The folding fingerprint of visual cortex reveals the timing of human V1 and V2

Primate neocortex contains over 30 visual areas. Recent techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have successfully identified many of these areas in the human brain, but have been of limited value for revealing the temporal dynamics between adjacent visual areas, a critical component of understanding visual cognition. The voltages recorded at the scalp, electroencephalography (EEG), is a direct measure of neural activity that reflects the summed activity across all brain areas. Identifying the cortical sources that contribute to the EEG is a difficult problem. We developed an anatomically constrained dipole search method that solves the traditional problems by combining fMRI, EEG and many stimuli that activate small cortical regions. The method provides a means to validate the extracted waveforms. Both V1 and V2 waveforms have similar onset latencies as well as dynamics that can explain previous controversial findings about the responses of these areas

Using Psychic Phenomena to Connect Mind to Brain and to Revise Quantum Mechanics

One of the deep mysteries facing science concerns how the subjective aspect of consciousness (qualia) comes to exist. There is a possibility that psychic phenomena (psi) can provide an answer since psi and qualia may have the same source. Although I'm a psi skeptic I would love to see reliable data supporting it, since that could then usher in an exciting new exploration into brain mechanisms and would force fundamental physics to change. This paper explores four different approaches for understanding qualia and psi:  1) Modify physics. Four quite different approaches will be discussed: a) a modified Born Rule, b) a modification to general relativity, c) a Bohmian update of hidden variables, and d) adding a panpsychic ‘psychon' to QED. 2) Surprising emergence. This is the view whereby the neuroscience and psychology of the future will show how qualia and psi can come about by surprising brain mechanisms.  3) Panentheism and Cosmic Mind. In this view, consciousness is primary and possibly not amenable to scientific explanation. 4) Awesome illusion. Here, "qualia" is an ill-posed question and will therefore not be answered by science. For psi, being an illusion means that the past experiments are not replicable when steps are taken to satisfy friendly skeptics like me. Although I am a skeptic, I strongly hope that psi is replicable since that would usher in a revolution in physics and neuroscience. It could even lead to an understanding of qualia

Quantum Interpretations for Building Science/Religion Bridges

This paper attempts a systematic comparison of the multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics (QM). The article ends with a summary table that has 13 rows and 10 columns. The columns are metaphysical principles such as determinism and reality. The rows are the main interpretations from 1925 to the present. Each row has entries such as Yes/No/Agnostic. We have contacted most of the living authors and based on their comments we have modified the entry for their interpretation. However, there is reasonable space for disagreement when it comes to determining the correct value of each box (Yes/No/Agnostic). We hope to improve the table in the future. We have also eliminated one of the columns and replaced it with two new columns. We believe that this topic is especially relevant to bridge building in dialogues on science, religion and spirituality because of the unique way that QM brings out metaphysical questions from within science. While any science may lend itself to metaphysical speculation, few sciences beyond QM have such a wide range of metaphysical speculation that all correspond to the same empirical results. This fact may humble scientists and have interesting consequences for how to build bridges between conflicting worldviews

“Phase capture” in amblyopia: The influence function for sampled shape

AbstractThis study was concerned with what stimulus information humans with amblyopia use to judge the shape of simple objects. We used a string of four Gabor patches to define a contour. A fifth, center patch served as the test pattern. The observers’ task was to judge the location of the test pattern relative to the contour. The contour was either a straight line, or an arc with positive or negative curvature. We asked whether phase shifts in the inner or outer pairs of patches distributed along the contour influence the perceived shape. That is, we measured the phase shift influence function. Our results, consistent with previous studies, show that amblyopes are imprecise in shape discrimination, showing elevated thresholds for both lines and curves. We found that amblyopes often make much larger perceptual errors (biases) than do normal observers in the absence of phase shifts. These errors tend to be largest for curved shapes and at large separations. In normal observers, shifting the phase of inner patches of the string by 0.25 cycle results in almost complete phase capture (attraction) at the smallest separation (2λ), and the capture effect falls off rapidly with separation. A 0.25 cycle shift of the outer pair of patches has a much smaller effect, in the opposite direction (repulsion). While several amblyopic observers showed reduced capture by the phase of the inner patches, to our surprise, several of the amblyopes were sensitive to the phase of the outer patches. We used linear multiple regression to determine the weights of all cues to the task: the carrier phase of the inner patches, carrier phase of the outer patches and the envelope of the outer patches. Compared to normal observers, some amblyopes show a weaker influence of the phase of the inner patches, and a stronger influence of both the phase and envelope of the outer patches. We speculate that this may be a consequence of abnormal “crowding” of the inner patches by the outer ones

Counting matrices over finite fields with support on skew Young diagrams and complements of Rothe diagrams

We consider the problem of finding the number of matrices over a finite field with a certain rank and with support that avoids a subset of the entries. These matrices are a q-analogue of permutations with restricted positions (i.e., rook placements). For general sets of entries these numbers of matrices are not polynomials in q (Stembridge 98); however, when the set of entries is a Young diagram, the numbers, up to a power of q-1, are polynomials with nonnegative coefficients (Haglund 98). In this paper, we give a number of conditions under which these numbers are polynomials in q, or even polynomials with nonnegative integer coefficients. We extend Haglund's result to complements of skew Young diagrams, and we apply this result to the case when the set of entries is the Rothe diagram of a permutation. In particular, we give a necessary and sufficient condition on the permutation for its Rothe diagram to be the complement of a skew Young diagram up to rearrangement of rows and columns. We end by giving conjectures connecting invertible matrices whose support avoids a Rothe diagram and Poincar\'e polynomials of the strong Bruhat order.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, 1 tabl

Clusters and Fluctuations at Mean-Field Critical Points and Spinodals

We show that the structure of the fluctuations close to spinodals and mean-field critical points is qualitatively different than the structure close to non-mean-field critical points. This difference has important implications for many areas including the formation of glasses in supercooled liquids. In particular, the divergence of the measured static structure function in near-mean-field systems close to the glass transition is suppressed relative to the mean-field prediction in systems for which a spatial symmetry is broken.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Judgements of Solomon: anxieties and defences of social workers involved in care proceedings

Evidence from focus group discussions with social workers in child care and child protection was collected for a research project exploring decision-making in care proceedings and seeking a better understanding of the causes of delay in the process. Here this material is used to examine social workers’ feelings about their work and to explore the anxieties they expressed. Isabel Menzies’s work on containing anxiety in institutions is used to provide a conceptual framework for thinking about the ways in which individuals’ unconscious defences against anxiety may affect the structure, policies and practices of the organization in which they work. It is suggested that this dimension needs to be taken into account in understanding difficulties which arise in putting policy into practice

Observation of enhanced transmission for s-polarized light through a subwavelength slit

Enhanced optical transmission (EOT) through subwavelength apertures is usually obtained for p-polarized light. The present study experimentally investigates EOT for s-polarized light. A subwavelength slit surrounded on each side by periodic grooves has been fabricated in a gold film and covered by a thin dielectric layer. The excitation of s-polarized dielectric waveguide modes inside the dielectric film strongly increases the s-polarized transmission. Transmission measurements are compared with a coupled mode model and show good qualitative agreement. Adding a waveguide can improve light transmission through subwavelength apertures, as both s and p-polarization can be efficiently transmitted.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Applied Physics Letter