Group-wise 3D registration based templates to study the evolution of ant worker neuroanatomy

The evolutionary success of ants and other social insects is considered to be intrinsically linked to division of labor and emergent collective intelligence. The role of the brains of individual ants in generating these processes, however, is poorly understood. One genus of ant of special interest is Pheidole, which includes more than a thousand species, most of which are dimorphic, i.e. their colonies contain two subcastes of workers: minors and majors. Using confocal imaging and manual annotations, it has been demonstrated that minor and major workers of different ages of three species of Pheidole have distinct patterns of brain size and subregion scaling. However, these studies require laborious effort to quantify brain region volumes and are subject to potential bias. To address these issues, we propose a group-wise 3D registration approach to build for the first time bias-free brain atlases of intra- and inter-subcaste individuals and automatize the segmentation of new individuals.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, preprint for conference (not reviewed

Perceptions of gender in early years

This article presents an exploration of a group of Early Years Practitioners’ (EYPs) perceptions of gender that may provide some insight into the growing divide between boys’ and girls’ educational performance [Burusic, J., T. Babarovic, and M. Seric. 2012. “Differences in Elementary School Achievement between Girls and Boys: Does the Teacher’s Gender Play a Role?” European Journal of Psychology of Education 27 (4): 523–538]. I argue that the current media and educational interest in the gendered brain [Sax, L. 2005. Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences. New York: Broadway Books] and the influences that surround the child [Eckert, P., and G. S. McConnell. 2013. Language and Gender. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], can result in children acquiring social expectations and attitudes to learning that are different for both sexes. The frequent dimorphic treatment of boys and girls is often based on assumed biological differences [Baron-Cohen, S., S. Lutchmaya, and R. Knickmeyer. 2004. Prenatal Testosterone in Mind: Amniotic Fluids Studies. Massachusetts Institute of Technology] that suggest that the sexes learn differently. This can result in the approaches to the care and education of children being established on their sex categories rather than their individual needs. My focus here is to explore practitioners’ expectations and understanding of children’s behaviour and learning in the nursery environment. The study is premised on the belief that practitioners’ perceptions of gender could, as argued by [Eliot, L. 2009. Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps – And what we can do About It. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company], result in self-fulfilling prophecies being (re)produced and (re)created. The deployment of stereotypical assumptions and practices could, I suggest, limit children’s opportunities. The data used here are drawn from my doctoral study of the nature of gender as was understood by eight EYPs who took part in five discussion group sessions. An interpretative paradigm was adopted, where the EYPs’ discussed their experiences and understanding of gender from their practice. Following [Holloway, I., and S. Wheeler. 2013. Qualitative Research in Nursing and Healthcare. 3rd ed. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Limited], the study explored experiences and perceptions in order to illuminate meaning and understanding. The findings indicated that there is a belief amongst the group of practitioners with whom I worked that gender is either innate or learned and that EYPs play no role in its development. The tentative conclusions suggest that changes to the education and training of EYPs are required in order to raise awareness of gender issues in nurseries. I suggest that there is a need to place gender back on the education and training agenda for EYP in order to support changes to practice that could, in turn, provide children with more equitable teaching and learning experiences

Neurophysiological Assessment of Affective Experience

In the field of Affective Computing the affective experience (AX) of the user during the interaction with computers is of great interest. The automatic recognition of the affective state, or emotion, of the user is one of the big challenges. In this proposal I focus on the affect recognition via physiological and neurophysiological signals. Long‐standing evidence from psychophysiological research and more recently from research in affective neuroscience suggests that both, body and brain physiology, are able to indicate the current affective state of a subject. However, regarding the classification of AX several questions are still unanswered. The principal possibility of AX classification was repeatedly shown, but its generalisation over different task contexts, elicitating stimuli modalities, subjects or time is seldom addressed. In this proposal I will discuss a possible agenda for the further exploration of physiological and neurophysiological correlates of AX over different elicitation modalities and task contexts

The Silent Voice of Those Who are no Longer: Transgenerational Transmission of Information from the Perspective of the Informational Model of Consciousness

The “nature or nurture” problem concerning the debate on the innate features with respect to the acquired ones is approached in terms of information, from the perspective of the Informational Model of Consciousness. This model reveals seven distinct informational systems reflected in consciousness as informational centers, i.e. memory (Iknow-Ik), decisional info-operational center (Iwant-Iw), emotions (Ilove-Il), metabolic operations (Iam-Ia), genetic transmission (Icreate-Ic), genetic info-generation (Icreated-Icd) and the anti-entropic center (Ibelieve-Ib). Ib is a life-assisting beneficial center, because it is opposed to the entropic action of matter, eliminating or reducing the uncertainty characteristic of unknown possibilities to certainty, and inducing in this way the trust and confidence in own actions. The pro and contra arguments of the “nature or nurture” are shortly presented, noting the large range of divergent opinions and concepts on the approached problem. It is shown that the information concept acting both as informal and matter-related information, specifically referred to the embodiment/ disembodiment mechanisms for the transmission of information during the epigenetic processes, can coherently approach and explain the transgenerational transmission of the traits acquired during the life span of the predecessors. The concepts of tendency, affinity, propensity, predisposition, aptitude, vocation and talent, specific for inheritable properties described by Icd are discussed, pointing out the large pallet and variety of such concepts describing the evidences detected by external observers on the inherited behaviors, and that of self-perceived by the implicated individual, as a silent voice of whose are no longer. The external manifestation of such inherited features and traits depends on practice, because the characteristic operation of the nervous system and of epigenetic processes is based on repetition and/or intensive practice, but these are permanently guided by the silent voice of those who are no longer, with various signal intensities

Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance

In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences

Close relationships: A study of mobile communication records

Mobile phone communication as digital service generates ever-increasing datasets of human communication actions, which in turn allow us to investigate the structure and evolution of social interactions and their networks. These datasets can be used to study the structuring of such egocentric networks with respect to the strength of the relationships by assuming direct dependence of the communication intensity on the strength of the social tie. Recently we have discovered that there are significant differences between the first and further "best friends" from the point of view of age and gender preferences. Here we introduce a control parameter $p_{\rm max}$ based on the statistics of communication with the first and second "best friend" and use it to filter the data. We find that when $p_{\rm max}$ is decreased the identification of the "best friend" becomes less ambiguous and the earlier observed effects get stronger, thus corroborating them.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Chomsky and Foucault on Human Nature and Politics

Permission granted by Social Theory and Practice Journal, Department of Philosophy, Florida State UniversityIn 1971, Dutch television held a series of interviews and discussions with noted intellectuals of the day to discuss a wide range of issues regarding contemporary social and philosophical affairs. Perhaps the most significant of these encounters was the meeting between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault. It brought together arguably the two most prominent Western intellectual-activists of the day in a debate that illustrates clearly the lineage of thought within which each writer is situated. Nominally the discussion was in two parts: the first an examination of the origins or production of knowledge, with particular concern for the natural sciences, the second explicitly focused on the role and practice of oppositional politics within Western capitalist democracies—in part a response to the unfolding Vietnam Wa