A Fresh Look at a Stale Doctrine: How Public Policy and the Tenets of Piercing the Corporate Veil Dictate the Inapplicability of the Intracorporate Conspiracy Doctrine to the Civil Rights Arena

Civil rights conspiracy law has drifted dramatically far from its intended purpose. Courts regularly apply the intracorporate conspiracy doctrinea principle holding that officers and agents of the same corporation are incapable of conspiring when they act on behalf of the corporationto prevent civil rights conspiracy plaintiffs from vindicating violations of their rights. While the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine was originally used to shield officers of private corporations from antitrust liability, it is now used to shield state actors who abuse their positions of power. Applying the doctrine in this way not only contradicts the intent of Congress in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1871, but also contravenes traditional theories of corporate law, which recognize that the corporate entity should not be used to effectuate injustice. This Comment analyzes the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine and its improper extension to the civil rights arena through the lens of the piercing-the-corporate-veil doctrine and argues that the former doctrine should never have been applied to civil rights conspiracy claims

A Fresh Look at a Stale Doctrine: How Public Policy and the Tenets of Piercing the Corporate Veil Dictate the Inapplicability of the Intracorporate Conspiracy Doctrine to the Civil Rights Arena

Civil rights conspiracy law has drifted dramatically far from its intended purpose. Courts regularly apply the intracorporate conspiracy doctrinea principle holding that officers and agents of the same corporation are incapable of conspiring when they act on behalf of the corporationto prevent civil rights conspiracy plaintiffs from vindicating violations of their rights. While the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine was originally used to shield officers of private corporations from antitrust liability, it is now used to shield state actors who abuse their positions of power. Applying the doctrine in this way not only contradicts the intent of Congress in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1871, but also contravenes traditional theories of corporate law, which recognize that the corporate entity should not be used to effectuate injustice. This Comment analyzes the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine and its improper extension to the civil rights arena through the lens of the piercing-the-corporate-veil doctrine and argues that the former doctrine should never have been applied to civil rights conspiracy claims

Using large-scale neural models to interpret connectivity measures of cortico-cortical dynamics at millisecond temporal resolution

Over the last two decades numerous functional imaging studies have shown that higher order cognitive functions are crucially dependent on the formation of distributed, large-scale neuronal assemblies (neurocognitive networks), often for very short durations. This has fueled the development of a vast number of functional connectivity measures that attempt to capture the spatiotemporal evolution of neurocognitive networks. Unfortunately, interpreting the neural basis of goal directed behavior using connectivity measures on neuroimaging data are highly dependent on the assumptions underlying the development of the measure, the nature of the task, and the modality of the neuroimaging technique that was used. This paper has two main purposes. The first is to provide an overview of some of the different measures of functional/effective connectivity that deal with high temporal resolution neuroimaging data. We will include some results that come from a recent approach that we have developed to identify the formation and extinction of task-specific, large-scale neuronal assemblies from electrophysiological recordings at a ms-by-ms temporal resolution. The second purpose of this paper is to indicate how to partially validate the interpretations drawn from this (or any other) connectivity technique by using simulated data from large-scale, neurobiologically realistic models. Specifically, we applied our recently developed method to realistic simulations of MEG data during a delayed match-to-sample (DMS) task condition and a passive viewing of stimuli condition using a large-scale neural model of the ventral visual processing pathway. Simulated MEG data using simple head models were generated from sources placed in V1, V4, IT, and prefrontal cortex (PFC) for the passive viewing condition. The results show how closely the conclusions obtained from the functional connectivity method match with what actually occurred at the neuronal network level

PII S0361-9230(00)00435-4 Interpreting PET and fMRI measures of functional neural activity: The effects of synaptic inhibition on cortical activation in human imaging studies

ABSTRACT: Human brain imaging methods such as postiron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging have recently achieved widespread use in the study of both normal cognitive processes and neurological disorders. While many of these studies have begun to yield important insights into human brain function, the relationship between these measurements and the underlying neuronal activity is still not well understood. One open question is how neuronal inhibition is reflected in these imaging results. In this paper, we describe how large-scale modeling can be used to address this question. Specifically, we identify three factors that may play a role in how inhibition affects imaging results: (1) local connectivity; (2) context; and (3) type of inhibitory connection. Simulation results are presented that show how the interaction among these three factors can explain seemingly contradictory experimental results. The modeling suggests that neuronal inhibition can raise brain imaging measures if there is either low local excitatory recurrence or if the region is not otherwise being driven by excitation. Conversely, with high recurrence or actively driven excitation, inhibition can lower observed values

Discrimination Task Reveals Differences in Neural Bases of Tinnitus and Hearing Impairment

We investigated auditory perception and cognitive processing in individuals with chronic tinnitus or hearing loss using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Our participants belonged to one of three groups: bilateral hearing loss and tinnitus (TIN), bilateral hearing loss without tinnitus (HL), and normal hearing without tinnitus (NH). We employed pure tones and frequency-modulated sweeps as stimuli in two tasks: passive listening and active discrimination. All subjects had normal hearing through 2 kHz and all stimuli were low-pass filtered at 2 kHz so that all participants could hear them equally well. Performance was similar among all three groups for the discrimination task. In all participants, a distributed set of brain regions including the primary and non-primary auditory cortices showed greater response for both tasks compared to rest. Comparing the groups directly, we found decreased activation in the parietal and frontal lobes in the participants with tinnitus compared to the HL group and decreased response in the frontal lobes relative to the NH group. Additionally, the HL subjects exhibited increased response in the anterior cingulate relative to the NH group. Our results suggest that a differential engagement of a putative auditory attention and short-term memory network, comprising regions in the frontal, parietal and temporal cortices and the anterior cingulate, may represent a key difference in the neural bases of chronic tinnitus accompanied by hearing loss relative to hearing loss alone

SDG 3: Good health and well-being - framing targets to maximise co-benefits for forests and people

Key Points: The achievement of SDG 3 depends on many other SDGs; some SDGs are logically inconsistent, especially in the attempt to increase conventionally defined GDP while preserving natural capital. Any short-term gains for human health from further forest conversion (e.g. food production) creates short- and long-term, direct and indirect health risks for humans, as well as for other biota. Failure to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services (including family planning) will increase pressure on forests at local, regional and global scales. The burning and clearing of forests cause significant harm to health via impaired quality of water, soil and air; increased exposure to infectious diseases and impacts climate regulation. Many infectious diseases are associated with forest disturbances and intrusions; some important infectious diseases have emerged from forests (notably HIV/AIDS). Greater exposure to green space, including forests, provides mental and physical health benefits for the growing global urban population