scholarly journals Attending to and neglecting people: bridging neuroscience, psychology and sociology

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1693) ◽  
pp. 20150365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riitta Hari ◽  
Mikko Sams ◽  
Lauri Nummenmaa
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Person Perception ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Stimulus Response ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
The Future

Human behaviour is context-dependent—based on predictions and influenced by the environment and other people. We live in a dynamic world where both the social stimuli and their context are constantly changing. Similar dynamic, natural stimuli should, in the future, be increasingly used to study social brain functions, with parallel development of appropriate signal-analysis methods. Understanding dynamic neural processes also requires accurate time-sensitive characterization of the behaviour. To go beyond the traditional stimulus–response approaches, brain activity should be recorded simultaneously from two interacting subjects to reveal why human social interaction is critically different from just reacting to each other. This theme issue on Attending to and neglecting people contains original work and review papers on person perception and social interaction. The articles cover research from neuroscience, psychology, robotics, animal interaction research and microsociology. Some of the papers are co-authored by scientists who presented their own, independent views in the recent Attention and Performance XXVI conference but were brave enough to join forces with a colleague having a different background and views. In the future, information needs to converge across disciplines to provide us a more holistic view of human behaviour, its interactive nature, as well as the temporal dynamics of our social world.

Person perception in strategic social interaction

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasundhara Sridharan ◽  
Oliver Sheldon ◽  
Yuichi Shoda
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Person Perception

scholarly journals Resting‐State EEG Microstates Parallel Age‐Related Differences in Allocentric Spatial Working Memory Performance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeline Jabès ◽  
Giuliana Klencklen ◽  
Paolo Ruggeri ◽  
Christoph M. Michel ◽  
Pamela Banta Lavenex ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Age Related

AbstractAlterations of resting-state EEG microstates have been associated with various neurological disorders and behavioral states. Interestingly, age-related differences in EEG microstate organization have also been reported, and it has been suggested that resting-state EEG activity may predict cognitive capacities in healthy individuals across the lifespan. In this exploratory study, we performed a microstate analysis of resting-state brain activity and tested allocentric spatial working memory performance in healthy adult individuals: twenty 25–30-year-olds and twenty-five 64–75-year-olds. We found a lower spatial working memory performance in older adults, as well as age-related differences in the five EEG microstate maps A, B, C, C′ and D, but especially in microstate maps C and C′. These two maps have been linked to neuronal activity in the frontal and parietal brain regions which are associated with working memory and attention, cognitive functions that have been shown to be sensitive to aging. Older adults exhibited lower global explained variance and occurrence of maps C and C′. Moreover, although there was a higher probability to transition from any map towards maps C, C′ and D in young and older adults, this probability was lower in older adults. Finally, although age-related differences in resting-state EEG microstates paralleled differences in allocentric spatial working memory performance, we found no evidence that any individual or combination of resting-state EEG microstate parameter(s) could reliably predict individual spatial working memory performance. Whether the temporal dynamics of EEG microstates may be used to assess healthy cognitive aging from resting-state brain activity requires further investigation.

Affective Neuroscience: A Crucial Role in Psychiatry

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
L.C. Castro
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Stress Response ◽  
Emotional Disorders ◽  
Neural Control ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Psychiatric Morbidity ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Psychiatric Research ◽  
Affective Neuroscience ◽  
Brain Functions

Background:Neuroscience has been a growing revolutionary field of scientific knowledge. The increasing recognition of the importance of emotional processes and subjective experience in several aspects of human behaviour parallel the growing amount of research in the field of affective neuroscience. Affective neuroscience studies the brain mechanisms subjacent to emotional behaviour.Aim:To discuss the relevance of affective neuroscience research in social and biological sciences, namely within psychiatric and psychological researches.Methods:Review of the literature. MEDLINE and PubMed databases searches for peer-reviewed studies, published between 1994 and 2008, using combinations of the Medline Subject Heading terms affective neuroscience, emotions, affective sciences and psychiatry, psychology, biological sciences, social sciences.Results:Several studies addresses brain functions and how emotions relate to genetics, learning, primary motivations, stress response and human behaviour. Some actual areas of research within affective neuroscience include: emotional learning, affective behaviour, emotional empathy, psychosomatic medicine, functional and structural biomarkers, emotional disorders and stress response, among others.Discussion:In Psychiatry, affective neurosciences find application in understanding the neurobiology of mood disorders, the neural control of interpersonal and social behaviour and the emotional systems that underlie psychopathology. Affective neuroscience reflects the integration of knowledge across disciplines allowing a broader understanding of human functioning. The field of affective neuroscience is an exciting field of future psychiatric research and it provides an investigational framework for studying psychiatric morbidity.

Mortal Body, Immortal Mind

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Hans Goller
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Activity Data ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Near Death Experiences ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Alternative Theories

Neuroscientists keep telling us that the brain produces consciousness and consciousness does not survive brain death because it ceases when brain activity ceases. Research findings on near-death-experiences during cardiac arrest contradict this widely held conviction. They raise perplexing questions with regard to our current understanding of the relationship between consciousness and brain functions. Reports on veridical perceptions during out-of-body experiences suggest that consciousness may be experienced independently of a functioning brain and that self-consciousness may continue even after the termination of brain activity. Data on studies of near-death-experiences could be an incentive to develop alternative theories of the body-mind relation as seen in contemporary neuroscience.

Building the Arrow of Time… Over Time: A Sequence of Brain Activity Mapping Imagined Events in Time and Space

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (10) ◽  
pp. 4398-4414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baptiste Gauthier ◽  
Karin Pestke ◽  
Virginie van Wassenhove
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Spatial Task ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
The Future ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Neural Signatures

Abstract When moving, the spatiotemporal unfolding of events is bound to our physical trajectory, and time and space become entangled in episodic memory. When imagining past or future events, or being in different geographical locations, the temporal and spatial dimensions of mental events can be independently accessed and manipulated. Using time-resolved neuroimaging, we characterized brain activity while participants ordered historical events from different mental perspectives in time (e.g., when imagining being 9 years in the future) or in space (e.g., when imagining being in Cayenne). We describe 2 neural signatures of temporal ordinality: an early brain response distinguishing whether participants were mentally in the past, the present or the future (self-projection in time), and a graded activity at event retrieval, indexing the mental distance between the representation of the self in time and the event. Neural signatures of ordinality and symbolic distances in time were distinct from those observed in the homologous spatial task: activity indicating spatial order and distances overlapped in latency in distinct brain regions. We interpret our findings as evidence that the conscious representation of time and space share algorithms (egocentric mapping, distance, and ordinality computations) but different implementations with a distinctive status for the psychological “time arrow.”

On the Limits of Time in the Brain

KronoScope ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-239
Author(s):  
Rémy Lestienne
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Inner Sense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Intellectual Abilities ◽  
The Future ◽  
Flow Of Time ◽  
Nested Hierarchy ◽  
Future Outcomes ◽  
The Brain

Abstract J.T. Fraser used to emphasize the uniqueness of the human brain in its capacity for apprehending the various dimensions of “nootemporality” (Fraser 1982 and 1987). Indeed, our brain allows us to sense the flow of time, to measure delays, to remember past events or to predict future outcomes. In these achievements, the human brain reveals itself far superior to its animal counterpart. Women and men are the only beings, I believe, who are able to think about what they will do the next day. This is because such a thought implies three intellectual abilities that are proper to mankind: the capacity to take their own thoughts as objects of their thinking, the ability of mental time travels—to the past thanks to their episodic memory or to the future—and the possibility to project very far into the future, as a consequence of their enlarged and complexified forebrain. But there are severe limits to our timing abilities of which we are often unaware. Our sensibility to the passing time, like other of our intellectual abilities, is often competing with other brain functions, because they use at least in part the same neural networks. This is particularly the case regarding attention. The deeper the level of attention required, the looser is our perception of the flow of time. When we pay attention to something, when we fix our attention, then our inner sense of the flux of time freezes. This limitation should not sound too unfamiliar to the reader of J.T. Fraser who wrote in his book Time, Conflict, and Human Values (1999) about “time as a nested hierarchy of unresolvable conflicts.”

scholarly journals At udskyde det uundgåelige: Om brugen af kausal viden i forebyggende tiltag

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Hulvej Rod ◽  
Tine Curtis
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Health Agency ◽  
Public Health Research ◽  
Causal Knowledge ◽  
Local Public Health ◽  
The Future ◽  
Prevention And Health Promotion ◽  
Local Public Health Agency ◽  
Public Health Practitioners

This paper discusses the heavy reliance upon a particular kind of causal knowledge in prevention and health promotion. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with prevention professionals working with interventions targeting teenage drinking in Denmark, the paper argues that, while attempting to provide predictions for the future, prevention creates certain problems for itself in the moments of social interaction where it is practiced. The paper suggests that prevention can be seen as an attempt at postponing the future and through empirical examples it is illustrated how this project causes a number of practical problems to prevention professionals. The paper begins by sketching the causal epistemology that dominates current public health research. Next, ethnographic descriptions of (i) an educational intervention in Danish schools and (ii) a meeting for parents arranged by a local public health agency provide the material for discussing the practical use of causal knowledge. It is shown that this knowledge becomes contradicted and undermined in the social interaction between public health practitioners and their target groups, and that – paradoxically – this knowledge tends to actualize the very phenomenon it seeks to prevent. The paper employs Bourdieu’s distinction between two modes of anticipatory intelligence, the project and the protention, and argues that, in the interaction between prevention professionals and target group, the widespread use of causal knowledge might inhibit and counteract the situational competencies of prevention professionals.

scholarly journals A REPRESENTATIVE REVIEW OF FUZZY LOGIC APPLICATIONS IN TOURISM RESEARCH

2020 ◽  
pp. 324-336
Author(s):  
J. Eugene
Keyword(s):  
Fuzzy Logic ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Dynamic Modelling ◽  
Computing Methods ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Tourism Research ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The Future ◽  
Research Studies

Tourism offers many tangible benefits to society with the industry playing an important contributory role in the growth and development of the domestic economy. The quantum of research studies on tourism has increased substantially over the last twenty years in tandem with the upward trajectory of the global tourist industry. The many different dimensions and aspects of tourism have been explored by a wide and varied spectrum of research studies. As the entire world came to a standstill with the Covid-19 pandemic induced global lockdown, tourism research witnessed a steady growth in research publications although the industry itself as well as the intertwined hotel and hospitality sector were crippled by a miniscule virus and left battling for their very survival. This increased quantum of literary publication was particularly evident in Scopus and Web of Science which put forth several notable publications on the changing dynamics of the tourism industry. The present study is envisaged to offer a holistic view of the future growth trends of the tourism industry, which has been forced to rethink the very fabric of its functioning and reinvent itself to adapt to a changed environment that curbs the social interaction that the industry depends on to function. Fuzzy logic, a mathematical modelling that can predict outcomes based on inputted data, has gained a lot of attention in recent years as it is an effective tool that can be deployed to envisage a course of action for future scenarios and devise feasible solutions that can help tackle uncertain and ambiguous situations. The current research paper, comprehensively reviews highly cited noteworthy articles on fuzzy logic and its application in tourism, to offer a good understanding of the applications and advantages of this dynamic modelling tool whose use in a number of different fields may soon make it indispensable to research and development. This qualitative paper is constructed on the basis of content analysis of numerous important articles that were reviewed in-depth. Based on the observations and findings of the study, research directions for the future are proffered. This paper is novel in that it focuses on one particular segment of research, i.e. new computing methods based on fuzzy logic, and can greatly help upcoming researchers to explore the large number of real-life applications of this extremely useful tool and add meaningful knowledge to the existing literature with further research in the field of fuzzy logic models.

scholarly journals A simulation-based approach to improve decoded neurofeedback performance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Oblak ◽  
James Sulzer ◽  
Jarrod Lewis-Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Processing Parameters ◽  
Orientation Tuning ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Visual Orientation ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Simulation Based ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Right

AbstractThe neural correlates of specific brain functions such as visual orientation tuning and individual finger movements can be revealed using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) of fMRI data. Neurofeedback based on these distributed patterns of brain activity presents a unique ability for precise neuromodulation. Recent applications of this technique, known as decoded neurofeedback, have manipulated fear conditioning, visual perception, confidence judgements and facial preference. However, there has yet to be an empirical justification of the timing and data processing parameters of these experiments. Suboptimal parameter settings could impact the efficacy of neurofeedback learning and contribute to the ‘non-responder’ effect. The goal of this study was to investigate how design parameters of decoded neurofeedback experiments affect decoding accuracy and neurofeedback performance. Subjects participated in three fMRI sessions: two ‘finger localizer’ sessions to identify the fMRI patterns associated with each of the four fingers of the right hand, and one ‘finger finding’ neurofeedback session to assess neurofeedback performance. Using only the localizer data, we show that real-time decoding can be degraded by poor experiment timing or ROI selection. To set key parameters for the neurofeedback session, we used offline simulations of decoded neurofeedback using data from the localizer sessions to predict neurofeedback performance. We show that these predictions align with real neurofeedback performance at the group level and can also explain individual differences in neurofeedback success. Overall, this work demonstrates the usefulness of offline simulation to improve the success of real-time decoded neurofeedback experiments.

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