<p>Over long delays between events, evidence from computational models suggests that neurogenesis may be important for reducing the potential of interference between overlapping memories. These computational models also suggest that at shorter time scales, within a single memory episode, neurogenesis may play a role in binding together elements that share a common spatiotemporal context. Empirical evidence from animal research provides support for both of these hypothesized roles. Interestingly, results from recent research also suggest that depending on the task demands, neurogenesis may either aid or hinder performance.</p> <p>In order to investigate this potential trade-o, we designed the Concentration Memory Task (CMT); a novel spatial memory task which subjected participants to trials where neurogenesis is hypothesized to aid performance and trials where neurogenesis is hypothesized to hinder performance. Furthermore, we tested undergraduates on this novel task and memory tests from the CANTAB battery, and administered neuropsychological mood inventories and a lifestyle questionnaire.</p> <p>Our results suggest that measures on the CMT hypothesized to be dependent upon neurogenesis correlate with and predict performance on putatively neurogenesis-dependent tasks. Furthermore, individuals with potentially suppressed neurogenesis display selective decits on these measures. However, our results failed to provide evidence for a working memory enhancement in these individuals.</p> <p>The results from the present study provide strong encouragement for the continued development of this novel task. We provide evidence that as predicted, individuals with potentially suppressed neurogenesis display increased sensitivity to interference on the CMT. However, we failed to provide evidence that suppressed neurogenesis may enhance working memory performance. This null result may be due to shortcomings in the design of the CMT and a revised protocol that may resolve these shortcomings is discussed. With continued development, the CMT may serve as a tool for detecting early signs of cognitive impairment associated with suppressed neurogenesis.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Past research has supported a representational-hierarchical theory of memory and perception that extends the ventral visual stream into the medial temporal lobe. In this account, representations are organized in a hierarchical manner, such that structures located further anterior in the brain contain complex representations of whole objects and areas further posterior in the visual cortex contain representations of simple features. When conjunctive representations are compromised, an individual must rely on simple-feature representations to complete mnemonic and perceptual tasks. However, these simple-feature representations are susceptible to feature-level interference, which can cause false recognition of novel objects. The goal of the present study was to explore the account’s third assumption: the effect of interference. Experiment 1 examined the effect of interference on neural representations during fMRI. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of different types of interference on a behavioral memory task with older adults thought to have impaired conjunctive representations. Although the results of the first experiment were inconclusive, the second experiment revealed that older adults’ recognition memory performance was shielded from semantic, but not perceptual, interference. The implications of this finding are discussed.

<p> Category-specific semantic deficits (CSSD) result in the inability to recognize, recall, and/or remember objects from a particular semantic category. There is a common pattern of impairments observed in CSSD patients that is reviewed in Section One. In Section Two, I used a tempo-matching speeded word verification task to investigate the early stages of semantic memory to examine the similarities between healthy participants under time pressure and the patient data. Specifically, I sought to produce in the latter the reversal of the basic level effect found in CSSD, and to examine healthy participant data for other CSSD trends. The speeded methodology generally failed to replicate the reversal of the basic level effect, except for several specific items at the shortest response deadline. The final study in Section Two examines the effect of semantic relatedness on this task. Three types of semantic relatedness each reduced the speed and accuracy of responses relative to unrelated conditions. Section Three provides an overview and discussion of the results. The failure to replicate the reversal of the basic level effect suggests that speeded classification of neuropsychologically relevant stimuli does not share a common etiology with CSSD.</p>

<p> Chronic unemployment is one of the top stressors in life that affects an individual&rsquo;s income, identity and self-worth, emotional and physical health, and personal relationships. At the extreme, the stressors are associated with an increased risk of suicide. While the damaging effects of chronic unemployment are extensive, not everyone experiences such negative consequences. The focus of research has primarily been on the negative impact rather than exploring what may account for the differences in the ways that individuals adapt, such as the intelligent use of positive emotions. Researchers using quantitative methods have identified significant correlations among emotional intelligence (EI), positive emotions, and coping. The problem is that the results have not provided an understanding of the deliberate use of positive emotions to cope with stress. The purpose of this qualitative, hermeneutic (interpretative), phenomenological study was to provide a rich, contextual understanding of the processes by which individuals activated and utilized positive emotions via EI to cope with the multiple stressors associated with chronic unemployment. A purposeful sample of six adults receiving services from the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Job Center and unemployed for a period of 6 months or more participated in the study. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews to collect the data. The data was analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The identified themes underscored the importance of providing support services to extend vocational interventions and can be used to inform policy makers of changes needed in unemployment programs. Second, the use of a phenomenological approach to examine the confidence in the ability to use emotions and the ability to activate and use positive emotions provided support for the proposition that the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (PE) facilitates the application of trait EI and the deliberate use of positive emotions to cope with stress.</p>

No description available.

The introduction provides a theoretical analysis of a conceptual link between the ability to predict action based upon a false belief, and the ability to describe the contents of a misrepresenting representational artefact. This justifies an empirical comparison of these two abilities in three and four year old normally developing children, and high functioning children with autism (those having a Verbal Mental Age greater than four years). The first half of the empirical work describes the development and investigation of two procedures that test non-mental misrepresentation (false models and misleading direction signs). These are compared with performance on established false belief tasks to examine both levels of absolute difficulty, and developmental coincedence in task ability. It is found that there is a strong relationship in normally developing children between the ability to pass a false belief task, and to interpret the contents of a misrepresenting artefact. This close relationship is not found in children with autism, where tasks in the mental domain present greater difficulty than, and are unrelated to, the tasks in the non-mental domain. This suggests that the children with autism do not follow the same conceptual developmental course as normal children. Two subsequent experiments examine the abilities of children with autism in understanding the appearance reality distinction. It is found that this group and normally developing children are better at a colour transformation task than a deceptive objects task. An existing suggestion in the literature that children with autism produce a majority of phenomentist errors was not replicated. Experiment 6 exploited children's good performance on the colour transformation task in a new paradigm to produce a genuinely misrepresenting photograph. This task was of equal difficulty and highly correlated with false belief in the normally developing group. For children with autism this task was easier than and uncorrelated with false belief. These findings are discussed in relation to existing theories of normal development and the condition of autism.

<p> Given that mindfulness-based training techniques (MBT) stimulates and pushes one&rsquo;s core cognitive control capacity limits, brain stimulation techniques, such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), can be used to facilitate the ongoing neural patterns of functional connectivity toward long-lasting neuroplastic change. The current study assessed the combined effects of MBT with right frontal tDCS on cognitive control abilities and their corresponding brain patterns of activation using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This study found an enhancement in working memory and sustained attention performance along with changes in the attention-related P3 component and its theta and alpha oscillatory profiles recorded by EEG. Furthermore, a reconfiguration in the chronnectome of large-scale resting-state networks was observed using resting-state fMRI, in addition to task-related changes in the polymodal neural architecture associated with encoding and adaptation, which may bridge the necessary connections from near to far transfer gains.</p>

<p>Phenomenologically, humans effectively label and report feeling distinct emotions, yet the extent to which emotions are represented categorically in nervous system activity is controversial. Theoretical accounts differ in this regard, some positing distinct emotional experiences emerge from a dimensional representation (e.g., along axes of valence and arousal) whereas others propose emotions are natural categories, with dedicated neural bases and associated response profiles. This dissertation aims to empirically assess these theoretical accounts by examining how emotions are represented (either as disjoint categories or as points along continuous dimensions) in autonomic and central nervous system activity by integrating psychophysiological recording and functional neuroimaging with machine-learning based analytical methods. Results demonstrate that experientially, emotional events are well-characterized both along dimensional and categorical frameworks. Measures of central and peripheral responding discriminate among emotion categories, but are largely independent of valence and arousal. These findings suggest dimensional and categorical aspects of emotional experience are driven by separable neural substrates and demonstrate that emotional states can be objectively quantified on the basis of nervous system activity.</p> / Dissertation

<p> This thesis documents a correlational study of wayfinding experience and survey and route knowledge in a large, complex building. Twelve patient transport personnel who work in a very large, regional hospital facility participated as wayfinding subject matter experts. This correlational study addresses three primary research questions. Do more experienced patient transport personnel have more accurate survey knowledge of a large, complex building than less experienced patient transport personnel? Do more experienced patient transport personnel have more accurate route knowledge of a large, complex building than less experienced patient transport personnel? Do more experienced patient transport personnel choose more efficient routes in a large, complex building than less experienced patient transport personnel? The study measures survey knowledge using a pointing task and a mapping task. The study measures route knowledge and route efficiency using a route diagramming task. Linear and nonlinear regression analyses are used to analyze the data. The results of this study may contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between wayfinding experience and survey and route knowledge, as well as offer insights into how to better design wayfinding training materials and methods and building signage.</p>

<p> The web has become more than a supplementary information resource but a valuable and pervasive tool for nearly all aspects of daily life including social and community participation, health promotion, creative pursuits, education, and employment opportunity. However, the web is not yet easily accessible to all people, particularly those with cognitive disabilities who encounter many challenges with access and use of the web including limited accessibility of online content and difficulty with content comprehension. Furthermore, little is documented about how individuals with cognitive disabilities who currently use the web are overcoming or being inhibited by these challenges. Much of what is documented is anecdotal or generalized as broad technical guidance rather than providing methods to empower individual end users. This research explores which websites people with cognitive disabilities use and do not use and what challenges and successes they encounter with those websites. We developed the SimpleWebAnywhere tool to address the above research needs and serve as a technology probe to determine how content simplification affects web use by people with cognitive disabilities. We explored personalizable content transformation techniques, including advertisement removal, content extraction, and text to speech, to make webpages easier to use and comprehend. We found that many people with cognitive disabilities frequently access the web for long periods of time despite popular opinion to the contrary. Web access is preferred via mobile platforms, such as smartphones and tablet computers. Users had a strong preference for entertainment content largely comprised of images, videos, and games but did not necessarily have difficulty using or understanding long, complex textual content. An intercommunity approach of combining existing open source software to provide personalized content manipulations was found to be an effective method to improve web accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities.</p>