How do social dominance and social information influence reproduction and the brain?

How does living in a social environment influence the brain? In particular, we ask the following questions: How do animals perceive and use social information? How does the perception of social information influence the reproductive system? Where is this represented in the brain? We present a model system in which these questions can be addressed, focusing on the brain's role in integrating information. In the social fish, Astatotilapia burtoni (Haplochromis), the relationship between social status and gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH1) has been well established. Change in status results in numerous changes in the physiology of A. burtoni at every level of organization. Social status can regulate reproduction via the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis. GnRH1 is used by the brain to signal the pituitary about reproductive state so reproductive control depends on regulation of this signaling peptide. In this fish, social dominance is tightly coupled to fertility. Here, we have exploited this link to understand the regulatory systems from circulating hormones, brain volume to gene expression.     

The Ecosystem Approach and the Search for An Objective and Content for the Concept of Holistic Ocean Governance

Although the need for holistic ocean governance has been widely accepted and some implementation efforts have been undertaken, there is still a significant lack of understanding or agreement as to its content, or primary objective(s). While both principled and process-based approaches have been proposed as providing objectives or content for the holistic approach, both have flaws. In this article, an approach that combines both principle and process—the ecosystem approach—is assessed and the degree to which it can provide and does already provide such content and objective(s) is explored.     

Analysis of seminal plasma from roosters carrying the Sd (sperm degeneration) allele.

In previous research, subfertile roosters carrying the Sd (sperm degeneration) allele were characterized by malformed proximal efferent ducts. An abnormal biochemical milieu within the excurrent ducts of the testis was inferred. The objective of the present study was to compare seminal plasma composition between mutant (Sd) and normal (sd+) roosters. Phenotypic mutants were selected--on the basis of sperm viability--from a flock of Delaware roosters. After weekly ejaculations, sperm viability was < 60% for mutant roosters as compared to 100% for normal roosters. As reported previously, sperm viability in mutants increased to normal levels after frequent ejaculation. When comparisons were based on semen containing 100% viable spermatozoa, mutants were comparable to normal roosters with respect to sperm concentration and seminal plasma osmolality. Neither genotype was characterized by seminal plasma proteolytic activity at neutral pH. In contrast, seminal plasma from mutants was characterized by an imbalance of electrolytes, amino acids, and protein. Because the rooster lacks accessory sex glands, seminal plasma composition reflects excurrent duct function. Consequently, the abnormal seminal plasma composition of Sd roosters is attributed to excurrent duct dysfunction.     

Early Electrophysiological Basis of Experience-Associated Holistic Processing of Chinese Characters

Recent studies have found holistic processing to be a marker of expertise for perception of words in alphabetic (e.g., English) and non-alphabetic (e.g., Chinese) writing systems, consistent with what has been found for faces and other objects of face-like expertise. It is unknown, however, whether holistic processing of words occurs in an early, perceptual stage as it does for faces. We examined how early holistic processing of Chinese characters emerges by recording the event-related potentials (ERPs) in an adaptation paradigm. Participants judged if the top parts of two sequentially presented characters were the same or different while ignoring the bottom part. An early potential (P1) at the posterior channels was smaller when the attended top parts were the same compared with when they are different, indicating an adaptation effect. Critically, for trials with identical top parts, P1 was larger when the irrelevant bottom parts were different, indicating a release of adaptation. This effect was present only when the two character parts were aligned but not misaligned, and only for characters but not for pseudocharacters. The finding of early sensitivity to all parts of a Chinese character suggests that Chinese characters are represented holistically at a perceptual level.     

Introduction to the Special Issue <Emphasis Type="Italic">Semiotics of Perception</Emphasis> Being in the World of the Living—Semiotic Perspectives

This special issue on the semiotics of perception originates from two workshops arranged in Tartu, Estonia, in February 2009. We are located at the junction of nature and culture, and of semiotics and phenomenology. Can they be reconciled? More particularly, can subfields such as biosemiotics and ecophenomenology be mutually enriching? The authors of the current special issue believe that they can. Semiotic study of life and the living can emerge as properly informed only if it is capable of incorporating observations made in natural science, philosophy and cultural studies. The semiotic study of nature entails an experiential turn in the study of life processes. Perception is—or should be—at the heart of the life sciences.     

Olfaction and Taste: Invasive Odours and Disappearing Objects

The metaphorisation of sight and hearing, the objective senses, dominate the founding ideas, or philosophemes, of Western philosophy. The senses of taste and smell are of little relevance in the formation of conceptual knowledge or in classificatory systems; they are, by virtue of their dissolving objects, incapable of giving objective knowledge in Western metaphysics. Derrida and Ulmer developed a metaphorology that exploits the chemical basis of the subjective senses of taste and smell. The anthropology of the senses takes this questioning of metaphysics into issues of how olfaction and taste function in sociality. In the routine practices of everyday life, is olfaction able to create the sense of community that it does in rituals? Or, has the repression of smell in humanity's evolution towards ‘civilisation’ muted the connective ability of multiple odour particles? In a culture and metaphysics that presumes the separability of the self from the other and the self from the object, is there a place for senses that make a nonsense of separation and objectivity through their state of meaningful dissolution? Through philosophy's metaphorisation, has taste been stripped of its sensuousness and made a sense for aesthetics and not flavours and textures? In a metaphorics premised in judgement and discernment, can taste be a sense that founds sociality? In blurring the boundaries between self and other that are necessary to form and maintain the distinction, the dissolvability of smell and taste makes another metaphorics and other socialities possible. Of all the senses, that of smell—which is attracted without objectifying—bears clearest witness to the urge to lose oneself in and become the ‘other’. As perception and the perceived—both are united—smell is more expressive than the other senses (Horkheimer and Adorno 1979:184).     

Ukhtomski? and the nature of the human "ego"]

A. Ukhtomski? is one of those Russian naturalists of the beginning of the 20th century (K. Tsiolkovski?, V. Vernadski?, K. Timiriazev, I. Pavlov), whose scientific work is characterized by a combination of the valuable contribution to a specific field of science and deep philosophical conceptualizations. Ukhtomski? enriched modern neurophysiology by the ideas on dominant--a stable focus of enhanced excitability, determining the organism reactions to the environmental stimuli. Unlike artificial experimental models, natural dominant--vector of the goal-directed behaviour--represents the needs of immediate satisfaction, dominating at the present moment. Formation of needs hierarchy, characteristic of the given personality, occurs during the process of people communication. Namely, another man serves to the subject a mirror, looking into which he realizes himself as a human being (K. Marx). By his teaching on the dominant, Ukhtomski? has revealed the dual nature of the personality's self-consciousness in the process of its perception of the surrounding people. He showed that involuntary projection of its dominating vital and social needs (motives, intentions) to the image of another man makes the latter only the "double" of the observer, which does not promote the development and enrichment of personality. Actually productive is only the perception which is motivated by the ideal need of learning another personality, sincere interest in him, what makes another person a "well-deserved colocutor", a source of new knowledge about people and himself. The ideas of Ukhtomski? on the nature of human "self" are close to ideological searchings of L. Tolsto? and F. Dostoevski?.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Decreased spermatozoal survivability associated with aberrant morphology of the ductuli efferentes proximales of the chicken (Gallus domesticus)

The objective of this research were twofold: 1) to determine if decreased spermatozoal longevity, a previously reported heritable trait in chickens, was attributable to spermatozoal passage through the excurrent ducts, and 2) to document the morphology of the testicular excurrent ducts from affected roosters. Though spermatozoa were viable at ejaculation, as evidenced by their exclusion of ethidium bromide, fertility after intravaginal insemination of spermatozoa from affected roosters was less (p less than 0.001) than that observed with spermatozoa from nonaffected controls, 37 +/- 2.3 versus 58 +/- 1.5%, respectively, over a 21-day egg-collection interval. In contrast, fertility after intramagnal insemination of testicular spermatozoa from affected roosters was equivalent (p greater than 0.05) to that of nonaffected controls, 47 +/- 2.2 versus 41 +/- 3.6%, respectively. After intravaginal insemination, neither type of testicular spermatozoa fertilized oocytes. The ductuli efferentes proximales from affected roosters were characterized by a greater luminal cross-sectional area as well as a diminished height and number of longitudinal epithelial folds (p less than 0.005). It was concluded that heritable decreased spermatozoal longevity in the chicken is not attributable to an inherent spermatozoal defect. Rather, the defect is acquired during passage of spermatozoa through the extragonadal ducts of the rooster.     

I Gave My Child Life but I Also Gave Her Death

The capacity for a complex inner life—encompassing inner speech, imaginative reverie and unarticulated moods—is an essential feature of living with illness and a principal means through which people interpret, understand and manage their condition. Nevertheless, as Nigel Rapport has pointed out in a recent edition of The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2008: 19 (3)), interiority largely remains a ‘terra‐incognita’ for social science, while anthropology lacks a generally accepted theory or methodological framework for understanding how interiority relates to people’s public actions and expressions. Moreover, as conventional social‐scientific methods are often too static to understand the fluidity of perception among people living with illness or bodily instability, I argue we need to develop new, practical approaches to knowing. By placing the problem of interiority directly into the field and turning it into an ethnographic, practice‐based question to be addressed through fieldwork in collaboration with informants, this article works alongside women living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda with the aim of capturing the unvoiced but sometimes radical changes in being, belief and perception that accompany terminal illness.     

Individuation and holistic processing of faces in rhesus monkeys

Despite considerable evidence that neural activity in monkeys reflects various aspects of face perception, relatively little is known about monkeys' face processing abilities. Two characteristics of face processing observed in humans are a subordinate-level entry point, here, the default recognition of faces at the subordinate, rather than basic, level of categorization, and holistic effects, i.e. perception of facial displays as an integrated whole. The present study used an adaptation paradigm to test whether untrained rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) display these hallmarks of face processing. In experiments 1 and 2, macaques showed greater rebound from adaptation to conspecific faces than to other animals at the individual or subordinate level. In experiment 3, exchanging only the bottom half of a monkey face produced greater rebound in aligned than in misaligned composites, indicating that for normal, aligned faces, the new bottom half may have influenced the perception of the whole face. Scan path analysis supported this assertion: during rebound, fixation to the unchanged eye region was renewed, but only for aligned stimuli. These experiments show that macaques naturally display the distinguishing characteristics of face processing seen in humans and provide the first clear demonstration that holistic information guides scan paths for conspecific faces.     

Assessing the sustainability of water companies: A synthetic indicator approach

Performance indicators (PIs) are essential in the benchmarking process used to rate and rank water companies. However, a set of individual PIs does not provide a holistic assessment of company performance from multiple perspectives. A multidimensional evaluation of the performance of water companies can be achieved by aggregating the PIs into a synthetic indicator. Although the concept of sustainability involves economic, environmental and social criteria, most of the previous studies have not considered these three dimensions simultaneously. This paper discusses a process of indicator aggregation using two approaches based on multi-criteria decision analysis to evaluate and compare the sustainability of water companies from a holistic perspective. A synthetic indicator embracing economic, environmental and social PIs was computed for a sample of 154 Portuguese water companies. Both methods yielded similar rankings of water company sustainability. The techniques and results presented in this paper may be utilized as a means of improving the benchmarking process in regulated water industries, as well as providing valuable contributions to decision-makers on the most efficient steps for improving the sustainability of urban water services.     

Holistic processing of words modulated by reading experience

Perceptual expertise has been studied intensively with faces and object categories involving detailed individuation. A common finding is that experience in fulfilling the task demand of fine, subordinate-level discrimination between highly similar instances is associated with the development of holistic processing. This study examines whether holistic processing is also engaged by expert word recognition, which is thought to involve coarser, basic-level processing that is more part-based. We adopted a paradigm widely used for faces--the composite task, and found clear evidence of holistic processing for English words. A second experiment further showed that holistic processing for words was sensitive to the amount of experience with the language concerned (native vs. second-language readers) and with the specific stimuli (words vs. pseudowords). The adoption of a paradigm from the face perception literature to the study of expert word perception is important for further comparison between perceptual expertise with words and face-like expertise.     

Identification of heritable spermatozoal degeneration within the ductus deferens of the chicken (Gallus domesticus)

Low-fertility (LF) roosters were identified within a line of Delaware chickens. However, LF could be overcome by frequent insemination. Electron microscopy revealed numerous degenerate spermatozoa in LF Delaware semen. Therefore, LF was attributed to suboptimal numbers of functional spermatozoa within the oviduct. Spermatozoal degeneration was not induced (p greater than 0.05) when Leghorn spermatozoa were incubated with Delaware seminal plasma. Ejaculates from F1 roosters were screened for spermatozoal degeneration via uptake of ethidium bromide. Roosters were categorized as producing few, 4 +/- 1% (mean +/- SEM), or numerous, 43 +/- 6%, degenerate spermatozoa. Only roosters within the latter group were characterized by LF (p less than 0.001). When such F1 and F2 roosters were ejaculated daily for 5 days, the percentage of degenerate spermatozoa decreased to less than or equal to 5%. Low fertility was not observed (p greater than 0.05) with such semen from F2 roosters. When these roosters had resumed ejaculating numerous degenerate spermatozoa after a period of sexual rest, 3 representative roosters were killed. Each ductus deferens was subdivided into 9 sections, and spermatozoal integrity was determined for semen from each section. Degeneration commenced in the mid-ductus deferens and progressively increased towards the receptaculum. Thus, a genetic defect resulting in a shortened functional life of the spermatozoon within the ductus deferens has been identified.     

To Perceive or Not Perceive: The Role of Gamma-band Activity in Signaling Object Percepts

The relation of gamma-band synchrony to holistic perception in which concerns the effects of sensory processing, high level perceptual gestalt formation, motor planning and response is still controversial. To provide a more direct link to emergent perceptual states we have used holistic EEG/ERP paradigms where the moment of perceptual “discovery” of a global pattern was variable. Using a rapid visual presentation of short-lived Mooney objects we found an increase of gamma-band activity locked to perceptual events. Additional experiments using dynamic Mooney stimuli showed that gamma activity increases well before the report of an emergent holistic percept. To confirm these findings in a data driven manner we have further used a support vector machine classification approach to distinguish between perceptual vs. non perceptual states, based on time-frequency features. Sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were all above 95%. Modulations in the 30–75 Hz range were larger for perception states. Interestingly, phase synchrony was larger for perception states for high frequency bands. By focusing on global gestalt mechanisms instead of local processing we conclude that gamma-band activity and synchrony provide a signature of holistic perceptual states of variable onset, which are separable from sensory and motor processing.     

Was god ever a ‘boss’ at Wujal Wujal? Lutherans and Kuku‐Yalanji: A socio‐historical analysis

Lutheran missionaries from Germany arrived in 1887 to ‘care for’ and to evangelise to the Kuku‐Yalanji people of the Bloomfield River area of the north Queensland rainforests. They left fifteen years later without having converted a single soul. Was this failure the result of inept missionisation? Was Lutheranism at odds with Kuku‐Yalanji religious beliefs? This paper argues that the answer lies rather at the core of the Kuku‐Yalanji worldview and social universe. Using rich historical sources, this paper demonstrates that Kuku‐Yalanji people—who have particular socio‐territorial ties to the mission lands—instigated an experiment with the missionaries. Their assumption was that the missionaries held a role that was structurally equivalent to that of ‘majamaja’ in their own system—key focal individuals with religious knowledge, power and achieved status operating at the node of a social network on a particular area of ‘country’. The missionaries failed to live up to this expectation and for this and other reasons, Kuku‐Yalanji left and the mission failed with no lasting Christian impact.     

Human voice perception

We are all voice experts. First and foremost, we can produce and understand speech, and this makes us a unique species. But in addition to speech perception, we routinely extract from voices a wealth of socially-relevant information in what constitutes a more primitive, and probably more universal, non-linguistic mode of communication. Consider the following example: you are sitting in a plane, and you can hear a conversation in a foreign language in the row behind you. You do not see the speakers' faces, and you cannot understand the speech content because you do not know the language. Yet, an amazing amount of information is available to you. You can evaluate the physical characteristics of the different protagonists, including their gender, approximate age and size, and associate an identity to the different voices. You can form a good idea of the different speaker's mood and affective state, as well as more subtle cues as the perceived attractiveness or dominance of the protagonists. In brief, you can form a fairly detailed picture of the type of social interaction unfolding, which a brief glance backwards can on the occasion help refine - sometimes surprisingly so. What are the acoustical cues that carry these different types of vocal information? How does our brain process and analyse this information? Here we briefly review an emerging field and the main tools used in voice perception research.     

Why do some coronaviruses become pandemic threats when others do not?

Despite multiple spillover events and short chains of transmission on at least 4 continents, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) has never triggered a pandemic. By contrast, its relative, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has, despite apparently little, if any, previous circulation in humans. Resolving the unsolved mystery of the failure of MERS-CoV to trigger a pandemic could help inform how we understand the pandemic potential of pathogens, and probing it underscores a need for a more holistic understanding of the ways in which viral genetic changes scale up to population-level transmission.

What does it take for a coronavirus to become a pandemic threat? And why has MERS-CoV repeatedly failed to emerge as a pandemic pathogen when SARS-CoV-2 has successfully spread around the world?     

Why Do You Believe in God? Relationships between Religious Belief,Analytic Thinking,Mentalizing and Moral Concern

Prior work has established that analytic thinking is associated with disbelief in God, whereas religious and spiritual beliefs have been positively linked to social and emotional cognition. However, social and emotional cognition can be subdivided into a number of distinct dimensions, and some work suggests that analytic thinking is in tension with some aspects of social-emotional cognition. This leaves open two questions. First, is belief linked to social and emotional cognition in general, or a specific dimension in particular? Second, does the negative relationship between belief and analytic thinking still hold after relationships with social and emotional cognition are taken into account? We report eight hypothesis-driven studies which examine these questions. These studies are guided by a theoretical model which focuses on the distinct social and emotional processing deficits associated with autism spectrum disorders (mentalizing) and psychopathy (moral concern). To our knowledge no other study has investigated both of these dimensions of social and emotion cognition alongside analytic thinking. We find that religious belief is robustly positively associated with moral concern (4 measures), and that at least part of the negative association between belief and analytic thinking (2 measures) can be explained by a negative correlation between moral concern and analytic thinking. Using nine different measures of mentalizing, we found no evidence of a relationship between mentalizing and religious or spiritual belief. These findings challenge the theoretical view that religious and spiritual beliefs are linked to the perception of agency, and suggest that gender differences in religious belief can be explained by differences in moral concern. These findings are consistent with the opposing domains hypothesis, according to which brain areas associated with moral concern and analytic thinking are in tension.     

The Rapid Perceptual Impact of Emotional Distractors

The brief presentation of an emotional distractor can temporarily impair perception of a subsequent, rapidly presented target, an effect known as emotion-induced blindness (EIB). How rapidly does this impairment unfold? To probe this question, we examined EIB for targets that immediately succeeded (“lag-1”) emotional distractors in a rapid stream of items relative to EIB for targets at later serial positions. Experiments 1 and 2 suggested that emotional distractors interfere with items presented very soon after them, with impaired target perception emerging as early as lag-1. Experiment 3 included an exploratory examination of individual differences, which suggested that EIB onsets more rapidly among participants scoring high in measures linked to negative affect.