Social Nesting, Animal Welfare, and Disease Monitoring

The assessment of welfare and disease progression in animal models is critical. Most tools rely on evaluating individual subjects, whereas social behaviors, also sensitive to acute illness, chronic diseases, or mental health, are scarcely monitored because they are complex and time-consuming. We propose the evaluation of social nesting, a species-typical behavior naturally occurring in standard housing conditions, for such behavioral monitoring. We provide an example of its use to evaluate social deficits and the long-term effects of neonatal tactile-proprioceptive sensorial stimulation from postnatal day 1 to 21, in male and female adult 3xTg-AD mice for Alzheimer’s disease compared to sex- and age-matched non-transgenic (NTg) counterparts with normal aging. Social nesting was sensitive to genotype (worse in 3xTg-AD mice), sex (worse in males), profile, and treatment (distinct time to observe the maximum score and incidence of the perfect nest). Since social nesting can be easily included in housing routines, this neuroethological approach can be useful for animal welfare, monitoring the disease’s progress, and evaluating potential risk factors and effects of preventive/therapeutical strategies. Finally, the noninvasive, painless, simple, short time, and low-cost features of this home-cage monitoring are advantages that make social nesting feasible to be successfully implemented in most animal department settings.

Social Nesting, Animal Welfare and Disease Monitoring

The assessment of welfare and disease progression in animal models is critical. Most tools rely on evaluating individual subjects, whereas social behaviors, also sensitive to acute illness, chronic diseases, or mental health, are scarcely monitored because of their complexity, are invasive, and time-consuming. We propose the evaluation of social nesting, a species-typical behavior naturally occurring in standard housing conditions, for such behavioral monitoring. We provide an example of its use to evaluate social deficits and the long-term effects of neonatal sensorial stimulation in male and female adult 3xTg-AD mice for Alzheimer's disease compared to sex- and age-matched NTg counterparts with normal aging. Social nesting was sensitive to genotype (worse in 3xTg-AD mice), sex (worse in males), profile, and treatment (distinct temporal patterns, time to observe the maximum score and incidence of the perfect nest). Since social nesting can be easily included in housing routines, this neuroethological approach can be useful for animal's welfare, monitoring the disease's progress, and evaluating potential risk factors and effects of preventive/therapeutical strategies. Finally, the non-invasive, painless, simple, short time and low-cost features of this home-cage monitoring are advantages that make social nesting feasible to be successfully implemented in most animal department settings.

Choreographing Architectures of Public Intimacy

Chapter 2 develops a body-space-movement framework that studies the spaces of dance, the movement vocabularies used, and the resulting construction of star bodies. This framework uncovers the production processes behind the fetishized space of the Hindi film cabaret, an “architecture of public intimacy,” whose spatial and choreographic operations arouse intense sensorial stimulation. Through a focus on cabaret numbers featuring the dancing star Helen, this chapter discusses the cine-choreographic practices that produce a collision of infrastructures, bodies, and spaces. The body-space-movement framework is also employed to analyze film dance in relation to Indian “classical” and “folk” dance forms. Borrowing from Indian performance treatises like the Natya Shastra and Abhinaya Darpana, this chapter deconstructs the dancing female body into three broad zones—the face, the torso, and the limbs—each of which is capable of a variety of addresses depending on the social connotations of those gestural articulations at certain historical moments.

Could Self-Consciousness Be Enhanced in Alzheimer’s Disease? An Approach from Emotional Sensorial Stimulation

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) provides a valuable field of research into impairment of self-consciousness (SC), because AD patients have a reduced capacity to understand their mental world, to experience and relive previous personal events, as well as to interpret thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about themselves. Several studies observed that AD patients had an altered SC, but not a complete abolition of it. Emotions are an integral part of the construction of personal identity, therefore of Self. In general, most studies on emotion in AD patients have observed that emotion is not completely abolished and it lets them better remember autobiographical events with greater emotional charge. The positive effect of autobiographical memories rich in emotional content, evoked directly/automatically by sensorial stimuli such as familiar odors or music, could be used to reestablish/reinforce the permanence and coherence of the Self in AD. We studied the research of empirical evidence supporting the power of the sensorial cues associated with emotion, which could be capable of enhancing the SC in AD. We presented the studies about “Emotional stimulations” using odor, music, or taste cues in AD. All studies have shown to have a positive impact on SC in AD patients such as odor-evoked autobiographical memories, taste/odor-evoked autobiographical memories, emotional sensorial stimulation using musical cues, and multi-sensorial stimulations using healing gardens. We found research supporting the notion that emotional sensorial stimulations can even temporarily exalt memory, affective state, and personal identity, that is, the SC in AD. The emotional sensory stimulations could be used as a tool to activate the SC in AD and hence improve the quality of life of patients and caregivers.

Individual Differences in Aesthetic Preferences for Multi-Sensorial Stimulation

The aim of the current project was to investigate aesthetics in multi-sensorial stimulation and to explore individual differences in the process. We measured the aesthetics of interactive objects (IOs) which are three-dimensional objects with electronic components that exhibit an autonomous behaviour when handled, e.g., vibrating, playing a sound, or lighting-up. The Q-sorting procedure of Q-methodology was applied. Data were analysed by following the Qmulti protocol. The results suggested that overall participants preferred IOs that (i) vibrate, (ii) have rough surface texture, and (iii) are round. No particular preference emerged about the size of the IOs. When making an aesthetic judgment, participants paid more attention to the behaviour variable of the IOs than the size, contour or surface texture. In addition, three clusters of participants were identified, suggesting that individual differences existed in the aesthetics of IOs. Without proper consideration of potential individual differences, aesthetic scholars may face the risk of having significant effects masked by individual differences. Only by paying attention to this issue can more meaningful findings be generated to contribute to the field of aesthetics.

EEG correlation at a distance: A re-analysis of two studies using a machine learning approach

Background: In this paper, data from two studies relative to the relationship between the electroencephalogram (EEG) activities of two isolated and physically separated subjects were re-analyzed using machine-learning algorithms. The first dataset comprises the data of 25 pairs of participants where one member of each pair was stimulated with a visual and an auditory 500 Hz signals of 1 second duration. The second dataset consisted of the data of 20 pairs of participants where one member of each pair received visual and auditory stimulation lasting 1 second duration with on-off modulation at 10, 12, and 14 Hz. Methods and Results: Applying a ‘linear discriminant classifier’ to the first dataset, it was possible to correctly classify 50.74% of the EEG activity of non-stimulated participants, correlated to the remote sensorial stimulation of the distant partner. In the second dataset, the percentage of correctly classified EEG activity in the non-stimulated partners was 51.17%, 50.45% and 51.91%, respectively, for the 10, 12, and 14 Hz stimulations, with respect the condition of no stimulation in the distant partner. Conclusions: The analysis of EEG activity using machine-learning algorithms has produced advances in the study of the connection between the EEG activities of the stimulated partner and the isolated distant partner, opening new insight into the possibility to devise practical application for non-conventional “mental telecommunications” between physically and sensorially separated participants.

EEG correlation at a distance: A re-analysis of two studies using a machine learning approach

Background: In this paper, data from two studies relative to the relationship between the electroencephalogram (EEG) activities of two isolated and physically separated subjects were re-analyzed using machine-learning algorithms. The first dataset comprises the data of 25 pairs of participants where one member of each pair was stimulated with a visual and an auditory 500 Hz signals of 1 second duration. The second dataset consisted of the data of 20 pairs of participants where one member of each pair received visual and auditory stimulation lasting 1 second duration with on-off modulation at 10, 12, and 14 Hz. Methods and Results: Applying a ‘linear discriminant classifier’ to the first dataset, it was possible to correctly classify 50.74% of the EEG activity of non-stimulated participants, correlated to the remote sensorial stimulation of the distant partner. In the second dataset, the percentage of correctly classified EEG activity in the non-stimulated partners was 51.17%, 50.45% and 51.91%, respectively, for the 10, 12, and 14 Hz stimulations, with respect the condition of no stimulation in the distant partner. Conclusions: The analysis of EEG activity using machine-learning algorithms has produced advances in the study of the connection between the EEG activities of the stimulated partner and the isolated distant partner, opening new insight into the possibility to devise practical application for non-conventional “mental telecommunications” between physically and sensorially separated participants.

A nonszensz poétikája és politikája

The essay starts out from a close-reading analysis of Lewis Carroll‘s Victorian fairytale fantasies about Alice,s adventures in Wonderland with the aim to explore the complex poetical and political potentials of nonsense as a literary genre and a mode of artistic expression questioning the reliability of representational strategies across a variety of media. Nonsense is decoded as a meaningful yet gradually defamiliarized act of symbolization that makes the implied reader lose confidence in conventional interpretive apparati and urges inventive linguistic creativity and ludic co-authorship. As Lecercle points out, nonsense elicits a self-reflective awareness concerning the ambiguity of common sense and the (mal)functioning of our sense-making methods through revealing the inherent poetic-metaphorical, associative-imaginative surplus, as well as the authoritative ideological charge and socio-historical residue of “ordinary” representation. In a Kristevian sense, the transverbal corporeal facet of the nonsense animates the physicality of the represented-representing bodies and revivifies the materiality of signifying activity‘s lived experience, as incarnated rhythms and sounds stress the sensorial stimulation of the human voice. To understand how “we imagine the unimaginable” I interface ordinary nonsense, logical nonsense (Dunn, McDonald) and ethical nonsense as complementary categories.