#The new university: A special issue on the future of the university

This special issue of Krisis deals with the future of the university and academic life more broadly. Is a new university possible and if so, what should it look like and how do we work towards it

The time course of implicit affective picture processing: an eye movement study

Consistent with a negativity bias account, neuroscientific and behavioral evidence demonstrates modulation of even early sensory processes by unpleasant, potentially threat-relevant information. The aim of this research is to assess the extent to which pleasant and unpleasant visual stimuli presented extrafoveally capture attention and impact eye movement control. We report an experiment examining deviations in saccade metrics in the presence of emotional image distractors that are close to a nonemotional target. We additionally manipulate the saccade latency to test when the emotional distractor has its biggest impact on oculomotor control. The results demonstrate that saccade landing position was pulled toward unpleasant distractors, and that this pull was due to the quick saccade responses. Overall, these findings support a negativity bias account of early attentional control and call for the need to consider the time course of motivated attention when affect is implici

The effect of cycling on cognitive function and well-being in older adults

It has been demonstrated that, on their own, both exercise and stimulation from the environment can improve cognitive function and well-being in older adults. The combined effect of exercising in the outdoor environment on psychological function is less well studied. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of an outdoor cycling intervention on cognitive function and mental health and well-being in older adults. A total of 100 older adults took part in the study (aged 50–83), 26 of which were non-cycling controls, 36 were conventional pedal cyclists and 38 were participants using an e-bike (a bike fitted with an electric motor to provide assistance with pedaling), as part of a larger project (www.cycleboom.org). Participants took part in the study for an eight-week period, with cycling participants required to cycle at least three times a week for thirty minutes in duration for each cycle ride. Cognitive function and well-being were measured before and after the intervention period. For executive function, namely inhibition (the Stroop task) and updating (Letter Updating Task), both cycling groups improved in accuracy after the intervention compared to non-cycling control participants. E-bike participants also improved in processing speed (reaction times in go trials of the Stop-It task) after the intervention compared to non-cycling control participants. Finally, e-bike participants improved in their mental health score after the intervention compared to non-cycling controls as measured by the SF-36. This suggests that there may be an impact of exercising in the environment on executive function and mental health. Importantly, we showed a similar (sometimes larger) effect for the e-bike group compared to the pedal cyclists. This suggests that it is not just the physical activity component of cycling that is having an influence. Both pedal cycles and e-bikes can enable increased physical activity and engagement with the outdoor environment with e-bikes potentially providing greater benefits