17 research outputs found
Epitaxial thin films of binary Eu-compounds close to a valence transition
Intermetallic binary compounds of europium reveal a variety of interesting
phenomena due to the interconnection between two different magnetic and 4f
electronic (valence) states, which are particularly close in energy. The
valence states or magnetic properties are thus particularly sensitive to
strain-tuning in these materials. Consequently, we grew epitaxial EuPd
(magnetic Eu) and EuPd (nonmagnetic Eu) thin films on
MgO(001) substrates using molecular beam epitaxy. Ambient X-ray diffraction
confirms an epitaxial relationship of cubic Laves-type (C15) EuPd with an
(111)-out-of plane orientation, whereby four distinct in-plane crystallographic
domains develop. For simple cubic EuPd two different out-of-plane
orientations can be obtained by changing the substrate annealing temperature
under ultra-high vacuum conditions from 600{\deg} C to 1000{\deg} C for one
hour. A small resistance minimum evolves for EuPd thin films grown with low
temperature substrate annealing, which was previously found even in single
crystals of EuPd and might be attributed to a Kondo or weak localization
effect. Absence of influence of an applied magnetic fields and magnetotransport
measurements suggest always a nonmagnetic ground state for EuPd thin films,
i. e., a purely trivalent Eu valence, as previously found in EuPd3 single
crystals. For EuPd magnetic ordering below ~72 K is observed, quite similar
to single crystal behaviour. Additional field dependent measurements of the
magnetoresistance and the Hall effect show hysteresis effects below ~0.4 T and
an anomalous Hall effect below ~70 K, which saturates around 1.4 T, thus
proving a ferromagnetic ground state of the divalent Eu
Heroic music stimulates empowering thoughts during mind-wandering
It is generally well-known, and scientifically well established, that music affects emotions and moods. However, only little is known about the influence of music on thoughts. This scarcity is particularly surprising given the importance of the valence of thoughts for psychological health and well-being. We presented excerpts of heroic- and sad-sounding music to n = 62 individuals, and collected thought probes after each excerpt, assessing the valence and the nature of thoughts stimulated by the music. Our results show that mind-wandering emerged during listening to either type of music (heroic, sad), and that the type of music strongly influenced the thought contents during mind-wandering. Heroic-sounding music evoked more positive, exciting, constructive, and motivating thoughts, while sad-sounding music evoked more calm or demotivating thoughts. The results thus indicate that music has a strong effect on the valence of thought contents during mind-wandering, with heroic music evoking more empowering and motivating thoughts, and sad music more relaxing or depressive thoughts. These findings have important implications for the use of music in everyday life to promote health and well-being in both clinical populations and healthy individuals.publishedVersio
Neocortical substrates of feelings evoked with music in the ACC, insula, and somatosensory cortex
Neurobiological models of emotion focus traditionally on limbic/paralimbic regions as neural substrates of emotion generation, and insular cortex (in conjunction with isocortical anterior cingulate cortex, ACC) as the neural substrate of feelings. An emerging view, however, highlights the importance of isocortical regions beyond insula and ACC for the subjective feeling of emotions. We used music to evoke feelings of joy and fear, and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to decode representations of feeling states in functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) data of n = 24 participants. Most of the brain regions providing information about feeling representations were neocortical regions. These included, in addition to granular insula and cingulate cortex, primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, premotor cortex, frontal operculum, and auditory cortex. The multivoxel activity patterns corresponding to feeling representations emerged within a few seconds, gained in strength with increasing stimulus duration, and replicated results of a hypothesis-generating decoding analysis from an independent experiment. Our results indicate that several neocortical regions (including insula, cingulate, somatosensory and premotor cortices) are important for the generation and modulation of feeling states. We propose that secondary somatosensory cortex, which covers the parietal operculum and encroaches on the posterior insula, is of particular importance for the encoding of emotion percepts, i.e., preverbal representations of subjective feeling.publishedVersio
Magnetic properties of multi-domain epitaxial EuPd thin films
Europium intermetallic compounds show a variety of different ground states
and anomalous physical properties due to the interactions between the localized
4f electrons and the delocalized electronic states. Europium is also the most
reactive of the rare earth metals which might be the reason why very few works
are concerned with the properties of Eu-based thin films. Here we address the
low-temperature magnetic properties of ferromagnetic EuPd thin films
prepared by molecular beam epitaxy. The epitaxial (111)-oriented thin films
grow on MgO (100) with eight different domain orientations. We analyze the
low-temperature magnetic hysteresis behavior by means of micromagnetic
simulations taking the multi-domain morphology explicitly into account and
quantify the magnetic crystal anisotropy contribution. By ab initio
calculations we trace back the microscopic origin of the magnetic anisotropy to
thin film-induced biaxial strain
Multiancestry analysis of the HLA locus in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases uncovers a shared adaptive immune response mediated by HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes
Across multiancestry groups, we analyzed Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) associations in over 176,000 individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) versus controls. We demonstrate that the two diseases share the same protective association at the HLA locus. HLA-specific fine-mapping showed that hierarchical protective effects of HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes best accounted for the association, strongest with HLA-DRB1*04:04 and HLA-DRB1*04:07, and intermediary with HLA-DRB1*04:01 and HLA-DRB1*04:03. The same signal was associated with decreased neurofibrillary tangles in postmortem brains and was associated with reduced tau levels in cerebrospinal fluid and to a lower extent with increased Aβ42. Protective HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes strongly bound the aggregation-prone tau PHF6 sequence, however only when acetylated at a lysine (K311), a common posttranslational modification central to tau aggregation. An HLA-DRB1*04-mediated adaptive immune response decreases PD and AD risks, potentially by acting against tau, offering the possibility of therapeutic avenues
When the statistical MMN meets the physical MMN
How do listeners respond to prediction errors within patterned sequence of sounds? To answer this question we carried out a statistical learning study using electroencephalography (EEG). In a continuous auditory stream of sound triplets the deviations were either (a) statistical, in terms of transitional probability, (b) physical, due to a change in sound location (left or right speaker) or (c) a double deviants, i.e. a combination of the two. Statistical and physical deviants elicited a statistical mismatch negativity and a physical MMN respectively. Most importantly, we found that efects of statistical and physical deviants interacted (the statistical MMN was smaller when co-occurring with a physical deviant). Results show, for the frst time, that processing of prediction errors due to statistical learning is afected by prediction errors due to physical deviance. Our fndings thus show that the statistical MMN interacts with the physical MMN, implying that prediction error processing due to physical sound attributes suppresses processing of learned statistical properties of sounds
Under the hood of statistical learning: A statistical MMN reflects the magnitude of transitional probabilities in auditory sequences
Within the framework of statistical learning, many behavioural studies investigated the processing of unpredicted events. However, surprisingly few neurophysiological studies are available on this topic, and no statistical learning experiment has investigated electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates of processing events with different transition probabilities. We carried out an EEG study with a novel variant of the established statistical learning paradigm. Timbres were presented in isochronous sequences of triplets. The first two sounds of all triplets were equiprobable, while the third sound occurred with either low (10%), intermediate (30%), or high (60%) probability. Thus, the occurrence probability of the third item of each triplet (given the first two items) was varied. Compared to high-probability triplet endings, endings with low and intermediate probability elicited an early anterior negativity that had an onset around 100 ms and was maximal at around 180 ms. This effect was larger for events with low than for events with intermediate probability. Our results reveal that, when predictions are based on statistical learning, events that do not match a prediction evoke an early anterior negativity, with the amplitude of this mismatch response being inversely related to the probability of such events. Thus, we report a statistical mismatch negativity (sMMN) that reflects statistical learning of transitional probability distributions that go beyond auditory sensory memory capabilities
Heroic music stimulates empowering thoughts during mind-wandering
It is generally well-known, and scientifically well established, that music affects emotions and moods. However, only little is known about the influence of music on thoughts. This scarcity is particularly surprising given the importance of the valence of thoughts for psychological health and well-being. We presented excerpts of heroic- and sad-sounding music to n = 62 individuals, and collected thought probes after each excerpt, assessing the valence and the nature of thoughts stimulated by the music. Our results show that mind-wandering emerged during listening to either type of music (heroic, sad), and that the type of music strongly influenced the thought contents during mind-wandering. Heroic-sounding music evoked more positive, exciting, constructive, and motivating thoughts, while sad-sounding music evoked more calm or demotivating thoughts. The results thus indicate that music has a strong effect on the valence of thought contents during mind-wandering, with heroic music evoking more empowering and motivating thoughts, and sad music more relaxing or depressive thoughts. These findings have important implications for the use of music in everyday life to promote health and well-being in both clinical populations and healthy individuals
Neocortical substrates of feelings evoked with music in the ACC, insula, and somatosensory cortex
Neurobiological models of emotion focus traditionally on limbic/paralimbic regions as neural substrates of emotion generation, and insular cortex (in conjunction with isocortical anterior cingulate cortex, ACC) as the neural substrate of feelings. An emerging view, however, highlights the importance of isocortical regions beyond insula and ACC for the subjective feeling of emotions. We used music to evoke feelings of joy and fear, and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to decode representations of feeling states in functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) data of n = 24 participants. Most of the brain regions providing information about feeling representations were neocortical regions. These included, in addition to granular insula and cingulate cortex, primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, premotor cortex, frontal operculum, and auditory cortex. The multivoxel activity patterns corresponding to feeling representations emerged within a few seconds, gained in strength with increasing stimulus duration, and replicated results of a hypothesis-generating decoding analysis from an independent experiment. Our results indicate that several neocortical regions (including insula, cingulate, somatosensory and premotor cortices) are important for the generation and modulation of feeling states. We propose that secondary somatosensory cortex, which covers the parietal operculum and encroaches on the posterior insula, is of particular importance for the encoding of emotion percepts, i.e., preverbal representations of subjective feeling