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Exploring the Relationship Between Electroconvulsive Therapy and Reward Processing in Major Depressive Disorder
Full text linkDepression affects over ten percent of the population
worldwide, with a huge toll for patients, their families, and
the whole society. Around one third of patients with
depression does not respond satisfactorily or at all to either
pharmacological or psychological therapy. Electro-
convulsive therapy (ECT) is an established treatment for
severe mental illnesses, in particular treatment-resistant
depression, a leading contributor to global disease. Despite
its proven effectiveness in treating depression, the
underlying mechanisms of ECT are not yet fully understood.
This thesis examines the potential differences between
patients who respond positively to electroconvulsive
therapy (ECT) and those who do not, providing novel
insights into their relationship with the reward processing in
the brain. While this thesis expands our knowledge of ECT
effect in the treatment of depression, it is important to
acknowledge that the study comes with at least two major
limitations. (i) The small sample size may impact on the
statistical power of the study; (ii) the computer task used to
assess the reward processing may not be sensitive to detect
subtle differences between groups or changes over time. It is
possible that other measures will provide a more
comprehensive assessment of reward functions in future
evaluations. Future research with larger samples and more
sensitive measures could build upon these findings and
further advance our understanding of the mechanisms
underlying ECT and treatment response in depression
Applications of Network Science in Neuroimaging
Full text linkAt the intersection between neuroimaging and network science, network
neuroscience has brought remarkable opportunities to advance the understanding of the human brain. At macroscale, the brain can be seen
as a complex system relying on communication between its regions. Advanced neuroimaging techniques can map functional and structural brain
communication, enabling the study of network-level alterations in neurological disorders during development. To improve reproducibility and
provide a robust characterization of neurological disorders, collaborative
initiatives involving neuroimaging data collection across multiple sites
have started to emerge. However, multisite data acquisition poses significant challenges for managing increasingly larger and more complex
datasets, especially for data analysis pipelines required for whole-brain
network analysis. To this end, the current work aims to (1) assess different data harmonization techniques and (2) characterize structural and
functional network alterations in mild traumatic brain injury. In addition
to the typical applications for whole-brain network analysis, network
science can be utilized for advanced time series analysis and address challenges for signal processing in functional neuroimaging. Visibility graphs
can map time series into networks where nodes represent time points,
and have rapidly found applications across areas of science, including
resting state functional neuroimaging. However, to validate their use, the
current work aims to test if task activity can be identified based on the
local network centrality (node degree) in synthetically generated data and
event-related task fMRI time series.
The Advancing Concussion in Pediatrics (A-CAP) study is the largest
study of mild traumatic brain injury to date, and was used to address
the first two aims of this work. To understand network-level alterations
following mild traumatic brain injury in the pediatric population, the
current work validates the use of ComBat harmonization for network
analysis pipelines and tests for longitudinal alterations in network topology. ComBat harmonization had improved performance in removing
site effects when applied on network parameters instead of edge-wise
connectivity weights, and demonstrated excellent within-site consistency
with the network parameters before harmonization for structural and
functional networks. Network parameters based on structural and functional connectivity show no effects of injury before or after harmonization
in the post-acute phase following mild TBI. However, further longitudinal
analysis of global and nodal abnormalities in the functional connectome
indicates that variability in time post-injury, post-concussive symptoms,
biological sex, and age moderate the effect of injury in local and global
functional network topology.
To address the third aim of the current work, two datasets were used.
First, synthetic data was generated to resemble well-controlled eventrelated task fMRI signals, by adding varying levels of noise. An accuracy
score was defined to compare the identifiability of task events based on
visibility graph transformation versus the raw fMRI time series across
noise levels. The results were replicated using a slow, event-related picture
presentation dataset, with extensive scanning of four participants. When
applied to time series analysis, visibility graphs can accurately identify
task events and are robust to gaussian noise in synthetic time series
and to participant motion in real task fMRI data. The current work
addresses substantial contributions in mapping the human brain using
neuroimaging and network scienc
Between the Transnational and the Local: Assessing the Changing Profile of the Islamic Art Collections in Museums in Türkiye
Full text linkThis thesis aims to explain the multiple motives behind the
transformation of the display methodologies of Islamic art collections in
a museum context by considering the global circumstances such as
politics and society. It investigates the shifting ways of displaying the
Islamic art collections in Turkish national museums through analyzing
both physical and conceptual elements of their permanent galleries
starting from the formation of the collections—the late nineteenth or
early twentieth centuries—to the present day.
Starting from the early years of the twenty-first century, especially
after September 11, 2001 the debate about Islam in the West was reflected
within the general institution of the museum. During the last two
decades, most of the important private and state museum collections of
Islamic art around the world—such as the MET, the Benaki Museum, the
David Collection, the Louvre Museum, the V&A Museum and the British
Museum—have undergone substantial reinstallation. While this global
trend exists, each institution follows its own individual agendas, often or
partly motivated by local political influences as well as practical
purposes such as renovations. In line with this current global process,
two major Islamic art museums in Turkey, which were inherited from
the Ottoman Empire—the Museums of Turkish and Islamic Art in
Istanbul and Bursa—have recently redesigned their galleries in 2014 and
2021 respectively. In addition to the existing museums in Edirne and
Erzurum, established during the Republican era, a new Museum of
Turkish Islamic Art was recently opened in İznik in 2020.
Considering such international and local factors, this research
examines how and why the connotations of displaying the visual and
material culture of the Islamic world have changed for state museums in
Turkey starting from the late nineteenth century to the present day.
Through a comparative and a comprehensive analysis, this study aims
to understand how national public museums in Turkey display their
Islamic art collections within the changing frameworks of global and
local museology and as part of distinct social, cultural and political
environments. Based on fieldwork and archival research, this research
will conclude by presenting new results about the various layers of
meaning displaying Islamic art in a Turkish museum context, affected by
both transnational cultural and academic trends as well as local political dynamics tied to the AKP’s cultural conceptualizations of Turkey’s
Islamic past.
Even though scholarly literature on the history of collecting and
displaying of Islamic art has extended in parallel with the transformation
of the museum galleries for the last two decades, this area of study still
needs further research. Being the first study that focuses on Islamic art
collections in Turkey, this thesis will hopefully contribute to the existing
literature by bringing new perspectives to the meaning of exhibiting the
cultural heritage of Muslim societies
Essays on Public Good Game Experiments
Full text linkCooperation, i.e., paying a cost to benefit others, is a recurring
phenomenon in human interactions and a fundamental prin-
ciple of our societies. Hence, it is of great interest to under-
stand under what conditions this behavior can be promoted.
In the context of public good games and multilevel public
goods games, I behaviorally and experimentally investigate
if and how cooperation varies along with or as a response to
other factors, namely norms, social efficiency, group identity,
and risk. First, I find that personal norms, i.e., what one un-
conditionally believes to be the right thing to do, have major
explanatory power over cooperation than social norms, i.e.,
what one believes others will do and think is the right thing
to do. Moreover, I find that individuals positively react to
social efficiency increases related to an upper-level (global)
public good. The documented increase in contributions to-
ward the global good comes at the expense of the contribu-
tions to a lower-level (local) public good, with the total contri-
bution remaining unvaried. Furthermore, I obtain evidence
that this result is robustly replicated in the context of groups
primed with a strong sense of national identity and facing
a task framed to recall real-world institutions (national and
European Union public budgets). Lastly, I document that the
presence of a probability of facing significant losses - whether
independent or correlated among group members - does not
impact contributing behavior in the public good compared to
deterministic scenarios. These results, while building on re-
cent cutting-edge experimental literature, suggest interesting
avenues for new research
Museums as Living Organisms. A Historical Perspective on Change and Continuity in Museum Institutions
No full textThis dissertation engages with a question that is underrated and underexplored in the literature on museum history: how do museums respond to and/or trigger societal, political, and cultural changes? To answer this question, the research
concentrates on art and archaeological museums in Italy between National Unification and the post-war period. Indeed, the history of Italian museums and theoretical debates over how to organize museums and public education in late nineteenth/early twentieth-century Italy provide paradigmatic cases.
The first chapter gives an overview of the dominant avenues of research in social, political, and cultural history and role of the museum, spotlighting key historical moments and
historiographical approaches. It then applies to museum
institutions the Greek philosopher Plato’s well-known
observation that no living organism or no piece of knowledge
stays the same throughout its lifetime since the fundamental
nature of human bodies and knowledge is continuous change. We can thus ask what causes a museum to be perceived as the same museum over time and analyze the conditions under which the balance between continuity and change breaks down. Combining contextual analysis and a case study approach appeared to be the most promising strategy to address these questions. For example, an analysis of the debate over the function and mission of archaeological museums in post-Unification Italy shows that museums can serve multiple purposes. These purposes, in turn, might shape museums’ collections, visions, and display and narrative strategies. The second and third chapters present the analysis of two case studies that contextualize this idea that
museums never remain the same. They also outline an analytical model drafted as part of this research according to which the study of the concrete changes museums undergo or trigger in their interaction with, and in relation to, societal, political, and cultural changes enable us to identify the active fields of force in any given situation in which museums are located and act as institutions.
The case studies identified and analyzed in thisdissertation are the National Museum of Palermo and Civic Museum of Padua. The analysis proposed here classifies various stimuli for change, both exogenous and endogenous, and shows how these forces can coalesce in specific moments of a museum’s life so that, viewed aposteriori, they turn into pivotal turning points. At the same time, the research presented here also takes into account museums’behavioral complexity in responding to and triggering change while maintaining continuity
Optimized Monitoring and Detection of Internet of Things resources-constraints Cyber Attacks
Full text linkThis research takes place in the context of the optimized monitoring and detec-
tion of Internet of Things (IoT) resource-constraints attacks. Meanwhile, the In-
ternet of Everything (IoE) concept is presented as a wider extension of IoT. How-
ever, the IoE realization meets critical challenges, including the limited network
coverage and the limited resources of existing network technologies and smart
devices. The IoT represents a network of embedded devices that are uniquely
identifiable and have embedded software required to communicate between the
transient states. The IoT enables a connection between billions of sensors, actu-
ators, and even human beings to the Internet, creating a wide range of services,
some of which are mission-critical. However, IoT networks are faulty; things
are resource-constrained in terms of energy and computational capabilities. For
IoT systems performing a critical mission, it is crucial to ensure connectivity,
availability, and device reliability, which requires proactive device state moni-
toring.
This dissertation presents an approach to optimize the monitoring and detection
of resource-constraints attacks in IoT and IoE smart devices. First, it has been
shown that smart devices suffer from resource-constraints problems; therefore,
using lightweight algorithms to detect and mitigate the resource-constraints at-
tack is essential. Practical analysis and monitoring of smart device resources’
are included and discussed to understand the behaviour of the devices before
and after attacking real smart devices. These analyses are straightforwardly
extended for building lightweight detection and mitigation techniques against
energy and memory attacks. Detection of energy consumption attacks based
on monitoring the package reception rate of smart devices is proposed to de-
tect energy attacks in smart devices effectively. The proposed lightweight algo-
rithm efficiently detects energy attacks for different protocols, e.g., TCP, UDP,
and MQTT. Moreover, analyzing memory usage attacks is also considered in
this thesis. Therefore, another lightweight algorithm is also built to detect the
memory-usage attack once it appears and stops. This algorithm considers mon-
itoring the memory usage of the smart devices when the smart devices are
Idle, Active, and Under attack. Based on the presented methods and monitoring
analysis, the problem of resource-constraint attacks in IoT systems is systemat-
ically eliminated by parameterizing the lightweight algorithms to adapt to the
resource-constraint problems of the smart devices
The organization of action representation and the interaction between the action and perception systems
Full text linkAction representation is thought to rely on hierarchical
processing, whereby action-related information is represented
across different levels of abstraction. The visual processing of
human actions is subserved by the Action Observation
Network (AON), spanning separate anatomical areas. Rather
than relying on a modular organization based on the
segregation of action features, the AON organization may be
based on distributed representations, overlapping across a wide
expanse of the cortex and supporting a high-dimensional
representational space. Coherently with modern perspectives of
distributed interactive cortical systems, it has been proposed
that the same representational systems are shared between
action, perception, and higher-level cognitive functions; in this
view, action and perception are interdependent systems
characterized by reciprocal influences.
In the first and second studies, we aimed to better characterize
the organization of the AON at different levels of the action
hierarchy by measuring brain hemodynamic activity and
representational geometries during observation of transitive
and intransitive gestures. In the third study, we propose a novel
methodological and analytical framework aimed at
investigating the interplay between action and perceptual
processes during active perception; we tested the validity of the
proposed approach by recording participants’ motor and
perceptual behavior during a perceptual decision-making task
and assessing the influence of motor control features on
decision formation.
The results of the first and the second study indicate that
actions categories are not encoded in a segregated manner and
that the same areas of the AON participate in the
representations of multiple action features; moreover, the
representational content of the AON is not constrained byanatomical proximity, as anatomically distant regions shared
similar information content. These findings support the notion
that the AON relies on overlapping and distributed coding and
may act as a unique representational space. In the third study,
we established a link between motor and perceptual behavior,
as changes in movement kinematics continuously tracked the
decision formation process, and we revealed a significant
contribution of grip force to perceptual decisions. These results
support the validity of the proposed approach in exploring the
relationship between patterns of motor behavior and decision
processes and the neurophysiological correlates underlying
decision-making mechanisms
Legislative and Policy Responses to the Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property in the European Union An historical inquiry into the legal means and methods employed by the EU and its northern Member states to protect cultural property from illicit trafficking
Full text linkThis doctoral dissertation is an historical analysis of the
legislative and policy responses to the phenomenon that is illicit
trafficking and the illegal movement of cultural property to, from and
within the European continent in the 20th and 21st centuries. Its intent is to
illustrate the evolution of the historic means used the restrain the illicit
trafficking of culture property, ascertain if they work(ed), and
understand the extent to which they influence the current EU legal order.
Using archival resources, comparisons of national, European and
international legislation, policy, codes of conduct, and contemporary
media commentary, this dissertation illustrates that illicit trafficking is an
old and complex illegal trade that has long posed legal and policy
headaches for governments; though the types of objects being trafficked
differ from state to state, this dissertation illustrates that the problems
faced by governments in addressing this phenomenon are often similar.
Export controls are historically the main means by which states protect
heritage from trafficking, and this dissertation agrees with this
observation. However, the EU decision to complement export controls
with import controls appears to suggest the inability of these
traditionally accepted methods to fully restrain trafficking.
The most surprising findings of this work are the extent to which
museums have influenced national and EU policy; and early stage which
the EU engaged in finding solutions to illicit trade, earlier than originally
presumed. Finally, the innovative responses by the EU are ground-
breaking, and in this sense, this dissertation further demonstrates the
potential of the EU as an emerging major partner and forward-thinking
actor in the fight against illicit trafficking
Essays on financial stability: old and new risk sources
Full text linkEuropean Central Bank (ECB) defines financial stability1 as ”a condition
in which the financial system – which comprises financial intermediaries,
markets and market infrastructures – can withstand shocks and unravel
financial imbalances. This mitigates the prospect of disruptions in the
financial intermediation process that are severe enough to impact real
economic activity adversely.” Practically speaking, stability is a balance
among the agents participating in the financial environment: market par-
ticipants weave relationships, creating dependencies and interconnec-
tions. The risks and vulnerabilities affecting one agent can impact many
others, generating a cascade effect that propagates and might throw the
system out of balance. Hence it is essential to identify all the potential
sources of risk in the spirit that if we can recognize the form and assess
the severity, we can cope with specific risks and prevent the system from
unbalancing
On dissonance and fascist heritage in Italy. An analysis on the reuse of ex-Case del Fascio in three provinces
Full text linkIn Italy the current debate over the reuse of fascist heritage is, on
the one side, incapable of answering to contemporary needs and
criticalities raised by international movements and on the other
side, it is raising a growing academic interest. This research aims
to introduce critical heritage studies in the Italian context and
update the current debate over difficult heritage. Moreover, this
research enriches the interdisciplinary approach of critical
heritage studies by integrating a new perspective taken from
organisation studies.
The research focuses on the concept of dissonance linked to
difficult heritage by testing the dissonant heritage theory and
proposing a new and productive concept of dissonance. Are the
preservation of fascist heritage and the use of fascist architecture
generating dissonance? The objective is to understand how fascist
heritage is preserved and reused in Italy, how this approach has
changed over time and how it should be approached now. The
object of the research are the reuses of case del fascio (for their
capillary diffusion, representativeness of the regime, and ordinary
characteristic) in three Italian provinces (Latina, Livorno, Treviso).
The issue of the reuse, demolition or neglect of fascist-built
architectures is carried out on a twofold level: a material one,
studying the construction, modifications and reuse of case del fascio
through archival sources and on-site inspections; and a public
discourse one, applying the economies of worth by Boltanski and
Thevenot to debates over the preservation and reuse of fascist
heritage in Italy.
The innovations of the research can be found in (1) testing the
dissonant heritage theory to the Italian case, finding that the
relationship between the remains and reuse of fascist-built
architectures is not linear, is more complex and dependent on
inertia and local dynamics. It outlines also (2) a new perspective
for the critical reuse of fascist-built architectures based on a
positive concept of dissonance. An (3) analysis of how dissonance
works and how can be activated and silenced is paralleled with
suggestions on how organising dissonance as a new way of taking
decisions over the reuse of ex-fascist public buildings