Animal neuromechanics describes the coordinated self-propelled movement of a body, subject to the combined effects of internal neural control and mechanical forces. Here we use a computational model ...to identify effects of neural and mechanical modulation on undulatory forward locomotion of Caenorhabditis elegans, with a focus on proprioceptively driven neural control. We reveal a fundamental relationship between body elasticity and environmental drag in determining the dynamics of the body and demonstrate the manifestation of this relationship in the context of proprioceptively driven control. By considering characteristics unique to proprioceptive neurons, we predict the signatures of internal gait modulation that contrast with the known signatures of externally or biomechanically modulated gait. We further show that proprioceptive feedback can suppress neuromechanical phase lags during undulatory locomotion, contrasting with well studied advancing phase lags that have long been a signature of centrally generated, feed-forward control.
This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Connectome to behaviour: modelling C. elegans at cellular resolution’.
Abstract
The ‘murder box’ is a virtual, lawless space where anything goes. According to Atkinson and Rodgers, when debauched and hedonistic experiences are combed-out of our everyday lives as society ...ascends a gradual arc of civility, voyeuristic, pleasure-seekers can live out their violent, sadistic fantasies. Atkinson and Rodgers apply this popular criminological metanarrative, rooted in Freud, Elias and Presdee, to violence in gaming. In the context of their game of choice (Grand Theft Auto V), we empirically test the idea that given limitless avenues for violence, people will necessarily act out violent desires. We find that player choices are mixed, considered and vary wildly from untamed subjective violence, to more pro-social behaviours. Our contribution is to argue for a more measured understanding of player–game interaction that accounts for the broader spectrum of Elias’ work, including those internalized self-controls directing individuals away from hedonistic decisions. At the same time, this contribution should be read as a response to the often absolutist theoretical positions adopted in cultural criminology more broadly that require closer empirical scrutiny.
Inhibition plays important roles in modulating the neural activities of sensory and motor systems at different levels from synapses to brain regions. To achieve coordinated movement, motor systems ...produce alternating contractions of antagonist muscles, whether along the body axis or within and among limbs, which often involves direct or indirect cross-inhibitory pathways. In the nematode
, a small network involving excitatory cholinergic and inhibitory GABAergic motoneurons generates the dorsoventral alternation of body-wall muscles that supports undulatory locomotion. Inhibition has been suggested to be necessary for backward undulation because mutants that are defective in GABA transmission exhibit a shrinking phenotype in response to a harsh touch to the head, whereas wild-type animals produce a backward escape response. Here, we demonstrate that the shrinking phenotype is exhibited by wild-type as well as mutant animals in response to harsh touch to the head or tail, but only GABA transmission mutants show slow locomotion after stimulation. Impairment of GABA transmission, either genetically or optogenetically, induces lower undulation frequency and lower translocation speed during crawling and swimming in both directions. The activity patterns of GABAergic motoneurons are different during low-frequency and high-frequency undulation. During low-frequency undulation, GABAergic VD and DD motoneurons show correlated activity patterns, while during high-frequency undulation, their activity alternates. The experimental results suggest at least three non-mutually exclusive roles for inhibition that could underlie fast undulatory locomotion in
, which we tested with computational models: cross-inhibition or disinhibition of body-wall muscles, or neuronal reset.
Photography and Death Harris, Racheal; Denham, Jack; Rugg, Julie ...
2020, 2020-06-30
eBook
Examining a spectrum of post-mortem images, this volume considers what death photography communicates about attitudes related to dying, mourning and the afterlife. Focusing on American examples, ...topics are discussed alongside contemporary representations of death, as seen in celebrity death images and forensic photography.
This article ‘tracks’ memes, forms of networked, pictorial/caption humour and social commentary – as well as cultural labour, through a process of value change: the ‘meme stream’. This is a process ...of incorporation of cultural resistance and labour into, and by, the dominant forces of capital that facilitate them: social media networks and their advertisers. We use Marcuse’s Repressive Tolerance alongside Debord’s Spectacle to argue that as memes move, increasing their audience as they go, they lose resonance with a dedicated audience but gain exposure with a more diffuse audience, which is detrimental to the expression of political, countercultural or socially provocative positions. We use Doge as our explanatory structural example. Our contribution is to demonstrate that the systems that allow for the flow and movement of memes reduce their expressive content, shifting them towards a template that is impotent for cultural, social or political critique.
This article uses Lefebvre’s spatial triad and his concept of The Right to the City to categorise open-world video games as contested virtual spatial experiences, interconnected with the non-virtual ...spaces in which they are produced and played and replete with the same spatial, capital forces of alienation to be negotiated and maintained. We use qualitative gameplay data (n = 15), unpacking players’ journeys through Lefebvre’s conceived, lived and perceived spaces, to show, respectively, how open-world games can be (1) fundamentally about space, (2) spaces interconnected with the non-virtual world and (3) disruptive spatial experiences. In utilising The Right to the Virtual City and our players’ tendency to retreat into the wild spaces of our case study game, Red Dead Redemption 2, we evoke the same alienating forces of commodification and capitalism to which Lefebvre spoke, positioning open-world video games as both contested spatial experiences and opportunities to challenge spatialised inequalities.
In this paper we make a case for 'Little Data', which is real-time, self-collected, idiosyncratic datasets maintained by individuals about themselves on myriad topics. We develop and offer a ...methodology for combining these messy, highly personal insights, to make deductive observations about collective practices. In testing this approach, we use the case study of the 2020-21 stay-at-home orders imposed in the U.S.A., U.K., and Western Europe during the Coronavirus pandemic to operationalise and demonstrate the applicability of this method. Our main finding is to show that whilst stay-at-home orders did have a significant impact on habits during the COVID-19 pandemic, these changes were often counterintuitive, of an insightful nature on topics that would otherwise not be investigated, and always short-lived. Our main contribution is to present Little Data, despite and because of its fragmented and disparate nature, as a viable and useful tool to understand personal habits at finite junctures.
How can we understand the relationship between death and heritage? Using three case studies, Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spacesadapts contemporary spatial theory to develop a new conceptual ...toolbox, complementing existing work on dark tourism and difficult heritage, to explore the multifarious ways that memorialization functions.
Murderabilia (murder-memorabilia) has enjoyed increasing tabloid attention over the past two-decades. It follows a sustained appetite for the consumption or more 'mainstream' forms of crime and ...death-based culture, yet has not been explored in a dedicated academic study. Building on work in this journal that has considered dead criminals, the consumption of corpses more generally, or the way that we 'play' with death in popular culture - this paper contributes an ethnography of collectors and collections of death, the dead and murder. It explores the idea that the cultural consumption of crime and death is driven by a desire for visceral, gruesome and violent experiences - and proposes that these desires are accessed, in the case of material objects, through consumptive values of antique, aura and authenticity.
For the last 20 years, you have been able to buy body parts of criminals on the Internet. Through repeated exposure to the corpse in popular culture, the boundaries between real and facsimile are ...blurring when it comes to the cadaver, but 'murderabilia', a consumeristic arm of 'dark tourism', is often sold as the most authentic way to consume crime in the culture industry. Foltyn argues that in the process of consuming death, we are 'creating corpse facts and fictions'. With regards to murderabilia, my contribution offers the concept of 'selective memory' as a way to understand how positive histories are enhanced in posthumous representations of criminal. A 'selective memory' augments these corpse fictions, more than the facts, making for lopsided representations of the criminal corpse. This paper of three parts analyses historical commodification of the criminal corpse, arguing that being dead has often been a prerequisite of achieving notoriety for criminals. Second, a case study of Charles Manson is used to showcase the brand-like qualities attached to successful criminal celebrities. Third, this case study is continued through news media representations, to show that the criminal corpse is recalled with a 'selective memory', missing violent aspects and focussing instead on brand.
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