and scope, non-monstrosity, and systematization. In our account, unification is a graded property. The account is used to investigate the issue of how research traditions contribute to representational unification, focusing on embodied cognition in cognitive science. Embodied cognition contributes to unification even if it fails to offer a grand unification of cognitive science. The study of this failure shows that unification, contrary to what defenders of mechanistic explanation claim, is an important mechanistic virtue of research traditions

FRAMING AND NARRATIVES AS ASSISTANTS IN ADVANCING A SCIENCE-ORIENTED MINDSET. THE EXAMPLE OF THE POLICE IN THE BALTICS

Country-specific knowledge offered by police science is a necessary precondition for successful policing. However, cursory data on police science in the Baltic countries raises many questions about the real use of scientific knowledge opportunities in these countries.The paper elaborates on a framework to advance a science-oriented mindset in the police. Principles of narratives and framing were used to overcome a possible conflict between scientists and practitioners, and bridge all the parties related to policing. In this framework, scientists should take the lead. External, internal, and strategic factors, as Alisson’s three key management functions, were used to specify factors of the framework in the research. The framing process that holds a focusing function allows the use of discovered narratives and presents a variety of possible future directions. Creating a metanarrative with beginning, middle, and end grasps all the agents and ties into future developments

Design Resources in Movement-based Design Methods:A Practice-based Characterization

Movement-based design methods are increasingly adopted to help design rich embodied experiences. While there are well-known methods in the field, there is no systematic overview to help designers choose among them, adapt them, or create their own. We collected 41 methods used by movement design researchers and employed a practice-based, bottom-up approach to analyze and characterize their properties. We found 17 categories and arranged them into five main groups: Design Resources, Activities, Delivery, Framing, and Context. In this paper, we describe these groups in general and then focus on Design Resources containing the categories of Movement, Space, and Objects. We ground the characterization with examples from empirical material provided by the design researchers and references to previous work. Additionally, we share recommendations and action points to bring these into practice. This work can help novice and seasoned design researchers who want to employ movement-based design methods in their practice.This research was supported by the EU Erasmus+ project Method Cardsfor Movement-based Interaction Design (2020-1-DK01-KA203-075164) IO4: Gathering movement-frst methods for the design of movement-based experiences. This work was also partially supported by the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid) under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M in the line of Research Funds for Beatriz Galindo Fellowships (MovIntPlayLab-CM-UC3M 2021/00050/001) in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation), and by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101002711; project BODYinTRANSIT). We would like to collectively acknowledge all the people and institutions that have made possible the individual projects featured in this paper: ACHIEVE, KOMPAN Workshop, Astaire, Super Trouper (Vetenskapsrådet grant number 2017-04880), Magic outFit (Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación, PID2019-105579RBI00), Sense2makeSense (SpanishAgencia Estatal de Investigación, PID2019-109388GB-I00), LearnSPORTtech, Tangibles, DigiFys (Sweden Innovation Agency Vinnova grant number 2016-03777), Diverging Squash, GIFT, and Online Course in Embodied Interaction

High-throughput Metabolism-induced Toxicity Assays on a 384-pillar Plate

The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched the Transform Tox Testing Challenge in 2016 with the goal of developing practical methods that can be integrated into conventional high-throughput screening (HTS) assays to better predict the toxicity of parent compounds and their metabolites in vivo. In response to this need and to retrofit existing HTS assays for assessing metabolism-induced toxicity of compounds, we have developed a 384-pillar plate that is complementary to traditional 384-well plates and ideally suited for culturing human cells in three dimensions (3D) at a microscale. Briefly, human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells in a mixture of alginate and Matrigel were printed on the 384-pillar plates using a microarray spotter. These cells were then coupled with 384-well plates containing nine model compounds provided by the EPA, five representative Phase I and II drug metabolizing enzymes (DMEs), and one no enzyme control. Membrane integrity and viability of HEK 293 cells were measured with the calcein AM and CellTiter-Glo® kit, respectively, to determine the IC50 values of the nine parent compounds and DME generated metabolites. Out of the nine compounds tested, six compounds showed augmented toxicity with DMEs and one compound showed detoxification with a Phase II DME. This result indicates that the 384-pillar plate platform can be used to measure metabolism-induced toxicity of compounds with high predictivity. In addition, the Z’ factors and the coefficient of variation (CV) measured were above 0.6 and below 14%, respectively, indicating that the assays established on the 384-pillar plate are robust and reproducible

Communication and Non-Speaking Children with Physical Disabilities: Opportunities and Reflections from Design-Oriented Research

This thesis presents a series of design-oriented studies for investigating and describing communication involving children with severe speech and physical impairments (SSPIs). The overarching goal is to inform how designers conceptualise communication that involves children with SSPIs beyond a widely cited view that communication centres around speech and happens at the level of the individual through the transmission of information. Instead, by positioning communication as co-constructed, situated and multimodal, the goal is to stimulate how one designs for digitally mediated communication by applying multiple, alternative frames that acknowledge these features. In order to achieve this goal, qualitative empirical fieldwork is undertaken that examines the everyday communication experiences of five children who have SSPIs. Drawing on theoretical influences from multimodal social semiotics and participatory design, study one and two investigate child centred accounts of communication involving children with SSPIs and their peers. The focus is on investigating communication, first in formal learning contexts involving existing augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies, then in broader contexts beyond AAC use. Multi-layered perspectives are generated that consider: 1. a child’s view, by attending to children’s values and choices of modes; 2. an interactional view that attends to how communication is co-constructed in situ with other people and material objects, and; 3. a structural view, that examines the orderings of people, material objects and activities within an environment. These layered understandings produce research frames that are then utilised in study three. A design documentary is created and used to motivate design work for supporting face to face communication involving children with SSPIs and their peers with a team of designers who do not hold fixed orientations to designing assistive technologies. The findings of the three studies make three new contributions to the fields of HCI and AAC. First, the findings produce a theoretical perspective on communication, acknowledging multiple modes and displacing the taken for granted centrality of language. Second, the findings reveal design opportunities for new and existing technologies. Third, the studies contribute methodological insights for design work by considering ways of involving both children and designers when designing with and for children with SSPIs

High-throughput Metabolism-induced Toxicity Assays on a 384-pillar Plate

The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched the Transform Tox Testing Challenge in 2016 with the goal of developing practical methods that can be integrated into conventional high-throughput screening (HTS) assays to better predict the toxicity of parent compounds and their metabolites in vivo. In response to this need and to retrofit existing HTS assays for assessing metabolism-induced toxicity of compounds, we have developed a 384-pillar plate that is complementary to traditional 384-well plates and ideally suited for culturing human cells in three dimensions (3D) at a microscale. Briefly, human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells in a mixture of alginate and Matrigel were printed on the 384-pillar plates using a microarray spotter. These cells were then coupled with 384-well plates containing nine model compounds provided by the EPA, five representative Phase I and II drug metabolizing enzymes (DMEs), and one no enzyme control. Membrane integrity and viability of HEK 293 cells were measured with the calcein AM and CellTiter-Glo® kit, respectively, to determine the IC50 values of the nine parent compounds and DME generated metabolites. Out of the nine compounds tested, six compounds showed augmented toxicity with DMEs and one compound showed detoxification with a Phase II DME. This result indicates that the 384-pillar plate platform can be used to measure metabolism-induced toxicity of compounds with high predictivity. In addition, the Z’ factors and the coefficient of variation (CV) measured were above 0.6 and below 14%, respectively, indicating that the assays established on the 384-pillar plate are robust and reproducible