Improvisation and Transformation: Yes to the Mess

The field of organizational change has chiefly been studied from a teleological perspective. Most models of change emphasize action that is rational and goal oriented. What often gets overlooked and under theorized is the continuous, iterative nature of organizational life, the unplanned and serendipitous actions by and between people that lead to new discoveries and innovation. Recent research on organizational improvisation seeks to explore this area. In this chapter we will address two questions – what is the experience of improvisation and what are the conditions that support improvisation to flourish in organizations? In the first part of this paper, we look at the phenomenology of improvisation, the actual lived experience of those who improvise in the face of the unknown or in the midst of chaotic conditions. We will explore the strategies that some professional improvisers employ to deliberately create the improvisatory moment. We will then look at the dynamics of organizational life and explore the cultural beliefs, organizational structures, and leadership practices that support improvisation. We will draw primarily upon the model from Barrett (2012) that focuses on the how the nature of jazz improvisation and the factors that support improvisation can be transferred to leadership activities. This falls in the tradition of others who draw upon arts-based metaphors, including jazz music and theatrical improvisation, to suggest insights for leadership and ways of organizing. Since this is a book devoted to individual transformation as well as organizational transformation, we will also touch on the topic of how improvisation is a developmental project and explore the potential for improvisation to lead to personal transformation. We will attempt to move back and forth between both themes – organizational and personal transformation. Ultimately the two topics are not separate. Any significant organizational transformation begins with an improvisation. And any meaningful improvisatory move by a person is potentially a moment of self-discovery and an identity-shaping event

Forced Moves or Good Tricks in Design Space? Landmarks in the Evolution of Neural Mechanisms for Action Selection

This review considers some important landmarks in animal evolution, asking to what extent specialized action-selection mechanisms play a role in the functional architecture of different nervous system plans, and looking for “forced moves” or “good tricks” (see Dennett, D., 1995, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Penguin Books, London) that could possibly transfer to the design of robot control systems. A key conclusion is that while cnidarians (e.g. jellyfish) appear to have discovered some good tricks for the design of behavior-based control systems—largely lacking specialized selection mechanisms—the emergence of bilaterians may have forced the evolution of a central ganglion, or “archaic brain”, whose main function is to resolve conflicts between peripheral systems. Whilst vertebrates have many interesting selection substrates it is likely that here too the evolution of centralized structures such as the medial reticular formation and the basal ganglia may have been a forced move because of the need to limit connection costs as brains increased in size

Copy number variant discrepancy resolution using the ClinGen dosage sensitivity map results in updated clinical interpretations in ClinVar

Conflict resolution in genomic variant interpretation is a critical step toward improving patient care. Evaluating interpretation discrepancies in copy number variants (CNVs) typically involves assessing overlapping genomic content with focus on genes/regions that may be subject to dosage sensitivity (haploinsufficiency (HI) and/or triplosensitivity (TS)). CNVs containing dosage sensitive genes/regions are generally interpreted as â likely pathogenicâ (LP) or â pathogenicâ (P), and CNVs involving the same known dosage sensitive gene(s) should receive the same clinical interpretation. We compared the Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen) Dosage Map, a publicly available resource documenting known HI and TS genes/regions, against germline, clinical CNV interpretations within the ClinVar database. We identified 251 CNVs overlapping known dosage sensitive genes/regions but not classified as LP or P; these were sent back to their original submitting laboratories for reâ evaluation. Of 246 CNVs reâ evaluated, an updated clinical classification was warranted in 157 cases (63.8%); no change was made to the current classification in 79 cases (32.1%); and 10 cases (4.1%) resulted in other types of updates to ClinVar records. This effort will add curated interpretation data into the public domain and allow laboratories to focus attention on more complex discrepancies.The ClinGen Dosage Sensitivity (DS) Map provides evidenceâ based assessments of the haploinsufficiency and triplosensitivity of genes/genomic regions. We identified 251 clinical copy number variants (CNVs) in ClinVar that overlapped known DS genes/regions but were not interpreted as â likely pathogenicâ or â pathogenic;â these were sent back to their original laboratories for reâ evaluation. Of the 246 that were reâ evaluated, 63.0% resulted in updated classifications, showing that the ClinGen DS Map can be an effective initial step in CNV classification discrepancy resolution.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146425/1/humu23610_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146425/2/humu23610.pd

Dopamine, affordance and active inference.

The role of dopamine in behaviour and decision-making is often cast in terms of reinforcement learning and optimal decision theory. Here, we present an alternative view that frames the physiology of dopamine in terms of Bayes-optimal behaviour. In this account, dopamine controls the precision or salience of (external or internal) cues that engender action. In other words, dopamine balances bottom-up sensory information and top-down prior beliefs when making hierarchical inferences (predictions) about cues that have affordance. In this paper, we focus on the consequences of changing tonic levels of dopamine firing using simulations of cued sequential movements. Crucially, the predictions driving movements are based upon a hierarchical generative model that infers the context in which movements are made. This means that we can confuse agents by changing the context (order) in which cues are presented. These simulations provide a (Bayes-optimal) model of contextual uncertainty and set switching that can be quantified in terms of behavioural and electrophysiological responses. Furthermore, one can simulate dopaminergic lesions (by changing the precision of prediction errors) to produce pathological behaviours that are reminiscent of those seen in neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease. We use these simulations to demonstrate how a single functional role for dopamine at the synaptic level can manifest in different ways at the behavioural level

On the quest for selective constraints shaping the expressivity of the genes casting retropseudogenes in human

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Pseudogenes, the nonfunctional homologues of functional genes are now coming to light as important resources regarding the study of human protein evolution. Processed pseudogenes arising by reverse transcription and reinsertion can provide molecular record on the dynamics and evolution of genomes. Researches on the progenitors of human processed pseudogenes delved out their highly expressed and evolutionarily conserved characters. They are reported to be short and GC-poor indicating their high efficiency for retrotransposition. In this article we focused on their high expressivity and explored the factors contributing for that and their relevance in the milieu of protein sequence evolution.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We here, analyzed the high expressivity of these genes configuring processed or retropseudogenes by their immense connectivity in protein-protein interaction network, an inclination towards alternative splicing mechanism, a lower rate of mRNA disintegration and a slower evolutionary rate. While the unusual trend of the upraised disorder in contrast with the high expressivity of the proteins encoded by processed pseudogene ancestors is accredited by a predominance of hub-protein encoding genes, a high propensity of repeat sequence containing genes, elevated protein stability and the functional constraint to perform the transcription regulatory jobs. Linear regression analysis demonstrates mRNA decay rate and protein intrinsic disorder as the influential factors controlling the expressivity of these retropseudogene ancestors while the latter one is found to have the most significant regulatory power.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our findings imply that, the affluence of disordered regions elevating the network attachment to be involved in important cellular assignments and the stability in transcriptional level are acting as the prevailing forces behind the high expressivity of the human genes configuring processed pseudogenes.</p

Deficits in visuo-spatial working memory, inhibition and oculomotor control in boys with ADHD and their non-affected brothers.

Few studies have assessed visuo-spatial working memory and inhibition in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by recording saccades and consequently little additional knowledge has been gathered on oculomotor functioning in ADHD. Moreover, this is the first study to report the performance of non-affected siblings of children with ADHD, which may shed light on the familiality of deficits. A total of 14 boys with ADHD, 18 non-affected brothers, and 15 control boys aged 7-14 years, were administered a memory-guided saccade task with delays of three and seven seconds. Familial deficits were found in accuracy of visuo-spatial working memory, percentage of anticipatory saccades, and tendency to overshoot saccades relative to controls. These findings suggest memory-guided saccade deficits may relate to a familial predisposition for ADHD