The frontal aslant tract and its role in executive functions: a quantitative tractography study in glioma patients

Focal white matter lesions can cause cognitive impairments due to disconnections within or between networks. There is some preliminary evidence that there are specific hubs and fiber pathways that should be spared during surgery to retain cognitive performance. A tract potentially involved in important higher-level cognitive processes is the frontal aslant tract. It roughly connects the posterior parts of the inferior frontal gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus. Functionally, the left frontal aslant tract has been associated with speech and the right tract with executive functions. However, there currently is insufficient knowledge about the right frontal aslant tract’s exact functional importance. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of the right frontal aslant tract in executive functions via a lesion-symptom approach. We retrospectively examined 72 patients with frontal glial tumors and correlated measures from tractography (distance between tract and tumor, and structural integrity of the tract) with cognitive test performances. The results indicated involvement of the right frontal aslant tract in shifting attention and letter fluency. This involvement was not found for the left tract. Although this study was exploratory, these converging findings contribute to a better understanding of the functional frontal subcortical anatomy. Shifting attention and letter fluency are important for healthy cognitive functioning, and when impaired they may greatly influence a patient’s wellbeing. Further research is needed to assess whether or not damage to the right frontal aslant tract causes permanent cognitive impairments, and consequently identifies this tract as a critical pathway that should be taken into account during neurosurgical procedures.

Narrative Difference: Jacques Rancière, Gilles Deleuze and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

How should critics approach narrative temporality in times of ecological disorder? Literary critics have attempted to bridge eco-criticism with narrative theory, shifting attention from narrative content to narrative form. Econarratology studies how narrative shapes our understanding of the environment. Yet, eco-critical interrogations of narrative form are lacking. Grounded in a homogeneous conception of time, narratology often relays a dichotomy between narrativity and “dysnarrativity”. This dichotomy fails to translate the variety of temporal processes in film. I shall highlight the problem underlying Jacques Rancière's critique of Deleuze's film-philosophy and its relevance for narrative theory. My discussion of this dispute is grounded in the examination of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010). Critics invariably base their analyses on Boonmee's remembrances and reduce narrative complexity to dysnarrative indeterminacy by accommodating non-human storylines into a human plot. I argue that Uncle Boonmee both confirms and bypasses the critique of linear narrative that is at heart of the Rancière-Deleuze discussion. In doing so, Weerasethakul's feature calls for a new paradigm – different, yet unlike the crystalline narrative, positively determined. By bringing the event to the fore, Deleuze offers another theoretical backdrop for event narratology, that in turn proves useful to econarratology.

A Modern Non-Western Thinker as a Subject of Intercultural Dialogue (Based on M. K. Gandhi’s Example)

An intercultural dialogue is the essential question in modernising societies. Non-Western thinkers (i.e., thinkers influenced by both traditional non-Western and modern Western cultures) are the active subjects of such intercommunications. Their existence on the joint of two civilisations forms their social, cultural and mental image. The intellectuals of this type are attached to both societies and at the same time, they are detached from each of them. Also, they play the role of mediators between two civilisations. These circumstances determine features of their participation in the intercultural dialogue: promote the understanding of two cultures by thinkers, obstruct the understanding of their ideas by compatriots and foreigners and help intellectuals to explain values and senses of one culture to representatives of another. These processes are illustrated in the article on M. K. Gandhi’s example. Consideration of the Indian thinker as a subject of intercultural communications reveals complexity of his views on the Western civilisation. The author comes to the conclusion that Gandhi was not a traditionalist and his rejection of modern Western civilisation means his call for shifting attention from the material sphere to the spiritual one.

Feature Counting Is Impaired When Shifting Attention Between the Eyes in Adults With Amblyopia

BackgroundFeature counting requires rapid shifts of attention in the visual field and reflects higher-level cortical functions. This process is drastically impaired in the amblyopic eye of strabismic amblyopes. In this study, we hypothesized that feature counting performance in anisometropic and strabismic amblyopes is further impaired when shifts in attention is required between the eyes.Materials and MethodsThrough a mirror stereoscope, highly visible Gabor patches were presented to the same eye within a block or randomly presented to the left eye or to the right eye with an equal probability within a block. The task was to report the number of Gabors (3 to 9) as accurately as possible. Counting performance was compared between the amblyopes and the normal-vision observers and between the viewing conditions (shifting attention between the eyes versus maintaining attention in the same eye).ResultsWhen attention was maintained in the same eye, the amblyopic eye of both anisometropic and strabismic groups undercounted the number of Gabors, but achieved near-perfect performance with their fellow eye, compared to normal-vision observers. In contrast, when shifting attention randomly to the left or to the right eye, the amblyopic eye further undercounted the number of Gabors. Undercounting was also found in the fellow eye of strabismic amblyopes, but was not in the fellow eye of anisometropic amblyopes. Performance in normal-vision observers did not differ between shifting attention between the eyes and maintaining attention in the same eye.ConclusionOur data showed that the amblyopic eye of both anisometropic and strabismic amblyopes further undercounted features when shifting attention between the eyes, compared to when maintaining attention in the same eye. This suggests that the ability to quickly redirect attention, particularly under interocular suppression, is impaired in amblyopia. The fellow eye of strabismic amblyopes also undercounted features when shifting attention between the eyes. However, such fellow eye abnormality was not found in anisometropic amblyopes, suggesting that different patterns of visual deficits are associated with amblyopia of different etiologies. The inability to count multiple features accurately reflects dysfunctions of high-level cortices in the amblyopic brain.

Probing the Neural Systems Underlying Flexible Dimensional Attention

Flexibly shifting attention between stimulus dimensions (e.g., shape and color) is a central component of regulating cognition for goal-based behavior. In the present report, we examine the functional roles of different cortical regions by manipulating two demands on task switching that have been confounded in previous studies—shifting attention between visual dimensions and resolving conflict between stimulus–response representations. Dimensional shifting was manipulated by having participants shift attention between dimensions (either shape or color; dimension shift) or keeping the task-relevant dimension the same (dimension same). Conflict between stimulus–response representations was manipulated by creating conflict between response-driven associations from the previous set of trials and the stimulus–response mappings on the current set of trials (e.g., making a leftward response to a red stimulus during the previous task, but being required to make a rightward response to a red stimulus in the current task; stimulus–response conflict), or eliminating conflict by altering the features of the dimension relevant to the sorting rule (stimulus–response no-conflict). These manipulations revealed activation along a network of frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital cortices. Specifically, dimensional shifting selectively activated frontal and parietal regions. Stimulus–response conflict, on the other hand, produced decreased activation in temporal and occipital cortices. Occipital regions demonstrated a complex pattern of activation that was sensitive to both stimulus–response conflict and dimensional attention switching. These results provide novel information regarding the distinct role that frontal cortex plays in shifting dimensional attention and posterior cortices play in resolving conflict at the stimulus level.

Character-Infused Ethical Decision Making

Despite a growing body of research by management scholars to understand and explain failures in ethical decision making (EDM), misconduct prevails. Scholars have identified character, founded in virtue ethics, as an important perspective that can help to address the gap in organizational misconduct. While character has been offered as a valid perspective in EDM, current theorizing on how it applies to EDM has not been well developed. We thus integrate character, founded in virtue ethics, into Rest’s (1986) EDM model to reveal how shifting attention to the nature of the moral agent provides critical insights into decision making more broadly and EDM specifically. Virtue ethics provides a perspective on EDM that acknowledges and anticipates uncertainties, considers its contextual constraints, and contemplates the development of the moral agent. We thus answer the call by many scholars to integrate character in EDM in order to advance the understanding of the field and suggest propositions for how to move forward. We conclude with implications of a character-infused approach to EDM for future research.