Cosmopolitan Urbanism and Architecture & Paradigm Change in Research and Education in in Asia

The genesis of human settlements is a continuous process of production and layering of spaces in different scale levels across historical periods. The architectural production in our Asian context is always cosmopolitan, hybrid and eclectic, due to historical links and inclusive cultural attitude. Our common building typologies – and also our modernization processes - are the product of the cosmopolitan communities, the articulation of the multi-layered tangible and intangible traditions, and the direct response to local micro-climate of this region. Diversity, eclecticism, fusion, acculturation, adaptation, can perhaps best describe the nature of our architecture and urbanism. Our architectural education now is in dire needs to develop a design-research culture to deal with social and environmental changes. Contemporarily we are in an urgent need to find resolutions to address serious problems posed by the climate change, ideological conflicts, economic greed, depletion of resources, and social justice. Research in architecture should be based on the reality on the ground and not just based on alien theories. Design should be based on the understanding of the real contextual problems, to formulate sensible, sensitive, and holistic solutions. Learning the lessons and wisdoms from our cosmopolitan architecture and urbanism is an important and necessary step towards the improvements and paradigm change in architectural education, research, and practice in Asian context

Measurement of awareness at the end of life

Here I report evidence of awareness among unresponsive hospice patients at the end of life. Chapter 2 describes the neurotypical neural networks underlying some EEG measures used to assess awareness, particularly activations of different attention networks associated with the P3a and P3b event-related potential (ERP) sub-components of the P300 ERP. I found that the primary neural generators of the P3a were frontal regions associated with exogenous attention processes, such as the Ventral Attention (Corbetta & Shulman, 2002) and Saliency (Menon & Uddin, 2010) networks. The neural generators of the P3b, by contrast, were parietal regions associated with endogenous attention processes, such as the Dorsal Attention Network (Corbetta & Shulman, 2002), and regions often involved in detecting oddball targets (H. Kim, 2014). Chapter 3 reports evidence of auditory cortical processing (Näätänen et al., 2007) among all unresponsive patients, and attention orienting or context updating (Polich, 2007) among some unresponsive patients. Chapter 4 describes the spatio-temporal dynamics of attention networks reported in Chapter 2 among individual neurotypical control participants, and both responsive and unresponsive hospice patients. While these results are highly nuanced, some unresponsive patients showed some fronto-parietal connectivity, and may have engaged in motor imagery. Chapter 5 reports evidence of stimulus-independent cognition occurring in the default mode network (Buckner et al., 2008a; Christoff et al., 2016; Raichle et al., 2001; Smallwood et al., 2012) among unresponsive patients during a period of rest. Chapter 6 reports evidence of a decrease in alpha-band oscillation power in the posterio-parietal cortex in response to music among unresponsive patients. As such a decrease in alpha-band power is associated with orienting of attention, this implies that these patients may be paying attention to the music. The results of this research suggest that some unresponsive hospice patients at the end of life may be aware. These results lend credence to the belief that “hearing is the last to go”, and that loved ones at the bedside should be encouraged to interact with their dying relatives for as long as possible. Furthermore, attention to music could be a promising new biomarker of awareness that has potential for clinical adaptation.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofGraduat

Laminar specificity of the auditory perceptual awareness negativity: A biophysical modeling study

How perception of sensory stimuli emerges from brain activity is a fundamental question of neuroscience. To date, two disparate lines of research have examined this question. On one hand, human neuroimaging studies have helped us understand the large-scale brain dynamics of perception. On the other hand, work in animal models (mice, typically) has led to fundamental insight into the micro-scale neural circuits underlying perception. However, translating such fundamental insight from animal models to humans has been challenging. Here, using biophysical modeling, we show that the auditory awareness negativity (AAN), an evoked response associated with perception of target sounds in noise, can be accounted for by synaptic input to the supragranular layers of auditory cortex (AC) that is present when target sounds are heard but absent when they are missed. This additional input likely arises from cortico-cortical feedback and/or non-lemniscal thalamic projections and targets the apical dendrites of layer-5 (L5) pyramidal neurons. In turn, this leads to increased local field potential activity, increased spiking activity in L5 pyramidal neurons, and the AAN. The results are consistent with current cellular models of conscious processing and help bridge the gap between the macro and micro levels of perception-related brain activity

Laminar Specificity of the Auditory Perceptual Awareness Negativity: A Biophysical Modeling Study

How perception of sensory stimuli emerges from brain activity is a fundamental question of neuroscience. To date, two disparate lines of research have examined this question. On one hand, human neuroimaging studies have helped us understand the large-scale brain dynamics of perception. On the other hand, work in animal models (mice, typically) has led to fundamental insight into the micro-scale neural circuits underlying perception. However, translating such fundamental insight from animal models to humans has been challenging. Here, using biophysical modeling, we show that the auditory awareness negativity (AAN), an evoked response associated with perception of target sounds in noise, can be accounted for by synaptic input to the supragranular layers of auditory cortex (AC) that is present when target sounds are heard but absent when they are missed. This additional input likely arises from cortico-cortical feedback and/or non-lemniscal thalamic projections and targets the apical dendrites of layer-V pyramidal neurons (PNs). In turn, this leads to increased local field potential activity, increased spiking activity in layer-V PNs, and the AAN. The results are consistent with current cellular models of conscious processing and help bridge the gap between the macro and micro levels of perception-related brain activity

Sequential search asymmetry: Behavioral and psychophysiological evidence from a dual oddball task

<div><p>We conducted five experiments in order to explore the generalizability of a new type of search asymmetry, which we have termed <i>sequential search asymmetry</i>, across sensory modalities, and to better understand its origin. In all five experiments rare oddballs occurred randomly within longer sequences of more frequent standards. Oddballs and standards all consisted of rapidly-presented runs of five pure tones (Experiments 1 and 5) or five colored annuli (Experiments 2 through 4) somewhat analogous to simultaneously-presented feature-present and feature-absent stimuli in typical visual search tasks. In easy tasks feature-present reaction times and P300 latencies were shorter than feature-absent ones, similar to findings in search tasks with simultaneously-presented stimuli. Moreover the P3a subcomponent of the P300 ERP was strongly apparent only in the feature-present condition. In more difficult tasks requiring focused attention, however, RT and P300 latency differences disappeared but the P300 amplitude difference was significant. Importantly in all five experiments <i>d</i>’ for feature-present targets was larger than that for feature-absent targets. These results imply that sequential search asymmetry arises from discriminability differences between feature-present and feature-absent targets. Response time and P300 latency differences can be attributed to the use of different attention strategies in search for feature-present and feature-absent targets, indexed by the presence of a dominant P3a subcomponent in the feature-present target-evoked P300s that is lacking in the P300s to the feature-absent targets.</p></div

Northern Fulmar Breeding Range Extended to Baccalieu Island, Newfoundland

The numbers of Northern Fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) have been increasing in the boreal regions of the Northeast Atlantic for more than two centuries, and though population growth appears to have slowed recently (Fisher 1952, 1966; Salomonsen 1965) the breeding range of the species continues to expand. In the past few years Northern Fulmars have been found breeding in two locations off Newfoundland: Great Island (47° ll'N, 52°49'W) in Witless Bay (Nettleship and Montgomerie 1974) and Funk Island (49°46'N, 54°12'W), as documented in Nettleship's recent (1976) film, "The Funks.

Grand average (across all subjects) ERP difference waves at Pz (P300—left) and topomaps (right) to the feature-present (change) and feature-absent (flat) conditions.

<p>Time 600 ms refers to the onset of the last tone of the run The ERPs from which the difference waves were derived are displayed for these and other selected electrode sites in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0173237#pone.0173237.s005" target="_blank">S5 Fig</a>.</p