Speed tuning in head coordinates as an alternative explanation of depth selectivity from motion parallax in area MT

There are two distinct sources of retinal image motion: motion of objects in the world and movement of the observer. In cases where an object moves in a scene and the eyes also move, a coordinate transformation that involves smooth eye movements and retinal motion will be needed in order to estimate object motion in world coordinates. More recently, interactions between retinal and eye velocity signals have also been suggested to generate depth selectivity from motion parallax (MP) in the macaque middle temporal (MT) area. We explored whether the nature of the interaction between eye and retinal velocities in MT neurons favors one of these two possibilities or a mixture of both. We analyzed responses of MT neurons to retinal and eye velocities in a viewing context in which the observer translates laterally while maintaining visual fixation on a world-fixed target. In this scenario, the depth of an object can be inferred from the ratio between retinal velocity and eye velocity, according to the motion-pursuit law. Previous studies have shown that MT responses to retinal motion are gain-modulated by the direction of eye movement, suggesting a potential mechanism for depth tuning from MP. However, our analysis of the joint tuning profile for retinal and eye velocities reveals that some MT neurons show a partial coordinate transformation toward head coordinates. We formalized a series of computational models to predict neural spike trains as well as selectivity for depth, and we used factorial model comparisons to quantify the relative importance of each model component. Our findings for many MT neurons reveal that the data are equally well explained by gain modulation or a partial coordinate transformation toward head coordinates, although some responses can only be well fit by the coordinate transform model. Our results highlight the potential role of MT neurons in representing multiple higher-level sensory variables, including depth from MP and object motion in the world.

DIVA: natural navigation inside 3D images using virtual reality

As three-dimensional microscopy becomes commonplace in biological re-search, there is an increasing need for researchers to be able to view experimental image stacks in a natural three-dimensional viewing context. Through stereoscopy and motion tracking, commercial virtual reality headsets provide a solution to this important visualization challenge by allowing researchers to view volumetric objects in an entirely intuitive fashion. With this motivation, we present DIVA, a user-friendly software tool that automatically creates detailed three-dimensional reconstructions of raw experimental image stacks that are integrated in virtual reality. In DIVA’s immersive virtual environment, users can view, manipulate and perform volumetric measurements on their microscopy images as they would to real physical objects. In contrast to similar solutions, our software provides high-quality volume rendering with native TIFF file compatibility. We benchmark the software with diverse image types including those generated by confocal, light-sheet and electron microscopy. DIVA is available at https://diva.pasteur.fr and will be regularly updated.

Context and Work Organization in an Acute Health Care Setting

This chapter explores the influence of context in shaping the health care support worker in a hospital setting. Viewing context as constraining or facilitating the exercise of discretion or choice, the chapter examines such influences at different levels of a health care system: the national, the organizational, and the workplace. Drawing on material from four case study hospitals in National Health Service England, the chapter highlights the sensitivity of the support worker role to national and organizational policies and practices. However, the role is presented as particularly affected by workplace contingencies linked to clinical setting, work organization, and interpersonal relations on the ward. The result is a role that shares a job title but assumes a very different form, in terms of tasks performed between and especially within different hospitals.

The Football Boost? Testing Three Models on Impacts on Sports Spectators’ Self-Esteem

To explain the wide attraction to sports, self-esteem impacts of a live American college football game were investigated; testing hypotheses were derived from mood-as-information, social identity, and sociometer frameworks along with previous research on sports and self-esteem. A three-wave field study measured mood, group affiliation, and self-esteem among 174 students at two different universities, immediately before and on 2 consecutive days after the football teams of these universities played in a much anticipated game. Both self-esteem and mood were affected 2 days after the game; however, fans of the winning team showed increased self-esteem (with no related mood improvement) while fans of the defeated team showed decreases in mood (with no related self-esteem deflation). Both the game outcome and the social viewing context influenced self-esteem. Impacts on self-esteem were mediated by both mood and group affiliation changes.

Ekphrasis, Trauma, and Viewing Pain

This chapter treats the connection between trauma and pain which developed in the description of physical violence in Imperial rhetoric. In a medical context, at least, physical trauma was often associated with pain. By reformulating how one views trauma and physical violation, however, writers explored and criticized this assumed connection. Ekphrasis was used by different authors to explore the nature of one’s pain experience by focusing on how viewing context might inflect the presence of pain in the body. It was also used to develop emotional and intellectual engagement from the viewing audience: ekphrasis was a key tool in enabling viewers to imagine (or ignore) the pain felt by another and determining how they should react to it.

Medicine, madness and murderers: the context of English forensic psychiatric hospitals

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to add to the understanding of context by shedding light on the relationship between context and organisational actors’ abilities to resolve ongoing challenges. Design/methodology/approach The authors used qualitative data collection (interviews and focus groups with staff and site visits to English forensic psychiatry hospitals) and the analysis was informed by Lefebvre’s writings on space. Findings Responses to ongoing challenges were both constrained and facilitated by the context, which was negotiated and co-produced by the actors involved. Various (i.e. societal and professional) dimensions of context interacted to create tensions, which resulted in changes in service configuration. These changes were reconciled, to some extent, via discourse. Despite some resolution, the co-production of context preserved contradictions which mean that ongoing challenges were modified, but not resolved entirely. Originality/value The paper highlights the importance of viewing context as co-produced in a continuous manner. This helps us to delineate and understand its dynamic nature and its relationship with the everyday actions and beliefs of the organisational actors concerned.

The Most Social Games

Social media has substantially changed how people consume media content, particularly during sport mega-events. This study examined the audience social media uses during the “most social Olympics” and found that demographics, personality, motivations, preference, media use routine, and viewing context significantly predicted social media consumption for the Rio Games. Olympics viewing on social media was predominately predicted by media use routine, while following and posting on social media about the Olympics appeared to be a more “active” choice that was shaped by personal identity and virtual schemas. In addition, results indicate that social media uses during the Rio Games neither “displaced” nor “encouraged” Olympics viewing on traditional television. Uses of social media suggest a digital expansion of “group” viewing and transform ways in which the audience can experience a sport mega-event.