Individual Representations Research Articles

Democracy in Local Communities: Direct Election System versus Deliberation System in the Minangkabau Ethnicity in West Sumatra, Indonesia

This paper focuses on the dissonance between the values of the democracy of local communities and the liberal democracy of the Minangkabau community in West Sumatra, Indonesia. A direct election system is adopted to elect the leader of the Minangkabau community. However, a qualitative study shows that, culturally, the Minangkabau community chooses its leader through a clan-based deliberation system, relying on communal rather than individual representation. Adopting direct election with the one-person-one- vote principle to elect the community leader has instead been a source of conflict. The ambiguous understanding of the community members regarding the principles of individual and collective representation has given rise to the conflict. The institutionalisation of a clan-based deliberation system in the community is a solution to solve the conflict. This scholarly inquiry underscores that the Minangkabau ethnic group's democratic ethos fosters an environment conducive to communal deliberations, thereby sustaining their social cohesion and integration.

Individual representation in approval-based committee voting

AbstractWhen selecting multiple candidates based on approval preferences of voters, the proportional representation of voters’ opinions is an important and well-studied desideratum. Existing criteria for evaluating the representativeness of outcomes focus on groups of voters and demand that sufficiently large and cohesive groups are “represented” in the sense that candidates approved by some group members are selected. Crucially, these criteria say nothing about the representation of individual voters, even if these voters are members of groups that deserve representation. In this paper, we formalize the concept of individual representation (IR) and explore to which extent, and under which circumstances, it can be achieved. We show that checking whether an IR outcome exists is computationally intractable, and we verify that all common approval-based voting rules may fail to provide IR even in cases where this is possible. We then focus on domain restrictions and establish an interesting contrast between “voter interval” and “candidate interval” preferences. This contrast can also be observed in our experimental results, where we analyze the attainability of IR for realistic preference profiles.

Representation of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Individuals in Clinical Trials

Having diverse participants in clinical trials ensures new drug products work well across different demographic groups, making health care safer and more effective for everyone. Information on the extent of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander participation in clinical trials is limited. To examine representation of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders in clinical trials leading to the first US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for the 10 drug products with the top worldwide sales forecasts in 2024. Cross-sectional secondary analysis of existing data from clinical trials that took place from 2006 to 2021 in the US. All clinical trials that were included in the FDA first approval application for the 10 drug products were evaluated in this study. Data were analyzed from February to August 2024. Participation in a clinical drug trial. Comparison of the proportion of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander participation in clinical trials for the 10 drug products with top sales forecasts in 2024 to the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population proportion. In this cross-sectional study of 139 062 individuals, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander participation in clinical trials for the 10 drug products with top sales forecasts was either unknown or low. For 6 of the 10 drug products (60%), the number of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander participants was not documented. All trials that reported Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander participation had fewer Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander participants than would be expected based on their US population proportion, with 2 of the differences being statistically significant. Of the trials that disaggregated Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander participants from other racial groups, the number of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander participants was 8 for risankizumab-rzaa (0.38% of participants vs 0.49% of the population; percentage point difference, -0.11%; 95% CI, -0.37% to -0.15%), 7 for bictegravir/emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide (0.38% of participants vs 0.49% of the population; percentage point difference, -0.10%; 95% CI, -0.39% to 0.18%), 27 for 4vHPV/9vHPV (0.15% of participants vs 0.46% of the population; percentage point difference, -0.31%; 95% CI, -0.37% to -0.26%), and 90 for BNT162B2 COVID-19 vaccine (0.20% of participants vs 0.52% of the population; percentage point difference, -0.32; 95% CI, -0.36% to -0.27%). In this cross-sectional study, limited documentation and participation of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander individuals in clinical trials for drug products with top sales forecasts was found. This is especially concerning because Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander individuals have a higher risk than other racial groups for type 2 diabetes, cancer, and several other conditions the products examined in this study treat. Given the importance of enrolling Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander participants in clinical trials, sites should be established in key geographic regions, such as Hawai'i, and postmarket studies should be conducted within Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations.

NOise Reduction with DIstribution Corrected (NORDIC) principal component analysis improves brain activity detection across rodent and human functional MRI contexts.

NOise Reduction with DIstribution Corrected (NORDIC) principal component analysis (PCA) has been shown to selectively suppress thermal noise and improve the temporal signal-to-noise ratio (tSNR) in human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, the feasibility to improve data quality for rodent fMRI using NORDIC PCA remains uncertain. NORDIC PCA may also be particularly beneficial for improving topological brain mapping, as conventional mapping requires precise spatiotemporal signals from large datasets (ideally ~1 hour acquisition) for individual representations. In this study, we evaluated the effects of NORDIC PCA compared with "Standard" processing in various rodent fMRI contexts that range from task-evoked optogenetic fMRI to resting-state fMRI. We also evaluated the effects of NORDIC PCA on human resting-state and retinotopic mapping fMRI via population receptive field (pRF) modeling. In rodent optogenetic fMRI, apart from doubling the tSNR, NORDIC PCA resulted in a larger number of activated voxels and a significant decrease in the variance of evoked brain responses without altering brain morphology. In rodent resting-state fMRI, we found that NORDIC PCA induced a nearly threefold increase in tSNR and preserved task-free relative cerebrovascular reactivity (rCVR) across cortical depth. NORDIC PCA further improved the detection of TGN020-induced aquaporin-4 inhibition on rCVR compared with Standard processing without NORDIC PCA. NORDIC PCA also increased the tSNR for both human resting-state and pRF fMRI, and for the latter also increased activation cluster sizes while retaining retinotopic organization. This suggests that NORDIC PCA preserves the spatiotemporal precision of fMRI signals needed for pRF analysis, and effectively captures small activity changes with high sensitivity. Taken together, these results broadly demonstrate the value of NORDIC PCA for the enhanced detection of neural dynamics across various rodent and human fMRI contexts. This can in turn play an important role in improving fMRI image quality and sensitivity for translational and preclinical neuroimaging research.

The PCovR biplot: a graphical tool for principal covariates regression

Biplots are useful tools because they provide a visual representation of both individuals and variables simultaneously, making it easier to explore relationships and patterns within multidimensional datasets. This paper extends their use to examine the relationship between a set of predictors X and a set of response variables Y using Principal Covariates Regression analysis (PCovR). The PCovR biplot provides a simultaneous graphical representation of individuals, predictor variables and response variables. It also provides the ability to examine the relationship between both types of variables in the form of the regression coefficient matrix.

Innovative Digital Phenotyping Method to Assess Body Representations in Autistic Adults: A Perspective on Multisensor Evaluation.

In this perspective paper, we propose a novel tech-driven method to evaluate body representations (BRs) in autistic individuals. Our goal is to deepen understanding of this complex condition by gaining continuous and real-time insights through digital phenotyping into the behavior of autistic adults. Our innovative method combines cross-sectional and longitudinal data gathering techniques to investigate and identify digital phenotypes related to BRs in autistic adults, diverging from traditional approaches. We incorporate ecological momentary assessment and time series data to capture the dynamic nature of real-life events for these individuals. Statistical techniques, including multivariate regression, time series analysis, and machine learning algorithms, offer a detailed comprehension of the complex elements that influence BRs. Ethical considerations and participant involvement in the development of this method are emphasized, while challenges, such as varying technological adoption rates and usability concerns, are acknowledged. This innovative method not only introduces a novel vision for evaluating BRs but also shows promise in integrating traditional and dynamic assessment approaches, fostering a more supportive atmosphere for autistic individuals during assessments compared to conventional methods.

GenSynthPop: generating a spatially explicit synthetic population of individuals and households from aggregated data

Synthetic populations are representations of actual individuals living in a specific area. They play an increasingly important role in studying and modeling individuals and are often used to build agent-based social simulations. Traditional approaches for synthesizing populations use a detailed sample of the population (which may not be available) or combine data into a single joint distribution, and draw individuals or households from these. The latter group of existing sample-free methods fail to integrate (1) the best available data on spatial granular distributions, (2) multi-variable joint distributions, and (3) household level distributions. In this paper, we propose a sample-free approach where synthetic individuals and households directly represent the estimated joint distribution to which attributes are iteratively added, conditioned on previous attributes such that the relative frequencies within each joint group of attributes are maintained and fit granular spatial marginal distributions. In this paper we present our method and test it for the Zuid-West district of The Hague, the Netherlands, showing that spatial, multi-variable and household distributions are accurately reflected in the resulting synthetic population.

CLlight: Enhancing representation of multi-agent reinforcement learning with contrastive learning for cooperative traffic signal control

Multi-agent reinforcement learning has shown great potential for coordinating multi-intersection traffic signals due to its powerful adaptive capabilities, treating each intersection as an agent. However, in the real world, different intersections possess differentiating characteristics such as unique vehicle distributions and traffic patterns. Most existing methods directly add neighboring intersection states to local intersections and optimize the cooperative policy network based on synthesized global features. This indirect optimization approach makes it difficult to thoroughly explore the mutual interactions among different intersection agents, preventing agents from truly learning features with cooperative awareness. To resolve these challenges, we introduce contrastive learning as representation task to the multi-intersection traffic signal control approach named CLlight for two-stage policy network updating. In the first stage, we utilize policy-based or actor-critic-based reinforcement learning methods such as A2C, SAC, and PPO to train policy networks with certain representational capabilities. In the second stage, by extracting pre- and post-masked features and reconstructing the post-masked features, the agents are encouraged to learn the similarities and differences between different intersection policies, which in turn enhances the cooperative and individual representation capabilities of the policy network. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of contrastive learning in the field of traffic signal control. Experimental results demonstrate, compared to other state-of-the-art traffic signal control methods, superior average travel time and average waiting time performance under various scenarios, tested on synthetic and real-world datasets.

Sexuality, Virginity and Disability: Analyzing the Movie Why Do You Love Me (2023)

Some research indicates that sexuality and disability are two taboo concepts that are rarely combined. Individuals with disabilities are often portrayed as asexual or hypersexual. The film Why Do You Love Me (2023) attempts to break these stereotypes and depicts sexuality as a symbol of empowerment through the story of three friends with disabilities embarking on a journey to lose their virginity. This study aims to analyze how the film portrays sexuality and virginity of individuals with disabilities. Using a qualitative approach, the research uses critical disability theory and multimodal discourse analysis with critical standpoint to identify dialogues and scenes in the film related to dominant ideologies and accuracy in disability representation. Despite raising a unique theme and diversifying the representation of individuals with disabilities in mainstream media, the results reveal that the practice of “cripping up” perpetuates dominant perspectives and diction in the film’s lexical and visual elements. It uses sexuality and virginity as selling points to determine the social status of men with disabilities amidst societal norms of masculinity. Humor and cinematographic techniques still employ ableist discourses, suggesting the need of men with disabilities for accommodation from the dominant group. Insights for altering cinematic representations of disabilities are explored.

Concept cells and social memory: the abstract representation of familiar individuals.

Concept cells and social memory: the abstract representation of familiar individuals.

Cortically Disparate Visual Features Evoke Content-Independent Load Signals during Storage in Working Memory.

It is well established that holding information in working memory (WM) elicits sustained stimulus-specific patterns of neural activity. Nevertheless, here we provide evidence for a distinct class of neural activity that tracks the number of individuated items in working memory, independent of the type of visual features stored. We present two EEG studies of young adults of both sexes that provide robust evidence for a signal tracking the number of individuated representations in working memory, regardless of the specific feature values stored. In Study 1, subjects maintained either colors or orientations across separate blocks in a single session. We found near-perfect generalization of the load signal between these two conditions, despite being able to simultaneously decode which feature had been voluntarily stored. In Study 2, participants attended to two features with very distinct cortical representations: color and motion coherence. We again found evidence for a neural load signal that robustly generalized across these distinct visual features, even though cortically disparate regions process color and motion coherence. Moreover, representational similarity analysis provided converging evidence for a content-independent load signal, while simultaneously showing that unique variance in EEG activity tracked the specific features that were stored. We posit that this load signal reflects a content-independent "pointer" operation that binds objects to the current context while parallel but distinct neural signals represent the features that are stored for each item in memory.

Voter attitudes and politicians with health conditions and disabilities

AbstractBackgroundMillions of Americans live with chronic health conditions and disabilities. While disability and disabling conditions are common in the United States, the number of politicians and candidates with disclosed disabilities or chronic health conditions remains extremely low.ObjectivesThis study examines what drives the lack of descriptive representation of individuals with disabilities or chronic health conditions. In particular, it examines whether disability bias, or more specifically ableism, drives voter bias against politicians with health challenges and disabilities.MethodsThe analysis relies on two original surveys with samples of American respondents that match Census quotas on key indicators. The first survey was administered to more than 1800 U.S. respondents in 2018. The second survey was administered to 6345 U.S. respondents in 2020. The approach combines observational and experimental data, as well as quantitative and qualitative analysis.ResultsThe findings reveal that voters are significantly less likely to support candidates with disclosed disabilities or health conditions. Mental illness and HIV face the strongest discrimination, while physical challenges due to birth conditions like wheelchair usage and dwarfism are the least penalized. A combination of prejudice, negative character assessment, and electability concerns drive voter bias.ConclusionUnderstanding the barriers to the election of politicians with disabilities and chronic health conditions is crucial to improve the representation of marginalized communities, as descriptive representation improves public policy outcomes for marginalized communities.

Community representation and policing: Effects on Black civilians

AbstractDoes increased representation of Black individuals in the police force lead to less aggressive policing of Black individuals? The current study uses a Chicago panel data set with monthly police unit observations between 2013 and 2015 to understand 1) how police units’ representation of Black individuals affects the number of stops of Black residents and 2) how individual police officers patrol differently depending on the racial/ethnic background of co‐working officers. Using fixed‐effects negative binomial regression, we found that increasing racial congruence between police officers and the community being patrolled was associated over time with fewer stops of Black residents. Individual analyses showed that Black (vs. White) officers stopped fewer Black civilians, with larger effects in police units with higher percentages of Black officers, indicating a unit group effect. Furthermore, as the number of Black officer co‐workers in a shift increased, Black civilian stops declined for all officers, including White officers, which is consistent with active representation. These findings indicate that a more diverse and representative police force can reduce aggressive policing of minority communities by mitigating group threat and cultivating positive cross‐racial exchanges within police organizations and smaller peer groups.

Media representation of African individuals in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on mental health

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of media representation on the mental health of Australians of African descent during the COVID-19 pandemic. By analysing the media coverage of COVID-19 restriction breaches, particularly focusing on individuals from African backgrounds, the study aims to shed light on how racially charged narratives can contribute to emotional distress and exacerbate feelings of alienation within these communities. The findings highlight the detrimental effects of such portrayals, emphasising the need for more responsible and inclusive media reporting to safeguard the mental well-being of culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Design/methodology/approach The study employed media content analysis to explore representations of Australians of African origin versus the broader Anglo–Australian population during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on racial identity’s impact on news coverage of COVID-19 restriction breaches. Researchers classified and distilled extensive textual content, using a diverse sample from various ethnic-racial backgrounds, with an emphasis on African Australians within the CALD community. Data analysis was conducted using NVivo (version 12) software, following an inductive approach. Findings The findings underscore the consistent portrayal of people from African communities as outsiders and the racial profiling they experience in media coverage of significant issues like COVID-19. Originality/value There is very limited research that examines the impact of media coverage on African migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Retrospective Chart Review of Factors That Influence Outpatient Physical Therapy Care for Individuals With Chronic Constipation Utilizing an Intersectionality Lens

Purpose: This study sought to investigate intersectional factors regarding race, gender, health status, barriers to care, and socioeconomic factors surrounding adult individuals referred to outpatient physical therapy care with chronic constipation in the Miami, Florida metro area. Methods: The study was a retrospective chart review of 200 individuals referred to outpatient physical therapy at the University of Miami Health System over five years. The four primary questions that sought to explain physical therapy wait times, distance driven for care, duration of constipation on initial evaluation, and subjective well-being on the last physical therapy appointment were analyzed through binary logistic regression. Results: Our results demonstrate that subjective well-being at the end of outpatient physical therapy care for chronic constipation was negatively affected by identifying as African American/Black versus Caucasian (77.3%, odds ratio = 0.227 95% confidence interval, 0.061-0.847) and high durations of constipation ≥5 years (86.4%, odds ratio = 0.136; 95% confidence interval, = 0.026-0.723). Additionally, subjective well-being at the end of physical therapy care for CC was positively affected by an increasing number of sessions (9%, OR = 1.09; 95% CI, 1.002-1.194). Conclusion: Our findings indicated race and duration of constipation may impact clinical outcomes for individuals seeking outpatient physical therapy care for chronic constipation. Descriptive statistics also demonstrate the need to reach individuals with chronic constipation sooner and call for a more equitable and diverse representation of individuals in chronic constipation research and clinical care.

The neural representation of self, close, and famous others: An electrophysiological investigation on the social brain

ABSTRACT It is well established that the Self has a unique representation in the social brain, as evident from the Self-Referential Effect (SRE). However, the timing and neural mechanisms underlying the representation of individuals with varying degrees of closeness and emotional relevance to the Self remain unclear. Twenty-two participants read 260 personality traits and decided whether they described themselves, a close friend, or an admired celebrity. A strong Self-Referential Effect (SRE) was found at behavioral, ERP, and neuroimaging levels. Three anterior ERP components were identified as sensitive to social information: a P200 (250–350 ms) responding to famous others’ traits, a P600 (500–700 ms) responding to self-trait processing, and a late positivity (800–950 ms) responding to self-trait processing and close traits. Source reconstructions revealed partially overlapping but distinct neural sources for each individual. The right precuneus (bodily self) and inferior frontal areas (inner voice) were active only during self-processing, while the right medial prefrontal cortex (BA10) was consistently active across tasks, showing a robust SRE. These findings provide insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the representation of the Self in social contexts.

Sex, Race, and Ethnicity of Faculty and Department Chairs in Orthopaedic Surgery and Comparable Fields: 2015 to 2022.

The field of orthopaedic surgery has disproportionately low numbers of women and underrepresented in medicine (URM) groups. Although the representation of women and URM in orthopaedics has increased over the past several years, the growth has not kept up with other surgical specialties. This is a retrospective review of data presented by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) regarding US medical school faculty and department chair makeup in 2018 to 2022 and 2015 data from the AAMC Group on Women in Medicine and Sciences reports. Data regarding the sex and race/ethnicity of faculty and department chairs in orthopaedic surgery, a comparable surgical specialty (otolaryngology), surgery, and all medical fields were assessed. Otolaryngology was chosen as a comparable specialty because orthopaedic surgery and otolaryngology are the only two surgical specialties classified within the AAMC faculty report, separate from any medical counterpart. Among orthopaedic surgery, otolaryngology, surgery, and all clinical sciences, the representation of women and individuals from URM groups increased between 2015 and 2022. During this time, orthopaedic surgery had the lowest growth rate of the four groups in female faculty (+0.63%/year), URM faculty (+0.32%/year), and URM department chairs (+0.11%/year). However, orthopaedic surgery did have an increase in female department chairs (0.96%/year to 7% in 2022), similar to increases seen in surgery and all clinical sciences. The increase in representation in female and URM faculty and department chairs in orthopaedic surgery lags behind comparable fields and medicine as a whole. In addition, orthopaedic surgery had the lowest representation of female and URM faculty in 2015 and 2022. Improving the representation of female and URM orthopaedic faculty and department chairs is critical because this may encourage more diverse medical students to consider pursuing a career in the field.

'The Naked Truth' about degendering

In West Coast Swing (WCS) dancing, traditionally only men were permitted to lead and women to follow; however, since 2014 the degendering movement has sought to enable all dancers to participate in their preferred role and to remove gendered language from the discourse around leading and following. As part of a larger linguistic ethnography exploring (de)gendered language use in WCS contexts across Central Canada and the US Northeast and Midwest, this case study explores patterns of and factors contributing to the use and avoidance of gendered language in The Naked Truth, a podcast created by and for the WCS community. While the podcast hosts use the degendered terms ‘leader’ and ‘follower’, their differing but continued use of heteronormatively gendered pronouns in coreference with these neutral terms suggests that the speakers’ mental models remain gendered and that there is a continued need for representation of individuals dancing in nonheteronormative roles.

Electroencephalogram Decoding Reveals Distinct Processes for Directing Spatial Attention and Encoding Into Working Memory

Past work reveals a tight relationship between spatial attention and storage in visual working memory. But is spatially attending an item tantamount to working memory encoding? Here, we tracked electroencephalography (EEG) signatures of spatial attention and working memory encoding while independently manipulating the number of memory items and the spatial extent of attention in two studies of adults (N = 39; N = 33). Neural measures of spatial attention tracked the position and size of the attended area independent of the number of individuated items encoded into working memory. At the same time, multivariate decoding of the number of items stored in working memory was insensitive to variations in the breadth and position of spatial attention. Finally, representational similarity analyses provided converging evidence for a pure load signal that is insensitive to the spatial extent of the stored items. Thus, although spatial attention is a persistent partner of visual working memory, it is functionally dissociable from the selection and maintenance of individuated representations in working memory.

Dissociable effects of mild COVID-19 on short- and long-term memories.

Recent studies have highlighted the presence of cognitive deficits following COVID-19 that persist beyond acute infection, regardless of the initial disease severity. Impairments in short- and long-term memory are among the core deficits reported by patients and observed in objective tests of memory performance. We aimed to extend previous studies by examining performance in a task that allows us to directly compare and contrast memories at different timescales. More specifically, we assessed both short- and long-term memories for contextual-spatial associations encoded during a common session and probed at different durations using an equivalent task in non-hospitalized individuals recovering from mild COVID-19 compared to healthy controls. The approach equated all aspects of memory materials and response demands, isolating performance changes resulting only from memory timescales and thus allowing us to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on cognition. In addition to providing measures of accuracy and response times, the task also provided a sensitive continuous readout of the precision of memory representations, specifically by examining the resolution with which spatial locations were retained in memory. The results demonstrated selective impairment of long-term memory performance in individuals recovering from mild COVID-19 infection. Short-term memory performance remained comparable to healthy controls. Specifically, poor precision of long-term memory representations was demonstrated, which improved with days since diagnosis. No such relationship was observed for short-term memory performance. Our findings reveal a specific impairment to the precision of spatial-contextual long-term memory representations in individuals recovering from mild COVID-19 and demonstrate evidence of recovery in long-term memory over time. Further, the experimental design provides a carefully controlled and sensitive framework to assess memory across different durations with the potential to provide more detailed phenotyping of memory deficits associated with COVID-19 in general.