Les crises d'épilepsie proviennent d'une synchronisation pathologique de réseaux neuronaux du cortex. Les crises motrices, générées à partir du cortex moteur primaire, sont souvent pharmaco-résistantes. La résection neurochirurgicale du foyer épileptique est rarement l'option thérapeutique de choix au regard des risques de deficits moteurs potentiellement induits par la résection. Les ganglions de la base ont un rôle important dans la propagation des crises. Des enregistrements par micro-électrode réalisés dans une précédente étude ont montré que les activités des structures d'entrée des ganglions de la base telles que le Putamen, le noyau caudé et le noyau sous-thalamique (NST) sont fortement modifiées pendant des crises motrices. Par exemple, le taux de décharge moyen des neurones du NST et du Putamen augmente et le pourcentage de neurones oscillants synchronisés avec l'EEG durant la période ictale est plus élevé durant les crises que pendant la période inter-ictale. Des études pilotes chez l'humain ont montré un effet bénéfique potentiel de la stimulation cérébrale profonde (SCP) chronique du NST pour traiter les crises motrices pharmaco-résistantes. Le but de notre étude est d'évaluer les effets thérapeutiques de la SCP des structures d'entrée des ganglions de la base. Nous avons dans un premier temps développé un modèle primate de crise d'épilepsie motrice focale stable et reproductible par injection intra-corticale de pénicilline. Nous avons ensuite caractérisé la pharmaco-résistance du modèle. Nous avons implanté stéréotactiquement des électrodes de SCP dans le NST et le Putamen. Le stimulateur a été placé sous la peau dans le dos de l'animal. Un protocole de stimulation à 130 Hz à un voltage inférieur à l'apparition d'effets secondaires a été réalisé dans le NST. Le stimulateur était mis en marche au moment de l'injection de la pénicilline. Un protocole de stimulation à 0 volt a été réalisé comme condition contrôle. Chaque primate étant son propre contrôle. L'apparition des crises, leur nombre et leur durée ont été comparés par période de 1 heure entre la condition stimulée et non stimulée. Chaque session expérimentale a été menée sur une durée de plus de six heures. Nous avons évalué l'effet préventif de la SCP à haute fréquence (130 Hz) du NST sur les crises motrices. Nous avons également étudié l'effet préventif de la SCP à basse fréquence (5-20 Hz) du Putamen sur ce même modèle. Enfin, sur un autre primate, nous avons étudié l'effet combiné de la SCP du NST à haute fréquence et du Putamen à basse fréquence sur les crises motrices. Résultats : Les effets de la SCP chronique du NST à haute fréquence ont été analysés à partir de 1572 crises apparues au cours de 30 sessions expérimentales chez 3 primates. Les effets de la SCP préventive du NST ont été évalués sur 454 crises motrices durant 10 sessions expérimentales chez un primate. L'effet de la SCP du Putamen à basse fréquence a été analysé sur 289 crises durant 14 sessions chez 2 primates. Enfin l'effet combiné de la SCP du NST et du Putamen a été évalué sur 477 crises durant 10 sessions. Les meilleurs résultats ont été obtenus par SCP chronique du NST. L'apparition de la première crise était significativement retardée lorsque le primate était stimulé. Le temps total passé en situation de crise motrice était diminué en moyenne d'environ 69 % (p ≤0.05) par rapport à la condition non-stimulé au regard de la diminution significative du nombre de crises particulièrement durant les 3 heures après le début de la stimulation. La durée de chaque crise était modérément réduite. Les modes de stimulation mono-polaire ou bi-polaire avaient une efficacité similaire. La SCP préventive du NST n'a pas eu d'effet supérieur à la stimulation chronique du NST. La SCP chronique du Putamen à basse fréquence avait un effet positif mais principalement durant les deux premières heures de stimulation. L'effet combiné de la SCP du NST et du Putamen était inférieur à la SCP chronique du NST ou du Putamen.

Versions of naturalized epistemology that overlook or reject apriority ignore innate belief-forming processes that provide much of the grounding for epistemic warrant. A rigorous analysis reveals that non-experiential ways of viewing apriority, such as innateness, establish the domain for a plausible naturalistic theory of a priori warrant. A moderate version of naturalistic epistemology that embraces the non-experiential feature of apriority and motivates future cognitive scientific research is the preferred account.

This thesis describes and analyzes implications of going from hypertext news to hypermedia news through a process of design, involving users and producers. As in any product development, it is difficult to conceive design of a novel news format that does not relate to earlier genres, and thus to antecedent designs. The hypothesis is that this problem can be addressed by explicitly taking a genre perspective to guide interaction design. This thesis draws on genre theory, which has previously been used in rhetoric, literature, and information systems. It is also informed by theories from humancomputer interaction. The methodological approach is a case study of the ELIN project, in which new tools for online hypermedia newspaper production were developed and integrated. The study follows the project from concept design to interaction design and implementation of user interfaces, over three years. The thesis makes three contributions. Firstly, a genre perspective on interaction design is described, revealing broadly in what respects genre affects design. Secondly, the online newspaper genre is described. Based on a content analysis of online newspaper front-pages, and interviews with users and producers, genre specific design recommendations regarding hypertext news front-page design are given. A content analysis of Swedish online newspapers provides a basis for a design rationale of the context stream element, which is an important part of the news context on article pages. Regarding hypervideo news, design rationale is given for the presentation of hypervideo links, in the context of a hypermedia news site. The impact on news production in terms of dynamics of convergence is also discussed. Thirdly, the design processes in cooperative scenario building workshops are evaluated, regarding how the users and producers were able to contribute. It provides implications and lessons learned for the workshop phase model. A discourse analysis also reveals important facilitator skills and how participants relied on genre in the design process.

As active safety systems installed in vehicles become more common and more sophisticated, a concise method of testing them in conditions as close to real risk situations as possible becomes necessary. This study looks at the possibilities of developing use cases, using video recordings of real risk situations, obtained through naturalistic driving studies. The concept of conflicts is explored as a substitute to actual accidents. A method of finding conflicts in a large data material from looking at the acceleration signal and its derivative, referred to as jerk is also sought. These possibilities are tried on material from a previously conducted naturalistic driving study. The results are an improvement in the ability to find conflict situations automatically, and a suggestion to how use cases can be produced from video recordings of conflicts obtained through naturalistic driving studies. The DREAM framework is used and modified in order to aid with data collection and interpretation.

Användningen av datorer i arbetet har blivit en allt vanligare företeelse på arbetsplatsen, och för anställda på till exempel callcenter är datorer ett oumbärligt inslag i arbetssituationen. Med tekniken följer dock inte enbart fördelar; användningen av datorstöd kan även leda till kognitiva arbetsmiljöproblem och stress och ha en märkbart negativ inverkan på den psykosociala arbetsmiljön. Genom teoretisk genomgång och kvalitativa intervjuer med arbetsmiljökunniga konstateras dock att det saknas bra utvärderingsverktyg för att uppmärksamma denna typ avproblem. En arbetsplatsstudie på ett callcenter används för att visa på hur användningen av datorstöd kan inverka negativt på den psykosociala arbetsmiljön, och dess resultat ligger till grund för ett helt nytt utvärderingsverktyg. Detta syftar till att hjälpa organisationer och företagshälsovård att uppmärksamma kognitiva och psykosociala arbetsmiljöproblem relaterade till användningen av datorstöd, med hjälp av termer som kognitiva krav, kontroll och socialt stöd. Förhoppningen är att verktyget ska bidra till att öka medvetenheten om kognitiva arbetsmiljöproblem och teknikstress, och att i längden medverka till att förbättra datoranvändarens psykosociala arbetsmiljö.

No clear consensus exists in the scientific community of what constitutes efficient dual-tasking abilities. Moreover, the training of executive components has been given increased attention in the literature in recent years. Investigating transferability of cognitive training in a complex task setting, thirty subjects practiced for five days on a Name-Tag task (controls) or a Dual N-Back task (experimental), subsequently being tested on two transfer tasks; the Automated Operation Span and a dual task (Trail Making task + Mathematical Addition task). Dual N-Back training previously transferred to unrelated intelligence tests and in this study is assumed to rely primarily on executive attention. Executive attention, functioning to resolve interference and maintaining task-relevant information in working memory, has previously been linked to fluid intelligence and to dual-tasking. However, no transfer effects were revealed. The length of training may have been too short to reveal any such effects. However, the three complex tasks correlated significantly, suggesting common resources, and therefore having potentials as transfer tasks. Notably, subjects with the highest task-specific improvements performed worse on the transfer tasks than subjects improving less, suggesting that task-specific gains do not directly correlate with any transfer effect. At present, if transfer exists in these settings, data implies that five days of training is insufficient for a transfer to occur. Important questions for future research relates to the necessary conditions for transfer to occur, such as the amount of training, neural correlates, attention, and motivation.

Cognitive and emotional processes both seem to contribute in the production of moral judgments, but how they interact is still under investigation. Greene’s dual-process model suggests that these processes constitute dissociable systems in the brain, which are hypothesized to give rise to two qualitatively different ways of moral thinking characterized by two normative moral theories, consequentialism and deontology. Greene indicates that this research undermine deontology as a normative theory. The empirical investigation of moral judgments implies that the dual-process model only seems to accurately predict and explain moral judgments in moral dilemmas involving physical harmful intentions. Regardless of the models empirical support, the empirical findings in the study of moral judgments could have normative and metaethical implications.

The relationship between positive emotions and school satisfaction was studied in 19 adolescents aged 13,57 to 15,17 years (M=14,45, SD=0,446), of these 50% were female. The subjects were all Caucasian native Swedish speakers. Schools satisfaction, life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect and gratitude was measured at the beginning of the study and again fourteen days later. During the fourteen days, the subjects were given a task to carry out each day. The control condition was asked to list up to five things that had affected them during the last day. The experimental condition was asked to list up to five things they were grateful for in the last day. The results did not show any relationship between positive affect and school satisfaction. It is suggested that the results might be caused by either too little time for the intervention to cause a significant effect, by the subjects failing to carry out the given task each day or by too few subjects to rule out random effects.

Women in general seem to have a complicated relationship with their bodies and their body image. A small percent of the female population develop a serious pathological eating pattern which is characterized by a disturbed image of body size and shape. This disturbance has been investigated by many researchers and the quest of finding the underlying neural correlates has progressed enormously during the last decade. The relationship between disturbed eating patterns and body image distortions is highly complicated. The purpose of this review article is to give an overview of current research literature and scientific results. The aim is to find a framework for the phenomenon of body image distortions among both healthy and non-healthy women. Differences between genders and how food intake affects body image will also be addressed. The focus lies on behavioral traits and the underlying neural correlates, with focus on both the perceptual and the cognitive-affective component.

Concepts are widely agreed to be the basic constituents of thought. Amongst philosophers and psychologists, however, the question of how concepts are structured has been a longstanding problem and a locus of disagreement. I draw on recent work describing how representational content is ascribed to populations of neurons to develop a novel solution to this problem. Because disputes over the structure of concepts often reflect divergent explanatory goals, I begin by arguing for a set of six criteria that a good theory ought to accommodate. These criteria address philosophical concerns related to content, reference, scope, publicity, and compositionality, and psychological concerns related to categorization phenomena and neural plausibility. Next, I evaluate a number of existing theoretical approaches in relation to these six criteria. I consider classical views that identify concepts with definitions, similarity-based views that identify concepts with prototypes or exemplars, theory-based views that identify concepts with explanatory schemas, and atomistic views that identify concepts with unstructured mental symbols that enter into law-like relations with their referents. I conclude that none of these accounts can satisfactorily accommodate all of the criteria. I then describe the theory of representational content that I employ to motivate a novel account of concept structure. I briefly defend this theory against competitors, and I describe how it can be scaled from the level of basic perceptual representations to the level of highly complex conceptual representations. On the basis of this description, I contend that concepts are structured dynamically through sets of transformations of single source representation, and that the content of a given concept specifies the set of potential transformations it can enter into. I conclude by demonstrating that the ability of this account to meet all of the criteria introduced beforehand. I consider objections to my views throughout.