In two minds: executive functioning versus theory of mind in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia

Background: The relationship of executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) deficits in neurodegeneration is still debated. There is contradicting evidence as to whether these cognitive processes are overlapping or distinct, which has clear clinical relevance for the evaluation of their associated clinical symptoms. Aim: To investigate the relationship of EF and ToM deficits via a data-driven approach in a large sample of patients with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Methods: Data of 46 patients with bvFTD were employed in a hierarchical cluster analysis to determine the similarity of variance between different EF measures (verbal abstraction, verbal initiation, motor programming, sensitivity to interference, inhibitory control, visual abstraction, flexibility, working memory/attention) and ToM (faux pas). Results: Overall results showed that EF measures were clustered separately from the ToM measure. A post hoc analysis revealed a more complex picture where selected ToM subcomponents (empathy; intention) showed a relationship to specific EF measures (verbal abstraction; working memory/attention), whereas the remaining EF and ToM subcomponents were separate. Conclusions: Taken together, these findings suggest that EF and ToM are distinct components; however, ToM empathy and intention subcomponents might share some functions with specific EF processes. This has important implications for guiding diagnostic assessment of these deficits in clinical conditions

Product Design and Decision Rights in Vertical Structures

The paper argues that the emergence of private labels can be partially explained by the new information technologies available at the retail level. In our approach, the owner of a brand has ìdecision rightsîon product design, while the details of the production and distribution are left to contractual negotiation. Manufacturers have privileged information about the cost of improving quality, while distributors have private information on the impact of quality on demand. We show that ownership of the brand should be allocated to the party with a relative informational advantage. In particular, if the information of the distributor improves due to a technological shock on data collection and information management, it may become optimal for the distributor to introduce its own brand, rather than to distribute a manufacturerís brand

Séparation des parents et contribution à l'entretien et l'éducation de l'enfant : une évaluation du barème pour la fixation du montant de la pension alimentaire

Disponible à l'adresse : http://www.caf.fr/sites/default/files/cnaf/Documents/Dser/PSF/107/psf107-1-bjeandidier_cbourreau_dubois_isayn.pdfDisponible sur Persée : https://www.persee.fr/doc/caf_2101-8081_2012_num_107_1_2666National audienceLe 12 avril 2010, le ministère de la justice diffusait une circulaire proposant une table de référence indicative pour la fixation de la contribution à l'entretien et l'éducation des enfants (CEEE) après la séparation des parents. Cet article propose une évaluation de cette table de référence (ou barème). Les logiques économiques et juridiques de cette table sont présentées, notamment les questions de la répartition de la contribution des parents, de la priorité de l'obligation alimentaire par rapport à d'autres charges de créances, de l'égalité entre les enfants du débiteur, de la prise en charge du temps d'hébergement, de l'incidence de la remise en couple et du lien entre prestations sociales et CEEE. Les logiques de la table de référence sont évaluées en étudiant, à l'aide d'un outil économétrique, des décisions rendues en appel et fixant une CEEE avant que la table ne soit diffusée. L'existence même d'un barème est validée par la mise en lumière d'iniquités résiduelles dans les décisions prises sans barème. L'analyse compare également les montants de CEEE fixés par ces décisions d'appel (avant diffusion du barème), avec les montants simulés à l'aide du barème. Elle montre, en particulier, que l'application du barème "profiterait" aux parents débiteurs à bas revenus (moindre CEEE) et "désavantagerait" les parents débiteurs à hauts revenus, mais que, en raison d'une certaine homogamie des ressources, elle "profiterait" aux parents créanciers à hauts revenus (CEEE plus élevée) et "désavantagerait" les parents créanciers à bas revenus

Loss of brain inter-frequency hubs in Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) causes alterations of brain network structure and function. The latter consists of connectivity changes between oscillatory processes at different frequency channels. We proposed a multi-layer network approach to analyze multiple-frequency brain networks inferred from magnetoencephalographic recordings during resting-states in AD subjects and age-matched controls. Main results showed that brain networks tend to facilitate information propagation across different frequencies, as measured by the multi-participation coefficient (MPC). However, regional connectivity in AD subjects was abnormally distributed across frequency bands as compared to controls, causing significant decreases of MPC. This effect was mainly localized in association areas and in the cingulate cortex, which acted, in the healthy group, as a true inter-frequency hub. MPC values significantly correlated with memory impairment of AD subjects, as measured by the total recall score. Most predictive regions belonged to components of the default-mode network that are typically affected by atrophy, metabolism disruption and amyloid-beta deposition. We evaluated the diagnostic power of the MPC and we showed that it led to increased classification accuracy (78.39%) and sensitivity (91.11%). These findings shed new light on the brain functional alterations underlying AD and provide analytical tools for identifying multi-frequency neural mechanisms of brain diseases.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables, 3 supplementary figure

Judgments about moral responsibility and determinism in patients with behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia: Still compatibilists

Do laypeople think that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism? Recently, philosophers and psychologists trying to answer this question have found contradictory results: while some experiments reveal people to have compatibilist intuitions, others suggest that people could in fact be incompatibilist. To account for this contradictory answers, Nichols and Knobe (2007) have advanced a 'performance error model' according to which people are genuine incompatibilist that are sometimes biased to give compatibilist answers by emotional reactions. To test for this hypothesis, we investigated intuitions about determinism and moral responsibility in patients suffering from behavioural frontotemporal dementia. Patients suffering from bvFTD have impoverished emotional reaction. Thus, the 'performance error model' should predict that bvFTD patients will give less compatibilist answers. However, we found that bvFTD patients give answers quite similar to subjects in control group and were mostly compatibilist. Thus, we conclude that the 'performance error model' should be abandoned in favour of other available model that best fit our data

Deep-seeded Clustering for Unsupervised Valence-Arousal Emotion Recognition from Physiological Signals

Emotions play a significant role in the cognitive processes of the human brain, such as decision making, learning and perception. The use of physiological signals has shown to lead to more objective, reliable and accurate emotion recognition combined with raising machine learning methods. Supervised learning methods have dominated the attention of the research community, but the challenge in collecting needed labels makes emotion recognition difficult in large-scale semi- or uncontrolled experiments. Unsupervised methods are increasingly being explored, however sub-optimal signal feature selection and label identification challenges unsupervised methods' accuracy and applicability. This article proposes an unsupervised deep cluster framework for emotion recognition from physiological and psychological data. Tests on the open benchmark data set WESAD show that deep k-means and deep c-means distinguish the four quadrants of Russell's circumplex model of affect with an overall accuracy of 87%. Seeding the clusters with the subject's subjective assessments helps to circumvent the need for labels.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, 2 table