Immersive virtual reality (VR) enables naturalistic neuroscientific studies while maintaining experimental control, but dynamic and interactive stimuli pose methodological challenges. We here probed ...the link between emotional arousal, a fundamental property of affective experience, and parieto-occipital alpha power under naturalistic stimulation: 37 young healthy adults completed an immersive VR experience, which included rollercoaster rides, while their EEG was recorded. They then continuously rated their subjective emotional arousal while viewing a replay of their experience. The association between emotional arousal and parieto-occipital alpha power was tested and confirmed by (1) decomposing the continuous EEG signal while maximizing the comodulation between alpha power and arousal ratings and by (2) decoding periods of high and low arousal with discriminative common spatial patterns and a long short-term memory recurrent neural network. We successfully combine EEG and a naturalistic immersive VR experience to extend previous findings on the neurophysiology of emotional arousal towards real-world neuroscience.
Brain-age (BA) estimates based on deep learning are increasingly used as neuroimaging biomarker for brain health; however, the underlying neural features have remained unclear. We combined ensembles ...of convolutional neural networks with Layer-wise Relevance Propagation (LRP) to detect which brain features contribute to BA. Trained on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of a population-based study (n = 2637, 18–82 years), our models estimated age accurately based on single and multiple modalities, regionally restricted and whole-brain images (mean absolute errors 3.37–3.86 years). We find that BA estimates capture ageing at both small and large-scale changes, revealing gross enlargements of ventricles and subarachnoid spaces, as well as white matter lesions, and atrophies that appear throughout the brain. Divergence from expected ageing reflected cardiovascular risk factors and accelerated ageing was more pronounced in the frontal lobe. Applying LRP, our study demonstrates how superior deep learning models detect brain-ageing in healthy and at-risk individuals throughout adulthood.
•A large sample of older adults (N = 907) with MRI and resting EEG were analyzed.•Voxel-wise white matter hyperintensities were linked to alpha oscillations.•Probability of voxel-wise white matter ...hyperintensities relates positively to occipital alpha power.•WMHs should be considered when investigating the aging effects on neural oscillations.
Aging is associated with increased white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) and with alterations of alpha oscillations (7–13 Hz). However, a crucial question remains, whether changes in alpha oscillations relate to aging per se or whether this relationship is mediated by age-related neuropathology like WMHs. Using a large cohort of cognitively healthy older adults (N = 907, 60–80 years), we assessed relative alpha power, alpha peak frequency, and long-range temporal correlations from resting-state EEG. We further associated these parameters with voxel-wise WMHs from 3T MRI. We found that a higher prevalence of WMHs in the superior and posterior corona radiata as well as in the thalamic radiation was related to elevated alpha power, with the strongest association in the bilateral occipital cortex. In contrast, we observed no significant relation of the WMHs probability with alpha peak frequency and long-range temporal correlations. Finally, higher age was associated with elevated alpha power via total WMH volume. We suggest that an elevated alpha power is a consequence of WMHs affecting a spatial organization of alpha sources.
Wie kam es zur Krise der Organspende in der Schweiz? Trotz Reformen und Werbekampagnen beklagte die Transplantationsmedizin ab Ende der 1980er-Jahre ein zunehmendes Misstrauen und sinkende ...Spenderzahlen.Simon Hofmann beleuchtet die Rollen von Ärzten, Pflegenden, Angehörigen und Empfängern, aber auch von Medien, Politikern und der Pharmaindustrie. Dabei setzt er die Praxis in Krankenhäusern mit öffentlichen Debatten und fiktiven Narrativen über Organhandel in Beziehung. Er erzählt die komplexe und widersprüchliche Geschichte einer modernen Biomedizin an der Grenze von Leben und Tod, die ebenso von ökonomischem Kalkül wie von utopischen Hoffnungen und traumatischen Ängsten geprägt ist.
Ever-increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions narrow the timeframe for humanity to mitigate the climate crisis. Scientific research activities are resource demanding and, consequently, ...contribute to climate change; at the same time, scientists have a central role in advancing knowledge, also on climate-related topics. In this opinion piece, we discuss (1) how open science – adopted on an individual as well as on a systemic level – can contribute to making research more environmentally friendly, and (2) how open science practices can make research activities more efficient and thereby foster scientific progress and solutions to the climate crisis. While many building blocks are already at hand, systemic changes are necessary in order to create academic environments that support open science practices and encourage scientists from all fields to become more carbon-conscious, ultimately contributing to a sustainable future.
The aim of this study is to investigate the formaldehyde content and emissions of bark-based insulation panels bonded with three types of adhesives: urea formaldehyde, melamine urea-formaldehyde, and ...tannin-based adhesives. These panels were produced at two levels of density—300 and 500 kg/m3—and a thickness of 20 mm, and the influence of the adhesive amount and type on the formaldehyde emissions and content was measured. Other mechanical and physical properties such as modulus of rupture, modulus of elasticity, internal bond, and dimensional stability were also scrutinized. With one exception, all the panels belonged to the super E0 classification for free formaldehyde content (perforator value ≤1.5 mg/100 g oven dry mass of panels). The measurements using the desiccator method for formaldehyde emissions assigned all the testing specimens in the F *** category for low-emission panels according to the Japanese International Standards.
Entering PIN codes by smooth pursuit eye movements Cymek, Dietlind Helene; Venjakob, Antje Christine; Ruff, Stefan ...
Journal of eye movement research,
05/2014, Letnik:
7, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Despite its potential gaze interaction is still not a widely-used interaction concept. Major drawbacks as the calibration, strain of the eyes and the high number of false alarms are associated with ...gaze based interaction and limit its practicability for every-day human computer interaction. In this paper two experiments are described which use smooth pursuit eye movements on moving display buttons. The first experiment was conducted to extract an easy and fast interaction concept and at the same time to collect data to develop a specific but robust algorithm. In a follow-up experiment, twelve conventionally calibrated participants interacted successfully with the system. For another group of twelve people the eye tracker was not calibrated individually, but on a third person. Results show that for both groups interaction was possible without false alarms. Both groups rated the user experience of the system as positive.
During an ostracod sampling campaign in the city of Munich (Germany) samples were taken from containers in a greenhouse of the Munich Botanical Garden. Beside the ubiquitous species Cypridopsis vidua ...(O. F. Müller, 1776), the samples contained four alien species, i.e., Chlamydotheca arcuata (Sars, 1901), Strandesia bicuspis (Claus, 1892), Tanycypris centa Chang, Lee & Smith, 2012, and Tanycypris alfonsi Nagler, Geist & Matzke-Karasz, 2014. While sorting the living Tanycypris specimens, a yet undescribed usage of the caudal rami was observed. Freshwater ostracods usually move on or in the sediment by using their first and second antennae, walking legs and - if not reduced - their caudal rami. During (non-swimming) locomotion of most freshwater ostracods with well-developed caudal rami, they help pushing the body forward by being used as a lever. This movement can be fast, but has never been reported to include sudden jumps. In contrast, both investigated Tanycypris species show an extraordinarily fast movement, especially when disturbed. Recordings with a high-speed camera were made, shooting horizontally into a 1.5-mm-thick micro-aquarium. The fast movement could be identified as a powerful jump, much resembling the movement of a catapult, propelled by a very rapid repulsion of the caudal rami from the ground. Although sized only around 1 mm, the observed specimens reached top speeds of up to 0.75 ms−1. Anatomically, this speed is obtained by the exceptional length of the caudal rami in Tanycypris, combined with a well-developed musculature, which stretches from a broadened posterior end of soft body along the so-called 'caudal rami attachment'. The jump itself resembles that of springtails or fleas, where the jump is powered by the energy previously stored in an elastic proteinaceous material; however, in Tanycypris no such mechanism could be detected and thus the energy for the catapult-like jump must be considered muscular, possibly aided by tendon-like structures and/or a mechanism involving a muscular pre-tension by a click-joint as recorded for Squillids.
As Field-coupled Nanocomputing (FCN) gains traction as a viable post-CMOS technology, the EDA community lacks public benchmarks to evaluate the performance of academic and commercial design tools. We ...propose MNT Bench to address this gap by providing a platform for researchers to compare algorithms across a diverse set of benchmarks generated by multiple physical design tools. These benchmarks span various clocking schemes and gate libraries, with MNT Bench being consistently updated to integrate the latest advancements in the field. In fact, using MNT Bench, we were able to provide layouts that are substantially better (in terms of area) than everything the community generated thus far.
How did the Swiss organ donation crisis come about? Despite reforms and advertising campaigns, from the late '80s, Swiss transplant medicine began to lament an increasing mistrust in organ donation ...and falling donor numbers. Simon Hofmann throws light on the role of doctors, nurses, family members and donees, but also of the media, politicians and the pharmaceutical industry. In doing so, he draws out the relations between hospital practices, public debates, and fictitious narratives about organ smuggling. He tells a complex and contradictory story of modern biomedicine at the edge of life and death, which is shaped as much by economic calculations as by utopian hope and traumatic fears.
Wie kam es zur Krise der Organspende in der Schweiz? Trotz Reformen und Werbekampagnen beklagte die Transplantationsmedizin ab Ende der 1980er-Jahre ein zunehmendes Misstrauen und sinkende Spenderzahlen. Simon Hofmann beleuchtet die Rollen von Ärzten, Pflegenden, Angehörigen und Empfängern, aber auch von Medien, Politikern und der Pharmaindustrie. Dabei setzt er die Praxis in Krankenhäusern mit öffentlichen Debatten und fiktiven Narrativen über Organhandel in Beziehung. Er erzählt die komplexe und widersprüchliche Geschichte einer modernen Biomedizin an der Grenze von Leben und Tod, die ebenso von ökonomischem Kalkül wie von utopischen Hoffnungen und traumatischen Ängsten geprägt ist.
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