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Neural empathy mechanisms are shared for physical and social pain, and increase from adolescence to older adulthood
No full textFunding: This work was carried out with the support of a European Research Council grant to H.F. (Ref: CogSoCoAGE; 636458).Empathy is a critical component of social interaction that enables individuals to understand and share the emotions of others. We report a pre-registered experiment in which 240 participants, including adolescents, young adults and older adults, viewed images depicting hands and feet in physically or socially painful situations (vs. non-painful). Empathy was measured using imagined pain ratings and EEG mu suppression. Imagined pain was greater for physical vs. social pain, with young adults showing particular sensitivity to social pain events compared to adolescents and older adults. Mu desynchronisation was greater to pain vs. no-pain situations, but the physical/social context did not modulate pain responses. Brain responses to painful situations increased linearly from adolescence to young and older adulthood. These findings highlight shared activity across the core empathy network for both physical and social pain contexts, and an empathic response that develops over the lifespan with accumulating social experience.Peer reviewe
Influence of strong molecular vibrations on decoherence of molecular polaritons
Get PDFFunding: D.M.R. acknowledges studentship funding from EPSRC grant no. EP/L015110/1 and subsequent support from EPSRC grant no. EP/T517896/1. E.M.G. acknowledges support from EPSRC under grant no. EP/T01377X/1 and the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2022−335), and B.W.L acknowledges funding from EPSRC grant no. EP/T014032/1.We derive the transition rates, dephasing rates, and Lamb shifts for a system consisting of many molecules collectively coupled to a resonant cavity mode. Using a variational polaron master equation, we show that strong vibrational interactions inherent to molecules give rise to multi-phonon processes and suppress the light–matter coupling. In the strong light–matter coupling limit, multiphonon contributions to the transition and dephasing rates strongly dominate over single-phonon contributions for typical molecular parameters. This leads to novel dependencies of the rates and spectral line widths on the number of molecules in the cavity. We also find that vibrational Lamb shifts can substantially modify the polariton energies in the strong light–matter coupling limitPeer reviewe
Humans and great apes visually track event roles in similar ways
Get PDFFunding: The National Center for Competence in Research "Evolving Language" (SNSF agreement number 51NF40_180888, B.B., K.Z., M.M.D.): https://evolvinglanguage.ch/ Swiss National Science Foundation (project grant numbers 310030_185324, K.Z): https://www.snf.ch/en Swiss National Science Foundation (100015_182845, B.B.): https://www.snf.ch/en The National Center for Competence in Research "Evolving Language" Top-Up Grant (grant number N603-18-01, V.A.D.W., K.Z., B.B., M.M.D.): https://evolvinglanguage.ch/ Foundation for Research in Science and the Humanities at the University of Zurich (grant number 20-014, V.A.D.W., S.S., B.B.): https://www.research.uzh.ch/en/funding/researchers/stwf.html Seed money grant, University Research Priority Program “Evolution in Action”, University of Zurich (S.S.): https://www.evolution.uzh.ch/en.html Jacobs Foundation (S.W., M.M.D.): https://jacobsfoundation.org/ Swiss National Science Foundation (grant number PZ00P1_208915, S.S.): https://www.snf.ch/en The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Human language relies on a rich cognitive machinery, partially shared with other animals. One key mechanism, however, decomposing events into causally-linked agent-patient roles, has remained elusive with no known animal equivalent. In humans, agent-patient relations in event cognition drive how languages are processed neurally and expressions structured syntactically. We compared visual event tracking between humans and great apes, using stimuli that would elicit causal processing in humans. After accounting for attention to background information, we found similar gaze patterns to agent-patient relations in all species, mostly alternating attention to agents and patients, presumably in order to learn the nature of the event, and occasionally privileging agents under specific conditions. Six-month-old infants, in contrast, did not follow agent-patient relations and attended mostly to background information. These findings raise the possibility thatevent role tracking, a cognitive foundation of syntax, has evolved long before language but requires time and experience to become ontogenetically available.Peer reviewe
Church music in Scotland : crossroads survey
Get PDFThis research was undertaken in the context of the University of St Andrews MLitt in Sacred Music curriculum planning, to gather information about education and training gaps in the Scottish context. Recent national census data in Scotland has identified active membership in ‘mainline’ Christian churches to be in rapid decline, which is impacting all areas of worship practice. This report analyses data from an online survey run by the researcher in autumn 2024, asking Christians in Scotland, reached via networks of those particularly interested in worship music, to comment on the value and function of music in worship, current approaches for delivery and repertoire, and their memories and wishes for making worship music more effective in worship. The survey provided respondents with Biblical prompts about traditions and renewal, and although the data sample size is small, the quality of the responses provides some interesting insights into current aspirations and hopes. While the report is in the first instance intended for St Andrews curriculum planning, the response from church networks during the survey process indicates that it will also be of interest to those charged with music and ministry in the wider Scottish context
Forgetting George Washington Dugan : public memory, emancipation, and the Concord Soldiers’ Monument
Get PDFThis reflection considers attempts by inhabitants of Concord, Massachusetts to address the omission of the name of George Washington Dugan – the only Black Concordian to enlist in the Union Army during the American Civil War – from the Concord Soldiers’ Monument. In exploring the emphasis the community have placed on incorporating Dugan’s name into the Soldier’s Monument, the argument places these efforts within a longer trajectory of monumentalization which envisages the commemoration of Emancipation as an end in itself. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s speech at the dedication of the Concord Soldiers’ Monument in 1867 offers an example of this mode of thought. A further examination of the racially-charged Enlightenment philosophies of “progress” that inspired his speech and his view of the monument’s purpose provoke new and important questions about the form public commemorations of Black wartime service might take. The piece turns, finally, to Dugan’s missing body, its likely resting place on Morris Island, South Carolina, and its impact on the rhetoric of dedication at Boston’s Robert Gould Shaw Memorial to consider the merits of public forgetting – or, rather, of de-centralizing the monument as a commemorative mode.Peer reviewe
Resolving the energy trilemma across the Scottish islands : policy brief
Get PDFDue to their remoteness on the central grid and lack of population density, the Scottish Islands face a considerable number of energy challenges, despite the rapidly growing pool of renewable generation and innovation in the region. The purpose of this brief is to provide an overview and to bring attention to the energy issues specifically faced on the Scottish Islands, with broader implications for grid-remote spaces, and to provide implementable recommendations that can alleviate such issues while working towards broader net-zero goals
The three dimensions of authoritarianism in the dual-process model of ideology
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Douglas Gifford's Scott-land : from Enlightenment to Renaissance
Get PDFThe oeuvre of the late Douglas Gifford challenges some of the central orthodoxies in modern Scottish literature: the identification of Scott as a romantic; the perception of a Victorian and Edwardian trough embodied in evasions of contemporary social realities, whether in post-romantic historical escapism or the arcadian swerve of kailyard; and the conception of the inter-war Renaissance as a revolution against the sentimentality which supposedly preceded it. Gifford invites us to question these received ideas and to rethink the major turning points in Scotland's modern literary history. Yet Gifford's revisionism was polite and unobtrusive, and because of this the dramatic implications of his work have yet to be fully appreciated. Moreover, it is unclear whether Gifford ever wholly abandoned the essentialist assumptions that his scholarship implicitly undermined.Peer reviewe
Conference report of the 2024 Antimicrobial Resistance Meeting
Get PDFFunding: This conference was funded and hosted by Wellcome Connecting Science Learning and Training Programme.The Antimicrobial Resistance - Genomes, Big Data and Emerging Technologies Conference explored key topics including measuring the burden of AMR, global public health pathogen genomics infrastructure and surveillance, translation and implementation of genomics for AMR control, use of techniques such as wastewater surveillance, mathematical and statistical modelling, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to aid understanding of AMR. This report describes research presented during plenary sessions and discussions, keynote presentations and posters.Peer reviewe
Framing the Twelve : paratexts, prominence and parody
No full textThe question of a frame for the Twelve Prophets can be meaningfully approached in at least three ways. First, a frame describes the boundary of a text. According to the documentary evidence for the Twelve from the Masoretes back to the Dead Sea discoveries, the paratextual presentation of the Twelve encourages its reception as a verbal entity bounded by Hosea and Malachi. Thus, in at least this sense, Hosea and Malachi can be described as a frame for the Twelve. A second approach to the term frame is investigating the exploitation of prominent peripheral positions of a text for hermeneutic potential. Utilisation of such framing devices was common in many types of Jewish and non-Jewish ancient literature with various different compositional histories. This raises the possibility for such a device being available to the producers of the Twelve. Indeed, on investigation, there are significant intertextual relationships between Hosea and Malachi, the peripheries of the Twelve. In particular, both Hosea and Malachi parody the same texts from outside the Twelve in order to portray the object of their critique in a particular way: The nation is an unfaithful spouse encouraged to return to their first spouse; the priest is a prototypical fool who must repent; Israel is scheming Jacob who must return to receive God's blessing as gift. Such parodic intertextuality highlights a third possible way to approach the concept of a frame for the Twelve, viz. a framework, or interpretive context, which shapes one's reading of the Twelve. The framing parodies heighten the Twelve's critique and encourage its reading within the framework of a call to return to YHWH. Thus, in all three of the above senses, Hosea and Malachi form a meaningful and purposeful frame for the Twelve
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