A psychophysiology practical as part of the medical psychology course

Die Vermittlung der Zusammenhänge zwischen psychologischen Funktionen und körperlichen Veränderungen sowie deren Relevanz für die Entstehung und Aufrechterhaltung von Krankheiten stellt ein zentrales Ziel der Ausbildung in Medizinischer Psychologie dar. Zur Veranschaulichung dieser Zusammenhänge führten wir ein Psychophysiologie-Praktikum im ersten vorklinischen Semester ein. Die Studierenden führten in Vierergruppen mit Hilfe ausführlicher schriftlicher Instruktionen jeweils ca. 30 Minuten andauernde praktische Übungen durch, die die folgenden Themen behandelten: (1) Stress (abhängige Variable: Herzrate), (2) "Lügendetektor" (abhängige Variable: Hautleitwertsreaktionen), (3) Biofeedback (abhängige Variable: Hauttemperatur) und (4) Elektroenzephalogramm (abhängige Variable: Amplituden der vier klassischen Frequenzbänder). Die praktischen Übungen wurden durch theoretische Gruppenarbeiten und einen Termin zur Zusammenfassung der Ergebnisse der Übungen ergänzt. Die studentische Evaluation des Praktikums war durchweg positiv. So wurde das Praktikum als Bereicherung des Kurses angesehen, und der selbstbeurteilte Kenntnisstand auf dem Gebiet der Psychophysiologie zeigte eine signifikante Verbesserung. Diese Ergebnisse sowie unsere Eindrücke während des Praktikums bekräftigten unseren Entschluss, ein Psychophysiologie-Praktikum als Teil des Kurses der Medizinischen Psychologie und Medizinischen Soziologie fest zu etablieren.Teaching in medical psychology aims at establishing an understanding of the relationships between psychological functions and bodily reactions and of the relevance of these interactions for the development and maintenance of diseases. To illustrate these relationships, a psychophysiology practical was introduced in the first semester. Students performed practical 30-minute exercises in groups of four on the basis of comprehensive written instructions. The following topics were covered: (1) stress (dependent variable: heart rate), (2) "lie detection" (dependent variable: skin conductance response), (3) biofeedback (dependent variable: skin temperature), and (4) electroencephalogram (dependent variable: amplitude in the four classical frequency bands). The practical exercises were complemented by theoretical group work and a summary of the results of the exercises. Students evaluated the practical positively. It was considered a benefit to the course, and the self-rated knowledge in the area of psychophysiology increased significantly. These results, as well as our experiences during the practical, have reinforced our decision to establish a psychophysiology practical as part of the medical psychology/medical sociology course

Vom neuronalen Einzelfahrschein zur kortikalen Netzkarte : audio-visuelle Objekterkennung in der Großhirnrinde

Die Wahrnehmung von Objekten gelingt uns jeden Tag unzählige Male – zumeist rasend schnell und problemlos. Obwohl fast immer mehrere unserer Sinne gleichzeitig bei ihrer Wahrnehmung angesprochen werden, erscheinen uns diese Objekte dennoch als ganzheitlich und geschlossen. Für die neuronale Verarbeitung eines bellenden Hundes zum Beispiel empfängt die Großhirnrinde zumindest Eingangsdaten des Seh- und des Hörsystems. Sie werden auf getrennten Pfaden und in spezialisierten Arealen mit aufsteigender Komplexität analysiert. Dieses Funktionsprinzip der parallel verteilten Verarbeitung stellt die Wissenschaftler aber auch vor das so genannte »Bindungsproblem«: Wo und wie werden die Details wieder zu einem Ganzen – zu einer neuronalen Repräsentation – zusammengefügt? Am Institut für medizinische Psychologie der Universitätsklinik Frankfurt untersuchen Neurokognitionsforscher die crossmodale Objekterkennung mit einer Kombination modernster Verfahren der Hirnforschung und kommen dabei den Ver - arbeitungspfaden in der Großhirnrinde auf die Spur

The Impact of Intimate Partner Violence on Female Survivors’ Quality of Life: Exploring the Roles of Shame and Dissociation

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a form of violence that consists of physical, sexual, psychological, and financial abuse, as well as manipulation and control by a romantic partner (World Health Organization, 2013). IPV can have a profound impact on many aspects of life, including psychological health, with many survivors experiencing high levels of shame and dissociation. Both shame and dissociation are disengagement coping strategies that individuals may utilize in the face of abuse from a trusted individual like a romantic partner, as illustrated in Betrayal Trauma Theory (Freyd, 1996). Though the use of shame and dissociation as disengagement coping strategies may protect survivors during active abuse, over time these can become longstanding responses to distress and lead to detrimental effects on survivors’ health and functioning (Snyder & Pulvers, 2001). Additionally, shame and dissociation may influence how survivors interact with others and engage in the world around them. Shame and dissociation have been negatively associated with quality of life (QOL) in trauma samples (Jackley, 2001; Panisch et al., 2022; Persons et al., 2010). The current study extends available literature by examining the direct and indirect impacts of IPV on QOL. The sample was comprised of 595 help-seeking women who had experienced IPV; the sample ranged from 18 to 75 in age (Mage = 36.63, SD = 12.15). Participants identified their race as white (47.5%), Black (40.1%), Hispanic (3.4%), Asian (1.4%), Indian (0.2%), Native American (0.3%), and other (6.4%). The Conflict Tactics Scale-2 was used to assess frequency of IPV exposure. The Internal Shame Scale was used to examine intensity of shame while the Dissociative Experiences Scale was used to assess the frequency of dissociative symptoms. The Quality of Life Inventory was used to measure overall quality of life as well as subdomains including achievement, self-expression, environment, and interpersonal relationships. Parallel mediation models were performed via Mplus v8 to examine the direct and indirect relationships between IPV, shame, and dissociation on overall QOL and on each unique QOL subdomain. Results indicated that IPV was significantly, positively associated with shame and that greater levels of shame were associated with lower levels of QOL. Shame partially intermediated the relationship between IPV and QOL. These findings were replicated across all four QOL subdomains. No significant associations regarding dissociation were found. Results support that shame plays a significant, intermediating role between IPV and QOL. Further, the current findings indicate an expansive impact of IPV on survivors’ wellbeing and functioning. Results are considered in light of previous research as well as the theoretical postulates of Betrayal Trauma Theory. Clinical and research implications are discussed

Dimensionality Collapse: Optimal Measurement Selection for Low-Error Infinite-Horizon Forecasting

This work introduces a method to select linear functional measurements of a vector-valued time series optimized for forecasting distant time-horizons. By formulating and solving the problem of sequential linear measurement design as an infinite-horizon problem with the time-averaged trace of the Cram\'{e}r-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for forecasting as the cost, the most informative data can be collected irrespective of the eventual forecasting algorithm. By introducing theoretical results regarding measurements under additive noise from natural exponential families, we construct an equivalent problem from which a local dimensionality reduction can be derived. This alternative formulation is based on the future collapse of dimensionality inherent in the limiting behavior of many differential equations and can be directly observed in the low-rank structure of the CRLB for forecasting. Implementations of both an approximate dynamic programming formulation and the proposed alternative are illustrated using an extended Kalman filter for state estimation, with results on simulated systems with limit cycles and chaotic behavior demonstrating a linear improvement in the CRLB as a function of the number of collapsing dimensions of the system.Comment: 33 Pages, 9 Figures, To appear in Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS) 202

Investigating human audio-visual object perception with a combination of hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-testing fMRI analysis tools

Primate multisensory object perception involves distributed brain regions. To investigate the network character of these regions of the human brain, we applied data-driven group spatial independent component analysis (ICA) to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data set acquired during a passive audio-visual (AV) experiment with common object stimuli. We labeled three group-level independent component (IC) maps as auditory (A), visual (V), and AV, based on their spatial layouts and activation time courses. The overlap between these IC maps served as definition of a distributed network of multisensory candidate regions including superior temporal, ventral occipito-temporal, posterior parietal and prefrontal regions. During an independent second fMRI experiment, we explicitly tested their involvement in AV integration. Activations in nine out of these twelve regions met the max-criterion (A < AV > V) for multisensory integration. Comparison of this approach with a general linear model-based region-of-interest definition revealed its complementary value for multisensory neuroimaging. In conclusion, we estimated functional networks of uni- and multisensory functional connectivity from one dataset and validated their functional roles in an independent dataset. These findings demonstrate the particular value of ICA for multisensory neuroimaging research and using independent datasets to test hypotheses generated from a data-driven analysis

Monumenti antichi inediti. Johann Joachim Winckelmanns großes italienisches Werk

Die 1767 erschienen Monumenti antichi inediti waren die letzte und gleichzeitig einzig aufwendig illustrierte Publikation Johann Joachim Winckelmanns (1717 - 1768). Das in italienischer Sprache geschriebene Werk enthält eine gekürzte Übersetzung und Bearbeitung der Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums sowie einen Katalog von 208 antiken, bisher nicht oder falsch gedeuteten Denkmälern, die Winckelmann in Stichen abbilden lässt und ausführlich unter Heranziehung antiker Quellentexte ikonologisch erörtert. In graphischer Hinsicht wenig aufwendig, überwiegend ohne künstlerischen Eigenwert, statt dessen informativ illustrieren die unsignierten Kupfertafeln den gelehrten Text und dienen somit mehr der Wissenschaft als dem Sinn für Ästhetik oder der künstlerischen Empfindung. Gleichwohl sind die meist schlichten Umrisslinienstiche nicht nur zum Vorbild für die Wissenschaftsillustration des 19. Jahrhunderts geworden, sondern sogar zum erklärten künstlerischen Mode-Ideal der Zeit um 1800, dem linearen Umrisslinienstil von Künstlern wie Flaxman, Carstens, Genelli u.a. Winckelmanns Werk und seine Hermeneutik wurden maßgeblich für den Buchtypus des wissenschaftlichen Stichwerks und dienten noch lange als Muster für die Vorstellung neu entdeckter antiker Kunstwerke in archäologischen Zeitschriften

On representations of differential equations for state space statistical forecasting

The key to understanding the statistical limitations of a problem is often in finding the right representation of the space. Under sub-optimal representations, guarantees on the performance of an estimator can be too loose or even seemingly contradictory due to the inherently local nature of frequentist statistics. This work investigates several interconnected problems in forecasting dynamical systems: seeking to use different parameterizations of the system to provide strong statistical guarantees on the underlying families of probability distributions and to complete a detailed analysis of specific estimators applied to the problem. We begin this work with a focus on linear space-invariant spatiotemporal processes. When observations are made at discrete time steps, we identify statistical guarantees around a grid-based approximation of an inherently continuous system defined by a partial differential equation (PDE). In particular, by applying a Fourier transform to the grid approximation, we provide guarantees on the performance of the Kalman filter under mismatched model assumptions, as well as the least-squares estimator of the underlying state-transition operator. Many generalizations of the core analysis are outlined throughout the chapter, including an extension to piecewise constant dynamics. The second focus of this work is on deterministic nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) under noisy observations. Assuming Lipschitz continuity of the differential equation, we demonstrate that the set of trajectories of a system form a manifold where each trajectory corresponds to a single point. This realization motivates a collection of different perspectives on the forecasting problem based on properties of different time horizons. By considering the family of observations to be parameterized by the state of the system, we prove the often contradictory behavior of the infinitely large Cramér–Rao lower bound in the neighborhood of repelling points, as well as the dimensionality reduction inherent in convergence to low-dimensional attractors. We furthermore demonstrate two concrete algorithms enabled by these observations: multiple shrinkage estimators to stabilize error in the neighborhood of the unstable equilibria and a sequential optimal experimental design policy for infinite-horizon forecasting. Finally, we conclude with an investigation into the prediction of the formation of shocks in PDEs based on noisy measurements of boundary conditions. As shocks, or discontinuities in the solutions of PDEs, are particularly poorly behaved mathematical structures, we introduce a sequence of relaxations of the prediction problem. By instead looking at the variation within epsilon-balls, we propose a Monte Carlo method to quantify the probability of observing a discontinuity. Under a conjecture on the behavior of shocks, the proposed algorithm converges to a function analogous to an arrival rate in a point process. The behavior is verified in simulation using Burgers' Equation. This dissertation creates a solid foundation for the future study of statistical forecasting with differential equation governed systems. This work provides an analysis of various representations of the observation process in state-space models, as well as a methodology to construct new estimation techniques and bounds. The proposed methods emphasize the geometry of the space of solutions and thus are equally applicable to Bayesian and Frequentist methods in statistics.Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2024-09-16 without embargo termsThe student, Helmuth Naumer, accepted the attached license on 2024-04-23 at 11:41.The student, Helmuth Naumer, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2024-04-23 at 12:03.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2024-04-24 at 10:06.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #20571 on 2024-09-16 at 00:35:5