The digital traces we leave behind when engaging with the modern world offer an interesting lens through which we study behavioral patterns as expression of gender. Although gender differentiation has been observed in a number of settings, the majority of studies focus on a single data stream in isolation. Here we use a dataset of high resolution data collected using mobile phones, as well as detailed questionnaires, to study gender differences in a large cohort. We consider mobility behavior and individual personality traits among a group of more than 800 university students. We also investigate interactions among them expressed via person-to-person contacts, interactions on online social networks, and telecommunication. Thus, we are able to study the differences between male and female behavior captured through a multitude of channels for a single cohort. We find that while the two genders are similar in a number of aspects, there are robust deviations that include multiple facets of social interactions, suggesting the existence of inherent behavioral differences. Finally, we quantify how aspects of an individual’s characteristics and social behavior reveals their gender by posing it as a classification problem. We ask: How well can we distinguish between male and female study participants based on behavior alone? Which behavioral features are most predictive?

 

Psylla I, Sapiezynski P, Mones E, Lehmann S (2017) The role of gender in social network organization. PLoS ONE 12(12): e0189873. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189873

Source: journals.plos.org

Reciprocity stabilizes cooperation from the level of microbes all the way up to humans interacting in small groups, but does reciprocity also underlie stable cooperation between larger human agglomerations, such as nation states? Famously, evolutionary models show that reciprocity could emerge as a widespread strategy for achieving international cooperation. However, existing studies have only detected reciprocity-driven cooperation in a small number of country pairs. We apply a new method for detecting mutual influence in dynamical systems to a new large-scale data set that records state interactions with high temporal resolution. Doing so, we detect reciprocity between many country pairs in the international system and find that these reciprocating country pairs exhibit qualitatively different cooperative dynamics when compared to nonreciprocating pairs. Consistent with evolutionary theories of cooperation, reciprocating country pairs exhibit higher levels of stable cooperation and are more likely to punish instances of noncooperation. However, countries in reciprocity-based relationships are also quicker to forgive single acts of noncooperation by eventually returning to previous levels of mutual cooperation. By contrast, nonreciprocating pairs are more likely to exploit each other’s cooperation via higher rates of defection. Together, these findings provide the strongest evidence to date that reciprocity is a widespread mechanism for achieving international cooperation.

 

Detecting reciprocity at a global scale
Morgan R. Frank, Nick Obradovich, Lijun Sun, Wei Lee Woon, Brad L. LeVeck and Iyad Rahwan,
Science Advances  03 Jan 2018:
Vol. 4, no. 1, eaao5348
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aao5348

Source: advances.sciencemag.org

Spatial structure is one of the most studied mechanisms in evolutionary game theory. Here, we explore the consequences of spatial structure for a question which has received considerable empirical and theoretical attention in recent years, but has not yet been studied from a network perspective: whether cooperation relies on intuitive predispositions or deliberative self-control. We examine this question using a model which integrates the “dual-process” framework from cognitive science with evolutionary game theory, and considers the evolution of agents who are embedded within a social network and only interact with their neighbors. In line with past work in well-mixed populations, we find that selection favors either the intuitive defector (ID) strategy which never deliberates, or the dual-process cooperator (DC) strategy which intuitively cooperates but uses deliberation to switch to defection in Prisoner’s Dilemma games. We find that sparser networks (i.e. smaller average degree) facilitate the success of DC over ID, while also reducing the level of deliberation that DC agents engage in; and that these results generalize across different kinds of networks. These observations demonstrate the important role that spatial structure can have not just on the evolution of cooperation, but on the co-evolution of cognition and cooperation.

Source: papers.ssrn.com

The roles of neuromodulation in a neural network, such as in a cortical microcolumn, are still incompletely understood. Neuromodulation influences neural processing by presynaptic and postsynaptic regulation of synaptic efficacy. Synaptic efficacy modulation can be an effective way to rapidly alter network density and topology. We show that altering network topology, together with density, will affect its synchronization. Fast synaptic efficacy modulation may therefore influence the amount of correlated spiking in a network. Neuromodulation also affects ion channel regulation for intrinsic excitability, which alters the neuron’s activation function. We show that synchronization in a network influences the read-out of these intrinsic properties. Highly synchronous input drives neurons, such that differences in intrinsic properties disappear, while asynchronous input lets intrinsic properties determine output behavior. Thus, altering network topology can alter the balance between intrinsically vs. synaptically driven network activity. We conclude that neuromodulation may allow a network to shift between a more synchronized transmission mode and a more asynchronous intrinsic read-out mode.

 

Neuromodulation Influences Synchronization and Intrinsic Read-out

Gabriele Scheler
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/251801

Source: www.biorxiv.org