Brain Research

Creativity in adults is highly valued in our society. Personal creativity contributes to inventiveness, innovation, social and cultural change as well as political development and economic progression. The creator is an innovator, a problem solver, an entrepreneur, an artist. Creative people have rapid and effective responses that help them to achieve their life goals and allow them to enjoy the journey. Creativity is both a skill set and a unique and individual character structure that is developed throughout childhood and fine-tuned in adolescence and adulthood. Education has a key role to play in its development. Positive creativity inspiring experiences at every stage of the educational journey are needed. This is especially true in early childhood. Educators who rise to the creativity challenge will be well rewarded in rich teaching experiences and the joy of seeing children reach their creative potential in supportive and integrated learning communities.

Benyshek, D.  (2013).  A historical and critical overview of the artist as shaman and recent research. In A. Czyżewski  &  E.E. Djaltchinova-Malets (Eds.), Shamanhood and its arts. Budapest, Hungary: Bibliotheca Shamanistica, Akademia Kiado, and The Polish Institute of the World Art Studies, Warsaw.

Abstract: A historical overview follows the association of artists with shamans through myth, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, iconography, art history, psychology, and studies of creativity, primarily through the lens of the West. Forms of proto-art, such as the Woman of Willendorf, might represent entheogenmorphic female shamans.

A theoretical model of contemporary artists as shamans is presented.  Several traditional shamanic artists served as socially recognized shamans, spiritual practitioners who voluntarily controlled their attention to obtain information presented as forms of art. Shamanlike artists fulfilled many properties of shamanism, possibly earning implicit social designation when audiences receive psychological, social, spiritual, or physiological benefits from art.
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Preface
Throughout all of Europe we find examples of folk-belief assigning special qualities to the seventh-born son or daughter of a family. At times these attributes were positive, at times negative. However, they always had a magical aura about them (Bloch [1924] 1983). For the most part, these beliefs have been written off as superstitious residue from times past and as a result little attention has been paid to documenting the concrete social practices associated with them. An exception to this tendency is the work of Marc Bloch, who in 1924, called attention to the supernatural powers attributed to the seventh son and at times, to the seventh daughter, born after an uninterrupted series of the same sex, remarking that seventh-born children were credited with a “particular supernatural power” (Bloch [1924] 1983: 293, 296). Writing in 1924, Bloch observed that “La croyance sous cette forme a été et est sans doute encore très largement répandue dans l’Europe occidentale et centrale: on l’a signalée en Allemagne, en Biscaye, en Catalogne, dans presque toute la France, dans les Pays-Bas, en Angleterre, en Escosse, en Irlande […]”  (Bloch [1924] 1983: 294-295).

Specifically, Bloch noted that from at least the 16th century onwards, children born into a seventh position in their family supposedly had the power to heal by touch. Such extraordinary people, often deemed sorcerers, even devils, were also referred to by a variety of expressions such as mahr (German) or murawa (Polish) and consequently they had the ambivalent privilege of tapping into powers that were inaccessible to normal humans. Specifically, they were viewed as having healing and divinatory powers, which could entail shape-shifting (Vaz da Silva 2003). That is, those individuals were endowed with the ability to take the form of an animal. From the point of view of modern Western thought this belief causes the dividing line between humans and animals to become blurred. Nonetheless, that blurring or fusion of two natures would be in accordance with the cosmology of native peoples in other parts of the world, especially contemporary hunter-gatherers, where such animistic beliefs also prevail (Bird-David 1999; Brightman 2002; Ingold 2000; Willerslev 2007).

It is quite clear that the qualities assigned to the seventh-son or daughter harken back to an earlier animistic mindset, notions of nonhuman personhood and social practices that in turn connect back to shamanic modes of healing. At the same time, as noted in the earlier chapters of this study, the fused nature of the Bear Son, the half-human, half-bear being known as Hamalau “Fourteen” in Basque, reflects a similar blurring of the Western human-animal divide and related cultural conceptualizations.

And as Bertolotti has demonstrated in his detailed and extraordinarily well researched study Carnevale di Massa 1950 (1992), European versions of the Bear Son folktales, e.g., Giovanni l’Orso, may well reproduce much earlier beliefs, more in consonance with the cosmovision of hunter-gatherers who inhabited these zones in times past. More concretely, the fact that the figure of Hamalau is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears allows us to consider the significance and symbolism of this character’s own genesis: he is born of a human female, but his father is a bear. In this sense, he is a double-natured intermediary occupying the ontological ground between humans and bears.

The goal of the present study is to propose the use of global connectivity measures as quantitative indicators of long-term medication in pediatric patients with Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder, combined type (ADHD-C). For this purpose, graph theoretical brain connectivity indices are computed from connectivity estimations across eyes-opened resting-state EEG recordings measured before and after the treatment with osmotic release oral system-methylphenidate for a month in 18 boys (aged between 7–12 years). In order to present the reliable results, neurofunctional correlations are firstly estimated in time (Pearson Correlation (PC), Spearman Correlation), frequency (Directed Transfer Function, Partial Directed Coherence) and phase (Phase Locking Value, Phase Lag Index) domains in between short segments of
2 sec over single trials of 1 min. Later, transitivity, clustering coefficients, assortativity, global efficiency and modularity are computed from EEG based connectivity matrices produced by each approach. Since the highest classification accuracy of 83.79%
is provided by PC, statistical tests (one-way Anova, pair-wise multiple comparison) and step-wise logistic regression modelling are all examined to detect significant differences between pre- and post- treatment relevant connectivity measures. Statistical boxplots are also shown, as well. Overall results reveal that global brain connectivity can be increased by long-term medication in pediatric ADHD-C in terms of increased segregation & resilience. This is the first study to demonstrate that long-term medication can normalize the functional brain connectivity in ADHD, which is characterized by decreased connectivity compared to controls

Abstract for The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman
Kitsune Books
April 20, 2012

Author
Lynn Gelfand

Title of essay
“The End of the World as We Know It: Neil Gaiman and the Future of Mythology”

A story about a struggle between old and new deities is not particularly modern. Many of our oldest religious texts and mythic traditions address this theme. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, however, depicts not simply a battle between old gods and new gods in a fight for survival. It demonstrates that if the pace of technology continues to accelerate at an exponential rate, old gods are not the only ones threatened; new and powerful gods can become obsolete within a matter of decades rather than centuries. American Gods aligns neatly with the theories of American inventor and author Ray Kurzweil who has argued that at the current rate of technological development, the next 100 years of human achievement will be the equivalent of 10,000 years of progress. If myths define and support a culture, as Gaiman’s body of work suggests, what happens when a culture evolves so rapidly and continuously that a multitude of traditional myths are in danger of being rendered irrelevant almost overnight, while newer myths are overturned long before they can take root? In a globally connected world that is subject to an ever increasing rate of change, will the very notion of myth itself become obsolete? An examination of Gaiman’s Sandman comic book series, his short stories (“Nicholas Was…,” “Sunbird,” “A Study in Emerald,” and “Goliath”) and his novel American Gods, in conjunction with Kurzweil’s theories, offers some provocative answers regarding the fluid nature of myth and its role in a world driven by technological change.

Carvedilol, a non selective beta blocker is an antihypertensive drug which has oral bioavailability of 25-35% with conventional dosage forms due to first pass metabolism. The present study investigated the possibility of developing carvdilol fast dissolving sublingual films allowing fast, reproducible drug dissolution in the oral cavity, thus bypassing first pass metabolism to provide rapid onset of action of the drug. The fast dissolving films were prepared by solvent casting method. Low viscosity grades of HPMC E3 and HPMC E5 were used as film forming polymers. In this study Tween 80 was used as solubilising agent as well as plasticizer. All the film formulations (F1-F9) were evaluated for their thickness, weight variation, tensile strength, percentage elongation, folding endurance, in-vitro disintegration, drug content, in-vitro drug release and ex-vivo permeation studies. Disintegration time showed by the formulations was found to be in range of 25-50 sec. Formulation F7 was chosen as the best formulation which showed 96.65% in-vitro drug release within 5 min and 62.36% ex-vivo drug permeation within 60 min. The film showed an excellent stability at least for 45 days when stored at 400 C and 75% relative humidity.

Mother Goose on the Loose is an award-winning early
childhood literacy program for babies and their caregivers
offered each week at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in
Baltimore, Maryland. This article describes the history of the
program including the theories behind it, practical
implementations for creating optimal learning environments
for very young children, descriptions and benefits of the
program, and parent reactions to it.

In this article, we provide an in-depth organizational analysis of the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) through its global strategies in achieving nation building and self-determination for indigenized higher education efforts. We identify four theories from the literature used by WINHEC in its operations, and propose two new theories to fit our evaluation of the Consortium—Indigenous Creativity Theory and Indigenous Cultural Creativity Theory. Social cartography, archival analysis, and discourse analysis are used to identify the indigenous, paradigms, and practices of the Consortium. Employing a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges (SWOC) approach, we examine WINHEC’s organizational contributions, effectiveness, unique aspects, and challenges of indigenous engagement and governance in the membership nations’ locations. The findings suggest that both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples play an important and symbiotic role essential for the furthering of indigenous higher education worldwide.

Keywords: indigenous paradigm, indigenous higher education, WINHEC

Introduction:

In my talk, I would like to propose a historical perspective on how brain researchers deal with diagnoses and nosologies, when they take part in the understanding of troubled mind and human behavior. Much has been written on the so-called neurologisation or cerebralisation of the mental disorders, on the way “neuro” vocabulary, conceptions and discourses are taking more and more importance in the field of mental disorders. Autism, hyperactivity, depression or schizophrenia are supposedly re-described in terms of brain circuits dysfunctions, impairment in information processing of the brain, or deficit in brain metabolism and chemistry. But few scholars from history, and the social sciences (like in the field of science and technology studies, or philosophy of science and medicine) have taken seriously what it means for neuroscientists to deal with psychiatric categories, and with ways of classifying people. The relationship of neuro-fields towards psy-fields is often regarded as a temptation to reductionnism, a work of cutting down the whole into parts to be analysed carefully. I would argue that recent past tells us another story, where brain scientists deal in much more manifold ways with their difficult task to tell something about the humain mind by studying the brain. In a sense, they have to psychologise the brain.

Toutes les sociétés sont préoccupées du sel, soit sous une forme physique, soit sous une forme symbolique. L'absence de sel est également signifiante. Cependant, jusqu'à présent, aucune quête systématique de ce condiment et de ses avatars en Asie du Sud-Est, autant continentale qu'insulaire, n'avait été entreprise. C'est le propos du présent ouvrage, fruit d'une coopération de recherche de l'ECASE (Ethnologie comparative de l'Asie du Sud-Est, UPR 298 du Centre national de la recherche scientifique français) à laquelle ont participé des chercheurs thaïlandais, chinois, hollandais, français, anglais et canadiens. Ce regard à la fois éloigné et détaillé sur de nombreuses sociétés d'Asie du Sud-Est prend en compte non seulement ce qu'il est coutume d'appeler "sel", c'est-à-dire les cristaux de sodium ou de potassium, mais également les saumures et salaisons. Celles-ci s'avèrent aussi importantes – et parfois plus – que le sel dans nombre des espaces sociaux évoqués. L'interdisciplinarité a été volontairement favorisée dans l'approche de ce volume : ethnologie, linguistique, histoire, technologie, biologie, agronomie, confrontent points de vue et niveaux de lecture complémentaires dans le but d'une appréhension globale de la place tenue par le sel en Asie du Sud-Est ; étude qui emporte bien au-delà du goût ou de la seule physiologie pour atteindre à un système symbolique complexe, celui des substances, dont le sel n'est qu'un élément.

Over 50 years have passed since it was proposed that in early development, testosterone would irreversibly mas-culinize the brain of males away from a default female form. In the past two decades, this concept has been replaced by a more complex scenario. According to this new view, sex effects on the brain are exerted in both females and males throughout life by several steroid hormones (including testosterone, estradiol, and progester-one) as well as by genetic and environmental factors. These effects are exerted via multiple partly independent mechanisms and may vary according to internal and external factors (for review, see Arnold 2012; Forger 2018; Grgurevic and Majdic 2016; McCarthy 2016; McCarthy and others 2018; McEwen and Milner 2017; Sekido 2014). Most of the evidence supporting this new understanding of sex effects on the brain derives from studies in laboratory animals and tissue cultures. In vitro studies of neuronal cultures obtained from embryos prior to the development of the gonads revealed some differences between XX and XY neurons in the absence of sex-related hormones (for a recent review, see Grgurevic and Majdic 2016). For example, dopamine content and uptake (but not neuron number) were higher in cultures obtained from the embryonic mesencephalon (but not diencephalon) of female compared with male NMRI mice (Sibug and others 1996). It is noteworthy that the same study found no differences in these measures in cultures from two other mouse strains (Sibug and others 1996), highlighting the dependency of sex effects on other factors, in this case most likely genetic background. In vivo studies in mice, in which the genetic and gonadal components of sex were dissociated, support the results of the in vitro studies in providing examples for a direct effect of sex-related genes independent of sex-related hormones on some brain measures (for review, see Arnold 2012; Arnold and Chen 2009; Ngun and others 2011; Sekido 2014). For example, the vasopressin innervation of the lateral septum is denser in males compared with females in many mammalian species (De Abstract In the past decennia, our understanding of the sexual differentiation of the mammalian brain has dramatically changed. The simple model according to which testosterone masculinizes the brain of males away from a default female form, was replaced with a complex scenario, according to which sex effects on the brain of both females and males are exerted by genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors. These factors act via multiple partly independent mechanisms that may vary according to internal and external factors. These observations led to the "mosaic" hypothesis-the expectation of high variability in the degree of "maleness"/"femaleness" of different features within a single brain. Here, we briefly review animal data that form the basis of current understanding of sexual differentiation; present, in this context, the results of co-analyses of human brain measures obtained by magnetic resonance imaging or postmortem; discuss criticisms and controversies of the mosaic hypothesis and implications for research; and conclude that co-analysis of several (preferably, many) features and going back from the group level to that of the individual would advance our understanding of the relations between sex and the brain in health and disease.

Authors/Szerzők: Dávid István, Kiss Márton Zsolt, Marha Tibor, Gál László, Egyed Péter, Ungvári Zrínyi Imre, Schmidt Dániel, Demeter Márton Attila, Veress Károly X X X
Tonk Márton‒Veress Károly (eds): Interpretation and Application: Hermeneutical and Applied Philosophical Researches ‒ The volume contains studies prepared under the joint hermeneutical and applied philosophical research programme involving teachers and students from the Hungarian branch of Babeș-Bolyai University’s Philosophy Department Group.
X X X
A tanulmányok a Babeș-Bolyai Tudományegyetem Filozófia Tanszékcsoportja magyar tagozatához tartozó oktatók és egyetemi hallgatók hermeneutikai és alkalmazott filozófiai közös kutatási tervének keretében készültek.

The aim of this study was to study the diagnostic parameters in
brain tuberculosis (meningeal and parenchymal)
Material and Methods: This study was conducted in the
department of Neurosurgery and Neurology SKIMS for a period
of two years. A total of 61 patients presenting with brain
tuberculosis admitted at skims during these two years were
included in the study.
Results: The most presenting symptom in our study was headache
found in 95.10% followed by vomiting found in 86.90% of
subjects, fever in 78.70%, altered sensorium in 49.20%, seizures in
19.70% and diplopia in18%. Out of 61 patients cranial nerve
involment was found in 34(55.73%) with 11 having more than two
cranial nerves involved. The most common cranial nerve involved
were 3rd and 6th. ADA was positive in 36 of 53 patients of TBM
with a sensitivity of 67.9% and a specificity of 75%. PCR proved
to be highly specific CT scan of head was abnormal in 56 out of
61 patients (91.8%). 12 (19.70%) were in stage I (meningeal
involvement only), 29 (47.50%) were in stage II (parenchymal
involvement only) and 15 (24.60%) were in stage III (both
parenchymal and meningeal invlolvement). The most common
finding in CT head was meningeal enhancement in 43 patients,
hydrocephalus in 37 patients and tuberculomas in 14 patients. The
most common sites of tuberculomas were frontal lobe (n=6;
42.8%), parietal lobe (n=4; 28.5%), followed by cerebellum in 2
patients and occipital in two. Nine patients had single and five
multiple tuberculomas. Of the 14 patients with tuberculomas,
hydrocephalus on CT was seen in 6 patients.
Conclusion: CT scan is a useful diagnostic tool even in very early
stages of TBM. Abnormalities reported on CT scan done are
hydrocephalus, infarcts, basal enhancement, and tuberculomas.
Normal study is reported in up to 20% of the cases.

Wittgenstein wrote: “No supposition seems to me more natural than that there is no process in the brain correlated with associating or with thinking; so that it would be impossible to read off thought-processes from brain processes.” In general, he rejects what he calls “psycho-physical parallelism.” In Sect. 1, I explain Wittgenstein’s position on this topic and how his followers defend it. In Sect. 2, I argue against Wittgenstein, contending that there is “thought” in a wider sense and that it can be “manifested” without expression. Thought does not need to be ordinarily expressed or even expressible, and it can be read off from the brain, provided one has sufficient technology, data, and understanding of the subject’s interaction with the environment. In Sect. 3, I offer results from brain-science in support of my claims.

Background: Public domain databases nowadays provide multiple layers of genome-wide data e.g., promoter methylation, mRNA expression, and miRNA expression and should enable integrative modeling of the mechanisms of regulation of gene expression. However, researches along this line were not frequently executed.
Results: Here, the public domain dataset of mRNA expression, microRNA (miRNA) expression and promoter methylation patterns in four regions, the frontal cortex, temporal cortex, pons and cerebellum, of human brain were sourced from the National Center for Biotechnology Informations gene expression omnibus, and reanalyzed computationally. A large number of miRNA-mediated regulation of target genes and
miRNA-targeting-specific promoter methylation were identified in the six pairwise comparisons among the four brain regions. The miRNA-mediated regulation of target genes was found to be highly correlated with one or both of miRNA-targeting-specific promoter methylation and differential miRNA expression. Genes enriched for Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways that were related to brain
function and/or development were found among the target genes of miRNAs whose differential expression patterns were highly correlated with the miRNA-mediated regulation of their target genes.
Conclusions: The combinatorial analysis of miRNA-mediated regulation of target genes, miRNA-targeting-specific promoter methylation and differential miRNA expression can help reveal the brain region-specific contributions of miRNAs to brain
function and development.

Recorrienso una serie de mitos indígenas americanos, se retoman algunas nociones no eurocéntricas del significado de trabajo y de creación artística. Nociones que sobreviven gracias a la resistencia y el sincretismo de pueblos indígenas y mestizos. A partir de esos mitos y ritos. La definición del concepto de trabajo se mece entre diversas nociones que en occidente se valoran desde la cosmología racionalista, científica, patitalista, cartesiana y pragmática.

Vision
A well trained multi-skilled, self-employed, and self-sustained rural young men and women who move to cities for higher education. 

Mission
Train and equip young undergraduate and graduate men and women from rural communities with multiple business and career development skills while they are pursuing advanced studies in urban centers.

Goal
To train young undergraduate and graduate women and men in practical community organizing for social transformation, business skills, time management and enterprise development for sustainable independent livelihoods during and after their studies.

The present study compares two Auto-Regressive (AR) model based (Burg Method (BM) and Yule Walker Method) and two subspace based (Eigen Method and Multiple Signal Classification Method) power spectral density predictors in computing the Coherence Function (CF) to observe EEG synchronization between right and left hemispheres. For this purpose, two channels intracortical EEG series recorded from WAG/Rij rats (a genetic model for human absence epilepsy) are analyzed. In tests, AR modelbased predictors result the close performance such that the CF estimations are sensitive to the AR model order. Dealing with the subspace-based predictors; certain peaks in CF estimations can also be detected in case of low noise subspace dimension. Besides, they are more computational complexity. In conclusion, high order BM is proposed in EEG synchronization. The results support that each EEG sequence probably meets a high order AR model where the dimension of the related noise subspace is relatively low in comparison to the model order.

Conclusions:  Overall results show that Set A consists of pre-lesion EEG series, whereas the others are related to epileptic lesions: There are more lesions in both Set D and Set E in comparison to Set B and Set C. All data sets show sleep-wave like oscillations.

Parametric PSD predictors (BM, YWM) are based on the AR model. The data is not windowed in performing these methods. Therefore, application of them eliminates the assumption that the autocorrelation sequence is zero outside the window. The BM and YWM are applied to short time EEG series at low SNR. It is stated that these predictors exhibit spectral line splitting in case of high SNR and sensitive to the initial phase in case of sinusoidal noisy signals.10 In the present application, the high order (p ≥ 20) parametric predictors provide us to useful CF estimations in the present EE synchronization where the number of FFT is 128.

Subspace-based PSD predictors (EM, MM) are based on an eigen-decomposition of the correlation matrix of the noisy data. These methods assume that the data consists of some real sinusoids and then the frequencies of sinusoidal components are estimated. For the data at low SNR, it is difficult to determine the number of principal eigenvectors.10 In the present case study, subspace-based predictors can also provide useful estimations when the empirically selected subspace dimension is low (K = 10) such that the EM is less sensitive to this parameter. Therefore, the low dimensional EM can also be proposed in EEG synchronization for short time EEG series at low SNR. However, adequate estimations are obtained when the number of FFT is 256 at least.

In conclusion, it can be said that high order AR model-based predictors are more suitable than the subspace-based predictors. The reasons of this superiority can be summarized as: When the sampling frequency is low, short epochs are advised in EEG analysis as best guarantee for wide sense stationary. Therefore, a stable AR model can be yielded by the parametric estimations. High frequency resolution can be obtained by using both BM and YWM without consuming a large memory.

Note that, the recent results support that the short time intracortical EEG series can be represented by a high order (p ≥ 20) AR model as indicated in past literature.2,6 In the former EEG study, p = 10 was provided for successful AR modeling with high accuracy. It was suggested in the latter study that p = 30 is the best order to verify normality in EEG series collected during anesthesia.

In this article, we provide an in-depth organizational analysis of the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) through its global strategies in achieving nation building and self-determination for indigenized higher education efforts. We identify four theories from the literature used by WINHEC in its operations, and propose two new theories to fit our evaluation of the Consortium—Indigenous Creativity Theory and Indigenous Cultural Creativity Theory. Social cartography, archival analysis, and discourse analysis are used to identify the indigenous, paradigms, and practices of the Consortium. Employing a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges (SWOC) approach, we examine WINHEC’s organizational contributions, effectiveness, unique aspects, and challenges of indigenous engagement and governance in the membership nations’ locations. The findings suggest that both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples play an important and symbiotic role essential for ...