Global citizenship identity mediates the relationship of knowledge, cognitive, and socio-emotional skills with engagement towards global issues.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a unified framework to address interconnected global issues, emphasizing the need for collective action across all sectors of society to achieve a sustainable future for all. In this paper, we empirically investigate how knowledge (awareness of global issues), cognitive skills (critical inquiry), and socio-emotional skills (cognitive empathy) relate to engagement towards global issues, and whether global citizenship identification mediates these relationships. Mediation analysis of data from 249 participants revealed that both awareness of global issues and cognitive empathy directly predict higher engagement levels.

A simplicial analysis of the fMRI data from human brain dynamics under functional cognitive tasks.

The topological analysis of fMRI time series data has recently been used to characterize the identification of patterns of brain activity seen during specific tasks carried out under experimentally controlled conditions. This study uses the methods of algebraic topology to characterize time series networks constructed from fMRI data measured for adult and children populations carrying out differentiated reading tasks. Our pilot study shows that our methods turn out to be capable of identifying distinct differences between the activity of adult and children populations carrying out identical reading tasks.

Effects of a Digital Game-Based Course in Building Adolescents' Knowledge and Social-Emotional Competencies.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of a digital game-based course to build domain knowledge and social emotional competencies of empathy and compassion in adolescents. The study used a digital game with an accompanying course which was administered to 201 participants between ages 13-18 across United Arab Emirates (UAE) and India. Standardized self-reports were used to score participants on measures of knowledge and attitudes, empathy, and compassion before and after the intervention.

Structural connectivity predicts sequential processing differences in music perception ability.

To relate individual differences in music perception ability with whole brain white matter connectivity, we scanned a group of 27 individuals with varying degrees of musical training and assessed musical ability in sensory and sequential music perception domains using the Profile of Music Perception Skills-Short version (PROMS-S). Sequential processing ability was estimated by combining performance on tasks for Melody, Standard Rhythm, Embedded Rhythm, and Accent subscores while sensory processing ability was ascertained via tasks of Tempo, Pitch, Timbre, and Tuning. Controlling for musical training, gender, and years of training, network-based statistics revealed positive linear associations between total PROMS-S scores and increased interhemispheric fronto-temporal and parieto-frontal white matter connectivity, suggesting a distinct segregated structural network for music perception.

Development and standardization of the DALI-DAB (dyslexia assessment for languages of India - dyslexia assessment battery).

A majority of Indian schoolchildren are biliterate in that they acquire literacy in at least two language systems, necessitating dyslexia assessment in both. The DALI-DAB assesses risk for dyslexia by evaluating reading ability and literacy-learning potential through a battery including literacy tests (letter and word reading, spelling, nonword reading, reading comprehension), and mediator skills (phonological awareness, processing automaticity and executive fluency, oral language) in multiple languages. DALI-DAB was developed in three languages - English, Hindi, and Marathi - and standardized on a sample of 1013 children.

The International Science and Evidence-based Education Assessment.

Education is indispensable for the flourishing of people from all backgrounds and stages of life. However, given the accelerating demographic, environmental, economical, socio-political, and technological changes—and their associated risks and opportunities—there is increasing consensus that our current educational systems are falling short and that we need to repurpose education and rethink the organization of learning to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “Futures of Education” initiative was formally launched at the United Nations General Assembly in 2019 to provide such a vision of education for the future.

Perceived Closeness and Autistic Traits Modulate Interpersonal Vocal Communication.

Vocal modulation is a critical component of interpersonal communication. It not only serves as a dynamic and flexible tool for self-expression and linguistic information but also plays a key role in social behavior. Variation in vocal modulation can be driven by individual traits of interlocutors as well as factors relating to the dyad, such as the perceived closeness between interlocutors.

Cultural differences in the use of acoustic cues for musical emotion experience.

Does music penetrate cultural differences with its ability to evoke emotion? The ragas of Hindustani music are specific sequences of notes that elicit various emotions: happy, romantic, devotion, calm, angry, longing, tension and sad. They can be presented in two modes, alaap and gat, which differ in rhythm, but match in tonality. Participants from Indian and Non-Indian cultures (N = 144 and 112, respectively) rated twenty-four pieces of Hindustani ragas on eight dimensions of emotion, in a free response task.

Ancestral Variations of the PCDHG Gene Cluster Predispose to Dyslexia in a Multiplex Family.

Dyslexia is a heritable neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties in reading and writing. In this study, we describe the identification of a set of 17 polymorphisms located across 1.9Mb region on chromosome 5q31.

Reading Research and Practice: Indian Perspective.

The authors outline the basic structure of akshara, the basic unit of writing in Indic writing systems used widely in South and Southeast Asia; present preliminary studies relating to reading, assessment, and instruction of akshara; and outline recommendations for future studies.

Brains of verbal memory specialists show anatomical differences in language, memory and visual systems.

We studied a group of verbal memory specialists to determine whether intensive oral text memory is associated with structural features of hippocampal and lateral-temporal regions implicated in language processing. Professional Vedic Sanskrit Pandits in India train from childhood for around 10years in an ancient, formalized tradition of oral Sanskrit text memorization and recitation, mastering the exact pronunciation and invariant content of multiple 40,000-100,000 word oral texts. We conducted structural analysis of gray matter density, cortical thickness, local gyrification, and white matter structure, relative to matched controls.

Reading in Devanagari: Insights from functional neuroimaging.

Objectives: The current study used functional MRI (fMRI) to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the neural network underlying visual word recognition in Hindi/Devanagari, an alphasyllabic - partly alphabetic and partly syllabic Indian writing system on which little research has hitherto been carried out.

Materials And Methods: Sixteen (5F, 11M) neurologically healthy, native Hindi/Devanagari readers aged 21 to 50 named aloud 240 Devanagari words which were either visually linear - had no diacritics or consonant ligatures above or below central plane of text, e.g.

The case of the neglected alphasyllabary: orthographic processing in Devanagari.

We applaud Ram Frost for highlighting the need for multicultural perspectives while developing universal models of visual word recognition. We second Frost's proposal that factors like lexical morphology should be incorporated besides purely orthographic features in modeling word recognition. In support, we provide fresh evidence from Hindi (written in Devanagari), an example of hitherto under-represented alphasyllabic orthographies, in which flexible encoding of aksara (character) position is constrained by the morphological structure of words.

Picture-naming in patients with left frontal lobe tumor - a functional neuroimaging study.

The objective of this study was to investigate behavioral performance as well as cortical activation patterns while picture-naming, in patients with left frontal lobe tumor prior to surgery. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to compare behavior and brain activations while 10 patients with a tumor in the left frontal lobe and 9 controls, named aloud simple pictures presented in a block design inside a 3 T Philips Achieva scanner. Evaluations of task performance included naming accuracy and articulation time.

Categorization of environmental sounds.

Sounds in the natural environment are non-stationary, in that their spectral dynamics is time-dependent. We develop measures to analyze the spectral dynamics of environmental sound signals and find that they fall into two categories-simple sounds with slowly varying spectral dynamics and complex sounds with rapidly varying spectral dynamics. Based on our results and those from auditory processing we suggest rate of spectral dynamics as a possible scheme to categorize sound signals in the environment.