1,721,390 research outputs found
On Some Epistemological Advantages of the Notion of “Intervenient Aesthetic Field”
Full text linkThe reality of the aesthetic seems to manifest itself more and more in relational and immersive ways that defy analyses that follow the trail of the modern tradition of philosophy, based on the dual gnoseological relationship between subject and object. Even some areas of the new cognitive sciences seem to converge towards a conception of experience as a complex horizon in which variously related vectors operate. From this point of view, it is worth exploring the notion of “field” as a conceptual tool to describe the aesthetic. In this paper we will consider two possible uses of this notion in reference to the aesthetic: to describe experiential modes (following Arnold Berleant), and to describe social dynamics (following Pierre Bourdieu). Yet, the starting point will be some considerations provided by Peter Abbs. We will thus try to show how the notion of “aesthetic field” can be consonant with scientific settings that advocate models of mind that stress its being extended and situated. A particular test bed will be the psychology of art as a discipline spanning philosophical knowledge and empirical investigation. In this key will also be considered the so-called “experiential revolution” in psychology, which indicates an extra-cognitive horizon variously coinciding with the perspective of an aesthetic research focused on the conception of aisthesis as a system of practices of perception, emotion, and expression. According to this conception, the dynamics within the aesthetic field, such as those related to the nexus between perceptual contents and aesthetic properties, or between emotional content and the practices of sensing could prove to be dynamics of “intervenience,” rather than of supervenience
Selvicoltura e cambiamenti climatici
No full textSebbene il ciclo di vita naturale dei boschi sia sempre caratterizzato da una notevole variabilità climatica ed ambientale, il cambiamento climatico e globale in corso influenzerà in modo nuovo e non facilmente prevedibile la dinamica e l’accrescimento dei popolamenti forestali, a causa non solo dell’aumento di temperature e richieste evapotraspirative, ma anche della maggiore frequenza di e-venti estremi, dell’irregolarità di precipitazione, dell’aumento di concentrazione atmosferica di CO2, delle deposizioni azotate.
Numerose evidenze dimostrano come la produttività e le dinamiche di accrescimento dei boschi europei negli ultimi 40-50 anni siano stato influenzate in senso positivo da aumento di CO2, deposi-zioni azotate e variazioni climatiche. In ambiente mediterraneo, al contrario, le variazioni climatiche in atto sembrerebbero avere influito in senso negativo sulla produttività forestale, in particolare al li-mite meridionale dell’areale delle specie.
Partendo da dati sperimentali e risultati di simulazioni modellistiche si cercherà pertanto di indicare quali opzioni selvicolturali possano essere più idonee a favorire l’adattamento degli ecosistemi fore-stali ai cambiamenti globali, ed a stimolare la loro capacità di mitigare i cambiamenti climatici stessi. Viene in particolare sottolineata l’importanza della conservazione della sostanza organica, per una gestione selvicolturale realmente sostenibile e di lungo termine
Unsupervised experience with temporal continuity of the visual environment is causally involved in the development of V1 complex cells
Full text linkUnsupervised adaptation to the spatiotemporal statistics of visual experience is a key computational principle that has long been assumed to govern postnatal development of visual cortical tuning, including orientation selectivity of simple cells and position tolerance of complex cells in primary visual cortex (V1). Yet, causal empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis is scant. Here, we show that degrading the temporal continuity of visual experience during early postnatal life leads to a sizable reduction of the number of complex cells and to an impairment of their functional properties while fully sparing the development of simple cells. This causally implicates adaptation to the temporal structure of the visual input in the development of transformation tolerance but not of shape tuning, thus tightly constraining computational models of unsupervised cortical learning
A template-matching algorithm for laminar identification of cortical recording sites from evoked response potentials
Full text linkIn recent years, the advent of the so-called silicon probes has made it possible to homogeneously sample spikes and local field potentials (LFPs) from a regular grid of cortical recording sites. In principle, this allows inferring the laminar location of the sites based on the spatiotemporal pattern of LFPs recorded along the probe, as in the well-known current source-density (CSD) analysis. This approach, however, has several limitations, since it relies on visual identification of landmark features (i.e., current sinks and sources) by human operators, features that can be absent from the CSD pattern if the probe does not span the whole cortical thickness, thus making manual labeling harder. Furthermore, as with any manual annotation procedure, the typical CSD-based workflow for laminar identification of recording sites is affected by subjective judgment undermining the consistency and reproducibility of results. To overcome these limitations, we developed an alternative approach, based on finding the optimal match between the LFPs recorded along a probe in a given experiment and a template LFP profile that was computed using 18 recording sessions, in which the depth of the recording sites had been recovered through histology. We show that this method can achieve an accuracy of 79 μm in recovering the cortical depth of recording sites and a 76% accuracy in inferring their laminar location. As such, our approach provides an alternative to CSD that, being fully automated, is less prone to the idiosyncrasies of subjective judgment and works reliably also for recordings spanning a limited cortical stretch. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Knowing the depth and laminar location of the microelectrodes used to record neuronal activity from the cerebral cortex is crucial to properly interpret the recorded patterns of neuronal responses. Here, we present an innovative approach that allows inferring such properties with high accuracy and in an automated way (i.e., without the need of visual inspection and manual annotation) from the evoked response potentials elicited by sensory (e.g., visual) stimuli
Alberto Martinengo, Giovanni Matteucci and Silvia Vizzardelli discuss. Alessandro Bertinetto's Il pensiero dei suoni (The Thought of Sounds)
No full textAlberto Martinengo, Giovanni Matteucci and Silvia Vizzardelli discuss Alessandro Bertinetto's Il pensiero dei suoni (The Thought of Sounds). After presenting the book's main theses, the authors critically examine Bertinetto's approach to philosophy of music. Martinengo focuses on the phenomena of musical improvisation and on their compatibility with debates in Continental aesthetics. Matteucci retraces the role of aesthetic experience in the theoretical discussion around music. Vizzardelli places Bertinetto's perspective within the most recent issues in analytic aesthetics and offers a critical response
Uniform pricing and product innovation
No full textWe consider the rationale for imposing uniform pricing (UP) on a monopolist in a two-market model with endogenous quality. In contrast to the literature, we find that UP may yield higher quality than third-degree price discrimination (PD). This occurs when the demand dispersion between markets is sufficiently decreasing with quality. A simple test for a higher quality under UP is to check whether an increase in quality reduces the price differential between markets under PD. In this case, a higher quality under UP is an effective substitute for PD to extract consumer surplus. When the demand dispersion is small enough, a higher quality under UP increases social welfare relative to PD
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