Large Stimuli Research Articles

Sustainable Recovery: 2022: Recovery With a New Trajectory?

It’s January, and the JPT issue has a new look and a new digital edition. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the JPT staff, led by Pam Boschee and Glenda Smith, along with the JPT Editorial Review Committee, for producing exciting articles and technology news every month. For some, the move to a digital-only issue of JPT has disrupted reading and sharing habits. While I know that many of you miss having a print version, the SPE Board believes that remaining digital is the right decision as we look to the future. We’ve changed the digital edition this month. Your feedback on how we can make the digital version match your expectations is very important. I want to take the opportunity to wish you, your family, and those who matter to you an excellent year following the roller coaster we experienced in 2021. Last year started with the hope that the rapid development of vaccines soon would be providing us protection against the COVID-19 virus. However, the numerous waves of infection (we are now in the fifth in many countries) and the various mutations of the virus have kept health authorities and governments in a reactive mode. With the number of COVID-19-related fatalities worldwide above 5 million at the end of 2021, nearly all of us had family or friends who were affected. For the economy in general and our industry in particular, 2022 will bring a bag of uncertainties. Mohamed El-Erian, a recognized economic expert, said at 2021 ADIPEC, “The recovery from the pandemic crisis can be characterized by the U’s: uneven, unusual, uncertain.” The December 2021 OECD Economic Outlook mentions, “The rebound is losing some momentum as the surge in demand for goods has met bottlenecks in production chains. Inflation pressures have emerged in all economies.” Among the risks associated with the large stimulus packages are bottlenecks in production chains, disruptions in commodities and energy supply, high inflation rates (which developed economies had not seen for the past 2 decades), and the loss of momentum in the economic rebound. In terms of the upstream activity outlook, James West, senior managing director at Evercore, in an optimistic outlook recently said, “The spending cycle begins anew: 2021 was the beginning,” adding that “2022 is acceleration.” For our industry, this is great news following two sharp downcycles in less than 6 years. The year 2021 ended on a high note. 2021 ADIPEC in Abu Dhabi was a great success from organizational, technical, and attendance standpoints. In addition to the excellent papers and panels, the exhibition attracted large numbers of visitors (in line with 2019 ADIPEC). I was impressed by the eagerness of participants to meet. The exhibition booths were busy with members that wanted to discuss innovation until the last hours of the fourth day of the conference. Great attention was given to ensure the health and safety of the participants. I had the pleasure to attend the SPE Abu Dhabi Section dinner, and I was pleased to see how much progress has been made in diversity and inclusion.

Distributed coding of duration in rodent prefrontal cortex during time reproduction.

As we interact with the external world, we judge magnitudes from sensory information. The estimation of magnitudes has been characterized in primates, yet it is largely unexplored in nonprimate species. Here, we use time interval reproduction to study rodent behavior and its neural correlates in the context of magnitude estimation. We show that gerbils display primate-like magnitude estimation characteristics in time reproduction. Most prominently their behavioral responses show a systematic overestimation of small stimuli and an underestimation of large stimuli, often referred to as regression effect. We investigated the underlying neural mechanisms by recording from medial prefrontal cortex and show that the majority of neurons respond either during the measurement or the reproduction of a time interval. Cells that are active during both phases display distinct response patterns. We categorize the neural responses into multiple types and demonstrate that only populations with mixed responses can encode the bias of the regression effect. These results help unveil the organizing neural principles of time reproduction and perhaps magnitude estimation in general.

The role of automatic stabilizers in business cycle: the case of indonesia

TThe use of large fiscal stimulus packages to dampen the impact of Covid-19 recently has raised concerns about the effectiveness of the discretionary fiscal policy. This paper aims at analysing the feasibility of automatic fiscal stabilisers to mitigate economic fluctuations in the case of Indonesia. Using the IMF standard model for quarterly data over the period of 2001(1) to 2019(4), we find that the role of automatic fiscal stabilisers is getting greater both in revenue and spending. This implies that the automatic fiscal stabilisers are feasible as the main fiscal policy instrument for economic stability goals in the future. However, given the existing circumstances, Indonesia has to reform economic, regulatory, and institutional ecosystems in adopting the automatic fiscal stabilisers.

Both negative and positive task-irrelevant stimuli contract attentional breadth in individuals with high levels of negative affect

ABSTRACT Emotionally-salient stimuli can capture attention to their spatial location, even when they are not relevant to a prescribed task. Here we tested whether they can influence the spatial breadth of attention. Experiment 1 tested whether small task-irrelevant emotionally-salient stimuli contracted attentional breadth when the task required a broad focus, while Experiment 2 tested whether large task-irrelevant emotionally-salient stimuli expanded attentional breadth when the task required a narrow focus. Both experiments compared the effect of negative and positive emotionally-salient images against neutral, and examined the role of participants’ self-reported experiences of negative affect. Both experiments revealed slower responses following large emotionally-salient images, an effect unrelated to attentional breadth. Experiment 1 demonstrated an interaction between accuracy and negative affect, such that individuals with high levels of negative affect were less accurate at identifying global targets following both negative and positive small images, but not following neutral small images. This suggests that these small task-irrelevant emotionally-salient images contracted attentional breadth. Experiment 2 suggested that large task-irrelevant emotionally-salient images did not expand attentional breadth. We discuss how these results cannot be explained by existing models of emotion-based effects on attention and cognition, and the important implications they have for the practicalities of model-testing.

Designing Light for Night Shift Workers: Application of Nonvisual Lighting Design Principles in an Industrial Production Line

Chronodisruption deteriorates the health and wellbeing of shift workers. Artificial light at night and the lack of light during the day are major contributors to chronodisruption and need to be optimized in shift work scenarios. Here, we present one solution for a lighting and automation system in an industrial production workplace. The setting is a rapidly rotating shift work environment with morning, evening, and night shifts. We describe a procedure to specify the new lighting through a software-agnostic nonvisual lighting simulation for artificial and daylighting scenarios. Through this process, a new luminaire is created, called Drosa, that allows for a large melanopic stimulus range between 412 and 73 lx melanopic equivalent daylight (D65) illuminance vertically at eye level, while maintaining a neutral white illuminance at task level between 1250 and 900 lx, respectively. This is possible through a combination of glare-free spotlights with adjustable areal wing lights. An individually programmed automation system controls the light dosage and timing during the day and night. The work is relevant for other shift work scenarios, where the presented example and the discussed rationale behind the automation might provide insights. The work is further relevant for other lighting scenarios beyond industrial shift work, as the nonvisual lighting simulation process can be adapted to any context.

Corticothalamic feedback sculpts visual spatial integration in mouse thalamus.

En route from the retina to the cortex, visual information passes through the dorsolateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) of the thalamus, where extensive corticothalamic (CT) feedback has been suggested to modulate spatial processing. How this modulation arises from direct excitatory and indirect inhibitory CT feedback pathways remains enigmatic. Here, we show that in awake mice, retinotopically organized cortical feedback sharpens receptive fields (RFs) and increases surround suppression in the dLGN. Guided by a network model indicating that widespread inhibitory CT feedback is necessary to reproduce these effects, we targeted the visual sector of the thalamic reticular nucleus (visTRN) for recordings. We found that visTRN neurons have large RFs, show little surround suppression and exhibit strong feedback-dependent responses to large stimuli. These features make them an ideal candidate for mediating feedback-enhanced surround suppression in the dLGN. We conclude that cortical feedback sculpts spatial integration in the dLGN, likely via recruitment of neurons in the visTRN.

The Developmental Eye Movement Test as a Diagnostic Aid in Cerebral Visual Impairment.

The symptoms that characterize children with cerebral visual impairments (CVI) are diverse, ranging from extensive behavioral or physical disabilities to subtle changes that can easily be missed. A correct diagnosis of CVI is therefore difficult to make, but having a wide variety of tests available can be helpful. This study aims to determine if the developmental eye movement test (DEM) can be one of those tests. In this test, a fixed set of numbers has to be read aloud, first in vertical columns and then in horizontal lines. In order to measure differences between children with CVI compared to normally sighted age-matched controls and children with a visual impairment (VI), we determined DEM times, crowding intensities and the reaction time to a large visual stimulus for all three groups. We found that children with CVI or VI need significantly more time to read the DEM numbers than age-matched controls. Additionally, children with CVI need more time than children with VI to read the horizontal DEM, but not the vertical DEM. We also found a significant difference between the children with CVI and the other two groups in the relationship between horizontal DEM performance and crowding intensity. However, for the relationship between DEM performance and visual detection time, no group-differences were found. We conclude that the DEM can be a useful addition in the diagnosis of CVI, especially in combination with information about crowding.

RUBubbles as a novel tool to study categorization learning

Grouping objects into discrete categories affects how we perceive the world and represents a crucial element of cognition. Categorization is a widespread phenomenon that has been thoroughly studied. However, investigating categorization learning poses several requirements on the stimulus set in order to control which stimulus feature is used and to prevent mere stimulus–response associations or rote learning. Previous studies have used a wide variety of both naturalistic and artificial categories, the latter having several advantages such as better control and more direct manipulation of stimulus features. We developed a novel stimulus type to study categorization learning, which allows a high degree of customization at low computational costs and can thus be used to generate large stimulus sets very quickly. ‘RUBubbles’ are designed as visual artificial category stimuli that consist of an arbitrary number of colored spheres arranged in 3D space. They are generated using custom MATLAB code in which several stimulus parameters can be adjusted and controlled separately, such as number of spheres, position in 3D-space, sphere size, and color. Various algorithms for RUBubble generation can be combined with distinct behavioral training protocols to investigate different characteristics and strategies of categorization learning, such as prototype- vs. exemplar-based learning, different abstraction levels, or the categorization of a sensory continuum and category exceptions. All necessary MATLAB code is freely available as open-source code and can be customized or expanded depending on individual needs. RUBubble stimuli can be controlled purely programmatically or via a graphical user interface without MATLAB license or programming experience.Graphical abstract

Dynamic tunability of phase-change material transition temperatures using ions for thermal energy storage

Thermal energy storage (TES) based on phase-change materials (PCMs) has many current and potential applications, such as climate control in buildings, thermal management for batteries and electronics, thermal textiles, and transportation of pharmaceuticals. Despite its promise, the adoption of TES has been limited, in part due to limited tunability of the transition temperature, which hinders TES performance for varying use temperatures. Transition temperature tuning of a material using an external stimulus, such as pressure or an electric field, typically requires very large stimuli. To circumvent this problem, here, we report on the dynamic transition temperature tunability of a PCM using ions. We achieve a transition temperature tunability up to 6°C in polyethylene glycol (PEG) by using the salt lithium oxalatodifluoroborate at a low voltage of 2.5 V, which may enable simpler and safer devices/system designs. We also explain the thermal properties of the salt/PCM solution using the Flory-Huggins theory. Dynamically tunable T m (15°C–21°C) of phase change materials with 2.5 V perturbation A dual-ion battery approach using ions to modulate T m of the phase-change materials Combination of thermal energy storage with electrical energy storage in one device Demonstration of higher thermal utilization of the dynamically tunable PCM Lau et al. develop a dynamic tunable phase-change material (PCM) that uses ions to tune the T m , based on the dual-ion battery concept. With static T m PCM, utilization at ambient temperature is limited, whereas for tunable PCM, where T m closely aligns with ambient temperature, higher energy storage is possible.

Visual Search Asymmetry Due to the Relative Magnitude Represented by Number Symbols.

In visual search tasks, physically large target stimuli are more easily identified among small distractors than are small targets among large distractors. The present study extends this finding by presenting preliminary evidence of a new search asymmetry: stimuli that symbolically represent larger magnitude are identified more easily among featurally equivalent distractors that represent smaller magnitude. Participants performed a visual search task using line-segment digits representing the numbers 2 and 5, and the numbers 6 and 9, as well as comparable non-numeric control stimuli. In three experiments, we found that search times are faster when the target is a digit that represents a larger magnitude than the distractor, although this pattern was not evident in one additional experiment. The results provide suggestive evidence that the magnitude of a number symbol can affect perceptual comparisons between number symbols, and that the semantic meaning of a target stimulus can systematically affect visual search.

Inclusive housing programmes to stimulate the economy and improve health outcomes after COVID-19

Countries around the globe have experienced the health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. In many countries in the Global South, interventions in the housing sector can support public and private investments and have large economic stimulus effects. This article develops a series of principles that would ensure investments in housing not only serve as economic stimuli but deliver the basis for long-term improvement in housing conditions and overall community wellbeing and health by being inclusive and sustainable. This article proposes five principles and illustrates how to apply them in core areas that would typically be included in a housing stimulus package: 1) focus on supporting housing for the underserved middle- and lower-income households; 2) inclusion of both ownership and rental markets; 3) inclusion of both formal and informal housing markets; 4) incorporating communities; and 5) avoiding long-term negative effects on housing and housing finance market development.

Contrasting effects of exogenous and endogenous attention on size perception.

Although neuroimaging studies have shown that exogenous and endogenous attention are dissociable, only a few behavioural studies have explored their differential effects on visual sensitivity, and none have directly focused on visual appearance. Here, we show that exogenous and endogenous attention produces contrasting effects on apparent size. Participants performed a spatial pre-cueing comparative judgement task that had been frequently used to test the attentional effects on visual perception. The results showed that a smaller stimulus within the focus of exogenous attention was perceived to be equal in size as a larger unattended stimulus, whereas a larger stimulus within the focus of endogenous attention was perceived to be equal in size as a smaller unattended stimulus. In other words, exogenous attention increased the perceived size while endogenous attention decreased the perceived size. The contrasting effects may be attributed to the mechanism that exogenous attention favours parvocellular processing for which more neurons with smaller receptive fields (RFs) are activated for a given size, whereas endogenous attention favours magnocellular processing for which fewer neurons with larger RFs are activated. This finding shows that exogenous and endogenous attention acts differentially on size perception, and provides supportive evidence for the distinct mechanisms underlying the two types of attentional processing.

Comparison of Visual Evoked Potentials in Patients Affected by Optic Neuritis From Multiple Sclerosis or Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder.

To compare the visual evoked potentials (VEPs) of optic neuritis (ON) patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD), and controls. To evaluate correlations between VEP and optical coherence tomography (OCT), contrast sensitivity (CS), and automated perimetry. Fifty-five eyes with ON from 29 patients (MS = 14 and NMOSD = 15) and 57 eyes from 29 controls were evaluated using VEP, automated perimetry, CS, and optical coherence tomography. Three groups were analyzed: 1) MS eyes with history of ON (ON-MS), 2) NMOSD eyes with ON (ON-NMOSD), and 3) healthy controls. Groups were compared and associations between the parameters were tested. Compared to controls, ON-MS eyes showed significantly delayed N75 and P100 latencies when using a medium-sized stimulus (30'), and delayed P100 latency when using a large stimulus (1.5°), but similar amplitudes. Compared to controls, ON-NMOSD eyes showed significantly lower N75/P100 amplitudes (both stimulus sizes) and P100/N135 amplitudes (with the 30' stimulus), but latencies did not differ, except for a delayed P100 latency with the 30' stimulus. When comparing the 2 ON groups using the 1.5° stimulus, there was significant delay in P100 latency in ON-MS eyes and a reduction in N75/P100 amplitude in ON-NMOSD eyes. Peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer, macular inner retinal layers, and CS measurements were significantly smaller in ON patients than in controls. A strong correlation was found between VEP parameters and inner retinal layer thickness in ON-NMOSD eyes. ON-MS eyes had normal amplitude and delayed VEP latency, whereas ON-NMOSD eyes displayed reduced amplitude and preserved latency when elicited by checkerboard stimulus with large 1.5° checks. Under such conditions, VEP may help distinguish resolved MS-related ON from resolved NMOSD-related ON.

Health reforms in the United States: The outlook after Biden's first 100 days

The November 2020 election of Joe Biden, coupled with the election of a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party, has the potential to dramatically alter the direction of health policy in the United States. Donald Trump failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) but he managed to whittle down aspects of coverage protection. Historically, the first 100 days of a presidency are a bellwether of accomplishments to come. During this period Biden reversed several of Trump policies through both executive orders and a large economic stimulus bill. The stimulus bill substantially increased premium subsidies to encourage people to purchase health insurance coverage, albeit with funding guaranteed only for a two-year period. Larger accomplishments, such as making these enhanced premium subsidies permanent, reining in prescription drug spending, enacting a public health insurance option to compete with private insurers, and improving public health and health equity, will require further legislation. The political environment in the U.S. is now extraordinarily contentious. Each of these proposed initiatives faces major political hurdles and the window of opportunity for enacting each of these goals very well may be brief.

Spatial suppression of chromatic motion

Center-surround antagonism, as a ubiquitous feature in visual processing, usually leads to inferior perception for a large stimulus compared to a small one. For example, it is more difficult to judge the motion direction of a large high-contrast pattern than that of a small one. However, this spatial suppression in the motion dimension was only reported for luminance motion, and was not found for chromatic motion. Given that center-surround suppression only occurs for strong visual inputs, we hypothesized that previous failure in finding spatial suppression of chromatic motion might be due to weak chromatic motion being induced with stimuli of limited parameters. In this study, we used phase-shift discrimination and motion-direction discrimination tasks to measure motion spatial suppression induced by stimuli of two spatial frequencies (0.5 and 2 cpd) and two contrasts (low and high). We found that spatial suppression of the chromatic motion was stably observed for stimuli of high spatial frequency (2 cpd) and high contrast and spatial summation occurred for stimuli of low spatial frequency (0.5 cpd). Intriguingly, there was no correlations between the motion spatial suppressions of luminance motion and chromatic motion, implying that the two types of spatial suppression are not originated from the same neural processing. Our findings indicate that spatial suppression also exists for chromatic motion, and the mechanisms underlying the spatial suppression of chromatic motion is different from that of luminance motion.

THE CORONAVIRUS RECESSION IN THE U.S.: IS THERE A LONG-RUN FOOTPRINT?

The U.S. coronavirus recession began in late February of 2020 and was over in two months. The rapid recovery was due to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Stability Act (CARES Act), a large fiscal stimulus program initiated in late March 2020, that was accompanied by a strong expansionary monetary policy. This paper advances the notion that although the Corona-Recession was historically short it had two more permanent—longer-run—impacts that have largely been ignored. First, it accelerated two emerging trends—expansion of remote work, and more rapid adoption of digital technologies—and each will have a profound effect on work, society, and well-being in the U.S. Second, the pandemic-fuelled downturn fostered a new pathway—loneliness and social isolation—that exacerbated the emotional health concern that is part of all recessions, especially for younger persons. This occurrence is also likely to have an enduring footprint on economic and social life.

Shape discrimination in peripheral vision: Addressing pragmatic limitations of M-scaling radial frequency patterns

Peripheral worsening in shape discrimination (SD) can be compensated by size-scaling of peripheral stimuli. However, such scaling results in production of large stimuli that occupy a vast range of eccentricities. We used six proportionally decreasing spatial scales to address this pragmatic limitation and to explore how shape discrimination varies with radius in the nasal visual field. Five participants with normal vision discriminated circles and radial frequency (RF) patterns presented nasally to the fixation point at 5°, 10°, 15° and 20°. Stimuli were scaled with the nasal cortical magnification factor (nCMF) from a central stimulus in six spatial scales, which varied from 0.125 to 1, where 1 corresponded to 1.2° radius. Thresholds expressed in Weber fractions remained constant at eccentricities up to 20° regardless of the spatial scale. Weber fractions for the smaller spatial scales (0.125–0.5) were higher and more variable than for the larger spatial scales (0.75–1), yet still constant across periphery. The results provide evidence that peripheral shape discrimination is constrained by low-level properties, such as eccentricity, and can be predicted by the cortical magnification theory. However, above the peripheral modulation resolution limits, RF shape discrimination is based on the proportion between the modulation amplitude and the radius for larger scales (0.75–1), and demonstrates peripheral scale invariance for these stimuli. For eccentric shape discrimination tests, stimuli with low spatial frequency, high contrast, and radii corresponding to SS 0.75–0.875 should be used to ensure constant Weber fractions, small variability, and peripheral stimuli that are not excessively magnified.

The Role of Meaningful Stimuli in Large Stimulus Classes

The Role of Meaningful Stimuli in Large Stimulus Classes

Macroeconomic effects of government transfer payments: Evidence from Korea

Although government transfer payments (TPs) have recently become an important policy option to prevent severe recessions, the literature on the aggregate effects of TPs is sparse. To fill this gap, this study empirically examines the effects of government TPs on the aggregate economy. To this end, I estimate two leading time series models using Korean data: a local projection with an instrumental variable model and a proxy vector autoregressive model. Employing natural disasters as an instrumental variable to identify government TP shocks, the results reveal that an exogenous increase in TPs has large stimulus effects, including raising gross domestic product, private consumption, and investment. In particular, an increase in TPs boosts non-durable goods consumption, services consumption, and residential investment. Finally, the estimated peak output multipliers of TPs are greater than one, which implies that TPs can be an effective tool for overcoming recessions.

Advances in Application of Azobenzene as a Trigger in Biomedicine: Molecular Design and Spontaneous Assembly.

Azobenzene is a well-known derivative of stimulus-responsive molecular switches and has shown superior performance as a functional material in biomedical applications. The results of multiple studies have led to the development of light/hypoxia-responsive azobenzene for biomedical use. In recent years, long-wavelength-responsive azobenzene has been developed. Matching the longer wavelength absorption and hypoxia-response characteristics of the azobenzene switch unit to the bio-optical window results in a large and effective stimulus response. In addition, azobenzene has been used as a hypoxia-sensitive connector via biological cleavage under appropriate stimulus conditions. This has resulted in on/off state switching of properties such as pharmacology and fluorescence activity. Herein, recent advances in the design and fabrication of azobenzene as a trigger in biomedicine are summarized.