Systematic deviations from rational decision-making in public administration

When making judgments and decisions, individuals have been widely shown to be prone to cognitive biases, leading them to inconsistently reveal their preferences. Despite the fact that these can have far-reaching consequences for our society, research on how systematic errors impinge on the decisions made within the public sector is limited. While a robust discussion has begun on decision-making biases in public management, administration, and policy, these scholars have mostly focused on how citizens make informed assessments of government policies. Only few of them have investigated how public managers and policy makers make decisions. Nonetheless, while exploring the systematic errors of citizens’ judgments about government services is important, it is equally relevant and timely to understand whether and how cognitive biases affect public workers responsible for designing, managing, and implementing public policies and managerial procedures. The three chapters included in this proposal provide empirical evidence, by means of randomized experiments, aimed at increasing our knowledge of these dynamics. In particular, the first chapter replicates and extends previous trials by testing a broad range of cognitive biases on public policy and management decisions on a sample of public managers and employees. While this chapter is purposefully wide-ranging, the remaining two dig deeper on frequent decision-making processes of public workers. More specifically, the second chapter focuses on performance information use by Italian local public managers, investigating how the framing of performance information might differently affect decisions depending on the type of decision that has to be made. The third chapter investigates the micro-foundations of isomorphic pressures which lead to suboptimal decision-making in the public sphere, adding qualitative evidence which helps illuminate the mechanisms behind the causal relations. Public managers and employees who participated in the randomized trials included in chapter 1 were found to be prone to a number of cognitive biases like framing, anchoring, proportion dominance, status quo, and asymmetric dominance. In particular, the framing of outcomes influenced decisions across policy and management domains. In addition, public employees were prone to an anchoring bias when setting standards for responsiveness, were more likely to stick to a suboptimal status quo as the number of superior alternatives increased, and tended to put more effort into activities that affected higher percentages of beneficiaries, even if the absolute number of affected clients was constant. Lastly, decisions changed when a decoy was present, proving an asymmetric dominance effect. In chapter 2, local public managers were more likely to be subject to framing effects under ex post uses of performance information (e.g., service evaluation) than ex ante (e.g., resource allocation). Interestingly, asking them to justify for their choices did not work as a debiasing strategy in their ex post decisions. Finally, the eight experiments included in chapter 3 show that indeed isomorphic pressures can lead to inferior solutions. The qualitative findings help identify public managers and employees who were victims of bandwagon effect and those who gave in to isomorphic pressures because they thought it was the best they could do with the available information

Source Activity Correlation Effects on LCMV Beamformers in a Realistic Measurement Environment

In EEG and MEG studies on brain functional connectivity and source interactions can be performed at sensor or source level. Beamformers are well-established source-localization tools for MEG/EEG signals, being employed in source connectivity studies both in time and frequency domain. However, it has been demonstrated that beamformers suffer from a localization bias due to correlation between source time courses. This phenomenon has been ascertained by means of theoretical proofs and simulations. Nonetheless, the impact of correlated sources on localization outputs with real data has been disputed for a long time. In this paper, by means of a phantom, we address the correlation issue in a realistic MEG environment. Localization performances in the presence of simultaneously active sources are studied as a function of correlation degree and distance between sources. A linear constrained minimum variance (LCMV) beamformer is applied to the oscillating signals generated by the current dipoles within the phantom. Results show that high correlation affects mostly dipoles placed at small distances (1, 5 centimeters). In this case the sources merge. If the dipoles lie 3 centimeters apart, the beamformer localization detects attenuated power amplitudes and blurred sources as the correlation level raises

Hybrid governance and the attribution of political responsibility: experimental evidence from the United States

How does the mode of public service delivery affect the attribution of responsibility for public goods? Through a survey experiment on a sample of more than 1,000 Americans, we provide evidence of how the allocation of public goods shapes voters' support for incumbent politicians. We find that voters prefer a mixture of public-private financing and management when it comes to the delivery of infrastructure. However, once performance information is available, the mode of infrastructure delivery no longer influences their voting intention. The successful delivery of these infrastructure projects is what ultimately matters to voters. Moreover, this preference for a mixture of public and private involvement in public service delivery is stronger among citizens with high political knowledge, who are more likely to punish the incumbent for a failed first phase of the public service delivery. These findings deepen our understanding of how hybrid forms of public service delivery are perceived by voters and how performance information affects evaluations of the performance of public services and politicians alike

Prefrontal Theta-Phase Synchronized Brain Stimulation With Real-Time EEG-Triggered TMS

BackgroundTheta-band neuronal oscillations in the prefrontal cortex are associated with several cognitive functions. Oscillatory phase is an important correlate of excitability and phase synchrony mediates information transfer between neuronal populations oscillating at that frequency. The ability to extract and exploit the prefrontal theta rhythm in real time in humans would facilitate insight into neurophysiological mechanisms of cognitive processes involving the prefrontal cortex, and development of brain-state-dependent stimulation for therapeutic applications.ObjectivesWe investigate individual source-space beamforming-based estimation of the prefrontal theta oscillation as a method to target specific phases of the ongoing theta oscillations in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) with real-time EEG-triggered transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Different spatial filters for extracting the prefrontal theta oscillation from EEG signals are compared and additional signal quality criteria are assessed to take into account the dynamics of this cortical oscillation.MethodsTwenty two healthy participants were recruited for anatomical MRI scans and EEG recordings with 18 composing the final analysis. We calculated individual spatial filters based on EEG beamforming in source space. The extracted EEG signal was then used to simulate real-time phase-detection and quantify the accuracy as compared to post-hoc phase estimates. Different spatial filters and triggering parameters were compared. Finally, we validated the feasibility of this approach by actual real-time triggering of TMS pulses at different phases of the prefrontal theta oscillation.ResultsHigher phase-detection accuracy was achieved using individualized source-based spatial filters, as compared to an average or standard Laplacian filter, and also by detecting and avoiding periods of low theta amplitude and periods containing a phase reset. Using optimized parameters, prefrontal theta-phase synchronized TMS of DMPFC was achieved with an accuracy of ±55°.ConclusionThis study demonstrates the feasibility of triggering TMS pulses during different phases of the ongoing prefrontal theta oscillation in real time. This method is relevant for brain state-dependent stimulation in human studies of cognition. It will also enable new personalized therapeutic repetitive TMS protocols for more effective treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders

The impact of GABAergic drugs on TMS-induced brain oscillations in human motor cortex

Brain responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) as measured with electroencephalography (EEG) have so far been assessed either by TMS-evoked EEG potentials (TEPs), mostly reflecting phase-locked neuronal activity, or time-frequency-representations (TFRs), reflecting oscillatory power arising from a mixture of both evoked (i.e., phase-locked) and induced (i.e., non-phase-locked) responses. Single-pulse TMS of the human primary motor cortex induces a specific pattern of oscillatory changes, characterized by an early (30–200 ms after TMS) synchronization in the α- and β-bands over the stimulated sensorimotor cortex and adjacent lateral frontal cortex, followed by a late (200–400 ms) α- and β-desynchronization over the stimulated and contralateral sensorimotor cortex. As GABAergic inhibition plays an important role in shaping oscillatory brain activity, we sought here to understand if GABAergic inhibition contributes to these TMS-induced oscillations. We tested single oral doses of alprazolam, diazepam, zolpidem (positive modulators of the GABAA receptor), and baclofen (specific GABAB receptor agonist). Diazepam and zolpidem enhanced, and alprazolam tended to enhance while baclofen decreased the early α-synchronization. Alprazolam and baclofen enhanced the early β-synchronization. Baclofen enhanced the late α-desynchronization, and alprazolam, diazepam and baclofen enhanced the late β-desynchronization. The observed GABAergic drug effects on TMS-induced α- and β-band oscillations were not explained by drug-induced changes on corticospinal excitability, muscle response size, or resting-state EEG power. Our results provide first insights into the pharmacological profile of TMS-induced oscillatory responses of motor cortex

TMS- EEG Signatures of GABAergic Neurotransmission in the Human Cortex

Combining transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroencephalography (EEG) constitutes a powerful tool to directly assess human cortical excitability and connectivity. TMS of the primary motor cortex elicits a sequence of TMS-evoked EEG potentials (TEPs). It is thought that inhibitory neurotransmission through GABA-A receptors (GABAAR) modulates early TEPs (<50 ms after TMS), whereas GABA-B receptors (GABABR) play a role for later TEPs (at ∼100 ms after TMS). However, the physiological underpinnings of TEPs have not been clearly elucidated yet. Here, we studied the role of GABAA/B-ergic neurotransmission for TEPs in healthy subjects using a pharmaco-TMS-EEG approach. In Experiment 1, we tested the effects of a single oral dose of alprazolam (a classical benzodiazepine acting as allosteric-positive modulator at α1, α2, α3, and α5 subunit-containing GABAARs) and zolpidem (a positive modulator mainly at the α1 GABAAR) in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. In Experiment 2, we tested the influence of baclofen (a GABABR agonist) and diazepam (a classical benzodiazepine) versus placebo on TEPs. Alprazolam and diazepam increased the amplitude of the negative potential at 45 ms after stimulation (N45) and decreased the negative component at 100 ms (N100), whereas zolpidem increased the N45 only. In contrast, baclofen specifically increased the N100 amplitude. These results provide strong evidence that the N45 represents activity of α1-subunit-containing GABAARs, whereas the N100 represents activity of GABABRs. Findings open a novel window of opportunity to study alteration of GABAA-/GABAB-related inhibition in disorders, such as epilepsy or schizophrenia

μ-Rhythm Extracted With Personalized EEG Filters Correlates With Corticospinal Excitability in Real-Time Phase-Triggered EEG-TMS

Ongoing brain activity has been implicated in the modulation of cortical excitability. The combination of electroencephalography (EEG) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in a real-time triggered setup is a novel method for testing hypotheses about the relationship between spontaneous neuronal oscillations, cortical excitability, and synaptic plasticity. For this method, a reliable real-time extraction of the neuronal signal of interest from scalp EEG with high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is of crucial importance. Here we compare individually tailored spatial filters as computed by spatial-spectral decomposition (SSD), which maximizes SNR in a frequency band of interest, against established local C3-centered Laplacian filters for the extraction of the sensorimotor μ-rhythm. Single-pulse TMS over the left primary motor cortex was synchronized with the surface positive or negative peak of the respective extracted signal, and motor evoked potentials (MEP) were recorded with electromyography (EMG) of a contralateral hand muscle. Both extraction methods led to a comparable degree of MEP amplitude modulation by phase of the sensorimotor μ-rhythm at the time of stimulation. This could be relevant for targeting other brain regions with no working benchmark such as the local C3-centered Laplacian filter, as sufficient SNR is an important prerequisite for reliable real-time single-trial detection of EEG features

Identification, molecular characterization and functional analysis of interleukin (IL)-2 and IL-2like (IL-2L) cytokines in sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax L.)

This research was supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7) of the European Union (Grant Agreement 311993 TARGETFISH) and by the “Department of Excellence-2018” Program (Dipartimenti di Eccellenza) of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, DIBAF-Department of University of Tuscia, Project “Landscape 4.0 – food, wellbeing and environment”.Peer reviewedPostprin

Characterization of GABAB-receptor mediated neurotransmission in the human cortex by paired-pulse TMS–EEG

GABAB-receptor (GABABR) mediated inhibition is important in regulating neuronal excitability. The paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) protocol of long-interval intracortical inhibition (LICI) likely reflects this GABABergic inhibition. However, this view is based on indirect evidence from electromyographic (EMG) studies. Here we combined paired-pulse TMS with simultaneous electroencephalography (paired-pulse TMS–EEG) and pharmacology to directly investigate mechanisms of LICI at the cortical level. We tested the effects of a conditioning stimulus (CS100) applied 100 ms prior to a test stimulus (TS) over primary motor cortex on TS-evoked EEG-potentials (TEPs). Healthy subjects were given a single oral dose of baclofen, a GABABR agonist, or diazepam, a positive modulator at GABAARs, in a placebo-controlled, pseudo-randomized double-blinded crossover study. LICI was quantified as the difference between paired-pulse TEPs (corrected for long-lasting EEG responses by the conditioning pulse) minus single-pulse TEPs. LICI at baseline (i.e. pre-drug intake) was characterized by decreased P25, N45, N100 and P180 and increased P70 TEP components. Baclofen resulted in a trend towards the enhancement of LICI of the N45 and N100, and significantly enhanced LICI of the P180. In contrast, diazepam consistently suppressed LICI of late potentials (i.e. N100, P180), without having an effect on LICI of earlier (i.e. P25, N45 and P70) potentials. These findings demonstrate for the first time directly at the system level of the human cortex that GABABR-mediated cortical inhibition contributes to LICI, while GABAAR-mediated inhibition occludes LICI. Paired-pulse TMS–EEG allows investigating cortical GABABR-mediated inhibition more directly and specifically than hitherto possible, and may thus inform on network abnormalities caused by disordered inhibition, e.g. in patients with schizophrenia or epilepsy