The work presented here provides some exploratory argument concerning what can be expected to hap... more The work presented here provides some exploratory argument concerning what can be expected to happen, at the biological level of the description, when a act of persuasion takes place. It also describes some scientific tools and actual neurobiotechnological methods that can be used to describe the underlying phenomena that happen during a convincing act.
In the framework of new neurotechnologies available for education improvement, a general referent... more In the framework of new neurotechnologies available for education improvement, a general referential conceptual model of brain operation and functioning, together with some different ways to visualize brain processing, in terms of functional architectural activity patterns, during basal and cognitive tasks, are presented. The model proposed is based on a general description of interacting modules in the brain, acting as coordinated and mutually regulated units, assembled in terms of temporal synchrony and tuning correlations measured between EEG channels, recording cortical brain activity during different tasks. An exploratory method to allow data gathering for channels spectral map visualization and functional EEG architectural patterns of basal brain activity and cognitive tasks is presented to determine inter-and intra-individual differences and the potential of individual identification based on this approach. Results obtained in this way support the idea that it is possible to ...
Arsenic has been associated with multiple harmful effects at the cellular level. Indirectly these... more Arsenic has been associated with multiple harmful effects at the cellular level. Indirectly these defects could be related to impairment of the integrity of the immune system, in particular in lymphoid population. To characterize the effect of Arsenic on redox status on this population, copper smelter workers and arsenic unexposed donors were recruited for this study. We analyzed urine samples and lymphocyte enriched fractions from donors to determinate arsenic levels and lymphocyte proliferation. Moreover, we studied the presence of oxidative markers MDA, vitamin E and SOD activity in donor plasma. Here we demonstrated that in human beings exposed to high arsenic concentrations, lymphocyte MDA and arsenic urinary levels showed a positive correlation with SOD activity, and a negative correlation with vitamin E serum levels. Strikingly, lymphocytes from the arsenic exposed population respond to a polyclonal stimulator, phytohemaglutinin, with higher rates of thymidine incorporation t...
Abstract.-We describe the first nesting colony of the Red-billed Tropicbird (Phaethon aethereus) ... more Abstract.-We describe the first nesting colony of the Red-billed Tropicbird (Phaethon aethereus) known in Chile, the southernmost colony for this species described to date. During two breeding seasons the nesting phenology was observed. The birds arrived in October, ...
This paper details the special avifauna of Juan Fernández archipelago, off Chile. We visited the ... more This paper details the special avifauna of Juan Fernández archipelago, off Chile. We visited the archipelago from 3 to 15 March 2013, mainly to study the local gadfly petrels Pterodroma at sea, namely Juan Fernández Petrel P externa, Stejneger's Petrel P longirostris and De Filippi's Petrel P defilip-piana. While on land, we focused on the endemic landbird taxa of the archipelago, including three full species. This expedition was undertaken by Hadoram Shirihai as part of the Tubenoses Project & Extreme Gadfly Petrel Expeditions for the forthcoming book Albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters of the world (Shirihai & Bretagnolle in prep). Special interests included documenting plumage variation, pelagic distribution and population numbers, and feeding techniques and species associations. In addition, we studied the petrels' island return strategy of a number of species that breed in 'petrel-capital' Masafuera. As far as we know, our pelagic 'mass chumming' ex...
Human behavior is the result of a long and intricate history of evolutionary events that probably... more Human behavior is the result of a long and intricate history of evolutionary events that probably began more than 4,500 million years ago with the first cells that populated our planet. Perhaps it may be surprising that much of the behavior and complexity we see today in the animals that we call “superior”, were individually developed by single-celled creatures that seem insignificant to our daily lives, but laid the chemical and molecular basis that are at the root of all emerging future complexity. This essay is a brief tour of this biological evolutionary history from these tiny primordial cells to the present, where our society faces the use, and sometimes abuse, of advertising tools for capture the attention of potential consumers and induce or encourage, preferences in their buying behavior. The long history that leads from the origins of life to the amazing actual processing brain is now complemented by new disciplines of study such as neuroeconomics, a subdiscipline derived ...
ABSTRACT Correlation analysis allows detecting the degree of relatedness between two variables. E... more ABSTRACT Correlation analysis allows detecting the degree of relatedness between two variables. Even when correlation does not mean necessarily causation, in a time series, it indicates the degree of synchrony of two comparing variables and in many aspects renders similar information compared with cross-coherence analysis of the electroencephalographic signal. In this work we explore rather simple statistical features to mine into deeper underlying aspects of the functional organization of the brain during performing an intelligence test. We studied time length duration taken to solve a series of questions ordered with increasing difficulty and the correlation values reached by tine series data synchronization between the 14 EEG channels placed in the subject’s scalp, during the mental task. The intelligence test consisted in an abbreviated (15 questions) version of the Raven Matrices test. Results coming from the correlation analysis showed relevant information about functional organization strategies of the brain solving a cognitive problem, as well as good discrimination for inter-individual differences in the way inter-channel correlation values distribute differently for each subject around central values of R.
The work presented here provides some exploratory argument concerning what can be expected to hap... more The work presented here provides some exploratory argument concerning what can be expected to happen, at the biological level of the description, when a act of persuasion takes place. It also describes some scientific tools and actual neurobiotechnological methods that can be used to describe the underlying phenomena that happen during a convincing act.
In the framework of new neurotechnologies available for education improvement, a general referent... more In the framework of new neurotechnologies available for education improvement, a general referential conceptual model of brain operation and functioning, together with some different ways to visualize brain processing, in terms of functional architectural activity patterns, during basal and cognitive tasks, are presented. The model proposed is based on a general description of interacting modules in the brain, acting as coordinated and mutually regulated units, assembled in terms of temporal synchrony and tuning correlations measured between EEG channels, recording cortical brain activity during different tasks. An exploratory method to allow data gathering for channels spectral map visualization and functional EEG architectural patterns of basal brain activity and cognitive tasks is presented to determine inter-and intra-individual differences and the potential of individual identification based on this approach. Results obtained in this way support the idea that it is possible to ...
Arsenic has been associated with multiple harmful effects at the cellular level. Indirectly these... more Arsenic has been associated with multiple harmful effects at the cellular level. Indirectly these defects could be related to impairment of the integrity of the immune system, in particular in lymphoid population. To characterize the effect of Arsenic on redox status on this population, copper smelter workers and arsenic unexposed donors were recruited for this study. We analyzed urine samples and lymphocyte enriched fractions from donors to determinate arsenic levels and lymphocyte proliferation. Moreover, we studied the presence of oxidative markers MDA, vitamin E and SOD activity in donor plasma. Here we demonstrated that in human beings exposed to high arsenic concentrations, lymphocyte MDA and arsenic urinary levels showed a positive correlation with SOD activity, and a negative correlation with vitamin E serum levels. Strikingly, lymphocytes from the arsenic exposed population respond to a polyclonal stimulator, phytohemaglutinin, with higher rates of thymidine incorporation t...
Abstract.-We describe the first nesting colony of the Red-billed Tropicbird (Phaethon aethereus) ... more Abstract.-We describe the first nesting colony of the Red-billed Tropicbird (Phaethon aethereus) known in Chile, the southernmost colony for this species described to date. During two breeding seasons the nesting phenology was observed. The birds arrived in October, ...
This paper details the special avifauna of Juan Fernández archipelago, off Chile. We visited the ... more This paper details the special avifauna of Juan Fernández archipelago, off Chile. We visited the archipelago from 3 to 15 March 2013, mainly to study the local gadfly petrels Pterodroma at sea, namely Juan Fernández Petrel P externa, Stejneger's Petrel P longirostris and De Filippi's Petrel P defilip-piana. While on land, we focused on the endemic landbird taxa of the archipelago, including three full species. This expedition was undertaken by Hadoram Shirihai as part of the Tubenoses Project & Extreme Gadfly Petrel Expeditions for the forthcoming book Albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters of the world (Shirihai & Bretagnolle in prep). Special interests included documenting plumage variation, pelagic distribution and population numbers, and feeding techniques and species associations. In addition, we studied the petrels' island return strategy of a number of species that breed in 'petrel-capital' Masafuera. As far as we know, our pelagic 'mass chumming' ex...
Human behavior is the result of a long and intricate history of evolutionary events that probably... more Human behavior is the result of a long and intricate history of evolutionary events that probably began more than 4,500 million years ago with the first cells that populated our planet. Perhaps it may be surprising that much of the behavior and complexity we see today in the animals that we call “superior”, were individually developed by single-celled creatures that seem insignificant to our daily lives, but laid the chemical and molecular basis that are at the root of all emerging future complexity. This essay is a brief tour of this biological evolutionary history from these tiny primordial cells to the present, where our society faces the use, and sometimes abuse, of advertising tools for capture the attention of potential consumers and induce or encourage, preferences in their buying behavior. The long history that leads from the origins of life to the amazing actual processing brain is now complemented by new disciplines of study such as neuroeconomics, a subdiscipline derived ...
ABSTRACT Correlation analysis allows detecting the degree of relatedness between two variables. E... more ABSTRACT Correlation analysis allows detecting the degree of relatedness between two variables. Even when correlation does not mean necessarily causation, in a time series, it indicates the degree of synchrony of two comparing variables and in many aspects renders similar information compared with cross-coherence analysis of the electroencephalographic signal. In this work we explore rather simple statistical features to mine into deeper underlying aspects of the functional organization of the brain during performing an intelligence test. We studied time length duration taken to solve a series of questions ordered with increasing difficulty and the correlation values reached by tine series data synchronization between the 14 EEG channels placed in the subject’s scalp, during the mental task. The intelligence test consisted in an abbreviated (15 questions) version of the Raven Matrices test. Results coming from the correlation analysis showed relevant information about functional organization strategies of the brain solving a cognitive problem, as well as good discrimination for inter-individual differences in the way inter-channel correlation values distribute differently for each subject around central values of R.
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