Emotion as information : inferring the unobserved causes of others' emotional expressions

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2018.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 188-214).Research in the domain of cognitive science has tended to neglect emotions. In my thesis, I take several steps to fill this gap by looking at people's representation of emotions, and its connection to other representations typically studied in cognitive science. I argue that people have an intuitive theory of emotion that is causally intertwined with their understanding of the physical and social world broadly. This intuitive theory allows us to use observed emotional cues as a window, to recover unobserved information about the world. I study these abilities in both adults and children, to gain insight into the most fundamental representations supporting such abilities. I also use computational models to capture the hierarchical, causal structure of this intuitive theory of emotion. In Study 1, I show that infants as young as 12-17 months can discriminate diverse within-valence emotional expressions elicited by funny, exciting, adorable, delicious, and sympathetic events, and map them onto their probable causes. In Study 2.1, I present that preschoolers can recover rich mental state information from observed emotional expressions. When the valence of someone's face changes between anticipated and actual outcomes, children by five gain insight into what she wants and believes about the world. Study 2.2 bridges theory of mind research, accounts of emotion attribution, and formal modeling, to provide a formal account of how people jointly infer beliefs and desires from emotional expressions. Study 3 tests children's understanding of social display rules. By middle childhood, children can use one person's emotional expressions regulated by a social context to infer the mental states of another. Altogether, these findings suggest that emotional cues provide a valuable entrée into the unseen world. Not only adults, but also children, can use observed emotional expressions to infer their external causes and the internal mental states of other people. Although this intuitive theory of emotion may not necessarily mirror the actual processes of how emotions are generated, it supports rational inferences much of time, and it may be formed early in development. I see this work as bridging gaps across disciplines and helping advance the cognitive science of emotion understanding."Funding support, including Leventhal, Stark, and Henry E. Singleton Fellowships, and the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (funded by NSF STC Award CCF-1231216)"--Page 5by Yang Wu.Ph. D

Intraperitoneal delivery of paclitaxel by poly(ether-anhydride) microspheres effectively suppresses tumor growth in a murine metastatic ovarian cancer model

Intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy is more effective than systemic chemotherapy for treating advanced ovarian cancer, but is typically associated with severe complications due to high dose, frequent administration schedule, and use of non-biocompatible excipients/delivery vehicles. Here, we developed paclitaxel (PTX)-loaded microspheres composed of di-block copolymers of poly(ethylene glycol) and poly(sebacic acid) (PEG-PSA) for safe and sustained IP chemotherapy. PEG-PSA microspheres provided efficient loading (∼13 % w/w) and prolonged release (∼13 days) of PTX. In a murine ovarian cancer model, a single dose of IP PTX/PEG-PSA particles effectively suppressed tumor growth for more than 40 days and extended the median survival time to 75 days compared to treatments with Taxol® (47 days) or IP placebo particles (34 days). IP PTX/PEG-PSA was well tolerated with only minimal to mild inflammation. Our findings support PTX/PEG-PSA microspheres as a promising drug delivery platform for IP therapy of ovarian cancer and potentially other metastatic peritoneal cancers

Measurement of ϒ production in pp collisions at √s = 2.76 TeV

The production of ϒ(1S), ϒ(2S) and ϒ(3S) mesons decaying into the dimuon final state is studied with the LHCb detector using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.3 pb−1 collected in proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 2.76 TeV. The differential production cross-sections times dimuon branching fractions are measured as functions of the ϒ transverse momentum and rapidity, over the ranges pT < 15 GeV/c and 2.0 < y < 4.5. The total cross-sections in this kinematic region, assuming unpolarised production, are measured to be σ (pp → ϒ(1S)X) × B ϒ(1S)→μ+μ− = 1.111 ± 0.043 ± 0.044 nb, σ (pp → ϒ(2S)X) × B ϒ(2S)→μ+μ− = 0.264 ± 0.023 ± 0.011 nb, σ (pp → ϒ(3S)X) × B ϒ(3S)→μ+μ− = 0.159 ± 0.020 ± 0.007 nb, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic

Study of the doubly charmed tetraquark T+cc

Quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong force, describes interactions of coloured quarks and gluons and the formation of hadronic matter. Conventional hadronic matter consists of baryons and mesons made of three quarks and quark-antiquark pairs, respectively. Particles with an alternative quark content are known as exotic states. Here a study is reported of an exotic narrow state in the D0D0π+ mass spectrum just below the D*+D0 mass threshold produced in proton-proton collisions collected with the LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The state is consistent with the ground isoscalar T+cc tetraquark with a quark content of ccu⎯⎯⎯d⎯⎯⎯ and spin-parity quantum numbers JP = 1+. Study of the DD mass spectra disfavours interpretation of the resonance as the isovector state. The decay structure via intermediate off-shell D*+ mesons is consistent with the observed D0π+ mass distribution. To analyse the mass of the resonance and its coupling to the D*D system, a dedicated model is developed under the assumption of an isoscalar axial-vector T+cc state decaying to the D*D channel. Using this model, resonance parameters including the pole position, scattering length, effective range and compositeness are determined to reveal important information about the nature of the T+cc state. In addition, an unexpected dependence of the production rate on track multiplicity is observed