Primate brains can detect a variety of unexpected deviations in auditory sequences. The local-global paradigm dissociates two hierarchical levels of auditory predictive coding by examining the brain responses to first-order (local) and second-order (global) sequence violations. Using the macaque model, we previously demonstrated that, in the awake state, local violations cause focal auditory responses while global violations activate a brain circuit comprising prefrontal, parietal and cingulate cortices. Here we used the same local-global auditory paradigm to clarify the encoding of the hierarchical auditory regularities in anesthetized monkeys and compared their brain responses to those obtained in the awake state as measured with fMRI. Both, propofol, a GABAA-agonist, and ketamine, an NMDA-antagonist, left intact or even enhanced the cortical response to auditory inputs. The local effect vanished during propofol anesthesia and shifted spatially during ketamine anesthesia compared with wakefulness. Under increasing levels of propofol, we observed a progressive disorganization of the global effect in prefrontal, parietal and cingulate cortices and its complete suppression under ketamine anesthesia. Anesthesia also suppressed thalamic activations to the global effect. These results suggest that anesthesia preserves initial auditory processing, but disturbs both short-term and long-term auditory predictive coding mechanisms. The disorganization of auditory novelty processing under anesthesia relates to a loss of thalamic responses to novelty and to a disruption of higher-order functional cortical networks in parietal, prefrontal and cingular cortices.

Please note that this paper has been greatly extended to an article published at NeurIPS 2018. Unless referring to specific results contained here, we recommend reading and citing the new paper (Geirhos et al., 2018).

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This study investigates to what extent different dimensions of religiosity are differentially related to rejection of homosexuality in countries around the world and, moreover, to what extent these relationships can be explained by particular mediators: authoritarianism and traditional gender beliefs. The theoretical framework includes in particular socialization and integration theories. Hypotheses are tested by employing multilevel models, using data from the World Values Survey, covering 55 countries around the world for the period 2010-2014. The results indicate that every dimension of religiosity has a positive relationship with rejection of homosexuality, rejecting some of our hypotheses: those who adhere to any denomination more often attend religious services and have stronger religious particularistic beliefs, or those who are more religiously salient do reject homosexuality more strongly. Sobel tests and bootstrapping procedures indicate that the relationships between the dimensions of religiosity and rejection of homosexuality are partially explained by authoritarianism and traditional gender beliefs.

A rich history of theoretical models in finance shows that speculation can lead to overpricing and price bubbles. We provide evidence that, indeed, individual speculative behavior fuels overpricing in (experimental) asset markets. In a first step, we elicit individual speculative behavior in a one-shot setting with a novel speculation elicitation task (SET). In a second step, we use this measure of speculative behavior to compose dynamic, continuous double auction markets in line with Smith et al. (Econometrica 56(5):1119(Econometrica 56(5): -1151(Econometrica 56(5): , 1988). We find significant higher overpricing in markets with traders who exhibited more speculative behavior in the individual SET. However, we find no such differences in overpricing when we test for alternative explanations, using a market environment introduced by Lei, Noussair, and Plott (Econometrica 69(4):831-859, 2001) where speculation is impossible. Taken together, our results corroborate the notion that speculation is an important factor in overpricing and bubble formation if market environments allow for the pursuit of capital gains.

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