• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publications close
• HU close
• Neuroinformatics close

The cerebellum has a striking homogeneous cytoarchitecture and participates in both motor and non-motor domains. Indeed, a wealth of evidence from neuroanatomical, electrophysiological, neuroimaging and clinical studies has substantially modified our traditional view on the cerebellum as a sole calibrator of sensorimotor functions. Despite the major advances of the last four decades of cerebellar research, outstanding questions remain regarding the mechanisms and functions of the cerebellar circuitry. We discuss major clues from both experimental and clinical studies, with a focus on rodent models in fear behaviour, on the role of the cerebellum in motor control, on cerebellar contributions to timing and our appraisal of the pathogenesis of cerebellar tremor. The cerebellum occupies a central position to optimize behaviour, motor control, timing procedures and to prevent body oscillations. More than ever, the cerebellum is now considered as a major actor on the scene of disorders affecting the CNS, extending from motor disorders to cognitive and affective disorders. However, the respective roles of the mossy fibres, the climbing fibres, cerebellar cortex and cerebellar nuclei remains unknown or partially known at best in most cases. Research is now moving towards a better definition of the roles of cerebellar modules and microzones. This will impact on the management of cerebellar disorders. info:eu-repo/semantics/published SCOPUS: re.j

Reaction time data have long been collected in order to gain insight into the underlying mechanisms involved in language processing. Means analyses often attempt to break down what factors relate to what portion of the total reaction time. From a dynamic systems theory perspective or an interaction dominant view of language processing, it is impossible to isolate discrete factors contributing to language processing, since these continually and interactively play a role. Non-linear analyses offer the tools to investigate the underlying process of language use in time, without having to isolate discrete factors. Patterns of variability in reaction time data may disclose the relative contribution of automatic (grapheme-to-phoneme conversion) processing and attention-demanding (semantic) processing. The presence of a fractal structure in the variability of a reaction time series indicates automaticity in the mental structures contributing to a task. A decorrelated pattern of variability will indicate a higher degree of attention-demanding processing. A focus on variability patterns allows us to examine the relative contribution of automatic and attention-demanding processing when a speaker is using the mother tongue (L1) or a second language (L2). A word naming task conducted in the L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English) shows L1 word processing to rely more on automatic spelling-to-sound conversion than L2 word processing. A word naming task with a semantic categorization subtask showed more reliance on attention-demanding semantic processing when using the L2. A comparison to L1 English data shows this was not only due to the amount of language use or language dominance, but also to the difference in orthographic depth between Dutch and English. An important implication of this finding is that when the same task is used to test and compare different languages, one cannot straightforwardly assume the same cognitive sub processes are involved to an equal degree using the same task in different languages.

This contribution describes the results of the second edition of the shared task on automatic identification of verbal multiword expressions, organized as part of the LAW-MWE-CxG 2018 workshop, co-located with COLING 2018, concerning both the PARSEME-IT corpus and the systems that took part in the task for the Italian language. The paper will focus on the main advances in comparison to the first edition of the task. Il presente contributo descrive i risultati della seconda edizione dello ’Shared task on automatic identification of verbal multiword expressions’ organizzato nell’ambito del LAW-MWE-CxG 2018 workshop realizzato durante il COLING 2018 riguardo sia il corpus PARSEME-IT e i sistemi che hanno preso parte nel task per quel che riguarda l’italiano. L’articolo tratta i principali progressi ottenuti a confronto con la prima edizione del task.

We thank Eveline Verhulst for help with the methylome data, Christa Mateman for lab assistance, Martijn Derks for calculating the sliding windows, Tieshan Xu for the help with the Trinity assembly, Louise Dittmar for the help in dN/dS and diversity analysis, Christian Huber for help on the sweep analysis and Jun-Mo Kim who designed the SNP chip. K.M.S. was supported by a grant from the Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science & Technology Development (PJ009103) of the Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea. T.I.G., P.C. and K.Z. were supported by a BBSRC grant (BB/K000209/1) and a NERC grant (NE/L005328/1) awarded to K.Z., C.J.G. was funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) (NE/K01126X/1). K.J.F.V. was funded by the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research, NWO VIDI grant (864.10.008). B.C.S. was funded by ERC Advanced Grant (250164) and by a Wolfson Merit Award from the Royal Society. J.S. was funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting grant, Avian EGG (202487) and a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), The Great Tit HapMap Project (NE/J012599/1). M.E.V. was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO-VICI grant) and the European Research Council (ERC-2013-AdG 339092). [EN] For over 50 years, the great tit (Parus major) has been a model species for research in evolutionary, ecological and behavioural research; in particular, learning and cognition have been intensively studied. Here, to provide further insight into the molecular mechanisms behind these important traits, we de novo assemble a great tit reference genome and whole-genome re-sequence another 29 individuals from across Europe. We show an overrepresentation of genes related to neuronal functions, learning and cognition in regions under positive selection, as well as increased CpG methylation in these regions. In addition, great tit neuronal non-CpG methylation patterns are very similar to those observed in mammals, suggesting a universal role in neuronal epigenetic regulation which can affect learning-, memory-and experience-induced plasticity. The high-quality great tit genome assembly will play an instrumental role in furthering the integration of ecological, evolutionary, behavioural and genomic approaches in this model species.

A striking puzzle about language use in everyday conversation is that turn-taking latencies are usually very short, whereas planning language production takes much longer. This implies overlap between language comprehension and production processes, but the nature and extent of such overlap has never been studied directly. Combining an interactive quiz paradigm with EEG measurements in an innovative way, we show that production planning processes start as soon as possible, that is, within half a second after the answer to a question can be retrieved (up to several seconds before the end of the question). Localization of ERP data shows early activation even of brain areas related to late stages of production planning (e.g., syllabification). Finally, oscillation results suggest an attention switch from comprehension to production around the same time frame. This perspective from interactive language use throws new light on the performance characteristics that language competence involves. Contains fulltext : 205405.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

In this paper, I take a look at certain forms of contemporary art as practices that allow meanings within biomedical science and medical practice to emerge in novel ways. I claim that conceptual art and biological art are two unique spaces within which the understanding of embodiment and disease comes to be shaped actively and reflexively, sometimes on the very level of the materiality of the body, sometimes through the articulation and representation of medical images and technologies. I link these developments to Paul Rabinow's notion of biosociality and argue that the molecularization and geneticization of the medical gaze, conjoined with certain social and cultural shifts, results in the formation of an experimental public of artists, scientists and lay people, all invested in actively shaping the conceptualization of bodies and diseases. This will take me to a consideration of the intertwining of art and medicine beyond the domain of the visual.