Coherence and phase locking of intracerebral activation during visuo- and audio-motor learning of continuous tracking movements

The aim of the present study was to assess changes in EEG coherence and phase locking between fronto-parietal areas, including the frontal and parietal motor areas, during early audio- and visuo-motor learning of continuous tracking movements. Subjects learned to turn a steering-wheel according to a given trajectory in order to minimise the discrepancy between a changing foreground stimulus (controllable by the subjects) and a constant background stimulus (uncontrollable) for both the auditory and the visual modality. In the auditory condition, we uncovered a learning-related increase in inter-hemispheric phase locking between inferior parietal regions, suggesting that coupling between areas involved in audiomotor integration is augmented during early learning stages. Intra-hemispheric phase locking between motor and superior parietal areas increased in the left hemisphere as learning progressed, indicative of integrative processes of spatial information and movement execution. Further tests show a significant correlation of intra-hemispheric phase locking between the motor and the parietal area bilaterally and movement performance in the visual condition. These results suggest that the motor-parietal network is operative in the auditory and in the visual condition. This study confirms that a complex fronto-parietal network subserves learning of a new movement that requires sensorimotor transformation and demonstrates the importance of interregional coupling as a neural correlate for successful acquisition and implementation of externally guided behaviou

Characterisation of a RhoBTB3 deficient mouse model

RhoBTB proteins are atypical members of the Rho-family of small GTPases with a characteristic domain architecture: a GTPase-domain is followed by a proline-rich region, a tandem of two BTB domains and a C-terminal region. RhoBTB3 is the most divergent member of the RhoBTB family and has been shown to have ATPase instead of GTPase activity. Its precise roles at a cellular and organismal level are unknown. In order to investigate the functions of RhoBTB3 in vivo a RhoBTB3 knockout mouse was characterised in this study. The expression pattern of rhobtb3 was studied with the help of a β-galactosidase reporter gene and confirmed in a number of cases by studying protein expression. The overall strong expression in embryos was highest in bone, cartilage, smooth muscle and heart followed by skeletal muscle, skin and localised areas of the nervous system. The expression declines during late development but remains visible in cartilage, heart, kidneys, smooth muscle cells of blood vessels, testes and ovaries of adult animals. Important phenotypic changes in RhoBTB3 knockout animals are reduced survival as well as growth and fertility defects. Testes of knockout animals are smaller than wildtype controls. Proliferation of primary lung fibroblasts and the integrity of the intestinal tract appear not to be affected by knockout of RhoBTB3. RhoBTB3 appears to have a completely novel role in haemostasis and platelets of RhoBTB3 knockout animals have defects in aggregation stimulated by collagen and thrombin as well as in adhesion to fibrinogen and collagen. They express higher numbers of α2β1 and αIIbβ3 integrins which might relate to the molecular origin of the observed defects. Platelet morphology and in vivo tail bleeding times were appeared unaffected by loss of RhoBTB3. A two-hybrid screening yielded Kindlins as potential binding partners of RhoBTB3 and the interaction has been verified in this study by co-immunoprecipitation. Kindlins are mediators of integrin activation and have been implicated in various human diseases of the skin, the intestine and haematopoietic tissue

Improvements and application of the STatistical Analogue Resampling Scheme STARS

Basically, there are two approaches to downscale climate simulations from global climate models to a regional scale: dynamical and statistical downscaling. This thesis focuses on a statistical method – the Statistical Analogue Resampling Scheme (STARS) – which rearranges observed weather data according to a prescribed linear regression of a given meteorological variable (e.g., temperature). The STARS model is analysed and further developed to provide accurate climate data for impact modelling. First, the use of gridded data instead of station data is tested for an area covering Southern Africa. Second, the model is applied on a continental scale (the whole of Europe). Third, the climate projections of STARS for the 21st century are evaluated by comparing them to projections from a dynamical regional climate model. To this end, the STARS model is forced with past data from the same dynamical model. The good performance of STARS in Southern Africa indicates that it is possible to use gridded data as model input. The application on a continental scale showed model deficiencies in temperature and short wave radiation. Those were corrected in a new model version. Now the model is able to provide good results on a continental scale. The forcing and comparison with dynamical model data shows good results for the first half of the 21st century, while for the middle of the century only precipitation and temperature are well reproduced. For the end of the century, it is not possible to compute simulations that fulfill the prescribed model criteria of STARS. Overall, this makes STARS an alternative to dynamical regional climate models for a time span of 40 or 50 years into the future

American Borders: Borderlines and Borderlands in Thomas King’s “Borders” and Helena Viramontes’ “The Cariboo Café”

Borders have vastly defined the way society and communities have been organized, directly affecting certain cultures and groups of people. The border itself has always presented problems, as the idea of it just bringing political order is merely utopic, and it has often been defied or even rejected when imposed. With the creation of borders, also come borderlands, a fuzzy area where cultures coexist and intertwine. In this study, the concepts of borderlines and borderlands are explored and put into historical context, analyzing them along the works of two different authors: Thomas King’s “Borders” and Helena Viramontes’ “The Cariboo Café”.Las fronteras han definido en gran medida la forma en la que la sociedad y las comunidades están organizadas, afectando directamente a ciertas culturas y grupos de personas. La frontera en sí siempre ha presentado ciertos problemas, ya que la idea de que únicamente traen una organización política es meramente utópica, y muchas veces es desafiada o incluso rechazada cuando se impone. Con la creación de las fronteras, también surgen las tierras fronterizas, donde las dos culturas divididas coexisten y se entrelazan. En este trabajo los conceptos de línea fronteriza y tierras fronterizas son estudiados junto con su contexto histórico, analizándolos con las obras de dos autores diferentes: “Borders” de Thomas King, y “The Cariboo Café” de Helena Viramontes.Departamento de Filología InglesaGrado en Estudios Inglese

Інтерпретації художньої мови мінімалізму у творчості японського дизайнера Н.Фукасави

Мета роботи полягає в аналізі художньо-проектної діяльності відомого японського дизайнера-мінімаліста Н.Фукасави на прикладі окремих промислових об’єктів, а також популяризації поданої інформації

Coherent intracerebral brain oscillations during learned continuous tracking movements

The aim of the present study was to assess changes in electroencephalogram (EEG) phase locking between fronto-parietal areas, including the frontal and parietal motor areas, during audiomotor learning of continuous tracking movements. Subjects learned to turn a steering wheel according to a given trajectory in order to minimise the discrepancy between a changing foreground stimulus (controllable by the subjects) and a constant background stimulus. The results of the present study show that increasing practice of continuous tracking movements that are continuously performed in the presence of auditory feedback is not accompanied by decrease in phase locking between areas involved. Moreover, the study confirms that internally produced movements show enhanced coherent activities compared to externally guided movements and therefore suggests that the motor-parietal network is more engaged during internally produced than externally produced movement

Querflötenunterricht im 19. Jahrhundert

Das 19. Jahrhundert ist ein Zeitraum bedeutender Neuerungen in der Bauweise der Querflöte und ein Zeitraum, in dem bei der Vermittlung ihrer Spielweise wichtige Veränderungen zu beobachten sind. Gegenstand der vorliegenden Arbeit ist der Querflötenunterricht im deutschsprachigen Raum. Die Studie betrachtet aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven, wie das Flötenspiel im 19. Jahrhundert gelehrt und gelernt wird und möchte damit die Lücke an Informationen zur Geschichte der Querflötenpädagogik verkleinern. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage nach den Intentionen des Lehrens und Lernens, nach den Lernbereichen und ihrer Vermittlung und nach dem musikalischen Material, das für Lehr- und Lernzwecke verwendet wird. Ergänzend dazu erfolgt ein Blick auf die Rahmenbedingungen des Unterrichts: zentrale Stationen in der Entwicklung des Flötenbaus, das Repertoire an Flötenmusik und die Bedeutung der Flöte im zeitgenössischen Musikleben. Informationen, wie das Flötenspiel bzw. einzelne Teilbereiche vermittelt werden, liefern in erster Linie die Flöten-Lehrwerke. Als Quellenmaterial liegen der Studie rund 50 Lehrwerke zugrunde, die in der Zeit zwischen 1780 und 1915 als deutschsprachige Originalwerke erscheinen. Ihnen ist zu entnehmen, wie der Lehr-Lern-Prozess theoretisch verlaufen kann, nicht aber, wie der Unterricht in der Praxis aussieht. Über die Unterrichtsrealität ist in zeitgenössischen Quellen wenig zu erfahren. Die Lehrwerke, ergänzendes Übungsmaterial und theoretische Schriften über die Flöte und das Flötenspiel dokumentieren, dass der Querflötenunterricht vom Ende des 18. bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts in ganz verschiedenen Formen mit teilweise großen Unterschieden in den Zielsetzungen, mit unterschiedlichen inhaltlichen Akzentuierungen und mit Unterschieden in der methodischen Gestaltung stattfindet. Bis um 1850 sind Flötenspiel und Flötenunterricht einerseits von der Tradition des vorangehenden Jahrhunderts geprägt, auf der anderen Seite zeichnen sich Veränderungen ab, die insbesondere methodische Aspekte betreffen. Viele Neuerungen und besonders der neue Typ des Flöten-Lehrwerks - ein sukzessive durchzuarbeitender Lehrgang, der in Form von Übungen und Spielstücken umfangreiches Notenmaterial bereitstellt - setzen sich in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts durch und sind zum Teil auch heute noch in der Unterrichtspraxis präsent. Querflötenunterricht im 19. Jahrhundert ist damit nicht allein als historisches Thema, sondern auch mit Blick auf den heutigen Flötenunterricht interessant

The effects of practice distribution upon the regional oscillatory activity in visuomotor learning.

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a massed compared to a distributed practice upon visuomotor learning as well as upon the regional oscillatory activity in the sensorimotor cortex. METHODS: A continuous visuomotor tracking task was used to assess visuomotor learning; the underlying neuronal correlates were measured by means of EEG. The massed practice group completed a continuous training of 60 minutes, while the distributed practice group completed four 15 minutes practice blocks separated by rest intervals. RESULTS: While the massed and the distributed practice group did not differ in performance, effects of practice distribution were evident in the regional oscillatory activity. In the course of practice, the massed training group showed a higher task-related theta power and a strong task-related power decrease in the upper alpha frequency over the sensorimotor cortex compared to the distributed practice group. CONCLUSIONS: These differences in the regional oscillatory activity indicate a higher cognitive effort and higher attention demands in the massed practice group. The results of this study support the hypothesis, that a distributed practice is superior to a massed practice in visuomotor learning

Predicting patients who will drop out of out-patient psychotherapy using machine learning algorithms

Background: About 30% of patients drop out of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), which has implications for psychiatric and psychological treatment. Findings concerning drop out remain heterogeneous. Aims: This paper aims to compare different machine-learning algorithms using nested cross-validation, evaluate their benefit in naturalistic settings, and identify the best model as well as the most important variables. Method: The data-set consisted of 2543 out-patients treated with CBT. Assessment took place before session one. Twenty-one algorithms and ensembles were compared. Two parameters (Brier score, area under the curve (AUC)) were used for evaluation. Results: The best model was an ensemble that used Random Forest and nearest-neighbour modelling. During the training process, it was significantly better than generalised linear modelling (GLM) (Brier score: d = -2.93, 95% CI (-3.95, -1.90)); AUC: d = 0.59, 95% CI (0.11 to 1.06)). In the holdout sample, the ensemble was able to correctly identify 63.4% of cases of patients, whereas the GLM only identified 46.2% correctly. The most important predictors were lower education, lower scores on the Personality Style and Disorder Inventory (PSSI) compulsive scale, younger age, higher scores on the PSSI negativistic and PSSI antisocial scale as well as on the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) additional scale (mean of the four additional items) and BSI overall scale. Conclusions: Machine learning improves drop-out predictions. However, not all algorithms are suited to naturalistic data-sets and binary events. Tree-based and boosted algorithms including a variable selection process seem well-suited, whereas more advanced algorithms such as neural networks do not