Transcranial Focused Ultrasound to the Right Prefrontal Cortex Improves Mood and Alters Functional Connectivity in Humans

Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) is an emerging method for non-invasive neuromodulation akin to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). tFUS offers several advantages over electromagnetic methods including high spatial resolution and the ability to reach deep brain targets. Here we describe two experiments assessing whether tFUS could modulate mood in healthy human volunteers by targeting the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG), an area implicated in mood and emotional regulation. In a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study, participants received 30 s of 500 kHz tFUS or a placebo control. Visual Analog Mood Scales (VAMS) assessed mood four times within an hour (baseline and three times after tFUS). Participants who received tFUS reported an overall increase in Global Affect (GA), an aggregate score from the VAMS scale, indicating a positive shift in mood. Experiment 2 examined resting-state functional (FC) connectivity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) following 2 min of 500 kHz tFUS at the rIFG. As in Experiment 1, tFUS enhanced self-reported mood states and also decreased FC in resting state networks related to emotion and mood regulation. These results suggest that tFUS can be used to modulate mood and emotional regulation networks in the prefrontal cortex

An examination of the effects of self-regulatory focus on the perception of the media richness: the case of email

Communication is a key element in organizations’ business success. The media richness theory and the channel expansion theory are two of the most influential theories regarding the selection and use of communication media in organizations; however, literature has focused little on the effects of self-regulation by managers and employees in these theories. To analyze these topics, this study develops an empirical investigation by gathering data from 600 managers and employees using a questionnaire. The results suggest that the perception of media richness is positively affected when the individual shows a promotion focus or strategy.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

Transcranial Focused Ultrasound to the Right Prefrontal Cortex Improves Mood and Alters Functional Connectivity in Humans

Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) is an emerging method for non-invasive neuromodulation akin to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). tFUS offers several advantages over electromagnetic methods including high spatial resolution and the ability to reach deep brain targets. Here we describe two experiments assessing whether tFUS could modulate mood in healthy human volunteers by targeting the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG), an area implicated in mood and emotional regulation. In a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study, participants received 30 s of 500 kHz tFUS or a placebo control. Visual Analog Mood Scales (VAMS) assessed mood four times within an hour (baseline and three times after tFUS). Participants who received tFUS reported an overall increase in Global Affect (GA), an aggregate score from the VAMS scale, indicating a positive shift in mood. Experiment 2 examined resting-state functional (FC) connectivity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) following 2 min of 500 kHz tFUS at the rIFG. As in Experiment 1, tFUS enhanced self-reported mood states and also decreased FC in resting state networks related to emotion and mood regulation. These results suggest that tFUS can be used to modulate mood and emotional regulation networks in the prefrontal cortex

A method for effective use of enterprise modelling techniques in complex dynamic decision making

Effective organisational decision-making requires information pertaining to various organisational aspects, precise analysis capabilities, and a systematic method to capture and interpret the required information. The existing Enterprise Modelling (EM) and actor technologies together seem suitable for the specification and analysis needs of decision making. However, in absence of a method to capture required information and perform analyses, the decision-making remains a complex endeavour. This paper presents a method that captures required information in the form of models and performs what-if calculations in a systematic manner

Team Players and Collective Performance: How Agreeableness Affects Team Performance Over Time

Previous research on teams has found that agreeableness is one of the strongest personality predictors of team performance, yet one of the weakest personality predictors of individual-level job performance. In this study, we examined why teams with more agreeable members perform better. Data were collected across 4 months at 5 points in time from 107 project teams. We found that agreeableness affects performance through communication and cohesion and that communication precedes cohesion in time. Furthermore, we found that virtualness moderated the relationships between agreeableness and communication, as well as between agreeableness and team performance, such that teams only benefitted from high levels of agreeableness when interacting face-to-face.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Corporate governance and financial constraints on strategic turnarounds

The paper extends the Robbins and Pearce (1992) two-stage turnaround response model to include governance factors. In addition to the retrenchment and recovery, the paper proposes the addition of a realignment stage, referring specifically to the re-alignment of expectations of principal and agent groups. The realignment stage imposes a threshold that must be crossed before the retrenchment and hence recovery stage can be entered. Crossing this threshold is problematic to the extent that the interests of governance-stakeholder groups diverge in a crisis situation. The severity of the crisis impacts on the bases of strategy contingent asset valuation leading to the fragmentation of stakeholder interests. In some cases the consequence may be that management are prevented from carrying out turnarounds by governance constraints. The paper uses a case study to illustrate these dynamics, and like the Robbins and Pearce study, it focuses on the textile industry. A longitudinal approach is used to show the impact of the removal of governance constraints. The empirical evidence suggests that such financial constraints become less serious to the extent that there is a functioning market for corporate control. Building on governance research and turnaround literature, the paper also outlines the general case necessary and sufficient conditions for successful turnarounds

The Hugging Team: The Role of Technology in Business Networking Practices

Abstract. Technological devices for social networking are produced in droves and networking through media seems to be the way of getting ahead in business. We examine what role technology plays in the creation, development and maintenance of business relationships among entrepreneurs in Copenhagen. We find that mediated communication is useful in all stages of relational maintenance but only in a supportive role in relational development where co-presence and shared personal experiences take center-stage, generating trust necessary for business relationships to work. These trust-developing experiences take effort and hard work and although they can be successfully supported and even facilitated through the use of communication technologies, they need not be replaced or made simpler. The difficulties of creating these experiences make working business relationships viable in the uncertain and risky world of entrepreneurship

THE ROLE OF INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE MICRO-FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN: TASK, GOAL, AND KNOWLEDGE INTERDEPENDENCE

Interdependence is a core concept in organization design, yet one that has remained consistently understudied. Current notions of interdependence remain rooted in seminal works, produced at a time when managers’ near-perfect understanding of the task at hand drove the organization design process. In this context, task interdependence was rightly assumed to be exogenously determined by characteristics of the work and the technology. We no longer live in that world, yet our view of interdependence has remained exceedingly task-centric and our treatment of interdependence overly deterministic. As organizations face increasingly unpredictable workstreams and workers co-design the organization alongside managers, our field requires a more comprehensive toolbox that incorporates aspects of agent-based interdependence. In this paper, we synthesize research in organization design, organizational behavior, and other related literatures to examine three types of interdependence that characterize organizations’ workflows: task, goal, and knowledge interdependence. We offer clear definitions for each construct, analyze how each arises endogenously in the design process, explore their interrelations, and pose questions to guide future research

Human-to-Human Interaction: the Killer Application of Ubiquitous Computing

Twenty-five years past the Weiser\u2019s vision of Ubiquitous Computing, and there is not a clear understanding of what is or is not a pervasive system. Due to the loose boundaries of such paradigm, almost any kind of remotely ac-cessible networked system is classified as a pervasive system. We think that that is mainly due to the lack of killer applications that could make this vi-sion clearer. Actually, we think that the most promising killer application is already here, but we are so used to it that we do not see it, as a perfect fitting of the Weiser\u2019s vision: the Human-to-Human Interaction mediated by com-puters

A model based approach for complex dynamic decision-making

Current state-of-the-practice and state-of-the-art of decision-making aids are inadequate for modern organisations that deal with significant uncertainty and business dynamism. This paper highlights the limitations of prevalent decision-making aids and proposes a model-based approach that advances the modelling abstraction and analysis machinery for complex dynamic decision-making. In particular, this paper proposes a meta-model to comprehensively represent organisation, establishes the relevance of model-based simulation technique as analysis means, introduces the advancements over actor technology to address analysis needs, and proposes a method to utilise proposed modelling abstraction, analysis technique, and analysis machinery in an effective and convenient manner. The proposed approach is illustrated using a near real-life case-study from a business process outsourcing organisation