The Predictive Nature of Individual Differences in Early Associative Learning and Emerging Social Behavior

Across the first year of life, infants achieve remarkable success in their ability to interact in the social world. The hierarchical nature of circuit and skill development predicts that the emergence of social behaviors may depend upon an infant's early abilities to detect contingencies, particularly socially-relevant associations. Here, we examined whether individual differences in the rate of associative learning at one month of age is an enduring predictor of social, imitative, and discriminative behaviors measured across the human infant's first year. One-month learning rate was predictive of social behaviors at 5, 9, and 12 months of age as well as face-evoked discriminative neural activity at 9 months of age. Learning was not related to general cognitive abilities. These results underscore the importance of early contingency learning and suggest the presence of a basic mechanism underlying the ontogeny of social behaviors

Consensus Paper: Cerebellum and Social Cognition.

The traditional view on the cerebellum is that it controls motor behavior. Although recent work has revealed that the cerebellum supports also nonmotor functions such as cognition and affect, only during the last 5 years it has become evident that the cerebellum also plays an important social role. This role is evident in social cognition based on interpreting goal-directed actions through the movements of individuals (social "mirroring") which is very close to its original role in motor learning, as well as in social understanding of other individuals' mental state, such as their intentions, beliefs, past behaviors, future aspirations, and personality traits (social "mentalizing"). Most of this mentalizing role is supported by the posterior cerebellum (e.g., Crus I and II). The most dominant hypothesis is that the cerebellum assists in learning and understanding social action sequences, and so facilitates social cognition by supporting optimal predictions about imminent or future social interaction and cooperation. This consensus paper brings together experts from different fields to discuss recent efforts in understanding the role of the cerebellum in social cognition, and the understanding of social behaviors and mental states by others, its effect on clinical impairments such as cerebellar ataxia and autism spectrum disorder, and how the cerebellum can become a potential target for noninvasive brain stimulation as a therapeutic intervention. We report on the most recent empirical findings and techniques for understanding and manipulating cerebellar circuits in humans. Cerebellar circuitry appears now as a key structure to elucidate social interactions

Proceedings of the 18th EDINEB Conference From Innovation to Crème de la Crème Education!

18th EDINEB Conference From Innovation to Crème de la Crème Education! June 7 - 10, 2011 IDRAC, Lyons, France During the last few years economics and business education have emerged as one of the largest fields of study in higher education. Simultaneously, the pressing concern for improving the quality of higher education in these fields has led to a definite need for more knowledge about effective instruction methods and tools, as well as about innovation (in terms of both methodology and contents). This has been the background to establish a network to disseminate the results of the efforts undertaken by researchers and professionals in the field of educational innovation. "EDiNEB", established in 1993, is such a network. The acronym EDiNEB represents two entities: the EDiNEB Network and the EDiNEB Association, where the prior is an international network/association of people and/or institutes that are considering the implementation of educational innovations in economics and business and the latter is a legal personality under Dutch laws registered in Haarlem. The general aim of the EDiNEB Network is to provide mutual support to member institutions who wish to adapt their curriculum to highly innovative programmes. There are three primary goals: strengthening of membership institutions in their realisation of innovative programmes; strengthening of faculty capacities related to innovative education; development of technologies, approaches (such as problem-based learning), methodologies and tools appropriate to curricula; emphasising applied economics to domestic situations, or curricula especially designed for developing countries focusing on (local) societal needs, or curricula with an orientation to skills training; problem-solving or professional practice. Strategies to achieve these goals can be summarised as follows: Emphasis on institutional support and capacity building through exchanges, dissemination of information, improved communication and publications; Emphasis on partnerships between universities; Focus on research and development, in particular regarding questions of relevance to education in economics and business administration

Proceedings of the 18th EDINEB Conference From Innovation to Crème de la Crème Education!

18th EDINEB Conference From Innovation to Crème de la Crème Education! June 7 - 10, 2011 IDRAC, Lyons, France During the last few years economics and business education have emerged as one of the largest fields of study in higher education. Simultaneously, the pressing concern for improving the quality of higher education in these fields has led to a definite need for more knowledge about effective instruction methods and tools, as well as about innovation (in terms of both methodology and contents). This has been the background to establish a network to disseminate the results of the efforts undertaken by researchers and professionals in the field of educational innovation. "EDiNEB", established in 1993, is such a network. The acronym EDiNEB represents two entities: the EDiNEB Network and the EDiNEB Association, where the prior is an international network/association of people and/or institutes that are considering the implementation of educational innovations in economics and business and the latter is a legal personality under Dutch laws registered in Haarlem. The general aim of the EDiNEB Network is to provide mutual support to member institutions who wish to adapt their curriculum to highly innovative programmes. There are three primary goals: strengthening of membership institutions in their realisation of innovative programmes; strengthening of faculty capacities related to innovative education; development of technologies, approaches (such as problem-based learning), methodologies and tools appropriate to curricula; emphasising applied economics to domestic situations, or curricula especially designed for developing countries focusing on (local) societal needs, or curricula with an orientation to skills training; problem-solving or professional practice. Strategies to achieve these goals can be summarised as follows: Emphasis on institutional support and capacity building through exchanges, dissemination of information, improved communication and publications; Emphasis on partnerships between universities; Focus on research and development, in particular regarding questions of relevance to education in economics and business administration

Sharp genetic break between Atlantic and English Channel populations of the polychaete Pectinaria koreni, along the North coast of France

This study uses enzymatic and mitochondrial genes to infer the relative importance of historical processes and contemporary hydrodynamic features on the observed patterns of genetic structure in subdivided populations of Pectinaria koreni (Polychaeta: Pectinariidae) along the coasts of Brittany and the English Channel. Nucleotide sequence variation of a 603-bp fragment of the mtDNA cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene revealed a surprisingly deep phylogeographic break of about 16% divergence separating the Brittany and Channel populations, which coincides with a biogeographic boundary along the western coast of Brittany. Deep sequence divergence with fixed haplotype differences and the inversion of allele frequencies at two enzyme loci suggests the occurrence of potential cryptic or sibling species of P. koreni. The two clades showed opposite features. Channel populations exhibited bimodal match mismatch curves due to two highly divergent haplotypes occurring at high frequencies and no overall heterozygote deficiencies at enzyme loci, suggesting respectively, a historic secondary contact between two differentiated populations followed by contemporary panmixia. On the contrary, Brittany populations displayed unimodal curves with low nucleotide diversity and highly significant heterozygote deficiencies, probably reminiscent of a recent population expansion and recolonisation of Brittany with contemporary admixture of divergent populations