Neural basis of learning from television in young children

This is the author\u27s version of a work that was accepted for publication in . Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms, may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Trends in Neuroscience and Education, VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3, 2014,DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2014.07.001

Robot-Assisted Mindfulness Practice: Analysis of Neurophysiological Responses and Affective State Change

Mindfulness is the state of paying attention to the present moment on purpose and meditation is the technique to obtain this state. This study aims to develop a robot assistant that facilitates mindfulness training by means of a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system. To achieve this goal, we collected EEG signals from two groups of subjects engaging in a meditative vs. nonmeditative human robot interaction (HRI) and evaluated cerebral hemispheric asymmetry, which is recognized as a well defined indicator of emotional states. Moreover, using self reported affective states, we strived to explain asymmetry changes based on pre and post experiment mood alterations. We found that unlike earlier meditation studies, the frontocentral activations in alpha and theta frequency bands were not influenced by robot guided mindfulness practice, however there was a significantly greater right sided activity in the occipital gamma band of Meditation group, which is attributed to increased sensory awareness and open monitoring. In addition, there was a significant main effect of Time on participants self reported affect, indicating an improved mood after interaction with the robot regardless of the interaction type. Our results suggest that EEG responses during robot-guided meditation hold promise in realtime detection and neurofeedback of mindful state to the user, however the experienced neurophysiological changes may differ based on the meditation practice and recruited tools. This study is the first to report EEG changes during mindfulness practice with a robot. We believe that our findings driven from an ecologically valid setting, can be used in development of future BCI systems that are integrated with social robots for health applications.Comment: accepted for conference RoMAN202

Parental presence with encouragement alters feedback processing in preschoolers : An ERP study

External feedback plays an important role in adapting to the environment; however, feedback processing in preschoolers has not been fully understood. The present event-related brain potential (ERP) study sought to understand the influence of parental presence with encouragement on feedback processing by focusing on reward positivity (RewP: mean amplitude between 200-350 ms). Five-year-old children (N = 21) completed an animal search task both alone (the alone condition) and with a parent who offered words of encouragement (the with a parent condition). ERPs were recorded while they received negative and positive feedback. We found a larger RewP amplitude in response to positive feedback in the with a parent condition relative to in the alone condition. In addition, differences in RewP between positive and negative feedback were only observed in the with a parent condition. These findings suggest that everyday parental encouragement has the potential to promote differential positive and negative feedback processing possibly by enhancing the reward value of positive feedback.UTokyo FOCUS Press releases掲載「親の応援が幼児の成功に対する認知処理を変える」＜研究成果＞ URI: https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/ja/press/z0109_00040.htmlThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Social Neuroscience on 08/10/2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17470919.2018.152725

Rubber Hand Illusion under Delayed Visual Feedback

BACKGROUND: Rubber hand illusion (RHI) is a subject's illusion of the self-ownership of a rubber hand that was touched synchronously with their own hand. Although previous studies have confirmed that this illusion disappears when the rubber hand was touched asynchronously with the subject's hand, the minimum temporal discrepancy of these two events for attenuation of RHI has not been examined. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In this study, various temporal discrepancies between visual and tactile stimulations were introduced by using a visual feedback delay experimental setup, and RHI effects in each temporal discrepancy condition were systematically tested. The results showed that subjects felt significantly greater RHI effects with temporal discrepancies of less than 300 ms compared with longer temporal discrepancies. The RHI effects on reaching performance (proprioceptive drift) showed similar conditional differences. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results first demonstrated that a temporal discrepancy of less than 300 ms between visual stimulation of the rubber hand and tactile stimulation to the subject's own hand is preferable to induce strong sensation of RHI. We suggest that the time window of less than 300 ms is critical for multi-sensory integration processes constituting the self-body image

Building a responsive teacher: How temporal contingency of gaze interaction influences word learning with virtual tutors

Animated pedagogical agents are lifelike virtual characters designed to augment learning. A review of developmental psychology literature led to the hypothesis that the temporal contingency of such agents would promote human learning. We developed a Pedagogical Agent with Gaze Interaction (PAGI), an experimental animated pedagogical agent that engages in gaze interaction with students. In this study, university students learned words of a foreign language, with temporally contingent PAGI (live group) or recorded version of PAGI (recorded group), which played pre-recorded sequences from live sessions. The result revealed that students in the live group scored considerably better than those in the recorded group. The finding indicates that incorporating temporal contingency of gaze interaction from a pedagogical agent has positive effect on learning

Is Adenosine Deaminase in Pleural Fluid a Useful Marker for Differentiating Tuberculosis from Lung Cancer or Mesothelioma in Japan, a Country with Intermediate Incidence of Tuberculosis?

The objective of this study was to evaluate the utility of the determination of adenosine deaminase (ADA) level in pleural fluid for the differential diagnosis between tuberculous pleural effusion (TPE) and malignant pleural effusion (MPE) in Japan, a country with intermediate incidence of tuberculosis (TB). We retrospectively reviewed the clinical records of 435 patients with pleural effusion and investigated their pleural ADA levels as determined by an auto analyzer. ROC analysis was also performed. The study included patients with MPE (n＝188), TPE (n＝124), benign nontuberculous pleural effusion (n＝94), and pleural effusion of unknown etiology (n＝29). The median ADA level in the TPE group was 70.8U/L, which was significantly higher than that in any other groups (p＜0.05). The area under the curve (AUC) in ROC analysis was 0.895. With a cut-off level for ADA of 36U/L, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value were 85.5%, 86.5%, 69.7%, and 93.6%, respectively. As many as 9% of patients with lung cancer and 15% of those with mesothelioma were false-positive with this ADA cutoff setting. Although the ADA activity in pleural fluid can help in the diagnosis of TPE, it should be noted that some cases of lung cancer or mesothelioma show high ADA activity in geographical regions with intermediate incidence of TB, in contrast to high prevalence areas

Building a responsive teacher: How temporal contingency of gaze interaction influences word learning with virtual tutors

Animated pedagogical agents are lifelike virtual characters designed to augment learning. A review of developmental psychology literature led to the hypothesis that the temporal contingency of such agents would promote human learning. We developed a Pedagogical Agent with Gaze Interaction (PAGI), an experimental animated pedagogical agent that engages in gaze interaction with students. In this study, university students learned words of a foreign language, with temporally contingent PAGI (live group) or recorded version of PAGI (recorded group), which played pre-recorded sequences from live sessions. The result revealed that students in the live group scored considerably better than those in the recorded group. The finding indicates that incorporating temporal contingency of gaze interaction from a pedagogical agent has positive effect on learning

Enhancement of DNA-transfection frequency by X-rays

&#8195;This study was conducted to evaluate the frequency of DNA transfection into human cells following X-ray irradiation. We transfected plasmid DNA (pSV2neo) into human cells, HeLa and PA-1, by either calcium phosphate precipitation or the lipofection method immediately after irradiating the cells with various doses of X-rays. The transfection frequency was evaluated by counting the number of G418-resistant colonies. When circular plasmid DNA was used, irradiation up to a dose of 2 Gy dose-dependently increased the transfection frequency, which reached a maximum of 5 to 10-fold that of the control unirradiated cells. When linear plasmid DNA was used, the transfection frequency was 2 times higher than that of circular DNA. All five of the clones that were randomly chosen expressed the transfected neo gene. In addition, the pSV2neo gene was randomly integrated into the genomic DNA of each clone. These findings indicate that X-ray treatment can facilitate foreign DNA transfer into human cells and that radiation-induced DNA breaks may promote the insertion of foreign DNA into host DNA. The enhancement of DNA transfection with X-rays may be instrumental in practicing gene therapy.</p

Neural dynamics in human imitation revealed by ERP surface topography

To clarify the neural dynamics in human motor imitation, we examined event-related potentials (ERP) for a reaction time task that required responses to an actor&apos;s ¢nger motions with identical motions. Compared with a control task (reaction to an LED illumination), the ERP surface topography in the imitative reaction was di¡erentiated at around 120^200 ms post-cueing, showing an early sensitivity to the response hand over the pre-central region.This result suggested that activities around the motor areas were facilitated in the imitative reaction, which is consistent with recent neuroimaging studies. However, taken together with that there were no di¡erences in reaction times, the early ERP latency of conditional divergence indicated that neural activities related to imitation are visual responses and do not directly lead to motor acceleration. NeuroRepor

Heterotransplantation of human leukemic B-cell, T-cell and null-cell lines in hamsters.

Human leukemic B-cell (BALL-1), T-cell (TALL-1) and null-cell (NALL-1) lines have been established from three patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). To study the heterotransplantability and in vivo growth characteristics, attempts were made to transplant these ALL cell lines into newborn Syrian hamsters treated with rabbit anti-hamster thymocyte serum. Intraperitoneal implantation of 1.8-3.5 x 10(7) cells gave rise to invasive tumors in all recipients after 15 to 41 days. In addition to a common in vivo feature of mesenteric and retroperitoneal tumors, BALL-1 line was characterized by infiltration of the skin, massive ascites and bone marrow invasion. TALL-1 cells infiltrated various organs including the lymph nodes, liver, gallbladder, spleen, bone marrow, central nervous system and eyes. NALL-1 line grew slowly, producing the least tumors, although there were distant metastases in the lungs. Tumor cells were detected in the blood of 2 of 3 BALL-1-bearing hamsters and in the blood of 4 of 5 TALL-1-bearing hamsters. Thus, these three ALL cell lines were found to exhibit a characteristic biological behavior in hamsters, which might be related to the different cell lineage.</p