Narrow Results

Architects and designers must consider issues of sustainability, building regulations, as well as a multitude of subjective questions such as style and taste. They are asked to create spaces not just in consideration of expected user needs, but in anticipation of them, whilst simultaneously defending and substantiating the value of their design decisions. By contrast, there is a growing body of research examining person-environment interactions and how experiences are immediately affected by designed properties of spaces. The research approach of Architectural Cognition in Practice seeks to develop a robust bridge to link learnings about user cognition from academic disciplines such as spatial cognition, neuroarchitecture and environmental psychology into real-world design processes. Toward this, we propose a framework addressing three distinct streams of issues: (1) Fundamental research to increase our understanding of person–environment interactions and their impact on cognition, decision-making and experience; (2) Reflective research considering how (and how well) designers currently conceptualize their end-users in the design process; and (3) Translational research to equip design teams with knowledge and tools to be able to apply learnings from architectural cognition into their practice. We briefly overview each pillar of research and provide examples from our own pool of research to demonstrate how our framework and methodologies aim to tackle this stated divide between knowledge and practice.

To avoid social and economic losses, governments need to control rumor propagation by releasing official rumor-refuting information (ORI) to dispel the rumors. Therefore, understanding the complex competition mechanism between ORI and rumors is key to successfully refuting rumors. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the function of ORI in suppressing and quashing rumors. First, the influencing factors were determined from which a competition model was constructed and the quenched mean-field method employed to determine the rumor outbreak threshold. It was found that public cognition could affect the rumor threshold and lead to rumor depletion, which was confirmed in a model simulation. The simulation results also indicated that government credibility and the release time of ORI played a critical role in controlling rumors. Specifically, it was found that when government credibility was high, the ORI release was able to quash the rumor spread. And it is shown that the government should release the ORI as soon as possible, and ensure the continuous dissemination of ORI to dispel rumors effectively.

To evaluate the therapeutic effects of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we evaluated five CHMs in oligomeric A${\beta }_{25-35}$-treated mouse primary hippocampal neuronal cultures. The aqueous extract from the root of Pueraria lobata (Puerariae Radix; PR) showed better neuroprotective effects than did the other four CHM aqueous extracts, including Gardenia jasminoides, Eleutherococcus senticosus, Rhodiola rosea, and Panax, in the primary culture treated with saline or oligomeric A${\beta }_{25-35}$. Furthermore, the neuroprotective effects of aqueous extract of PR were also better than its well-known active compound, puerarin, against the neurotoxicity of oligomeric A${\beta }_{25-35}$ in a primary culture. For in vivo experiments, C57BL/6J male mice that received direct infusion of soluble oligomeric A${\beta }_{25-35}$ into the bilateral hippocampal CA1 subregion were used as an alternative AD mouse model. The effects and molecular mechanisms of chronic systemic administration of PR aqueous extract were evaluated in the alternative AD model. PR aqueous extract prevented anxiety and cognitive impairment in mice associated with a decrease in the levels of A$\beta$ deposition, tau protein phosphorylation, inflammation, loss of noradrenergic, and serotonergic neurons and an increase in the levels of synaptophysin and insulin degrading enzyme (IDE) against the toxicity of oligomeric A${\beta }_{25-35}$. Furthermore, no obvious damage to the liver and kidney was detected after chronic systemic administration of PR aqueous extract. Therefore, using PR could be a safer, more effective therapeutic strategy than using its active compound puerarin to prevent both cognitive and noncognitive dysfunction and related pathological features of AD.

Human body motion pattern recognition in video images is an important research direction in the field of pattern recognition. It has a very broad application prospect in many fields such as intelligent video surveillance, human-computer interaction, motion analysis, video retrieval, etc. Research has also received extensive attention from scholars at home and abroad. Pattern recognition is essentially a branch of artificial intelligence. It has its unique role in the field of artificial intelligence. Accurate recognition of human body motion patterns in video images is of great help in image classification, retrieval, human tracking and video surveillance. Based on the human visual perception mechanism, this paper proposes a human behavior recognition algorithm based on semantic saliency map. Through the combination of sliding window and similarity measure, the behavioral region that best exhibits the semantic features of the image is found, which is the semantically significant region. The semantic significant region and the original image are used as the dual input source to study the human behavior recognition, and the image is enhanced. The utilization of significant regional information better reveals the identifiable area of the image and contributes to the recognition of human behavior.

The nonlinear dynamic characteristics of human brain cognition and music stimulation are introduced based on the negative emotions of college students to explore the influence of music stimulation on human brain cognition activities and analyze the nonlinear dynamic characteristics of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. First, the correlation between EEG signals and human brain cognition, as well as the nonlinear dynamics of cognition, are explained. The average correlation dimension and the maximum value of the Lyapunov exponent are selected to characterize the nonlinear dynamic characteristics of EEG signals. Second, the power spectrum and EEG coherence are considered, and an emotion assessment algorithm is proposed. Finally, music stimulation is introduced, and its role in adjusting college students’ negative emotions is discussed. Results demonstrate significant differences in the average correlation dimension and the maximum value of the Lyapunov component of the participants in different cognition states under normal physiological conditions. The cognition function state shows chaotic behaviors, explaining the nonlinear dynamic characteristics of EEG signals. After music stimulation, a significant increase in EEG relative power is mostly located in the frontal and temporal regions of the brain. The EEG coherence in the same brain region shows growth changes. After the intervention of music stimulation, the emotion assessment scores of the self-rating anxiety scale, the positive and negative affect schedule, and the self-rating depression scale are reduced, and the entire changing process presents statistical significance. In conclusion, music stimulation intervention can affect human brain cognition activity, playing a positive role in emotion regulation.

The aim of this research study is to test an integrative model of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition based on theories of cognition, social capital, environmental development and personality.

240 entrepreneurs in the services industry participated in this survey. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the model and find the factors that predict entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. Overall, eight hypotheses were tested and six were supported. Schema was found to be the strongest significant variable amongst all.

The study results indicate that entrepreneurs who discover opportunities organize prior knowledge and information related to their field in a manner that is easily accessible, have confidence in themselves, use social networks (both weak and strong ties) and see opportunities in changes in the economic environment.

The study implies that potential entrepreneurs should be supported in terms of their social networks and instructed in the beliefs about the information and changes in the environment needed to spot opportunities. Governments play a role in providing a munificent economic environment.

Alertness is a foundational concept in current understandings of the spotting and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. Yet, despite being identified as a key theoretical construct of individual entrepreneurs, its cognitive features are not fully described in the literature. And as a result, the existing instruments for measuring this cognitive feature of entrepreneurs do not fully reflect the broad nature of this concept. In this study, the cognitive theoretical basis of alertness is reviewed and a new scale, which better reflects the broader cognitive features of entrepreneurial alertness, is presented. This may assist the validity of future empirical studies that involve entrepreneurial alertness.

In this work, we present a simulation study drawn upon a famous ethological example: food-sharing habit of vampire bats in Central America. A norm of reciprocity is introduced when agents are expected to exhibit a cooperative behavior under serious environmental strictures (infrequent but lethal food scarcity). We compare different agents' architectures (with different levels of cognitive complexity) in the evolution of food-sharing habit and we analyze their performances against the presence of cheaters in the population. The experiments are aimed at studying the role of cognitive mediators (i.e. goals) in spreading altruism, described as a purposeful action.

China’s Healthcare Reforms: Who Will Survive?

Neovia Enrolls First Patient in Cancer Trial for Immunotherapy Enhancing Drug.

$5M Foundation Gift to Help Support US-China Energy Center at Berkeley Lab.

Scientists Make Breakthrough in 21st Century Killers Research.

Chinese Scientist Participates in Human Gene Editing Committee.

Monkeys Master a Key Sign of Self-awareness: Recognizing Their Reflections.

Poisonous Gas May Have Driven Prehistoric Mass Extinction.

Chinese Scientists in Rice Breakthrough.

It is well known that laboratory subjects often do not play mixed strategy equilibria games according to the theoretical predictions. However, little is known about the role of cognition in these strategic settings. We therefore conduct an experiment where subjects play a repeated hide and seek game against a computer opponent. Subjects play with either fewer available cognitive resources (high cognitive load treatment) or with more available cognitive resources (low cognitive load treatment). Surprisingly, we find some evidence that subjects in the high load treatment earn more than subjects in the low treatment. However, we also find that subjects in the low treatment exhibit a greater rate of increase in earnings across rounds, thus suggesting more learning. Our evidence is consistent with subjects in the low load treatment over-experimenting. Further, while we observe that subjects do not mix in the predicted proportions and that their actions exhibit serial correlation, we do not find strong evidence these are related to their available cognitive resources. This suggests that the standard laboratory deviations from the theoretical predictions are not associated with the availability of cognitive resources. Our results shed light on the extent to which cognitive resources affect (and do not affect) behavior in games with mixed strategy equilibria.

1/4 scaling of various biological variables in relation to body mass is universal in biology. Recent models provided evidence that such a scaling is a result of optimization of the processes in the system. We present evidence for 1/4 scaling in dynamical processes from two different types of experiments: fluctuation of the erythrocyte diameter and a task of random generation of series of numbers by human subjects. The time series obtained for different cells and human subjects respectively were analyzed by detrended fluctuation analysis. The exponents from different individuals presented a gaussian distribution centered at a scaling exponent equivalent to 1/4 for both types of experiments. While this proves the existence of 1/4 scaling in dynamics, it also shows that processes do not proceed equally efficient in various individuals. Consequently the deviation from the 1/4 scaling individuals can be used as a universal tool of investigation for the efficiency, or the optimization of various biological, psychological or other types of variables.

The conditions under which the aggregation of information from interacting agents results in a stable or an unstable collective outcome is an important puzzle in the study of complex systems. We show that if a complex system of aggregated choice respects a mutual knowledge structure, then the prospects of a stable collective outcome are considerably improved. Our domain-independent results apply to collective choice ranging from perception, where an interpretation of sense data is made by a collection of perceptual modules, to social choice, where a group decision is made from a set of preferences held by individuals.

This work advances the theory of the integrated functional organic unity of the combined brain and mind, with explicit inclusion of conscious awareness and associated partial autonomy, and outlines its main foundations and qualities. This view: a-indicates new perspectives regarding the foundations of the mind-body question; b-brings the mentoexperiential realm and its qualities into cooperative communication with neurobiological realms; c-offers fresh ground for considering the mentoexperiential in broader biological frameworks such as evolutionary theory; and d-provides a Neuroscientific framework for a full range of specific mentoexperiential qualities.

This article argues that the multimodal processing of sensorial flows is a biological property of organisms. Already effective at birth, the multimodal processing of flows organizes the infant's environment and unifies his/her perception, permitting the perception of multimodal but unified objects. The multimodal processing of sensorial flows is also a setting event for self-perception because it allows the infant to resolve two crucial questions: what is the source of the flow and where is the action. Lastly the multimodal processing of sensorial flows identifies very early cognitive processes in newborn infants.

Clinical depression is one of the most common psychiatric disorders in adults, yet non-clinical depression in the community may go unnoticed, despite high prevalence rates and significant psychosocial impairment. The aim of the current study was to classify 1,226 individuals from a community sample on the basis of depression scores (using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, DASS) and to determine whether depression in a non-clinical sample differed significantly from healthy controls on a profile of multimodal measures. The data analyzed in this study included personality, emotional intelligence, cognition and psychophysiology. It was predicted that non-clinically depressed participants would differ from healthy controls on measures of personality (increased neuroticism; decreased extraversion), emotional intelligence (decreased), cognition (impairments in executive dysfunction and memory impairment), psychophysiology (increased resting-state, right-frontal activation; diminished skin conductance) after controlling for gender, age, handedness and years of education. Findings provide support for the majority of hypotheses, though no evidence was found for memory impairment or frontal hemispheric asymmetry. Longitudinal studies are needed to determine the extent to which of these findings will have utility for the prediction of depression onset and treatment response/non-response.

Decline in cognitive function is well recognized, yet few neurophysiological correlates of age-related cognitive decline have been identified. In this study we examined the impact of age on neurocognitive function and Gamma phase synchrony among 550 normal subjects (aged 11–70). Gamma phase synchrony was acquired to targets in the auditory oddball paradigm. The two tasks of executive function were switching of attention and an electronic maze. Subjects were divided into four age groups, which were balanced for sex. We hypothesized that reduced cognitive performance among older healthy individuals would be associated with age-related changes in gamma phase synchrony. Results showed a significant decrease in executive function in the oldest (51–70 years) age group. ANOVAs of age-by-frontal Gamma synchrony also showed a significant effect of age on Gamma phase synchrony in the left frontal region that corresponded modestly to the age effect found on executive task performance, with reduced performance associated with increased gamma synchrony. The results indicate that age-related changes in cognitive function evident among elderly individuals may in part be related to decreased ability to integrate information and this may be reflected as a compensatory increase in gamma synchrony in frontal regions of the brain.

New treatments for Alzheimer's disease require early detection of cognitive decline. Most studies seeking to identify markers of early cognitive decline have focused on a limited number of measures. We sought to establish the profile of brain function measures which best define early neuropsychological decline. We compared subjects with subjective memory complaints to normative controls on a wide range of EEG derived measures, including a new measure of event-related spatio-temporal waves and biophysical modeling, which derives anatomical and physiological parameters based on subject's EEG measurements. Measures that distinguished the groups were then related to cognitive performance on a variety of learning and executive function tasks. The EEG measures include standard power measures, peak alpha frequency, EEG desynchronization to eyes-opening, and global phase synchrony. The most prominent differences in subjective memory complaint subjects were elevated alpha power and an increased number of spatio-temporal wave events. Higher alpha power and changes in wave activity related most strongly to a decline in verbal memory performance in subjects with subjective memory complaints, and also declines in maze performance and working memory reaction time. Interestingly, higher alpha power and wave activity were correlated with improved performance in reverse digit span in the subjective memory complaint group. The modeling results suggest that differences in the subjective memory complaint subjects were due to a decrease in cortical and thalamic inhibitory gains and slowed dendritic time-constants. The complementary profile that emerges from the variety of measures and analyses points to a nonlinear progression in electrophysiological changes from early neuropsychological decline to late-stage dementia, and electrophysiological changes in subjective memory complaint that vary in their relationships to a range of memory-related tasks.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is expected to impair vigilance and executive functioning, owing to the sensitivity of the prefrontal cortex to the effects of sleep fragmentation and intermittent hypoxia. Studies examining the pattern of cognitive dysfunction show variable results, with the heterogeneity in part due to small sample sizes in current studies and little consistency of the tests used. We examined a group of fifty subjects from the Brain Resource International Database (BRID), predicted to have OSA on the basis of the Multivariable Apnea Prediction Index, and compared them with 200 matched controls. On electrophysiological tests, the OSA group showed reduced eyes closed alpha power, increased auditory oddball N100 and P200 amplitude, but reduced N200 and P300 amplitude. The latency to P300 was not significantly different between groups, but latencies to N200 and P200 were prolonged in the OSA group. Performance testing of the executive function found that verbal interference and the switching of attention were impaired in the OSA group. We have demonstrated that a diagnostic algorithm based on apnea symptoms and demographic factors can be used to select a group with likely OSA manifesting deficits in information processing and executive function.

Introduction: Depression is characterized by disturbances in affect, cognition, brain and body function, yet studies have tended to focus on single domains of dysfunction. An integrated approach may provide a more complete profile of the range of deficits characterized by depressed individuals, but it is unclear whether this approach is able to predict depression severity over and above that predicted by single tasks or domains of function. In this study, we examined the value of combining multiple domains of function in predicting depression severity.

Methods: Participants contained in the International Brain Database, () had completed three testing components including a web-based questionnaire of Personal History, the Brain Resource Cognition battery of Neuropsychological tests, Personality assessment and Psychophysiological testing. Two hundred and sixty six of these participants were able to be classified as either non-depressed, mild-moderately or severely (non-clinically) depressed, based on a depression screening questionnaire. Analysis of variance identified variables on which the categorized participants differed. Significant variables were then entered into a series of stepwise regressions to examine their ability to predict depression scores.

Results: An integrated model including measures of affect (increased Neuroticism; decreased Emotional Intelligence), cognition (increased variability of reaction time during a working memory task; decreased "name the word component score" in the verbal interference task), brain (decreased left-lateralized P150 ERP component during a working memory task) and body function (increased negative skin conductance level gradient) were found to predict more of the variation in depression severity than any single domain of function.

Discussion: On the basis of behavioral as well as Psychophysiological findings reported in this study, it was suggested that deficits in subclinically depressed individuals are more pronounced during automatic stages of stimulus processing, and that performance in these individuals may improve (to the level displayed by controls) when task demands are increased. Findings also suggest that it is important to consider disturbances across different domains of function in order to elucidate depression severity. Each domain may contribute unique explanatory information consistent with an integrative model of depression, taking into account the role of both behavior and underlying neural changes.

The Gordon [37–40] framework of Integrative Neuroscience is used to develop a continuum model for understanding the central role of motivationally-determined "significance" in organizing human information processing. Significance is defined as the property which gives a stimulus relevance to our core motivation to minimize danger and maximize pleasure. Within this framework, the areas of cognition and emotion, theories of motivational arousal and orienting, and the current understanding of neural systems are brought together. The basis of integration is a temporal continuum in which significance processing extends from the most rapid millisecond time scale of automatic, nonconscious mechanisms to the time scale of seconds, in which memory is shaped, to the controlled and conscious mechanisms unfolding over minutes. Over this continuum, significant stimuli are associated with a spectrum of defensive (or consumptive) behaviors through to volitional regulatory behaviors for danger (versus pleasure) and associated brainstem, limbic, medial forebrain bundle and prefrontal circuits, all of which reflect a balance of excitatory (predominant at rapid time scales) to inhibitory mechanisms. Across the lifespan, the negative and positive outcomes of significance processing, coupled with constitutional and genetic factors, will contribute to plasticity, shaping individual adaptations and maladaptions in the balance of excitatory-inhibitory mechanisms.