Comparison of peripersonal space in front and rear spaces.

The space immediately around the body, referred to as the peripersonal space (PPS), plays a crucial role in interactions with external objects and in avoiding unsafe situations. This study aimed to investigate whether the size of the PPS changes depending on direction, with a particular focus on the disparity between the front and rear spaces. A vibrotactile stimulus was presented to measure PPS while a task-irrelevant auditory stimulus (probe) approached the participant. In addition, to evaluate the effect of the probe, a baseline condition was used in which only tactile stimuli were presented. The results showed that the auditory facilitation effect of the tactile stimulus was greater in the rear condition than in the front condition. Conversely, the performance on tasks related to auditory distance perception and sound speed estimation did not differ between the two directions, indicating that the difference in the auditory facilitation effect between directions cannot be explained by these factors. These findings indicate that the strength of audio-tactile integration is greater in the rear space compared to the front space, suggesting that the representation of the PPS differed between the front and rear spaces.

Age-related differences in temporal binding and the influence of action body parts.

If voluntary action is followed by an effect with a short time delay, the time interval between action and effect is often perceived to be shorter than it actually is. This perceptual time compression is termed intentional binding or temporal binding. We investigated age-related changes in adulthood considering temporal binding and its dependence on action body parts (i.e., hand vs. foot). This experiment included 17 young adults (mean age: 21.71 ± 3.14 years) and 27 older adults (mean age: 74.41 ± 3.38 years). Participants performed a button press task using their index fingers (hand condition) or toes (foot condition). The results showed that older participants exhibited a strong time compression comparable to young participants in the voluntary condition. Older participants also showed a strong time compression in involuntary action, which was induced by a mechanical device, differently from young participants. In line with previous research, the present age-related differences in time compression considering involuntary action suggest that causal belief significantly influences event perception rather than the associated intention of action or sensory afferents. The present results also suggest that the nature of action body parts has no significant influence on temporal binding, independent of age group.

Design and implementation of a hybrid cloud system for large-scale human genomic research.

In the field of genomic medical research, the amount of large-scale information continues to increase due to advances in measurement technologies, such as high-performance sequencing and spatial omics, as well as the progress made in genomic cohort studies involving more than one million individuals. Therefore, researchers require more computational resources to analyze this information. Here, we introduce a hybrid cloud system consisting of an on-premise supercomputer, science cloud, and public cloud at the Kyoto University Center for Genomic Medicine in Japan as a solution. This system can flexibly handle various heterogeneous computational resource-demanding bioinformatics tools while scaling the computational capacity. In the hybrid cloud system, we demonstrate the way to properly perform joint genotyping of whole-genome sequencing data for a large population of 11,238, which can be a bottleneck in sequencing data analysis. This system can be one of the reference implementations when dealing with large amounts of genomic medical data in research centers and organizations.

Inhibition of intentional binding by an additional sound presentation.

When a voluntary action is followed by an effect after a short delay, the time distance between the action and its effect is perceived to be shorter than the actual time distance. This phenomenon is known as intentional binding (IB). We investigated the influence of presentation of an additional effect on IB between the action and the target effect, and investigated the influence of the presentation timing of the additional effect. One sound (target sound) was constantly presented 250 ms after the button was pressed, and the other sound (additional sound) was presented simultaneously when the button was pressed (Experiment 1) or at one of various timings that included moments both before and after the target sound (Experiment 2). The results showed that IB between the action and target sound was significantly inhibited only when the additional sound was presented prior to the target sound. This suggests that the prior effect has a greater advantage in connecting to the action compared to the posterior sound.

Temporal and Directional Cue Effects on the Cocktail Party Problem for Patients With Listening Difficulties Without Clinical Hearing Loss.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the listening difficulty in a cocktail party environment in the sound field in order to better demonstrate patients' difficulties listening in noise, and to examine temporal and directional cue effects on the speech intelligibility in patients with listening difficulties in noise in comparison with control subjects. DESIGN: This study examined and analyzed 16 control subjects without any complaints of listening difficulties and 16 patients who had visited the outpatient clinic of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Tohoku University Hospital, with complaints of listening difficulties, especially in background crowded conditions, despite having relatively good hearing on routine audiograms and speech audiometry. Using five loudspeakers located in front of the subject and at 30° and 60° to the left and right from the front, word intelligibility for the target voice (female talker) presented from one of the loudspeakers in random order with four distractor voices (male talker) was assessed under the following cue conditions: (1) "no additional temporal/directional cue (only talker sex as a cue)"; (2) "fixed temporal cue without directional cue" (white noise bursts [cue sounds] were presented from the five loudspeakers just before word presentation at 500-ms intervals); (3) "directional + variable temporal cues" [cue sounds were presented from the loudspeaker where the next target word would be presented with a variable inter-stimulus interval [ISI] of 500, 1000, 1500, or 2000 ms between the cue sound and word presentation); and (4) "directional + fixed temporal cues" (cue sounds were presented from the loudspeaker where the next target word would be presented with a fixed ISI of 500 ms). RESULTS: The results indicated the following: (1) word intelligibility under distractors was significantly deteriorated in patients with listening difficulties compared with control subjects, although the clinical speech in noise test using the headphone system did not show any significant differences between the two groups; (2) word intelligibility under distractors for patients with listening difficulties was significantly improved with directional cues presented in advance; and (3) under most cue conditions, individual differences in word intelligibility among patients with listening difficulties were significantly correlated with their dichotic listening ability, which is one of the indicators used to assess auditory selective attention ability. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate the usefulness of the presentation of directional cues for speech comprehension in the cocktail party situation in patients with listening difficulties, as well as the importance of evaluating the degree of listening difficulties spatially in the cocktail party situation.

Touch-contingent visual motion perception: tactile events drive visual motion perception.

It has recently been demonstrated that the brain rapidly forms an association between concurrently presented sound sequences and visual motion. Once this association has been formed, the associated sound sequence can drive visual motion perception. This phenomenon is known as "sound-contingent visual motion perception" (SCVM). In the present study, we addressed the possibility of a similar association involving touch instead of audition. In a 9-min exposure session, two circles placed side by side were alternately presented to produce apparent motion in a horizontal direction. The onsets of the circle presentations were synchronized with vibrotactile stimulation on two different positions of the forearm. We then quantified pre- and post-exposure perceptual changes using a motion-nulling procedure. Results showed that after prolonged exposure to visuotactile stimuli, the tactile sequence influenced visual motion perception. Notably, this effect was specific to the previously exposed visual field, thus ruling out the possibility of simple response bias. These findings suggest that SCVM-like associations occur, at least to some extent, for the other modality combinations. Furthermore, the effect did not occur when the forearm posture was changed between the exposure and test phases, suggesting that the association is formed after integrating proprioceptive information.

syn-/anti-Anthradithiophene derivative isomer effects on semiconducting properties.

Isomerically pure syn-/anti-anthradithiophene derivatives have been developed in the past few years. Although anti-isomers showed higher field-effect mobilities than mixture of isomers have been reported, a detailed comparison of syn-isomer and anti-isomer molecules has not been carried out. In this study, we took newly synthesized pure unsubstituted syn-/anti-anthradithiophenes (ADTs) and compared their single crystal structures, physical properties and semiconducting behavior with a previously studied syn-/anti-dimethylanthradithiophenes (DMADTs). Although the both isomers were typical herringbone packing structures with similar parameters, anti-isomers involved less disordered atoms in the crystal packing. The results from thermal analysis, UV-vis spectra, photo luminescence spectra and cyclic voltammograms of syn-/anti-anthradithiophenes were nearly the in the solid state as well as in solution. However, field-effect transistors showed obvious differences with mobilities of 0.12 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) for anti-anthradithiophene and 0.02 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) for syn-anthradithiophene. Because the crystallinity of thin-films measured by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) seems to be better in syn-isomers, the differences in transistor performance are likely attributed to local defects affecting intermolecular interactions, such as disorder in the crystal packing and charge-dipole interactions.