A neural marker for social bias towards in-group accents

Accents provide information about the speaker's geographical, socio-economic, and ethnic background. Research in applied psychology and sociolinguistics suggests that we generally prefer our own accent to other varieties of our native language and attribute more positive traits to it. Despite the widespread influence of accents on social interactions, educational and work settings the neural underpinnings of this social bias toward our own accent and, what may drive this bias, are unexplored. We measured brain activity while participants from two different geographical backgrounds listened passively to 3 English accent types embedded in an adaptation design. Cerebral activity in several regions, including bilateral amygdalae, revealed a significant interaction between the participants' own accent and the accent they listened to: while repetition of own accents elicited an enhanced neural response, repetition of the other group's accent resulted in reduced responses classically associated with adaptation. Our findings suggest that increased social relevance of, or greater emotional sensitivity to in-group accents, may underlie the own-accent bias. Our results provide a neural marker for the bias associated with accents, and show, for the first time, that the neural response to speech is partly shaped by the geographical background of the listener

Quantum computing with mixed states

We discuss a model for quantum computing with initially mixed states. Although such a computer is known to be less powerful than a quantum computer operating with pure (entangled) states, it may efficiently solve some problems for which no efficient classical algorithms are known. We suggest a new implementation of quantum computation with initially mixed states in which an algorithm realization is achieved by means of optimal basis independent transformations of qubits.Comment: 2 figures, 52 reference

Prenatal Particulate Air Pollution and DNA Methylation in Newborns: An Epigenome-Wide Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Prenatal exposure to air pollution has been associated with childhood respiratory disease and other adverse outcomes. Epigenetics is a suggested link between exposures and health outcomes. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to investigate associations between prenatal exposure to particulate matter (PM) with diameter [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) or [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) and DNA methylation in newborns and children. METHODS: We meta-analyzed associations between exposure to [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) and [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) at maternal home addresses during pregnancy and newborn DNA methylation assessed by Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450K BeadChip in nine European and American studies, with replication in 688 independent newborns and look-up analyses in 2,118 older children. We used two approaches, one focusing on single cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) sites and another on differentially methylated regions (DMRs). We also related PM exposures to blood mRNA expression. RESULTS: Six CpGs were significantly associ

What is a starred tone? Evidence from Greek

Contains fulltext : 225546.pdf (author's version ) (Open Access

Prosody : Models and Measurements

Item does not contain fulltextXI, 159 p