Performative Strategies in the Extractive Periphery: Resisting Colonial-Capitalist Logics of Dissolution in the Anthropocene

Situated at the intersections of performance, decolonial and ecological theory, this thesis posits embodied performance strategies as a catalyst for subverting the colonial-capitalist logics of extractivism. Through close readings of the work of contemporary artists Tsēmā Igharas (Tahltan), Otobong Nkanga (Nigerian-born, Antwerp-based), Warren Cariou (Métis and European ancestry), Carolina Caycedo (Colombian mestizx, Los Angeles-based) and Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe), this thesis argues that the performing body translates extractive politics into the immediacy of the senses through the micro and intimate aesthetics of the corporeal to engage in a form of critical public pedagogy. Drawing on the work of scholars Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Laura Levin and Wanda Nanibush, this study queries what submerged perspectives are voiced and made visible in the extractive zone, and frames these perspectives within the current discourse of the Anthropocene. The artists’ land-based praxes, foregrounding Indigenous knowledges, are examined as a type of field research of specific regions’ geopolitics and temporalities—praxes which conceptualize alternative ways of representing and thinking about land through the performance of place-based relationality

Test-retest resting-state fMRI in healthy elderly persons with a family history of Alzheimer’s disease

We present a test-retest dataset of resting-state fMRI data obtained in 80 cognitively normal elderly volunteers enrolled in the “Pre-symptomatic Evaluation of Novel or Experimental Treatments for Alzheimer's Disease” (PREVENT-AD) Cohort. Subjects with a family history of Alzheimer's disease in first-degree relatives were recruited as part of an on-going double blind randomized clinical trial of Naproxen or placebo. Two pairs of scans were acquired ~3 months apart, allowing the assessment of both intra- and inter-session reliability, with the possible caveat of treatment effects as a source of inter-session variation. Using the NeuroImaging Analysis Kit (NIAK), we report on the standard quality of co-registration and motion parameters of the data, and assess their validity based on the spatial distribution of seed-based connectivity maps as well as intra- and inter-session reliability metrics in the default-mode network. This resource, released publicly as sample UM1 of the Consortium for Reliability and Reproducibility (CoRR), will benefit future studies focusing on the preclinical period preceding the appearance of dementia in Alzheimer's disease