Context: There is a growing recognition in consciousness science of the need for rigorous methods for obtaining accurate and detailed phenomenological reports of lived experience, i.e., descriptions of experience provided by the subject living them in the “first-person.” Problem: At the moment although introspection and debriefing interviews are sometimes used to guide the design of scientific studies of the mind, explicit description and evaluation of these methods and their results rarely appear in formal scientific discourse. Method: The recent publication of (...) an edited book of papers dedicated to the exploration of first-and second-person methods, Ten Years of Viewing from Within: The Legacy of Francisco Varela, serves as a starting point for a discussion of how these methods could be integrated into the growing discipline of consciousness science. We complement a brief review of the book with a critical analysis of the major pilot studies in Varela’s neurophenomenology, a research program that was explicitly devised to integrate disciplined experiential methods with the latest advances in neuroscience. Results: The book is a valuable resource for those who are interested in impressive recent advances in first- and second-person methods, as applied to the phenomenology of lived experience. However, our review of the neurophenomenology literature concludes that there is as yet no convincing example of these specialized techniques being used in combination with standard behavioral and neuroscientific approaches in consciousness science to produce results that could not have also been achieved by simpler methods of introspective reporting. Implications: The end of behaviorism and the acceptance of verbal reports of conscious experience have already enabled the beginning of a science of consciousness. It can only be of benefit if new first- and second-person methods become well-known across disciplines. Constructivist content: Constructivism has long been interested in the role of the observer in the constitution of our sense of reality, so these developments in the science of consciousness may open new avenues of constructivist research. More specifically, one of the ways in which the insights from first- and second-person methods are being validated is by recursively applying the methods to themselves; a practical application of an epistemological move that will be familiar to constructivists from the second-order cybernetics tradition. (shrink)

These lines, presented as they appear in the O.C.T., are among the most difficult and hotly disputed that Juvenal wrote. The poet defends his decision not to attack contemporary politicians directly: ‘expose a Tigellinus’, he says, ‘and you know what the consequences will be’. It has long been recognized that the consequences related are probably inspired by those suffered by the Christians in A.D. 64 during the reign of Nero, and so vividly described by Tacitus.

More than thirty years ago, Amari and colleagues proposed a statistical framework for identifying structurally stable macrostates of neural networks from observations of their microstates. We compare their stochastic stability criterion with a deterministic stability criterion based on the ergodic theory of dynamical systems, recently proposed for the scheme of contextual emergence and applied to particular inter-level relations in neuroscience. Stochastic and deterministic..

Arbib suggests that language emerged in direct relation to manual gestural communication, that Broca's area participates in producing and imitating gestures, and that emotional facial expressions contributed to gesture-language coevolution. We discuss functional and structural evidence supporting localization of the neuronal modules controlling limb praxis, speech and language, and emotional communication. Current evidence supports completely independent limb praxis and speech/language systems.

When Claudius came to power in January 41 he did not hesitate to distance himself from his predecessor's behaviour and policies, and among other measures, Suetonius reports, he abolished all Gaius' acta. The precise implications of this move are not made clear. Certainly, the extremely unpopular taxes introduced in Rome near the end of Gaius' reign were annulled, several people convicted of maiestas were set free, and the monies previously confiscated from negligent, and possibly corrupt, road commissioners were returned. But (...) if the abolition of the acta was as sweeping as Suetonius seems to imply, a number of popular and useful measures must inevitably have been abrogated at the same time, and as a matter of routine they would need to be reintroduced by Claudius. The arrangements with the client kings may well have belonged to this general category, and if we assume that this was indeed the case we shall have an explanation for a number of apparent inconsistencies in the literary sources. It should be observed that in the early part of his principate Gaius went out of his way to be a ‘constitutional’ ruler. The appointment of the client kings would have been handled so as not to seem like the arbitrary exercise of power. Certainly, when the three sons of the murdered king of Thrace, Polemo, Cotys and Rhoemetalces received new kingdoms in 38, Dio stresses that the act was legitimised by a formal senatorial decree. If client kings had generally been established by a formal and legal process their appointments could quite well have come to an end with the abolition of the acta in January 41. (shrink)

Derogatory language is common in medicine. “Objectifying” because it treats people as objects, it reflects an attitude toward patients, who are overwhelmingly seen as wrong, abnormal, and other. I discuss examples of objectifying language and its results; writers have attempted to explain demeaning jargon, but their attempts glorify doctors without admitting how destructive this language is. Legitimale concerns, such as limit-setting, are insufficient explanation. Medical training can be humiliating and shameful, and real responsibility cannot develop under such threat. Doctors-in-training turn (...) on patients and gain a potent, childish sense of security. Recommendations for doctors to change their behavior are discussed. (shrink)

additum et praesidium mille legionarii, tres sociorum chohortes duaeque equitum alae, et quo facilius novum regnum tueretur, pars Armeniae, ut cuique finitima, Pharasmani Polemonique et Aristobulo atque Antiocho parere iussae sunt. Corbulo in Syriam abscessit, morte Ummidii legati vacuam ac sibi permissam.

The coronavirus outbreak has led to abrupt changes in people’s daily lives as many state governments have restricted individuals’ movements in order to slow the spread of the virus. We conducted a natural experiment in the United States of America in April 2020, in which we compare responses from states with “stay-at-home orders” and no such orders. We surveyed 458 participants and examined the effects of these government-imposed restrictions on social, mental, physical, and financial well-being as well as the mediating (...) role of resilience. Structural equation modeling reveals that resilience buffers stay-at-home orders’ potential side-effects on well-being. Specifically, individuals living in states with stay-at-home orders report lower functional well-being than individuals living in states without such orders, which negatively relates to resilience. Resilience in turn is associated with higher social, mental, physical, and financial well-being. Thus, resilience can be seen as an effective means of buffering stay-at-home orders’ potential negative effects on the components of well-being. Our results indicate the central role of resilience, which is crucial in dampening the effects of stay-at-home orders on well-being. Following our results, governments and policymakers should focus their efforts on strengthening individuals’ resilience, which is a key predictor of social, mental, financial, and physical well-being. (shrink)

In his Vita Galbae Suetonius informs us that after Gaius' assassination Galba was urged by some to attempt to seize power but declined to do so. Consequently he was much favoured by Claudius, and held in such high regard that when Galba was smitten by a sudden, though mild, illness, the emperor postponed the expedition launched against Britain in A.D. 43: ‘ut cum subita ei [sc.Galbae] valetudo nee adeo gravis incidisset, dilatus sit expeditionis Britannicae dies’. The reference to the postponement (...) is clear and unequivocal, and contains nothing scurrilous or titillating that might have persuaded Suetonius to fabricate it. It does not, accordingly, seem unreasonable that modern commentators should, on the basis of this passage, record that Galba was present in Britain in A.D. 43. (shrink)

The year of Livia's birth is nowhere explicitly recorded in any ancient sources, and can be determined only by calculating back from the date given in the sources for the year of her death. Both Tacitus and Dio place that death securely in A.D. 29. Tacitus limits himself to the observation that by then she had lived into extreme old age, aetate extrema, but Dio adds the more precise and useful information that at the time of her death she had (...) lived for eighty-six years: ef ξ καì ὀγδοκουτα τη ζσασα Less usefully, Pliny the Elder states that Livia herself attributed her eighty-two years to her consumption of Pucine wine, which she drank exclusively . Whatever the merits of Pliny's health tips, his chronological information is of little service in determining when she was born. (shrink)

The book describes the features that vibrations and waves of all sorts have in commonand includes examples of mechanical, acoustical, and optical manifestations of these phenomena thatunite various parts of physics.

Exposure Therapy (ET) has demonstrated its efficacy in the treatment of phobias, anxiety and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), however, it suffers a high drop-out rate because of too low or too high patient engagement in treatment. Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) is comparably effective regarding symptom reduction and offers an alternative tool to facilitate engagement for avoidant participants. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that both ET and VRET normalize brain activity within a fear circuit. However, previous studies have employed brain imaging (...) technology which restricts people’s movement and hides their body, surroundings and therapist from view. This is at odds with the way engagement is typically controlled. We used a novel combination of neural imaging and VR technology—Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and Immersive Projection Technology (IPT), to avoid these limitations. Although there are a few studies that have investigated the effect of VRET on a brain function after the treatment, the present study utilized technologies which promote ecological validity to measure brain changes after VRET treatment. Furthermore, there are no studies that have measured brain activity within VRET session. In this study brain activity within the prefrontal cortex (PFC) was measured during three consecutive exposure sessions. N = 13 acrophobic volunteers were asked to walk on a virtual plank with a 6 m drop below. Changes in oxygenated (HbO) hemogl... (shrink)