O P300 auditivo é um potencial evocado que reflete a atividade neurofisiológica das habilidades cognitivas auditivas de atenção, memória, discriminação e tomada de decisão. A possibilidade de correlacionar aspectos do comportamento auditivo a fenômenos fisiológicos observáveis tem despertado o interesse de profissionais de diversas áreas interessados no estudo das disfunções auditivas. Por ser um procedimento novo, os métodos de análise e interpretação dos resultados ainda não estão padronizados e, portanto, devem ser explorados e discutidos visando maior segurança para aplicação clínica e científica. Este estudo investigou a estabilidade na análise e interpretação do P300 auditivo seguindo um conjunto de regras (critério) pré-determinadas. Para isso, quatro profissionais da área audiológica analisaram, em 2 momentos diferentes, 70 traçados de P300 de crianças e adolescentes saudáveis entre 8 e 18 anos de idade, seguindo as mesmas regras para a identificação das ondas (N1, P2, N2 e P3) e marcação de suas medidas de latência. As medidas de latência da onda P300 foram submetidas a análises qualitativa e quantitativa. A análise qualitativa investigou os tipos de erros cometidos pelo examinador no uso do critério de determinação do P300 (5,9% do total de 560 medidas obtidas). Os erros mais freqüentes no uso do critério foram: não identificar o P300 como a maior onda logo após o complexo N1-P2-N2 e identificar uma “falsa” onda P300. A análise quantitativa investigou a variabilidade da medida da latência do P300 atribuível ao examinador. Os resultados mostraram que não houve diferença significante entre as análises inter e intra-examinador, tendo sido encontradas correlações significantes entre as medidas de latência, indicando boa fidedignidade no teste-reteste e alta concordância entre os examinadores no modo como analisaram os traçados das ondas. O critério usado neste estudo demonstrou ser útil na determinação do P300, podendo ser sugerido com segurança para uso clínico e científico. / The P300 auditory is an evoked potential which reflects the neurophysiological activity of auditory cognitive abilities: attention, memory, discrimination and making decision as well. The possibility of correlation between aspects of auditory behavior and observable physiological phenomena has increased the interest in the study of auditory dysfunctions among professionals of various fields. Due the fact that the P300 is a recent procedure, the methods of its analysis and interpretation have not been standardized yet. Therefore, they must be explored and debated aiming more security for clinical and scientific application. In this study it was investigated the stability in the analysis and interpretation of P300 auditory, according to a pre-determined set of rules. Four audiologists analyzed twice 70 records of P300 of healthy children and adolescents between 8 and 18 years of age, identifying the waves (N1, P2, N2, P3) and their latencies according to the pre-determined set of rule. The P300 latency measurements were submitted to quantitative and qualitative analysis. The qualitative analysis looked into types of errors made by the examiner during the P300 identification (5.9% in a total of 560 measurements). The no-identification of the P300 as the highest wave following the complex N1-P2-N2, likewise the “wrong” identification of P300 wave were the most frequent mistakes. In the quantitative analysis we investigated the variability of the P300 latency measurements attributable to the examiner. The results showed that there were no significant differences between the inter- and intra-examiner analyses. Significant correlations were found between the measurements, showing a good test-retest reliability and high concordance among the examiners in the way they analyzed the wave records. We conclude that the rules used in this study are useful to the identification of the P300 in both clinical and scientific situations.

Sequential learning refers to the ability to learn the temporal and ordinal patterns of one’s environment. The current study examines the effects of synchronous and asynchronous temporal patterns on sequential learning. Twenty healthy adults participants (11 females, 18–34 years old) performed two versions of a visual sequential learning paradigm while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Reaction times to the targets following two predictor types were also recorded. Reaction time data revealed that learning occurred in both temporal conditions, although overall the synchronous condition was responded to faster. On the other hand, the mean ERP amplitudes between 300 and 700ms post-predictor onset revealed an interaction between timing condition and predictability in the posterior regions of interest. Specifically, the ERP results indicated that learning of the statistical contingencies between items was more pronounced for the synchronous temporal condition compared to the asynchronous condition.

This dissertation consists of a review of the N2 component of the ERP and five experiments investigating the role of complex visual object categorization in modulating the N2 and two other ERP components: the P300, and a late prefrontal positivity. In the review, we focus on paradigms that elicit N2 components with an anterior scalp distribution, namely cognitive control, novelty, and sequential matching, arguing that the anterior N2 should be divided into separate control- and mismatch-related subcomponents. The experiments manipulated categorical typicality and the presence of conflicting information as participants categorized multi-featured artificial animals. In Experiments 1 and 2, rule-irrelevant features were correlated with particular categories during training. During transfer, participants applied a one- dimensional rule to stimuli with category-congruent, category-incongruent, or novel rule-irrelevant features. Category-incongruent and novel features delayed RT and P300 latency, but had no effect on the N2. Experiment 3 used a two-dimensional rule to create conflict between rule-relevant features. Conflict resulted in prolonged RTs, P300 latency, and larger amplitudes of a prefrontal positive component, but had no impact on the N2. Novel features did enhance the N2 relative to frequent features. In Experiments 4 and 5, participants categorized stimuli using a more complex three dimensional rule. Conflicting stimuli shared two features with one prototype and one feature with a second prototype while prototypes contained no conflicting information. A third category contained stimuli with either common or novel features. Again, perceptual novelty, but not conflict, increased the amplitude of the N2. Compared to prototypes, stimuli with conflicting information slowed reaction times but had no effect on P300 latency, instead enhancing a late prefrontal positive component. These results suggest limitations on the generality of the N2's sensitivity to conflicting information, while confirming its sensitivity to attended visual novelty. We suggest that, while P300 latency tracks stimulus evaluation time, application of a complex categorization rule requires a later stage of evaluation involving prefrontal cortex. In very complex rules, computations indexed by the P3 may be terminated early in favor of computations in PFC.

This PhD submission by previous publication comprises independent critical work from 1997-2001 on 'hypermodernism'. Hypermodern 'new cultural theory' and 'technopolitics' designates a rejection of the binary opposition between modernism and postmodernism as a response to the crises of contemporary culture. Hypermodernism thus refuses the prefix 'post', substituting instead the prefix 'hyper' or 'excess'. Hypermodernism is neither a denial of the domineering epistemological optimism of modernity nor a dismissal of the peremptory theoretical pessimism of postmodernity. Rather, it is an original analytical engagement with and acceptance of 'double moments' of cultural affirmation and negation or 'the continuation of modernism by other means'. The contribution to knowledge represented by the published work is the innovative interpretation and extension of hypermodernism to 'new social theory' and technopolitics. It delineates the renunciation of the binary antagonism between modernity and postmodernity through an acknowledgement of the exigencies of 'hypermodernity'. The premise of hypermodernity is confirmed through the prefix 'hyper' and the discovery of the 'economies of excess'. Hypermodernity therefore integrates the hope of `dromoeconomics' with the despair of the 'project(ile)s of hypermodern(organ)ization'. Here, autonomous critical abilities and the recognition of double moments of social confirmation and contradiction are understood as 'the continuation of modernity by other means'. The concluding section of the PhD submission deals with recent work from 2001 that explores the hypermodern. New cultural, social and technopolitical theory is positively applied to the reaction of the French cultural theorist, Paul Virilio, to the 'strategies of deception'. Hypermodernism repudiates the prefix 'postmodern war', exchanging it for the assertion that 'The Kosovo W@r Did Take Place', merging a critique of the promises of the modern Persian Gulf war and the despondency of postmodern 'cyberwar'. Finally, individual evaluative powers partake of and identify such double moments as the 'orbital space' of the 'integral accident' or 'the continuation of politics by other means'.

This research project critically explores the manner in which online interaction between individuals affects their understanding of information and what this means for the meaning of information within this context. In order to examine these interactions and their effects the research question asked is: To what extent is digital discourse within the context of the online information explosion rendering all information effectively subjective? The aims of the research were to investigate the relationship between individuals and information and to develop a conceptual framework through which to understand this relationship. Coupled with this concept of interpretative methodology within this research is the idea of Verstehen as a way of developing an understanding of language and behaviour. As the research required public online discourse surrounding an information rich topic it was decided that the issue of climate change would meet these needs. It is an issue which is steeped in debate and that features a significant volume of publicly available information in the form of official statistics, reports and projections as well as widespread media coverage. The analysis of this data highlighted the prominence of certain key elements, such as notable individuals who can be seen taking on roles which direct the discourse shaping it either through the comments they make or the information which they share. This generative role-taking plays into the idea that social validation and the perceived credibility of an individual are vital to the impact which they can have on a discussion and in their ability to shape the opinions of others. The contribution to knowledge can be found in the relationships with the discourse with regard to the issue of who constructs meaning for a piece of information; reconceptualising who is regarded as owning a source and who is regarded as credible in an online social context.

Telomere, the ends of chromosomes, consists of simple hexameric repeats. In human, TTAGGG repeat is found at the ends of all chromosomes. Telomeres progressively shorten with age in somatic cells, because the insufficient telomerase activity fails to compensate the progressive telomeric erosion. Thus, the reduction of telomeric length in senescent cells is believed to result from active cell division that erodes chromosomal termini. The telomere length supposed to have been an evaluation tool for aging in human. Schizophrenia is a thought, perception disorder, generally regarded as an illness with onset in late adolescence or early adult life with a prevalence rate of 1%. Although the long-term course of schizophrenia shows great heterogeneity among patients, a significant number of patients experience very poor outcomes, shows severe cognitive impairment that is suggestive of a progressive neurodegenerative disorder. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between neurodegenerative process and telomere length in schizophrenic patients. The latency of P300 event-related potentials is prolonged in disorders associated with neural damage and degeneration and also becomes prolonged in the course of aging process. This study is separated as two parts: first part, using the event-related potentials P300 latency as a tool to evaluate the cognitive dysfunction and aging process in schizophrenics. One hundred and fifty three long-term hospitalization chronic schizophrenics were recruited as the experimental group of this research, including 44 male and 109 female patients with mean age of 38.4 years. These patients were divided into 2 groups according to the different responses to treatment, global assessment functional scale (GAF): 91 with good response to treatment; 62 with poor response to treatment. The normal control group included 101 normal people, male 37 and female 76, with mean age of 38.1 years. The event-related potentials was elicited by auditory oddball paradigm. The P300 latency prolonged in these two schizophrenic patients. The longest P300 latency was found in the poor response schizophrenic group. The shortest P300 latency was found in the normal group. Linear regression coefficients were computed to determine the slope of component P300 latency on age and other factors. The slope of P300 latency on age in normal control group is 1.2 ms/y. In schizophrenic groups, not only the age, but the GAF as the most contributing factors in the neurodegenerative process. Second part, the subjects were selected from part one, 48 chronic schizophrenia whose mean age was 37.9 years and 48 age-, handedness-, and gender-matched normal control subjects. The schizophrenic patients were divided into 2 groups according to the different responses to treatment: 34 with good response to treatment; 14 with poor response to treatment. The telomere length, measured by assay of terminal restriction fragments (TRFs), was determined in HinfI-digested DNA by Southern blot analysis using a (TTAGGG)4 probe. The shortest TRF length was found in the poor response schizophrenic group. There was no difference between the good response schizophrenic group and normal control group. TRF length in peripheral leukocytes obtained from normal control group decreased by approximately 89bP per year. In schizophrenic groups, the TRF length was found that not the age, but the age onset and GAF as the most contributing factors in linear regression model. This study shows that the poor response schizophrenic patients have the most rapid neurodegenerative process in P300 latency and TRF length evaluation. It implicates the homogeneous group, and can be considered as the kraepelinian schizophrenics, very poor outcome group.

After languishing for many years in the periphery of the field as a tacitly closed off concept, visuality is back on the agenda of Visual Culture Studies and, with it, the issue of power. In contrast to its informal use as a term to describe the ‘social fact’ of the visual, Nicholas Mirzoeff’s full scale reappraisal of visuality has revealed its strategic, military genealogy. However, in this and other revisionist accounts, the theory of twenty-first century power remains a predominantly hegemonic one, with visuality operating as an outside force, a power that structures and defines the reality of a world to which we remain subject. In this essay, by identifying emergent tendencies in the logic of capitalism, I present an alternate account of the present. I expose a post-hegemonic visuality which operates by co-opting the radical and experimental energies of digital culture, a visuality which no longer defines a fixed world but exploits the distributed social powers of ‘worlding’, a visuality which taps into and mediates our collective potential to make and remake new worlds. I situate this worlding visuality in the science-fictional context of what Gilles Deleuze calls ‘control society’. In so doing, I attend to the principal lacunae of the field – capital and labour – and examine how social and cultural activities previously identified with ‘resistance’ are increasingly integrated within a dynamic, complex system of power. By focusing on this ‘media ecology’, and taking into consideration the broader cultural implications of network technologies, I dispute the popular rhetoric of the digital and challenge conventional definitions of ‘the visual’. Indeed, I contend that a newly intense visuality necessitates a transformation in current attitudes toward the aesthetic, and that we must examine more closely the realm of bodily affect. I emphasize, throughout, a new temporality of control, insisting that it is crucial we now recognize an immanent, ontological visuality, a power which utilizes the ‘always-on’ communicational relations of a culture associated with cloud computing. To undertake such a study, I employ and adapt a set of tools which (though largely unfamiliar to the field formally identified with visual culture) stimulate the energies expressed in several realms of contemporary thought, particularly those assembled as ‘Non-Representational Theory’. My explicit contribution to the field is formulated around an argument for the need to go beyond representation, and, moreover, that to achieve any critical purchase on digital culture, theories of visuality must attend to the realm of the virtual, as outlined by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, among others. For examples, I turn to some apparently familiar places: advertising, television, film and gaming. But, in making transversal intersections across divergent disciplines, I also find expressions of this emergent visuality in less conventional spheres: in twenty-first century literature, in software procedures, in socio-biological experiments. Rather than images to be ‘read’ or interpreted, I take the relations and disjunctions between such examples to be symptoms of a new capitalist visuality, one that manipulates and exploits the multiple, paradoxical nature of the real.

Session ID: SA-B1-3 / SCIS & ISIS 2010, Joint 5th International Conference on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems and 11th International Symposium on Advanced Intelligent Systems. December 8-12, 2010, Okayama Convention Center, Okayama, Japan

The following thesis examines the possibility that the contemporary Western political leader can be assessed and understood as a performer. It subsequently highlights the various repercussions of this statement, from theoretical, practical, historical and cultural perspectives. Through an extensive, multi-disciplinary literature review and case specific examples, the author argues that researching the politician as a performer has both practical and theoretical value. Included in this review are analyses of key contemporary issues surrounding political performance. The various uses of contemporary media, including the skills and semiotics that they generate, are discussed. Questions are raised regarding the audience's ability to interpret the information they receive through mediated performance. A working definition of audience is developed, to include those who consume and interpret political performance. Also explored in relation to political performance are questions of contemporary celebrity, performativity, and feminism. The thesis suggests that not only is the politician a performer, but that the related theories of performance have an impact on political dialogue at a variety of levels. As is highlighted in the thesis, existing literature has not examined the politician from this perspective. Therefore the work contributes to the body of knowledge around performance and cultural studies.

This thesis argues that orthodox social constructionist and culturalist explanations of the mutation of interpersonal violence in the Anglo-American world over the past three decades need to be challenged. Macro-patterns of interpersonal violence appearing over historical time and social space indicate a direct correlation with changes in political economy. It is argued here that specific forms of physical and sublimated symbolic violence were functional to the development of mercantile and classic industrial capitalism, and thus they were cultivated and harnessed in complex forms across this time period. This suggests that the 'civilizing process' formulated in terms of evolving social relationships and emotional sensibilities is inadequate as an explanation for the decline in the murder and serious violence rates in Europe, and this concept needs to be reformulated in a direct relationship with political economy. The new concept of the 'pseudo-pacification process' arose from an attempted reformulation, which represents the internal pacification of the population as an accidental and rather fragile by-product of capitalism's functional requirements. Current rises in the rates of murder and serious interpersonal violence in vortices appearing in the shift from the classical productivist economy managed by interventionist state politics to a consumer/service economy managed by neo-liberal politics suggests that indeed the aetiological connection between political economy and violence rates needs to be returned to the foreground of criminological theory. The putative 'sensibilities' at the heart of the civilizing process are more likely to be emotional attachments to the rules and affectations that evolved as protective insulation for the brutally competitive practices that energise the capitalist economic project, and they are in danger of disintegrating as the pseudo-pacification process loses much of its functional value in the consumer economy and begins to break down.