108 research outputs found
New forms of open peer review will allow academics to separate scholarly evaluation from academic journals.
Todayâs academic publishing system may be problematic, but many argue it is the only one available to provide adequate research evaluation. Pandelis Perakakis introduces an open community platform, LIBRE, which seeks to challenge the assumption that peer review can only be handled by journal editors. By embracing a new culture of open, transparent and independent research evaluation, the academic community can more productively contribute to global knowledge
Cortical monitoring of cardiac activity during rapid eye movement sleep: the heartbeat evoked potential in phasic and tonic rapid-eye-movement microstates
The project was supported by the
Hungarian Scientific Research
Fund (NKFI FK 128100 and K
128117) of the National Research,
Development and Innovation Office, as well as by the Higher
Education Institutional Excellence Program of the Ministry of
Human Capacities in Hungary, within the framework of the
Neurology thematic program of the Semmelweis University. This
project has also received funding from the European Unionâs
Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the
Marie SklodowskaâCurie grant (agreement No. 801505). PP was
supported by a project from the Spanish Ministry of Science,
Innovation and Universities (PGC2018-096655-A-I00). The study
was supported by ELTE Thematic Excellence Programme 2020
TKP2020-IKA-05 provided by National Research, Development
and Innovation Office.Sleep is a fundamental physiological state that facilitates neural recovery during periods of attenuated sensory processing. On the other
hand, mammalian sleep is also characterized by the interplay between periods of increased sleep depth and environmental alertness.
Whereas the heterogeneity of microstates during non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep was extensively studied in the last decades,
transient microstates during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep received less attention. REM sleep features two distinct microstates: phasic
and tonic. Previous studies indicate that sensory processing is largely diminished during phasic REM periods, whereas environmental
alertness is partially reinstated when the brain switches into tonic REM sleep. Here, we investigated interoceptive processing as quantified
by the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP) during REM microstates. We contrasted the HEPs of phasic and tonic REM periods using two separate
databases that included the nighttime polysomnographic recordings of healthy young individuals (N = 20 and N = 19). We find a differential
HEP modulation of a late HEP component (after 500 ms post-R-peak) between tonic and phasic REM. Moreover, the late tonic HEP component
resembled the HEP found in resting wakefulness. Our results indicate that interoception with respect to cardiac signals is not uniform across
REM microstates, and suggest that interoceptive processing is partially reinstated during tonic REM periods. The analyses of the HEP during
REM sleep may shed new light on the organization and putative function of REM microstates.Hungarian Scientific Research
Fund (NKFI FK 128100 and K
128117)Higher
Education Institutional Excellence Program of the Ministry of
Human Capacities in HungaryEuropean Unionâs
Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the
Marie SklodowskaâCurie grant (agreement No. 801505)Spanish Ministry of Science,
Innovation and Universities (PGC2018-096655-A-I00)ELTE Thematic Excellence Programme 2020
TKP2020-IKA-05 National Research, Development
and Innovation Offic
Open Peer Review Module for Open Access Repositories
Workshop held on the 27th of Abril at CSIC Royal Botanic Garden in Madrid (RJB-CSIC).This work was funded by OpenAIRE 2020, EU-Horizon2020 Grant ID 643410.N
Dynamical patterns of human postural responses to emotional stimuli
Erotic scenes and images of mutilated bodies are emotional stimuli that have repeatedly shown to evoke specific neurophysiological responses associated with enhanced attention and perceptual processing. Remarkably however, only a handful of studies have investigated human motor reactions to emotional activation as a direct index of physical approximation or withdrawal. Given the inconclusive results of these studies, the approach-avoidance distinction, one of the most salient concepts in human motivational research, remains a broadly exploited hypothesis that has never been empirically demonstrated. Here, we investigate postural responses elicited by discrete emotional stimuli in healthy young adults. We discover that both positive and negative affective pictures induce a significant posterior deviation from postural baseline equilibrium. Further, we find that neutral pictures also evoke posterior deviation, although with a less pronounced amplitude. Exploring the dynamical evolution of postural responses to emotional pictures at high temporal resolution, we uncover a characteristic profile that remains stable for stimuli from all three affective categories. In contrast, the postural response amplitude is modulated by the emotional content of the stimulus. Our observations do not support the interpretation of postural responses to affective picture-viewing as approach-avoidance behavior. Instead, our findings indicate the involvement of a previously unrecognized motor component of the physiological mechanism underlying human orienting responses
Impact of Stock Market Structure on Intertrade Time and Price Dynamics
We analyse times between consecutive transactions for a diverse group of stocks registered on the NYSE and NASDAQ markets, and we relate the dynamical properties of the intertrade times with those of the corresponding price fluctuations. We report that market structure strongly impacts the scale-invariant temporal organisation in the transaction timing of stocks, which we have observed to have long-range power-law correlations. Specifically, we find that, compared to NYSE stocks, stocks registered on the NASDAQ exhibit significantly stronger correlations in their transaction timing on scales within a trading day. Further, we find that companies that transfer from the NASDAQ to the NYSE show a reduction in the correlation strength of transaction timing on scales within a trading day, indicating influences of market structure. We also report a persistent decrease in correlation strength of intertrade times with increasing average intertrade time and with corresponding decrease in companies' market capitalizationâa trend which is less pronounced for NASDAQ stocks. Surprisingly, we observe that stronger power-law correlations in intertrade times are coupled with stronger power-law correlations in absolute price returns and higher price volatility, suggesting a strong link between the dynamical properties of intertrade times and the corresponding price fluctuations over a broad range of time scales. Comparing the NYSE and NASDAQ markets, we demonstrate that the stronger correlations we find in intertrade times for NASDAQ stocks are associated with stronger correlations in absolute price returns and with higher volatility, suggesting that market structure may affect price behavior through information contained in transaction timing. These findings do not support the hypothesis of universal scaling behavior in stock dynamics that is independent of company characteristics and stock market structure. Further, our results have implications for utilising transaction timing patterns in price prediction and risk management optimization on different stock markets
Understanding the role of open peer review and dynamic academic articles
We welcome the commentary by L. Egghe stimulating discussion on our recent article âNatural selection of academic papersâ (NSAP) that focuses on an important modern issue at the heart of the scientific enterprise â the open and continuous evaluation and evolution of research. We are also grateful to the editor of Scientometrics for giving us the opportunity to respond to some of the arguments by L. Egghe that we believe are inaccurate or require further comment
Measuring Internationality: Reflections and Perspective on Academic Journals
Internationality as a concept is being applied ambiguously, particularly in the world of
academic journal publication. Although different criteria are used by scientometrists in order to
measure int
ernationality and to supplement its minimal literal meaning, the present study suggests
that no single criterion alone is sufficient. This paper surveys, critically
-
assesses and extends the
existing measures of internationality in the context of academic p
ublishing and identifies those
criteria that are most clearly resolved and amenable to quantitative analysis. When applied,
however, to a case study of four thematically
-
connected journals from the field of Health and
Clinical Psychology using descriptive
statistics and the Gini Coefficient, the measurement of
internationality using these criteria was found to be ambiguous. We conclude that internationality
is best viewed as a mathematically fuzzy entity and that a single measure Internationality Index,
con
structed from a combination of suitably weighted criteria, is the only way to unambiguously
quantify the
degree
of internationality
Dynamical patterns of human postural responses to emotional stimuli
Postural displacements in response to emotional activation have recently been proposed as a direct and objective index
of approachâavoidance behavior in humans. Here, we present the results of an experiment designed to assess spontaneous
postural responses to discrete affective pictures, brieïŹy presented in random order of valence. Our ïŹndings question the
interpretation of phasic postural responses to emotional stimuli as approachâavoidance behavior. Further, we identify a
robust dynamical pattern, characterized by speciïŹc features indicating that attentional processes may play a role in human
postural responses to emotional stimul
Recommended from our members
Take the money and run: psychopathic behavior in the trust game
We study the association among different sources of individual differences such as personality, cognitive ability and risk attitudes with trust and reciprocate behavior in an incentivized experimental binary trust game in a sample of 220 (138 females) undergraduate students. The game involves two players, player 1 (P1) and player 2 (P2). In the first stage, P1 decides whether to trust and let P2 decide, or to secure an egalitarian payoff for both players. If P1 trusts P2, the latter can choose between a symmetric payoff that is double than the secure alternative discarded by P1, and an asymmetric payoff in which P2 earns more than in any other case but makes P1 worse off. Before the main experiment, we obtained participantsâ scores for Abstract Reasoning (AR), risk attitudes, basic personality characteristics, and specific traits such as psychopathy and impulsivity. During the main experiment, we measured Heart Rate (HR) and ElectroDermal Activity (EDA) variation to account for emotional arousal caused by the decision and feedback processes. Our main findings indicate that, on one hand, P1 trust behavior associates to positive emotionality and, specifically, to the extraversionâs warmth facet. In addition, the impulsivity facet of positive urgency also favors trust behavior. No relation to trusting behavior was found for either other major personality aspects or risk attitudes. The physiological results show that participants scoring high in psychopathy exhibit increased EDA and reduced evoked HR deceleration at the moment in which they are asked to decide whether or not to trust. Regarding P2, we find that AR ability and mainly low disagreeable disinhibition favor reciprocal behavior. Specifically, lack of reciprocity significantly relates with a psychopathic, highly disinhibited and impulsive personality. Thus, the present study suggests that personality characteristics would play a significant role in different behaviors underlying cooperation, with extraversion/positive emotionality being more relevant for initiating cooperation, and low disagreeable disinhibition for maintaining it
A technical note on the precise timing of behavioral events in economic experiments
The increasing use of physiological recordings in experimental economics requires a precise timing of interesting events, such as the presentation of a set of choices, the decision-making moment and the reception of feedback through the display of a decision outcome. In this note we provide a simple, accurate and inexpensive solution based on the use of external photo-sensors that detect changes in light intensity on the participantsâ screens occurring in synchrony with experimental events. This system ensures an accurate communication between standard programs broadly used to run behavioral economic experiments, such as z-Tree, and eye-tracking devices or biosignal acquisition systems recording physiological variables, such as skin conductance, heart rate and electroencephalogram. An example is briefly discussed, offering specific guidelines for the application of this methodology in economic contexts with strategic interaction
- âŠ