Meta-Potentiation: Neuro-Astroglial Interactions Supporting Perceptual Consciousness

Conscious perceptual processing involves the sequential activation of cortical networks at several brain locations, and the onset of oscillatory synchrony affecting the same neuronal population. How do the earlier activated circuits sustain their excitation to synchronize with the later ones? We call such a sustaining process "meta-potentiation", and propose that it depends on neuro-astroglial interactions. In our proposed model, attentional cholinergic and stimulus-related glutamatergic inputs to astroglia elicit the release of astroglial glutamate to bind with neuronal NMDA receptors containing the NR2B subunit. Once calcium channels are open, slow inward currents activate the CaM/CaMKII complex to phosphorylate AMPA receptors in a population of neurons connected with the astrocyte, thus amplifying the local excitatory pattern to participate in a larger synchronized assembly that supports consciousness

Recognition of common object-based categories found in toddler’s everyday object naming contexts

Previously, we investigated the distribution of instances of early-learned object-based categories in toddler’s realistic everyday learning episodes; we found important differences in terms of frequency and variability (3D vs. 2D; real object vs. realistic toy vs. simple shape). Using a picture book task we tested 24-36 month olds’ recognition of these categories in four conditions: Realistic; Features (only parts of the photo visible); Silhouettes; and Geons (a shape caricature version made with only 3-4 parts and no color or texture). Results show similar recognition for all Realistic and Silhouette versions; Geons were lower than the first two; and Features had the lowest recognition rate. Critically, categories with the highest variability in our previous study were readily recognized by Features but difficult to recognize in Geon version. These results suggest that abstracting global shape is influenced by the specific trajectory of experienced exemplars.Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship PIIF-GA-2011-301155

Melhoria das condições de realização da ordenha em explorações de caprinos de raça Serrana em Trás-os-Montes

Os caprinos de raça Serrana têm uma significativa importância socioeconómica na região de Trás-os- Montes. As cabras desta raça são exploradas pela sua aptidão leiteira, sendo o leite destinado ao fabrico de queijo. Esta actividade pode contribuir para o desenvolvimento / manutenção do meio rural da região e proporcionar rendimento que permita a fixação da população rural. Para o crescimento e desenvolvimento da criação de cabras de raça Serrana é necessário aumentar os efectivos por exploração, melhorar as técnicas de produção e melhorar as condições de trabalho, principalmente a melhoria das condições de realização da ordenha. O ordenha manual, realizada de forma tradicional, é um trabalho fatigante, penoso e desagradável. É, muitas vezes, um factor que condiciona o aumento do número de animais na exploração. Os criadores mostram alguma resistência à adopção de novas técnicas de ordenha (ordenha mecânica, por exemplo) pelo receio que têm quanto aos investimentos necessários. Porém, a utilização de alguns equipamentos que exigem menor investimento, como a plataforma de ordenha e o cornadis autoblocante, pode melhorar bastante as condições da ordenha manual e de trabalho do ordenhador. Como resultado das acções de demonstração e divulgação realizadas, alguns criadores da região trocaram a ordenha manual tradicional pela ordenha com recurso a uma plataforma e cornadis. A utilização destes equipamentos permite melhorar as condições de realização da ordenha, principalmente nos aspectos relacionados com a postura do ordenhador; na redução dos tempos de operação necessários para a execução dos trabalhos; e na eficiência do trabalho

A systematic review

This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre ( PSI/01662 ), School of Psychology , the University of Minho , supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the Portuguese State Budget ( UID/PSI/01662/2020 ). This research was also supported by FCT projects PTDC/MHC/PCN/1530/2014. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and recommendations, which has assisted us in improving the quality and presentation of this article. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The AuthorsThe caregiver's touch behavior during early infancy is linked to multiple developmental outcomes. However, social touch remains a challenging construct to operationalize, and although observational tools have been a gold standard for measuring touch in caregiver-infant interactions, no systematic review has been conducted before. We followed the PRISMA guidelines and reviewed the literature to describe and classify the main characteristics of the available observational instruments. Of the 3042 publications found, we selected 45 that included an observational measure, and from those we identified 12 instruments. Most of the studies were of infants younger than six months of age and assessed touch in two laboratory tasks: face-to-face interaction and still-face procedure. We identified three approaches for evaluating the caregiver's touch behavior: strictly behavioral (the observable touch behavior), functional (the functional role of the touch behavior), or mixed (a combination of the previous two). Half of the instruments were classified as functional, 25% as strictly observational, and 25% as mixed. The lack of conceptual and operational uniformity and consistency between instruments is discussed.publishersversionpublishe

A control framework for a remotely operated vehicle

A control framework enabling the automated maneuvering of a Remotely Operate Vehicle (ROV) is presented. The control architecture is structured according to the principle of composition of vehicle motions from a minimal set of elemental maneuvers that are designed and verified independently. The principled approach is based on distributed hybrid systems techniques, and spans integrated design, simulation and implementation as the same model is used throughout. Hybrid systems control techniques are used to synthesize the elemental maneuvers and to design protocols, which coordinate the execution of elemental maneuvers within a complex maneuver. This work is part of the Inspection of Underwater Structures (IES) project whose main objective is the implementation of a ROV-based system for the inspection of underwater structures

Three Months-Old’ Preferences for Biological Motion Configuration and Its Subsequent Decline

Funding: ICL was supported by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (PD/BD/105966/ 2014), and AFP by the research grants PTDC/PSI-GER/2463/2021, PTDC/MHC-PCN/1530/2014, and IF/ 00217/2013. This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (PSI/01662), School of Psychology, University of Minho, supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the Portuguese State Budget (Ref.: UIDB/PSI/01662/ 2020). Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.To perceive, identify and understand the action of others, it is essential to perceptually organize individual and local moving body parts (such as limbs) into the whole configuration of a human body in action. Configural processing—processing the relations among features or parts of a stimulus—is a fundamental ability in the perception of several important social stimuli, such as faces or biological motion. Despite this, we know very little about how human infants develop the ability to perceive and prefer configural relations in biological motion. We present two preferential looking experiments (one cross-sectional and one longitudinal) measuring infants’ preferential attention between a coherent motion configuration of a person walking vs. a scrambled point-light walker (i.e., a stimulus in which all configural relations were removed, thus, in which the perception of a person is impossible). We found that three-month-old infants prefer a coherent point-light walker in relation to a scrambled display, but both five-and seven-month-old infants do not show any preference. We discuss our findings in terms of the different perceptual, attentional, motor, and brain processes available at each age group, and how they dynamically interact with selective attention toward the coherent and socially relevant motion of a person walking during our first year of life.publishersversionpublishe

COMPUTATIONAL MODEL TO EVALUATE ACTIONS IN WHEELRAIL CONTACT INTERACTION

Railway traffic is a big source of vibrations. Over the years, with higher freight capacity and speeds getting higher, excessive stresses are experienced by the subgrade. Then, stress waves propagate through the ground until buildings on the surroundings. This leads to considerable negative impacts on the neighborhood. On this context, this work is immersed in a broader scope of proposing an approach to create a model to simulate railway systems, with the main objective of predicting the vibration and stresses at the subgrade, in different situations, such as to predict the contact forces between the wheels and the rails. In this model, the dynamic characteristics of the vehicles and the contact between their wheels and the track are considered. The numerical model was solved using the software Giraffe. To simulate the traffic of a vehicle, a two-car train composition was modeled. One of the cars is loaded by an imposed torsion moment, applied on the axle of the wheels. A time-varying torsional moment was considered, so the simulation could reproduce an accelerating vehicle, the same vehicle in constant speed, as well as braking. The model, as it was proposed, represented the global mechanical behavior of the cars and it was possible to obtain the contact forces between wheels and a surface that represents the rails

Main axis of elongation dynamics and the planar bias in active object inspection: a developmental approach

Poster apresentado em "Leuven Christmas Applied Vision Association (AVA) Conference", em Leuven, Bélgica, 2014.As we turn our bodies, as we hold and move objects close to us and act on them, we generate dynamic views. Recent studies have examined the viewpoints that infants select during free play and found large developmental changes in dwell time distribution, namely an increasing preference for orienting objects on or around planar views – i.e. main axis is parallel (foreshortened) or perpendicular to the line of sight, and flat surfaces are perpendicular. This bias is characteristic of mature viewing and was found to promote more efficient learning. The functional role of this bias is poorly understood. We investigated two properties that seem relevant: (1) main axis expansion/foreshortening, and (2) instability – related to dynamic viewing, where rotations around planar views typically yield larger visual changes. In two experiments (E1: N=21, 18-24 months; E2: N = 54, 12-36 months), children inspected objects in a free play task and we measured 3D orientation; the main measures were the angle between the main axis of elongation and the line of sight, and its angular velocity and acceleration. There were two key results: (1) main axis is typically maintained in view (infrequent foreshortening) – this suggests that elongation is a distinctive property of preferred views; (2) planar views correspond to more stable periods of the object manipulation – this suggests that sampling planar views corresponds to moments of focused attention to a particular view and perhaps learning of a static view is occurring, leaving open the question of how view transitions are integrated over time.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

MUVTIME: a Multivariate time series visualizer for behavioral science

As behavioral science becomes progressively more data driven, the need is increasing for appropriate tools for visual exploration and analysis of large datasets, often formed by multivariate time series. This paper describes MUVTIME, a multimodal time series visualization tool, developed in Matlab that allows a user to load a time series collection (a multivariate time series dataset) and an associated video. The user can plot several time series on MUVTIME and use one of them to do brushing on the displayed data, i.e. select a time range dynamically and have it updated on the display. The tool also features a categorical visualization of two binary time series that works as a high-level descriptor of the coordination between two interacting partners. The paper reports the successful use of MUVTIME under the scope of project TURNTAKE, which was intended to contribute to the improvement of human-robot interaction systems by studying turn- taking dynamics (role interchange) in parent-child dyads during joint action.Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship PIIF-GA-2011- 301155; Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) project PTDC/PSI- PCO/121494/2010; AFP was also partially funded by the FCT project (IF/00217/2013)This research was supported by: Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship PIIF-GA-2011301155; Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) Strategic program FCT UID/EEA/00066/2013; FCT project PTDC/PSIPCO/121494/2010. AFP was also partially funded by the FCT project (IF/00217/2013). REFERENCE

Visual-vestibular and postural analysis of motion sickness, panic, and acrophobia

Trigger motion sickness and can also have a role in some anxiety disorders. We explore a method to detect individual sensitivity to visual-vestibular unusual patterns, which can signal a vulnerability to develop motion sickness and possibly anxiety disorders such as a fear of heights and panic. 65 undergraduate students were recruited for the purposes of this study as voluntary participants (44 females); average age 21.65 years (SD=2.84) with normal or corrected to normal vision, without vestibular or postural deficiencies. Panic was assessed with the Albany Panic and Phobia Questionnaire, Motion Sickness with the Motion Sickness Susceptibility Questionnaire and Acrophobia was assessed by means of the Acrophobia Questionnaire. The Sharpened Romberg Test was used to test participant’s postural balance. The Rod and Frame Test (RFT) measures the participant’s ability to align a rod to the vertical within a titled frame providing a measure of error in the perception of verticality by degrees. This test was changed to measure the error offered when a participant’s head was tilted, and to trace the error caused by manipulating the vestibular system input. The main findings show only motion sickness to be correlated with significant errors while performing a visual-vestibular challenging situation, and fear of heights is the only anxiety disorder connected with postural stability, although all disorders (fear of heights, panic and motion sickness) are correlated between each other in the self- report questionnaires. All disorders are correlated to each other in the surveys, and might have some common visual-vestibular origin, in theory. The rod and frame test was exclusively correlated with motion sickness whereas the postural stability test only displayed sensibility to acrophobia. Panic disorder was correlated to neither the RFT nor the Romberg. Although this method was initially employed to increase sensibility in order to detect anxiety disorders, it ended up showing its value in the detection of motion sickness.National funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). FCT/3599-PPCDT/121494/PTGrant IF/00217/ 2013info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio