35,665 research outputs found
One Action System or Two? Evidence for Common Central Preparatory Mechanisms in Voluntary and Stimulus-Driven Actions
Human behavior is comprised of an interaction between intentionally driven actions and reactions to changes in the environment. Existing data are equivocal concerning the question of whether these two action systems are independent, involve different brain regions, or overlap. To address this question we investigated whether the degree to which the voluntary action system is activated at the time of stimulus onset predicts reaction times to external stimuli.Werecorded event-related potentials while participants prepared and executed left- or right-hand voluntary actions, which were occasionally interrupted by a stimulus requiring either a left- or right-hand response. In trials where participants successfully performed the stimulus-driven response, increased voluntary motor preparation was associated with faster responses on congruent trials (where participants were preparing a voluntary action with the same hand that was then required by the target stimulus), and slower responses on incongruent trials. This suggests that early hand-specific activity in medial frontal cortex for voluntary action trials can be used by the stimulus-driven system to speed responding. This finding questions the clear distinction between voluntary and stimulus-driven action systems. © 2011 the authors
Stochastic Ergodicity Breaking: a Random Walk Approach
The continuous time random walk (CTRW) model exhibits a non-ergodic phase
when the average waiting time diverges. Using an analytical approach for the
non-biased and the uniformly biased CTRWs, and numerical simulations for the
CTRW in a potential field, we obtain the non-ergodic properties of the random
walk which show strong deviations from Boltzmann--Gibbs theory. We derive the
distribution function of occupation times in a bounded region of space which,
in the ergodic phase recovers the Boltzmann--Gibbs theory, while in the
non-ergodic phase yields a generalized non-ergodic statistical law.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability in a Weakly Ionized Medium
Ambient interstellar material may become entrained in outflows from massive
stars as a result of shear flow instabilities. We study the linear theory of
the Kelvin - Helmholtz instability, the simplest example of shear flow
instability, in a partially ionized medium. We model the interaction as a two
fluid system (charged and neutral) in a planar geometry. Our principal result
is that for much of the relevant parameter space, neutrals and ions are
sufficiently decoupled that the neutrals are unstable while the ions are held
in place by the magnetic field. Thus, we predict that there should be a
detectably narrower line profile in ionized species tracing the outflow
compared with neutral species since ionized species are not participating in
the turbulent interface with the ambient ISM. Since the magnetic field is
frozen to the plasma, it is not tangled by the turbulence in the boundary
layer.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure
Universal fluctuations in the support of the random walk
A random walk starts from the origin of a d-dimensional lattice. The
occupation number n(x,t) equals unity if after t steps site x has been visited
by the walk, and zero otherwise. We study translationally invariant sums M(t)
of observables defined locally on the field of occupation numbers. Examples are
the number S(t) of visited sites; the area E(t) of the (appropriately defined)
surface of the set of visited sites; and, in dimension d=3, the Euler index of
this surface. In d > 3, the averages (t) all increase linearly with t as
t-->infinity. We show that in d=3, to leading order in an asymptotic expansion
in t, the deviations from average Delta M(t)= M(t)-(t) are, up to a
normalization, all identical to a single "universal" random variable. This
result resembles an earlier one in dimension d=2; we show that this
universality breaks down for d>3.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX, 2 figures include
The twisted fourth moment of the Riemann zeta function
We compute the asymptotics of the fourth moment of the Riemann zeta function
times an arbitrary Dirichlet polynomial of length Comment: 28 pages. v2: added reference
Analysis of a fully packed loop model arising in a magnetic Coulomb phase
The Coulomb phase of spin ice, and indeed the Ic phase of water ice,
naturally realise a fully-packed two-colour loop model in three dimensions. We
present a detailed analysis of the statistics of these loops, which avoid
themselves and other loops of the same colour, and contrast their behaviour to
an analogous two-dimensional model. The properties of another extended degree
of freedom are also addressed, flux lines of the emergent gauge field of the
Coulomb phase, which appear as "Dirac strings" in spin ice. We mention
implications of these results for related models, and experiments.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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