Taylor's law (TL) is a widely observed empirical pattern that relates the variances to the means of groups of nonnegative measurements via an approximate power law: variance g ≈ a [Formula: see text] mean gb , where g indexes the group of measurements. When each group of measurements is distributed in space, the exponent b of this power law is conjectured to reflect aggregation in the spatial d...

We investigated whether synchrony between neuronal spike trains is affected by the animal's attentional state. Cross-correlation functions between pairs of spike trains in the second somatosensory cortex (SII) of three macaque monkeys trained to switch attention between a visual task and a tactile task were computed. We previously showed that the majority of recorded neuron pairs (66%) in SII c...

Spatial population theory predicts that synchrony in the dynamics of local populations should decrease as dispersal among populations decreases. Thus, it would be expected that the extinction of local populations and the attendant loss of immigrants to surrounding populations would reduce synchrony. We tested this hypothesis through a large-scale experiment, simulation of the experimental syste...

We present a framework for characterizing spike (and spiketrain) synchrony in parallel neuronal spike trains that is based on identifying spikes with what we call influence maps: real-valued functions describing an influence region around the corresponding spike times within which possibly graded synchrony with other spikes is defined. We formalize two models of synchrony in this framework: the...

Synchronous flashing occurs in certain species of Southeast Asian and North American fireflies. Most Southeast Asian synchrony involves stationary congregating fireflies, but North American synchrony occurs in flying fireflies that do not congregate. Southeast Asian synchrony is usually continuous, but North American synchrony is interrupted. Photuris frontalis, the only member of the North Ame...

BACKGROUND There are ongoing efforts to optimize patient selection criteria for cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). In this regard, the relationship between acute change in left ventricular synchrony (LV) after CRT and patient outcome remains undefined. METHODS AND RESULTS A novel protocol was designed to evaluate acute change in left LV synchrony after CRT using phase analysis of standa...

This study examined relations between mother-infant affect synchrony and the emergence of children's self-control. Mother-infant face-to-face play and infant difficult temperament were examined at 3 and 9 months. Maternal and infant affective states at play were coded in 0.25-s frames, and synchrony was computed with cross-correlation functions. Self-control, verbal IQ, and maternal warm discip...

A classical view of neural coding relies on temporal firing synchrony among functional groups of neurons, however, the underlying mechanism remains an enigma. Here we experimentally demonstrate a mechanism where time-lags among neuronal spiking leap from several tens of milliseconds to nearly zero-lag synchrony. It also allows sudden leaps out of synchrony, hence forming short epochs of synchro...

This paper examines the emergence of behavioral synchrony among strangers in the context of self-disclosure, and their path in predicting interaction quality. Specifically, we hypothesize that behavioral synchrony mediates the direct effect of self-disclosure on the development of embodied rapport. Same-sex stranger pairs (n=94) were randomly assigned to a videorecorded self-disclosure or contr...

Stern and McClintock’s (1998) recent finding of ‘definitive evidence of human pheromones’ and ‘confirmation’ of the mechanism underlying ‘menstrual synchrony’ is indeed spectacular. However, they disregarded the methodological critiques (Wilson, 1992; Strassmann, 1997) and negative evidence (Jarett, 1984; Wilson et al., 1991; Trevathan et al., 1993; Strassmann, 1997) that undermine the original...