Diverging against all odds? Regulatory Paths in Embryonic Stem Cell Research across Western Europe

An interest-driven account of Embryonic Stem Cell Research would, given the considerable financial and scientific concerns, likely predict regulations to converge towards permissive policies. However, across Western Europe, national regulations of embryonic stem-cell research vary considerably, from general bans to permissive policies. There is a lack of systematic accounting for the non-convergence, and the sparse attempts at explanation are contradictory. Drawing on qualitative comparative analysis and configurational causality, we assess the interaction of a number of explanatory factors. Our empirical analysis reveals the importance of one factor in particular, path-dependence, insofar as prior policies on assisted reproduction exert a strong and systematic effect on the subsequent regulation of ESCR

When Doctors Shape Policy: The Impact of Self-Regulation on Governing Human Biotechnology

This paper investigates the development and adoption of governance modes in the field of human biotechnology. As the field of human biotechnology is relatively new, voluntary professional self-regulation constituted the initial governing mode. In the meantime, with the exception of Ireland, all Western European countries have moved towards greater state intervention. Nevertheless they have done so in contrasting ways and the resulting governance modes for assisted reproductive technology (ART) and embryonic stem-cell research vary greatly. Instead of imposing their steering capacity in a ‘top-down’ fashion, governments have taken pre-existing self-regulatory arrangements in the field into account and built up governance mechanisms in conjunction with private actors and pre-existing modes of private governance. Our analysis demonstrates that the form and content of the initial self-regulation explain why the self-steering capacity of the medical profession was largely or at least partially preserved through hybrid governance systems in Britain and in Germany, while in France the self-regulation was entirely replaced by governmental intervention

Politikformulierung in der Fortpflanzungstechnologie: Partizipation und Einfluss feministischer Gruppierungen im internationalen Vergleich

'Der Artikel geht aus vergleichender Perspektive der Frage nach, ob die festgestellten beträchtlichen Unterschiede in den Politiken im Bereich der Fortpflanzungstechnologie auf eine je nach Land unterschiedlich starke und einheitliche Mobilisierung sowie erfolgreiche Partizipation feministischer und frauenpolitischer Gruppierungen zurückgeführt werden kann. Es werden sechs Länder verglichen, die Schweiz, Deutschland, Norwegen, Belgien, Italien und Kanada. Der Artikel kommt zu dem Schluss, dass für die 'erste Generation' von Politiken, die als Reaktion auf die Verbreitung und Routinisierung der In-vitro-Fertilisation erlassen wurden, von einem sehr beschränkten Einfluss feministischer Gruppen im Speziellen und Frauenorgansiationen im Allgemeinen auszugehen ist.' (Autorenreferat)'From a comparative perspective, this article analyses to what extent women's groups have participated and influenced the policy-making process for Assisted Reproductive Technology, and whether their participation and influence might help to explain the considerable variation observed in policy content across six countries, namely Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Belgium, Italy and Canada. The article comes to the conclusion that, for the 'first generation' of public policies formulated as a reaction towards the spread and routinization of in vitro fertilisation, feminist groups and in a larger sense women's groups have had a very limited influence on the content of the adopted policies.' (author's abstract

Strategic Resource Allocation in the Human Brain Supports Cognitive Coordination of Object and Spatial Working Memory

The ability to integrate different types of information (e.g., object identity and spatial orientation) and maintain or manipulate them concurrently in working memory (WM) facilitates the flow of ongoing tasks and is essential for normal human cognition. Research shows that object and spatial information is maintained and manipulated in WM via separate pathways in the brain (object/ventral versus spatial/dorsal). How does the human brain coordinate the activity of different specialized systems to conjoin different types of information? Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate conjunction- versus single-task manipulation of object (compute average color blend) and spatial (compute intermediate angle) information in WM. Object WM was associated with ventral (inferior frontal gyrus, occipital cortex), and spatial WM with dorsal (parietal cortex, superior frontal, and temporal sulci) regions. Conjoined object/spatial WM resulted in intermediate activity in these specialized areas, but greater activity in different prefrontal and parietal areas. Unique to our study, we found lower temporo-occipital activity and greater deactivation in temporal and medial prefrontal cortices for conjunction- versus single-tasks. Using structural equation modeling, we derived a conjunction-task connectivity model that comprises a frontoparietal network with a bidirectional DLPFC-VLPFC connection, and a direct parietal-extrastriate pathway. We suggest that these activation/deactivation patterns reflect efficient resource allocation throughout the brain and propose a new extended version of the biased competition model of WM. Hum Brain Mapp, 2011. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc

Dissociation of neural correlates of verbal and non-verbal visual working memory with different delays

Background: Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), posterior parietal cortex, and regions in the occipital cortex have been identified as neural sites for visual working memory (WM). The exact involvement of the DLPFC in verbal and non-verbal working memory processes, and how these processes depend on the time-span for retention, remains disputed