Cognitive motor dissociation in patients with chronic disorders of consciousness: a literature review

Chronic disorders of consciousness include several conditions that differ significantly in both clinical and neurophysiological features. As medical technology continues to develop, the differential diagnosis of disorders of consciousness extends beyond purely clinical work. Nevertheless, all types of consciousness disorders are united by varying degrees of dissociation between wakefulness, cognitive and motor activity. The external similarity and minimal differences in clinical symptoms in unresponsive patients may hide different morphofunctional variants of this condition. In particular, use of electroencephalography and functional magnetic re- sonance imaging techniques allows us to detect covert consciousness in some clinically unresponsive patients. Based on various estimates, this phenomenon occurs in 515% of all cases. A special instance of covert consciousness is cognitive motor dissociation (CMD), defined as activation of cortical motor centers, recorded using neurophysiological techniques, in response to a corresponding instruction to perform a movement without its visible performance. Some researchers believe that detection of CMD indicates a more favourable prognosis for the subsequent restoration of consciousness, rather than its absence. The aim of this review is to examine CMD and its potential significance for outcomes in patients with chronic disorders of consciousness.

Mating of Discrete Trees and Walks in the Quarter-Plane

We give a general construction of triangulations starting from a walk in the quarter plane with small steps, which is a discrete version of the mating of trees. We use a special instance of this construction to give a bijection between maps equipped with a rooted spanning tree and walks in the quarter plane. We also show how the construction allows to recover several known bijections between such objects in a uniform way.

Classical Partition Function for Non-Relativistic Gravity

We considered the canonical gravitational partition function Z associated to the classical Boltzmann–Gibbs (BG) distribution e−βHZ. It is popularly thought that it cannot be built up because the integral involved in constructing Z diverges at the origin. Contrariwise, it was shown in (Physica A 497 (2018) 310), by appeal to sophisticated mathematics developed in the second half of the last century, that this is not so. Z can indeed be computed by recourse to (A) the analytical extension treatments of Gradshteyn and Rizhik and Guelfand and Shilov, that permit tackling some divergent integrals and (B) the dimensional regularization approach. Only one special instance was discussed in the above reference. In this work, we obtain the classical partition function for Newton’s gravity in the four cases that immediately come to mind.

People confabulate with high confidence when their decisions are supported by weak internal variables

People can introspect on their internal state and report the reasons driving their decisions but choice blindness (CB) experiments suggest that this ability can sometimes be a retrospective illusion. Indeed, when presented with deceptive cues, people justify choices they did not make in the first place, suggesting that external cues largely contribute to introspective processes. Yet, it remains unclear what are the respective contributions of external cues and internal decision variables in forming introspective report. Here, using a brain–computer interface, we show that internal variables continue to be monitored but are less impactful than deceptive external cues during CB episodes. Moreover, we show that deceptive cues overturn the classical relationship between confidence and accuracy: introspective failures are associated with higher confidence than genuine introspective reports. We tracked back the origin of these overconfident confabulations by revealing their prominence when internal decision evidence is weak and variable. Thus, introspection is neither a direct reading of internal variables nor a mere retrospective illusion, but rather reflects the integration of internal decision evidence and external cues, with CB being a special instance where internal evidence is inconsistent.

Triangle-degrees in graphs and tetrahedron coverings in 3-graphs

We investigate a covering problem in 3-uniform hypergraphs (3-graphs): Given a 3-graph F, what is c1(n, F), the least integer d such that if G is an n-vertex 3-graph with minimum vertex-degree $\delta_1(G)>d$ then every vertex of G is contained in a copy of F in G? We asymptotically determine c1(n, F) when F is the generalized triangle $K_4^{(3)-}$ , and we give close to optimal bounds in the case where F is the tetrahedron $K_4^{(3)}$ (the complete 3-graph on 4 vertices). This latter problem turns out to be a special instance of the following problem for graphs: Given an n-vertex graph G with $m> n^2/4$ edges, what is the largest t such that some vertex in G must be contained in t triangles? We give upper bound constructions for this problem that we conjecture are asymptotically tight. We prove our conjecture for tripartite graphs, and use flag algebra computations to give some evidence of its truth in the general case.

Furstenberg boundaries for pairs of groups

Furstenberg has associated to every topological group $G$ a universal boundary $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}(G)$ . If we consider in addition a subgroup $H<G$ , the relative notion of $(G,H)$ -boundaries admits again a maximal object $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}(G,H)$ . In the case of discrete groups, an equivalent notion was introduced by Bearden and Kalantar (Topological boundaries of unitary representations. Preprint, 2019, arXiv:1901.10937v1) as a very special instance of their constructions. However, the analogous universality does not always hold, even for discrete groups. On the other hand, it does hold in the affine reformulation in terms of convex compact sets, which admits a universal simplex $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}(G,H)$ , namely the simplex of measures on $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}(G,H)$ . We determine the boundary $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}(G,H)$ in a number of cases, highlighting properties that might appear unexpected.

Distinguishing Standards and Regulation for Innovation Research

Certain influential innovation impact studies do not sharply distinguish standards from regulation. Is differentiation needed? In what way do they differ in how they work and work out? This article applies and extends a framework of regulatory modalities to open up the black box of direct innovation effects. It includes standards as a separate regulatory modality following careful consideration of alternatives, i.e., accommodating them as a special instance or as a hybrid of law, norm, market and architecture. The authors capture the essential differences between standards and law. They reconcile Lessig's emphasis on constraints with findings of enabling and constraining effects in innovation research by differentiating direct inherently constraining effects of regulatory modalities and modality-specific direct generic effects - as opposed to indirect effects. They conclude that standards and law merit separate treatment in innovation research, and recommend complementary frameworks to uncover unaddressed issues.

Modelling of retinal vasculature based on genetically tuned parametric L-system

Structures of retinal blood vessels are of great importance in diagnosis and treatment of diseases that affect the eyes. Parametric Lindenmayer system (L-system) is one of the powerful rule-based methods that has a great capability for generating tree-like structures using simple rewriting rules. In this study, a novel framework, which can be used to model the retinal vasculature based on available images, has been proposed. This framework presents a solution to special instance of a general open problem, the L-system inverse problem, in which L-system rules should be obtained based on images representing a particular tree-like structure. In this study, genetic algorithm with a novel objective function based on feature matching and an L-system grammar comparison has been used along with nonlinear regression to solve the parametric L-system inverse problem. The resulting L-system growth rules have been employed to predict inaccessible vascular branches. Graphical and quantitative comparison between model results and target structures of different case studies reveals that the proposed framework can be used to generate the structure of retinal blood vessels accurately. Even in the cases lacking sufficient image data, it can provide acceptable predictions.

Explaining asymmetries in number marking: Singulatives, pluratives, and usage frequency

This paper claims that crosslinguistic tendencies of number marking asymmetries can be explained with reference to usage frequency: The kinds of nouns which, across languages, tend to show singulative coding (with special marking of the uniplex member of a pair), rather than the more usual plurative coding (with special marking of the multiplex member), are also the kinds of nouns which tend to occur more frequently in multiplex use. We provide crosslinguistic coding evidence from a range of languages from different families and areas, and crosslinguistic corpus evidence from five languages, using large written corpora. Thus, the crosslinguistic pattern of singulative vs. plurative coding is a special instance of the tendency to devote more marking to rarer forms, and can be explained by the grammatical form-frequency correspondence principle.

Further Study of MultigranulationT-Fuzzy Rough Sets

The optimistic multigranulationT-fuzzy rough set model was established based on multiple granulations underT-fuzzy approximation space by Xu et al., 2012. From the reference, a natural idea is to consider pessimistic multigranulation model inT-fuzzy approximation space. So, in this paper, the main objective is to make further studies according to Xu et al., 2012. The optimistic multigranulationT-fuzzy rough set model is improved deeply by investigating some further properties. And a complete multigranulationT-fuzzy rough set model is constituted by addressing the pessimistic multigranulationT-fuzzy rough set. The full important properties of multigranulationT-fuzzy lower and upper approximation operators are also presented. Moreover, relationships between multigranulation and classicalT-fuzzy rough sets have been studied carefully. From the relationships, we can find that theT-fuzzy rough set model is a special instance of the two new types of models. In order to interpret and illustrate optimistic and pessimistic multigranulationT-fuzzy rough set models, a case is considered, which is helpful for applying these theories to practical issues.