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Neuroimaging --- Academic collection --- methods --- 616.8 --- 159.91 --- 616.8 Neurologie. Neuropathologie. Zenuwstelsel. Neurologische aandoeningen --- 616.8 Neurology. Neuropathology. Nervous system --- Neurologie. Neuropathologie. Zenuwstelsel. Neurologische aandoeningen --- Neurology. Neuropathology. Nervous system --- 159.91 Psychofysiologie. Neuropsychologie. Psychomotoriek. Psychomotorische therapie --- Psychofysiologie. Neuropsychologie. Psychomotoriek. Psychomotorische therapie --- Neuroimaging - methods

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Summary In this dissertation the topic of science communication is examined. More specifically, the association between exaggeration in health-related science news and academic press releases will be evaluated in order to illustrate whether biased coverage is present. This constitutes the first research question. This is a socially relevant research topic as biased coverage of health-related research may significantly influence readers’ health behaviours. Secondly, the level on which such a bias may occur will be assessed, distinguishing between two levels, namely the press releases and the corresponding newspaper articles. Finally, the form in which mismatches or biases manifest themselves will be evaluated, investigating whether there is a difference in the strength of the main statements, the explicitness of the advice contained within the articles as well as the overall content of the articles. The dissertation is comprised of two parts, namely a literature review and a research section. The literature review follows an inversed pyramid shaped structure, as it starts off with a broad evaluation of the definition of science communication, followed by a description of the actors involved in science communication, only to end with the more specific topic of biased coverage and questionable research practices and how the accuracy of science communication may be improved. The second part of the dissertation concerns a replicative study, based on two recent studies by Sumner et al. (2014) and Schat et al. (2018) in which health-related news and associated press releases are examined in terms of exaggeration. The data for this study were largely provided by the KU Leuven Nieuwsdienst and were evaluated using a retrospective quantitative content analysis, accompanied by some qualitative observations. Because of the small data sample used in the current study, the following main findings should be interpreted with caution. The results show that the press releases contained stronger statements in terms of causality as well as more explicit advice when compared to the research articles. There thus appears to be biased coverage of health-related news, as far as we can make this inference given the limitations of the study. This bias appears to take place mostly on the level of the press releases, with or without subsequent exaggeration in the newspaper articles. However, the primary statement of the researcher sent to the science information professional was not included in the study nor was the research article itself evaluated in terms of possible exaggeration of findings, both of which may already contain exaggeration of statements or advice. Finally, the main statements and the given advice showed similar rates of exaggeration, and therefore both constitute important forms in which a mismatch can present itself.

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Although visual processing is a well-studied topic in brain research, studying vision in rodents has been neglected for a long time. Additionally, studies that have been done on rodent vision often focus solely on their low-level capabilities, paying little attention to their mid- and high-level capabilities. However, getting a better understanding of rodent vision can be very beneficial to develop a model for vision in primates. This is why recently, studies on rodent vision are on the rise. In this thesis we want to contribute to the growing body of research on this topic. In our study, we investigated the higher-order processing capabilities of mice in a behavioral task based on figure-ground segregation using a looming stimulus. We tested the mice through a two-alternative forced choice task. The mice completed the task while put in a touch screen chamber, where the stimuli were presented and they had to touch one of two screens to select their response. We presented two types of squares, one retracting and one expanding, and the animals were trained to select one of them. The expanding square is a form of looming stimulus, which is the illusion that an object is directly approaching, caused by the presentation of a figure increasing in size. The experiment consisted of four different phases, in which the luminance and the initial size of the squares varied. We propose three main hypotheses. First, we hypothesize that the mice are capable of discriminating between the retracting and expanding square and will therefore learn to select the square they are trained for after a number of training sessions. Secondly, we hypothesize that the animals discriminate between both squares based on the second-order cue of change in size, as opposed to mere luminance (i.e. a first-order cue). We therefore expect that the animals generalize what they learned in the first phase to the later phases, despite the difference in luminance between the squares in different phases. Thirdly, we hypothesize that the looming stimulus has an effect on the behavior of the animals, reminding them of an approaching predator, which could lead to freezing behavior or hesitation to approach the stimulus. We expect that animals trained to select the retracting square will therefore be better at their task than animals trained to select the expanding square. We found interesting data regarding all three hypotheses. More specifically, we found that mice are able to learn to discriminate between the squares, but it is a hard task and gets harder when certain second-order cues change. We also found a slight effect of the animals trained to select the retracting square performing better than the animals trained to select the expanding square, indicating an effect of the looming stimulus.