Science Research & Publications

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Browsing Science Research & Publications by Department "Other"

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    Altered brain white matter connectome in children and adolescents with prenatal alcohol exposure
    (Springer, 2020-04-01) Long, Xiangyu; Little, Graham; Treit, Sarah; Beaulieu, Christian; Gong, Gaolang; Lebel, Catherine
    Diffuson tensor imaging (DTI) has demonstrated widespread alterations of brain white matter structure in children with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), yet it remains unclear how these alterations affect the structural brain network as a whole. The present study aimed to examine changes in the DTI-based structural connectome in children and adolescents with PAE compared to unexposed controls. Participants were 121 children and adolescents with PAE (51 females) and 119 typically-developing controls (49 females) aged 5-18 years with DTI data collected at one of four research centers across Canada. Graph-theory based analysis was performed on the connectivity matrix constructed from whole-brain white matter fibers via deterministic tractography. The PAE group had significantly decreased whole-brain global efficiency, degree centrality, and participation coefficients, as well as increased shortest path length and betweenness centrality compared to unexposed controls. Individuals with PAE had decreased connectivity between the attention, somatomotor, and default mode networks compared to controls. This study demonstrates decreased structural white matter connectivity in children and adolescents with PAE at a whole-brain level, suggesting widespread alterations in how networks are connected with each other. This decreased connectivity may underlie cognitive and behavioural difficulties in children with PAE.
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    Multi-Agent Simulations of Intra-colony Violence in Ants
    (Springer, 2020-06) Martin, Kit; Sengupta, Pratim
    This paper seeks to elucidate key aspects of a rarely-studied interaction in ant colonies -- intra-colony violence -- using multi-agent-based computational simulations. A central finding is that intra-colony violence is heritable, though not prevalent. Results from our simulations reveal specific conditions in which such infrequent forms of violence occur and can be inherited, which in turn helps us understand why Atta cephalotes may persist killing colony members, even though it dampens colony carrying capacity. We also discuss the concerns and implications of our work for modeling conflict and violence more broadly, which in turn raises questions about the ontological nature of the computational and evolutionary models.