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- ItemA Leak in the Academic Pipeline : Identity and Health Among Postdoctoral Women(Lausanne : Frontiers Research Foundation, 2019) Ysseldyk, Renate; Greenaway, Katharine H.; Hassinger, Elena; Zutrauen, Sarah; Lintz, Jana; Bhatia, Maya P.; Frye, Margaret; Starkenburg, Else; Tai, VeraSeveral challenges (e.g., sexism, parental leave, the glass ceiling, etc.) disproportionately affect women in academia (and beyond), and thus perpetuate the leaky pipeline metaphor for women who opt-out of an academic career. Although this pattern can be seen at all levels of the academic hierarchy, a critical time for women facing such challenges is during the postdoctoral stage, when personal life transitions and professional ambitions collide. Using a social identity approach, we explore factors affecting the mental health of postdoctoral women, including identity development (e.g., as a mother, a scientist) and lack of control (uncertainty about one’s future personal and professional prospects), which likely contribute to the leak from academia. In this mixed-method research, Study 1 comprised interviews with postdoctoral women in North America (n = 13) and Europe (n = 8) across a range disciplines (e.g., psychology, physics, political science). Common themes included the negative impact of career uncertainty, gender-based challenges (especially sexism and maternity leave), and work-life balance on mental and physical health. However, interviewees also described attempts to overcome gender inequality and institutional barriers by drawing on support networks. Study 2 comprised an online survey of postdoctoral women (N = 146) from a range of countries and academic disciplines to assess the relationships between social identification (e.g., disciplinary, gender, social group), perceived control (i.e., over work and life), and mental health (i.e., depression, anxiety, stress, and life satisfaction). Postdoctoral women showed mild levels of stress and depression, and were only slightly satisfied with life. They also showed only moderate levels of perceived control over one’s life and work. However, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that strongly identifying with one’s discipline was most consistently positively associated with both perceived control and mental health. Collectively, these findings implicate the postdoctoral stage as being stressful and tenuous for women regardless of academic background or nationality. They also highlight the importance of disciplinary identity as a potentially protective factor for mental health that, in turn, may diminish the rate at which postdoctoral women leak from the academic pipeline.
- ItemSingle pairing spike-timing dependent plasticity in BiFeO3 memristors with a time window of 25 ms to 125 μs(Lausanne : Frontiers Research Foundation, 2015) Du, Nan; Kiani, Mahdi; Mayr, Christian G.; You, Tiangui; Bürger, Danilo; Skorupa, Ilona; Schmidt, Oliver G.; Schmidt, HeidemarieMemristive devices are popular among neuromorphic engineers for their ability to emulate forms of spike-driven synaptic plasticity by applying specific voltage and current waveforms at their two terminals. In this paper, we investigate spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) with a single pairing of one presynaptic voltage spike and one post-synaptic voltage spike in a BiFeO3 memristive device. In most memristive materials the learning window is primarily a function of the material characteristics and not of the applied waveform. In contrast, we show that the analog resistive switching of the developed artificial synapses allows to adjust the learning time constant of the STDP function from 25 ms to 125 μs via the duration of applied voltage spikes. Also, as the induced weight change may degrade, we investigate the remanence of the resistance change for several hours after analog resistive switching, thus emulating the processes expected in biological synapses. As the power consumption is a major constraint in neuromorphic circuits, we show methods to reduce the consumed energy per setting pulse to only 4.5 pJ in the developed artificial synapses.
- ItemHigh-resolution diffusion kurtosis imaging at 3T enabled by advanced post-processing(Lausanne : Frontiers Research Foundation, 2015) Mohammadi, Siawoosh; Tabelow, Karsten; Ruthotto, Lars; Feiweier, Thorsten; Polzehl, Jörg; Weiskopf, NikolausDiffusion Kurtosis Imaging (DKI) is more sensitive to microstructural differences and can be related to more specific micro-scale metrics (e.g., intra-axonal volume fraction) than diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), offering exceptional potential for clinical diagnosis and research into the white and gray matter. Currently DKI is acquired only at low spatial resolution (2–3 mm isotropic), because of the lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and higher artifact level associated with the technically more demanding DKI. Higher spatial resolution of about 1 mm is required for the characterization of fine white matter pathways or cortical microstructure. We used restricted-field-of-view (rFoV) imaging in combination with advanced post-processing methods to enable unprecedented high-quality, high-resolution DKI (1.2 mm isotropic) on a clinical 3T scanner. Post-processing was advanced by developing a novel method for Retrospective Eddy current and Motion ArtifacT Correction in High-resolution, multi-shell diffusion data (REMATCH). Furthermore, we applied a powerful edge preserving denoising method, denoted as multi-shell orientation-position-adaptive smoothing (msPOAS). We demonstrated the feasibility of high-quality, high-resolution DKI and its potential for delineating highly myelinated fiber pathways in the motor cortex. REMATCH performs robustly even at the low SNR level of high-resolution DKI, where standard EC and motion correction failed (i.e., produced incorrectly aligned images) and thus biased the diffusion model fit. We showed that the combination of REMATCH and msPOAS increased the contrast between gray and white matter in mean kurtosis (MK) maps by about 35% and at the same time preserves the original distribution of MK values, whereas standard Gaussian smoothing strongly biases the distribution.
- ItemIncreasing Human Performance by Sharing Cognitive Load Using Brain-to-Brain Interface(Lausanne : Frontiers Research Foundation, 2018) Maksimenko, Vladimir A.; Hramov, Alexander E.; Frolov, Nikita S.; Lüttjohann, Annika; Nedaivozov, Vladimir O.; Grubov, Vadim V.; Runnova, Anastasia E.; Makarov, Vladimir V.; Kurths, Jürgen; Pisarchik, Alexander N.Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) attract a lot of attention because of their ability to improve the brain's efficiency in performing complex tasks using a computer. Furthermore, BCIs can increase human's performance not only due to human-machine interactions, but also thanks to an optimal distribution of cognitive load among all members of a group working on a common task, i.e., due to human-human interaction. The latter is of particular importance when sustained attention and alertness are required. In every day practice, this is a common occurrence, for example, among office workers, pilots of a military or a civil aircraft, power plant operators, etc. Their routinely work includes continuous monitoring of instrument readings and implies a heavy cognitive load due to processing large amounts of visual information. In this paper, we propose a brain-to-brain interface (BBI) which estimates brain states of every participant and distributes a cognitive load among all members of the group accomplishing together a common task. The BBI allows sharing the whole workload between all participants depending on their current cognitive performance estimated from their electrical brain activity. We show that the team efficiency can be increased due to redistribution of the work between participants so that the most difficult workload falls on the operator who exhibits maximum performance. Finally, we demonstrate that the human-to-human interaction is more efficient in the presence of a certain delay determined by brain rhythms. The obtained results are promising for the development of a new generation of communication systems based on neurophysiological brain activity of interacting people. Such BBIs will distribute a common task between all group members according to their individual physical conditions.
- ItemCortical hot spots and labyrinths: Why cortical neuromodulation for episodic migraine with aura should be personalized(Lausanne : Frontiers Research Foundation, 2015) Dahlem, M.A.; Schmidt, B.; Bojak, I.; Boie, S.; Kneer, F.; Hadjikhani, N.; Kurths, J.