318 research outputs found

    (b2023 to 2014) The UNBELIEVABLE similarities between the ideas of some people (2006-2016) and my ideas (2002-2008) in physics (quantum mechanics, cosmology), cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy (this manuscript would require a REVOLUTION in international academy environment!)

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    (b2023 to 2014) The UNBELIEVABLE similarities between the ideas of some people (2006-2016) and my ideas (2002-2008) in physics (quantum mechanics, cosmology), cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy (this manuscript would require a REVOLUTION in international academy environment!

    Uncovering the (un)attended: Pupil light responses index persistent biases of spatial attention in neglect

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    Visuospatial neglect is a frequent and disabling disorder, mostly after stroke, that presents in impaired awareness to stimuli on one side of space. Neglect causes disability and functional dependence, even long after the injury. Improving measurements of the core attentional deficit might hold the key for better understanding of the condition and development of treatment. We present a rapid, pupillometry-based method that assesses automatic biases in (covert) attention, without requiring behavioral responses. We exploit the phenomenon that pupil light responses scale with the degree of covert attention to stimuli, and thereby reveal what draws (no) attention. Participants with left-sided neglect after right-sided lesions following stroke (n = 5), participants with hemianopia/quadrantanopia following stroke (n = 11), and controls (n = 22) were presented with two vertical bars, one of which was white and one of which was black, while fixating the center. We varied which brightness was left and right, respectively across trials. In line with the hypotheses, participants with neglect demonstrated biased pupil light responses to the brightness on the right side. Participants with hemianopia showed similar biases to intact parts of the visual field, whilst controls exhibited no bias. Together, this demonstrates that the pupil light response can reveal not only visual, but also attentional deficits. Strikingly, our pupillometry-based bias estimates were not in agreement with neuropsychological paper-and-pencil assessments conducted on the same day, but were with those administered in an earlier phase post-stroke. Potentially, we pick up on persistent biases in the covert attentional system that participants increasingly compensate for in classical neuropsychological tasks and everyday life. The here proposed method may not only find clinical application, but also advance theory and aid the development of successful restoration therapies by introducing a precise, longitudinally valid, and objective measurement that might not be affected by compensation

    Comparative analysis of TMS-EEG signal using different approaches in healthy subjects

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    openThe integration of transcranial magnetic stimulation with electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) represents a useful non-invasive approach to assess cortical excitability, plasticity and intra-cortical connectivity in humans in physiological and pathological conditions. However, biological and environmental noise sources can contaminate the TMS-evoked potentials (TEPs). Therefore, signal preprocessing represents a fundamental step in the analysis of these potentials and is critical to remove artefactual components while preserving the physiological brain activity. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the effects of different signal processing pipelines, (namely Leodori et al., Rogasch et al., Mutanen et al.) applied on TEPs recorded in five healthy volunteers after TMS stimulation of the primary motor cortex (M1) of the dominant hemisphere. These pipelines were used and compared to remove artifacts and improve the quality of the recorded signals, laying the foundation for subsequent analyses. Various algorithms, such as Independent Component Analysis (ICA), SOUND, and SSP-SIR, were used in each pipeline. Furthermore, after signal preprocessing, current localization was performed to map the TMS-induced neural activation in the cortex. This methodology provided valuable information on the spatial distribution of activity and further validated the effectiveness of the signal cleaning pipelines. Comparing the effects of the different pipelines on the same dataset, we observed considerable variability in how the pipelines affect various signal characteristics. We observed significant differences in the effects on signal amplitude and in the identification and characterisation of peaks of interest, i.e., P30, N45, P60, N100, P180. The identification and characteristics of these peaks showed variability, especially with regard to the early peaks, which reflect the cortical excitability of the stimulated area and are the more affected by biological and stimulation-related artifacts. Despite these differences, the topographies and source localisation, which are the most informative and useful in reconstructing signal dynamics, were consistent and reliable between the different pipelines considered. The results suggest that the existing methodologies for analysing TEPs produce different effects on the data, but are all capable of reproducing the dynamics of the signal and its components. Future studies evaluating different signal preprocessing methods in larger populations are needed to determine an appropriate workflow that can be shared through the scientific community, in order to make the results obtained in different centres comparable

    Getting the gist of it: An investigation of gist processing and the learning of novel gist categories

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    Gist extraction rapidly processes global structural regularities to provide access to the general meaning and global categorizations of our visual environment – the gist. Medical experts can also extract gist information from mammograms to categorize them as normal or abnormal. However, the visual properties influencing the gist of medical abnormality are largely unknown. It is also not known how medical experts, or any observer for that matter, learned to recognise the gist of new categories. This thesis investigated the processing and acquisition of the gist of abnormality. Chapter 2 observed no significant differences in performance between 500 ms and unlimited viewing time, suggesting that the gist of abnormality is fully accessible after 500 ms and remains available during further visual processing. Next, chapter 3 demonstrated that certain high-pass filters enhanced gist signals in mammograms at risk of future cancer, without affecting overall performance. These filters could be used to enhance mammograms for gist risk-factor scoring. Chapter 4’s multi-session training showed that perceptual exposure with global feedback is sufficient to induce learning of a new gist categorisation. However, learning was affected by individual differences and was not significantly retained after 7-10 days, suggesting that prolonged perceptual exposure might be needed for consolidation. Chapter 5 observed evidence for the neural signature of gist extraction in medical experts across a network of regions, where neural activity patterns showed clear individual differences. Overall, the findings of this thesis confirm the gist extraction of medical abnormality as a rapid, global process that is sensitive to spatial structural regularities. Additionally, it was shown that a gist category can be learned via global feedback, but this learning is hard to retain and is affected by individual differences. Similarly, individual differences were observed in the neural signature of gist extraction by medical experts

    Interfaces between language and cognition: metaphor, iconicity, and multimodal numerical communication

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    This thesis explores metaphor, iconicity, and multimodal numerical communication, and their connection to the cognitive processes that are involved in language comprehension and production. Focusing on the English language, this thesis discusses the idea that linguistic metaphors reflect deeper conceptualisations of the world, which are expressed multimodally through metaphoric and iconic gesture, prosody, and vocalization. It also studies the representation of these metaphors in cultural artifacts, like line graphs, and how these representations can make data visualizations easier to comprehend. By focusing on number metaphors and then expanding its scope to include numerical communication more broadly, this thesis explores how communication about numbers reflects numerical cognition. It also argues that sensorimotor simulation motivates iconic and metaphoric expression in different modalities, and discusses the implications of this argument for language evolution. By synthesising insights from a wide range of research areas and methodologies from across the spectrum of linguistics, cognitive science, and psychology, this thesis demonstrates that metaphor, iconicity, and multimodal numerical communication are interfaces between language and cognition

    Age differences in conspiracy beliefs around Covid-19 pandemic and (dis)trust in the government

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    Objective: Times of societal crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, during which people need to make sense of a chaotic world and to protect their health and lives, according to psychological research, represent suitable ground for the development of conspiracy theories about origins, spread, and treatment of the threat (coronavirus). Although numerous studies have been conducted on this issue since the beginning of the pandemic until today, most of the studies were conducted on the adult population with limited insights into development of the conspiracy beliefs in adolescence or over the lifespan. Objective of this study is precisely to explore how conspiracy beliefs regarding COVID-19 pandemic differentiate between multiple age groups (cross-sectional design), what are their sources and contexts, and how do they relate with the tendency to trust the government. Methodology: Data were gathered through eight focus group discussions with four age groups (11-12, 14-15, 18-19, 30+) in Serbia. Results: Based on critical discourse analysis, this paper identifies the differences in content and the sources of conspiracy thinking and how it relates to trust in the government. Study shows that high distrust in Serbian government is associated with conspiracy beliefs both within youth and adults. However, while among adolescents this finding is exclusively related with their beliefs that ruling structures have financial gain from the pandemic, against the interests of citizens, among adults it is related to the belief that the government (un)intentionally submits to the new global order that is managed by one or more powerful actors who are coordinated in secret action to achieve an outcome that is of public interest, but not public knowledge. Conclusion: The results will be discussed within current socio-political climate in Serbia, as well as the basis for understanding psychological factors which may underlie these tendencies in conspiracy theorizing, such as social identification, collective narcissism, authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation
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