Search results for "C3"
showing 10 items of 1295 documents
Quantized Dissensus in Networks of Agents subject to Death and Duplication
2012
Dissensus is a modeling framework for networks of dynamic agents in competition for scarce resources. Originally inspired by biological cells behaviors, it fits also marketing, finance and many other application areas. Competition is often unstable in the sense that strong agents, those having access to large resources, gain more and more resources at the expense of weak agents. Thus, strong agents duplicate when reaching a critical amount of resources, whereas weak agents die when loosing all their resources. To capture all these phenomena we introduce systems with a discrete time gossip and unstable state dynamics interrupted by discrete events affecting the network topology. Invariancy o…
Children at risk for dyslexia show deficient left-hemispheric memory representations for new spoken word forms
2021
Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning disorder with impairments in reading and spelling acquisition. Apart from literacy problems, dyslexics show inefficient speech encoding and deficient novel word learning, with underlying problems in phonological processing and learning. These problems have been suggested to be related to deficient specialization of the left hemisphere for language processing. To examine this possibility, we tracked with magnetoencephalography (MEG) the activation of the bilateral temporal cortices during formation of neural memory traces for new spoken word forms in 7–8-year-old children with high familial dyslexia risk and in controls. The at-risk children impr…
Structural brain network fingerprints of focal dystonia
2019
Background: Focal dystonias are severe and disabling movement disorders of a still unclear origin. The structural brain networks associated with focal dystonia have not been well characterized. Here, we investigated structural brain network fingerprints in patients with blepharospasm (BSP) compared with those with hemifacial spasm (HFS), and healthy controls (HC). The patients were also examined following treatment with botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT). Methods: This study included matched groups of 13 BSP patients, 13 HFS patients, and 13 HC. We measured patients using structural-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at baseline and after one month BoNT treatment, at time points of maximal and minim…
Event-Related Potentials (ERP) Indices of Motivation during the Effort Expenditure for Reward Task
2020
Dynamic and temporal facets of the various constructs that comprise motivation remain to be explored. Here, we adapted the Effort Expenditure for Reward Task, a well-known laboratory task used to evaluate motivation, to study the event-related potentials associated with reward processing. The Stimulus Preceding Negativity (SPN) and the P300 were utilized as motivation indicators with high density electroencephalography. The SPN was found to be more negative for difficult choices compared to easy choices, suggesting a greater level of motivation, at a neurophysiological level. The insula, a structure previously associated with both effort discounting and prediction error, was concomitantly a…
Behavioral and Neural Arguments of Motivational Influence on Decision Making During Uncertainty
2020
The scientific world is increasingly interested in motivation, primarily due to the suspected impact on decision-making abilities, particularly in uncertain conditions. To explore this plausible relationship, 28 healthy participants were included in the study and performed decision-making and motivational tasks while their neural activity was recorded. All participants performed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and were split into two groups based on their score, one favorable group with 14 participants who performed advantageously and one undecided group with 14 participants who failed to develop the correct strategy on the IGT. In addition, all participants performed the Effort Expenditure fo…
Electrophysiological evidence for change detection in speech sound patterns by anesthetized rats
2014
Human infants are able to detect changes in grammatical rules in a speech sound stream. Here, we tested whether rats have a comparable ability by using an electrophysiological measure that has been shown to reflect higher order auditory cognition even before it becomes manifested in behavioral level. Urethane-anesthetized rats were presented with a stream of sequences consisting of three pseudowords carried out at a fast pace. Frequently presented “standard” sequences had 16 variants which all had the same structure. They were occasionally replaced by acoustically novel “deviant” sequences of two different types: structurally consistent and inconsistent sequences. Two stimulus conditions we…
Empirical evidence for musical syntax processing? Computer simulations reveal the contribution of auditory short-term memory
2014
During the last decade, it has been argued that (1) music processing involves syntactic representations similar to those observed in language, and (2) that music and language share similar syntactic-like processes and neural resources. This claim is important for understanding the origin of music and language abilities and, furthermore, it has clinical implications. The Western musical system, however, is rooted in psychoacoustic properties of sound, and this is not the case for linguistic syntax. Accordingly, musical syntax processing could be parsimoniously understood as an emergent property of auditory memory rather than a property of abstract processing similar to linguistic processing.…
New Evidence of the Real Interest Rate Parity for OECD Countries Using Panel Unit Root Tests with Breaks
2006
This paper tests for real interest parity (RIRP) among the nineteen major OECD countries over the period 1978:Q2-1998:Q4. The econometric methods applied consist of combining the use of several unit root or stationarity tests designed for panels valid under cross-section dependence and presence of multiple structural breaks. Our results strongly support the fulfillment of the weak version of the RIRP for the studied period once dependence and structural breaks are accounted for.
The determinants of increasing equity market comovement: economic or financial integration?
2010
This paper investigates to what extent the substantial increase in exposures of local European equity market returns to global shocks is mainly due to a convergence in cash flows (“economic integration”), to a convergence in discount rates (“financial integration”), or to both. We find that this increased exposure is nearly entirely due to increasing discount-rate betas. This finding is robust to alternative ways of calculating discount-rate and cash-flow shocks.
Credit demand and supply shocks in Italy during the Great Recession
2018
In this article, we use Structural VAR analysis to disentangle credit demand and supply shocks and their effect on real economic activity in Italy during the 2008 to 2014 crisis period. The three endogenous variables considered are the loan interest rate, the loans growth rate and the employment to population ratio. The data are observed at annual frequency for each of 103 Italian provinces. The empirical evidence suggests that the variance of the shocks varies across four Italian macro-regions: North, Centre, South and Islands, and hece heteroscedasticity is used to identify (ex ante) the structural shocks. Sign restrictions are used to interpret shocks ex post. The empirical findings sugg…