Superior colliculus drives stimulus-evoked directionally biased saccades and attempted head movements in head-fixed mice

Animals investigate their environments by directing their gaze towards salient stimuli. In the prevailing view, mouse gaze shifts entail head rotations followed by brainstem-mediated eye movements, including saccades to reset the eyes. These 'recentering' saccades are attributed to head movement-related vestibular cues. However, microstimulating mouse superior colliculus (SC) elicits directed head and eye movements resembling SC-dependent sensory-guided gaze shifts in other species, suggesting that mouse gaze shifts may be more flexible than has been recognized. We investigated this possibility by tracking eye and attempted head movements in a head-fixed preparation that eliminates head movement-related sensory cues. We found tactile stimuli evoke directionally biased saccades coincident with attempted head rotations. Differences in saccade endpoints across stimuli are associated with distinct stimulus-dependent relationships between initial eye position and saccade direction and amplitude. Optogenetic perturbations revealed SC drives these gaze shifts. Thus, head-fixed mice make sensory-guided, SC-dependent gaze shifts involving coincident, directionally biased saccades and attempted head movements. Our findings uncover flexibility in mouse gaze shifts and provide a foundation for studying head-eye coupling.

OLD AGE AS A PEDAGOGICAL PROBLEM

The article deals with the substantiation of the theoretical and methodological principles of the old age phenomenon. It has also been analyzed positive and negative stereotypes related to aging and old age in the aspect of intergenerational relations. The characteristics of the phenomenon of old age, content, forms of attitude to the elderly are considered. This is important at the level of personal development, rational interaction of generations, no less important are the social and economic aspects. This issue gained special importance at the beginning of the XXI century, when the elderly found themselves in the position of social outsiders, and that was important both for society as a whole and for each person. The importance of addressing the topic is substantiated, as the development of many aspects of social life has led to a significant increase in the number of elderly people, and the ratio between workers and retirees has caused concern among economists. The attention is paid to the fact that demographic change, which means that our society continues to age and the prevailing view that the old man is no longer needed, it is emphasized the importance of recognizing the strengths of old age and their use.

What is Wrong with Populism?

The main goal of this article is to explore the relationship between populism and representative democracy. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, the paper offers a detailed analysis of the three criticisms of populism and the implications these criticisms have on our understanding of representative democracy. First, it addresses the argument that populism inevitably relies on demagogy and it examines the inference this argument has on the concept of political representation in democracy. Second, it discusses the claim that populism relies on the oversimplification of political issues and what this claim reveals about the democratic ideal of the informed and politically responsible voter. The third criticism deals with the anti-pluralist character of populist politics, which, the paper argues, can also be extended to the concept of popular sovereignty itself. In the second part, the article looks more closely at the relationship between populism and representative democracy. Relying on the insights from the first part, it examines different institutional restraints on the will of the majority and how populism redefines these restraints as anti-democratic and elitist barriers to popular will. Finally, the paper questions the prevailing view that sees populism as a phenomenon arising from the tension between liberal and democratic principles within representative democracy and offers an alternative framework for understanding the relationship between populism and democracy.

Opinia krytyczna do przeważającego poglądu reprezentowanego w orzecznictwie sądowym w zakresie ustalania dochodu z wydzierżawionego gospodarstwa rolnego jako kryterium do przyznania świadczeń rodzinnych Opinion critical of the prevailing view the jurisprudence of the courts as regards the determination of the income from a rented agricultural holding as a criterion for granting family benefits

W opracowaniu podejmowana jest polemika w zakresie ustalania dochodu z wydzierżawionego gospodarstwa rolnego dla celów związanych z przyznaniem prawa do zasiłku rodzinnego. Problem ten ma istotne znaczenie z tego względu, że obecny sposób interpretowania przez sądy przepisów w tym zakresie prowadzi do nierównego traktowania osób ubiegających się o zasiłek rodzinny. W związku z tym w artykule przedstawiono właściwy, zdaniem autora, sposób interpretacji przedmiotowych przepisów. Pozwoliłby on objąć zakresem pomocy większą liczbę osób, które obecnie są wykluczane z możliwości jej uzyskania. W opracowaniu zwrócono również uwagę na zasadną, zdaniem autora, zmianę stanowiska w jednym z wyroków.

An Unseen Eighth Rune: Runic Legacy and Multiliteral Performativity in Cynewulf’s The Fates of the Apostles

The four Old English poems containing the runic Cyn(e)wulf ‘signature’ have continuously provoked debate as to the characters’ intratextual function and proper interpretation. While the prevailing view is that they are predominantly logogrammatic instantiations of traditional runic names, a case has nevertheless also been made for alternative words indicated by initialisms. Referencing both of these lines of reasoning in conjunction with a semiotic literary methodological stance, this article evaluates a single Cynewulf poem (The Fates of the Apostles) and its particular inclusion of runes amongst the bookhand alphabet characters. The assessment demonstrates the poem’s multiliteral destabilization of associative boundaries between different scripts, as well as between perceived boundaries of orality and legibility. In doing so, it identifies in the text an unseen ‘eighth rune’ that is semiotically operative.

Melanopsin phototransduction: beyond canonical cascades

ABSTRACT Melanopsin is a visual pigment that is expressed in a small subset of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs). It is involved in regulating non-image forming visual behaviors, such as circadian photoentrainment and the pupillary light reflex, while also playing a role in many aspects of image-forming vision, such as contrast sensitivity. Melanopsin was initially discovered in the melanophores of the skin of the frog Xenopus, and subsequently found in a subset of ganglion cells in rat, mouse and primate retinas. ipRGCs were initially thought to be a single retinal ganglion cell population, and melanopsin was thought to activate a single, invertebrate-like Gq/transient receptor potential canonical (TRPC)-based phototransduction cascade within these cells. However, in the 20 years since the discovery of melanopsin, our knowledge of this visual pigment and ipRGCs has expanded dramatically. Six ipRGC subtypes have now been identified in the mouse, each with unique morphological, physiological and functional properties. Multiple subtypes have also been identified in other species, suggesting that this cell type diversity is a general feature of the ipRGC system. This diversity has led to a renewed interest in melanopsin phototransduction that may not follow the canonical Gq/TRPC cascade in the mouse or in the plethora of other organisms that express the melanopsin photopigment. In this Review, we discuss recent findings and discoveries that have challenged the prevailing view of melanopsin phototransduction as a single pathway that influences solely non-image forming functions.

A Market-Friendly Human Rights Paradigm for Intellectual Property Rights in Europe?

This chapter explains that in the new variants of constitutionalism, human rights are perceived as critical normative counterweights to the extension of market-friendly rights privileging the protection of fiscal policies, the free movement of capital assets across borders, and the interests of investors over democratic processes, communities, and people. From this perspective, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which extend the right of property to legal persons, strike a discordant note by comparison with other international human rights instruments. The chapter investigates the origins of this incongruity. It shows that, paradoxically and contrary to the prevailing view, the rationale for the extension in the ECHR was to enable states to counteract the adverse social and economic impact of untrammelled exploitation of property and accumulation of profit. The chapter then examines the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) through this prism and considers how the Court may recover the normative ideals of human rights law. It also draws out the implications and challenges for the interpretation of IP rights in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Clowns, Fools, and Folly

Chapter 1, on clowns, fools, and folly analyzes the clown-figure in terms of his magical ontology and explores moments of folly that intervene—transformatively, enchantingly—in a comic narrative. In doing so, it argues against the prevailing view that fool- and clown-figures are fundamentally marginal and peripheral to a play’s action, at least in the case of the comedies. The chapter demonstrates how these magical clowns can influence other characters, affecting their perceptions and choices, illustrated especially in Feste’s fantastical chop-logical interview with the lachrymose Olivia in Twelfth Night, which makes possible her subsequent infatuation with Viola. It also shows how clowns can intervene in and alter the action, with Dogberry, a hybrid of Providence and everyman, emerging as a paradigmatic example. The chapter closes with a discussion of the theater-happy Bottom as the mystical moral center of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Fossils Do Not Substantially Improve, and May Even Harm, Estimates of Diversification Rate Heterogeneity

There is a prevailing view that the inclusion of fossil data could remedy identifiability issues related to models of diversification, by drastically reducing the number of congruent models. The fossilized birth-death (FBD) model is an appealing way of directly incorporating fossil information when estimating diversification rates. Here we explore the benefits of including fossils by implementing and then testing two-types of FBD models in more complex likelihood-based models that assume multiple rate classes across the tree. We also assess the impact of severely undersampling, and even not including fossils that represent samples of lineages that also had sampled descendants (i.e., k-type fossils), as well as converting a fossil set to represent stratigraphic ranges. Under various simulation scenarios, including a scenario that exists far outside the set of models we evaluated, including fossils rarely outperforms analyses that exclude them altogether. At best, the inclusion of fossils improves precision but does not influence bias. We also found that severely undercounting the number of k-type fossils produces highly inflated rates of turnover and extinction fraction. Similarly, we found that converting the fossil set to stratigraphic ranges results in turnover rates and extinction fraction estimates that are generally underestimated. While fossils remain essential for understanding diversification through time, in the specific case of understanding diversification given an existing, largely modern tree, they are not especially beneficial.

Visions of lexicography of a semantic European

In this essay, it is assumed that the languages of Latin Europe do have many semantic features in common, which contradicts the prevailing view of a general semantic particularity of every individual language and thus the exploitation for national-political purposes arising from that view. However, the proposition made here requires a summary and the assessment of different semantic concepts led by the idea of commonality. By means of individual cases that can be understood as relevant examples, a vision of lexicography will follow that aims at replacing the biologistic concept of a genetic explanation for contrastive semantics by the concept of a comparative semantics that is based on socio-historical, cultural-historcial and textual-historical arguments. In doing so, a historiography relating to the subject-matter of “semantics” will be suggested that assigns a semantic bridging function to Late Antiquity / Early Medieval Latin in relation to all languages of Latin Europe. The logic of the argument implies that a new era of semantic history begins upon the development of a structure of national languages in Europe, whose historical basis can still be recognised in the semantic communalities.