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- Moisala, M., et al.
(författare)
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Gaming is related to enhanced working memory performance and task-related cortical activity
- 2017
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Ingår i: Brain Research. - : Elsevier BV. - 0006-8993 .- 1872-6240. ; 1655, s. 204-215
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gaming experience has been suggested to lead to performance enhancements in a wide variety of working memory tasks. Previous studies have, however, mostly focused on adult expert gamers and have not included measurements of both behavioral performance and brain activity. In the current study, 167 adolescents and young adults (aged 13–24 years) with different amounts of gaming experience performed an n-back working memory task with vowels, with the sensory modality of the vowel stream switching between audition and vision at random intervals. We studied the relationship between self-reported daily gaming activity, working memory (n-back) task performance and related brain activity measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results revealed that the extent of daily gaming activity was related to enhancements in both performance accuracy and speed during the most demanding (2-back) level of the working memory task. This improved working memory performance was accompanied by enhanced recruitment of a fronto-parietal cortical network, especially the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In contrast, during the less demanding (1-back) level of the task, gaming was associated with decreased activity in the same cortical regions. Our results suggest that a greater degree of daily gaming experience is associated with better working memory functioning and task difficulty-dependent modulation in fronto-parietal brain activity already in adolescence and even when non-expert gamers are studied. The direction of causality within this association cannot be inferred with certainty due to the correlational nature of the current study.
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| 2. |
- Moisala, M., et al.
(författare)
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Media multitasking is associated with distractibility and increased prefrontal activity in adolescents and young adults
- 2016
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Ingår i: NeuroImage. - : Elsevier BV. - 1053-8119 .- 1095-9572. ; 134, s. 113-121
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The current generation of young people indulges in more media multitasking behavior (e.g., instant messaging while watching videos) in their everyday lives than older generations. Concerns have been raised about how this might affect their attentional functioning, as previous studies have indicated that extensive media multitasking in everyday life may be associated with decreased attentional control. In the current study, 149 adolescents and young adults (aged 13–24 years) performed speech-listening and reading tasks that required maintaining attention in the presence of distractor stimuli in the other modality or dividing attention between two concurrent tasks. Brain activity during task performance was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We studied the relationship between self-reported daily media multitasking (MMT), task performance and brain activity during task performance. The results showed that in the presence of distractor stimuli, a higher MMT score was associated with worse performance and increased brain activity in right prefrontal regions. The level of performance during divided attention did not depend on MMT. This suggests that daily media multitasking is associated with behavioral distractibility and increased recruitment of brain areas involved in attentional and inhibitory control, and that media multitasking in everyday life does not translate to performance benefits in multitasking in laboratory settings.
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| 3. |
- Baum, Seth D., et al.
(författare)
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Long-term trajectories of human civilization
- 2019
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Ingår i: Foresight. - : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 1463-6689 .- 1465-9832. ; 21:11, s. 53-83
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. Design/methodology/approach: This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. Findings: Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible. Originality/value: Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue.
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| 7. |
- Lappalainen, T, et al.
(författare)
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Migration waves to the Baltic Sea region
- 2008
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Ingår i: Annals of Human Genetics. - Oxford : Blackwell Publishing. - 0003-4800 .- 1469-1809. ; 72, s. 337-348
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this study, the population history of the Baltic Sea region, known to be affected by a variety of migrations and genetic barriers, was analyzed using both mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal data. Over 1200 samples from Finland, Sweden, Karelia, Estonia, Setoland, Latvia and Lithuania were genotyped for 18 Y-chromosomal biallelic polymorphisms and 9 STRs, in addition to analyzing 17 coding region polymorphisms and the HVS1 region from the mtDNA. It was shown that the populations surrounding the Baltic Sea are genetically similar, which suggests that it has been an important route not only for cultural transmission but also for population migration. However, many of the migrations affecting the area from Central Europe, the Volga-Ural region and from Slavic populations have had a quantitatively different impact on the populations, and, furthermore, the effects of genetic drift have increased the differences between populations especially in the north. The possible explanations for the high frequencies of several haplogroups with an origin in the Iberian refugia (H1, U5b, I1a) are also discussed.
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| 9. |
- Salmela, L., et al.
(författare)
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Gap filling as exact path length problem
- 2015
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Ingår i: Research in Computational Molecular Biology. 19th Annual International Conference, RECOMB 2015. Proceedings. - Cham : Springer International Publishing. - 9783319167053 ; , s. 281-292
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- One of the last steps in a genome assembly project is filling the gaps between consecutive contigs in the scaffolds. This problem can be naturally stated as finding an s-t path in a directed graph whose sum of arc costs belongs to a given range (the estimate on the gap length). Here s and t are any two contigs flanking a gap. This problem is known to be NP-hard in general. Here we derive a simpler dynamic programming solution than already known, pseudo-polynomial in the maximum value of the input range. We implemented various practical optimizations to it, and compared our exact gap filling solution experimentally to popular gap filling tools. Summing over all the bacterial assemblies considered in our experiments, we can in total fill 28% more gaps than the best previous tool and the gaps filled by our method span 80% more sequence. Furthermore, the error level of the newly introduced sequence is comparable to that of the previous tools.
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