There is now compelling evidence that motor imagery (MI) promotes motor learning. While MI has been shown to influence the early stages of the learning process, recent data revealed that sleep also contributes to the consolidation of the memory trace. How such “online” and “offline” processes take place and how they interact to impact the neural underpinnings of movements has received little attention. The aim of the present review is twofold: i) providing an overview of recent applied and fundamental studies (...) investigating the effects of MI practice on motor learning, and ii) detangling applied and fundamental findings in support of a sleep contribution to motor consolidation after MI practice. We conclude with an integrative approach of online and offline learning resulting from intense MI practice in healthy participants, and underline research avenues in the motor learning/clinical domains. (shrink)

En este artículo discutiré algunos problemas lógicos de la omnipotencia que van más allá de las clásicas paradojas ligadas a esta noción. Presentaré una versión refinada de la paradoja de Fitch sobre la omnipotencia que tiene en cuenta la distinción entre acciones básicas y derivadas, así como la distinción entre la capacidad de hacer algo y la mera posibilidad metafísica de hacerlo. También explico cómo esta paradoja puede reformularse para obtener una versión afín a la paradoja del mentiroso que afecta (...) a la consistencia de ciertas nociones de omnipotencia. Por último, evalúo algunas posibles respuestas disponibles para el teísta y un intento de usar la paradoja de Fitch como argumento a favor de la existencia de Dios. (shrink)

Motor Imagery reproduces cognitive operations associated with the actual motor preparation and execution. Postural recordings during MI reflect somatic motor commands targeting peripheral effectors involved in balance control. However, how these relate to the actual motor expertise and may vary along with the MI modality remains debated. In the present experiment, two groups of expert and non-expert gymnasts underwent stabilometric assessments while performing physically and mentally a balance skill. We implemented psychometric measures of MI ability, while stabilometric variables were calculated (...) from the center of pressure oscillations. Psychometric evaluations revealed greater MI ability in experts, specifically for the visual modality. Experts exhibited reduced surface COP oscillations in the antero-posterior axis compared to non-experts during the balance skill. Experts further exhibited reduced length of COP displacement in the antero-posterior axis and as a function of the displacement area during visual and kinesthetic MI compared to the control condition. Predictive relationships were found between the stabilometric correlates of visual MI and physical practice of the balance skill, as well as between the stabilometric correlates of kinesthetic MI and the training experience in experts. Present results provide original stabilometric insights into the relationships between MI and expertise level. While data support the incomplete inhibition of postural commands during MI, whether postural responses during MI of various modalities mirror the level of motor expertise remains unclear. (shrink)

Contemporary art, which explodes from the borders and identifiable genres, the dance requires to be discussed in a perspective that exceeds the narrow of the sector. It is a microcosm of the world, a privileged space for observing the displacements and tensions of the contemporary world whose stake is a new posture that redesigns the body map in the society of capital and in the era of relations mediated by the mechanisms of the network. The result is a unique field (...) of analysis to explore with the work of Michele Di Stefano, one of the most interesting figures in the advanced front of contemporary choreography. Space, time and aesthetic categories mark this path of reflection. (shrink)

La pensée du corps. Un parcours esthétique chez le dernier Merleau-PontyLe but de cette contribution est de chercher à reconstruire un parcours théorique, entre plusieurs autres possibles, en mesure de montrer comment l’art, en particulier la peinture, incarne chez le dernier Merleau-Ponty la possibilité d’un autre type de pensée. Il s’agit de la tentative de suivre une idée qui semble faire son chemin au sein de la réflexion que l’auteur consacre à la Nature et puis à l’Etre brut et sauvage, (...) ou bien aussi dans celle d’une pensée enracinée dans la corporéité, qui devient une chose qui pense et qui fait penser. Une hypothèse de sens qui ouvre à une investigation de la chair humaine, et qui aboutit au résultat visible de cette pensée qui est corps et qui trouve dans la vision de l’art moderne ses signes les plus paradigmatiques.Il s’agit d’un itinéraire exégétique qui propose, en substance, un double plan: d’une part, une lecture de l’essence du corps, dans la facticité primordiale de la Nature, dans lequel se loge une sorte d’ontologie de la cavité et, de l’autre, le résultat philosophique possible d’une corporéité qui pense et qui, à travers l’art de la peinture, fait voir une pensée non plus fondée sur la représentation, en dernière instance, une pensée post-métaphysique. Et cela n’est pas sans conséquences pour le rapport de l’homme avec le monde et avec la philosophie.The Thought of Body. An Aesthetic Path in the Final Merleau-PontyThe purpose of this contribution is to try to reconstruct a theoretical path, between several other possibilities, capable of showing how art, in particular painting, incarnates in the final Merleau-Ponty the possibility of another type of thinking. What is at issue is an attempt to follow an idea which seems to make its way within the reflection that Merleau-Ponty dedicates first to Nature, and then to brute and wild Being, or as well in that of a thought rooted in corporeity, which becomes a thing which thinks and which requires thinking. We are following a hypothesis concerning the sense which opens to an investigation of human flesh, and which leads to the visible result of this thought which is body and which finds its most paradigmatic signs in the vision of modern art.What is at issue is an exegetical itinerary which proposes, in substance, a double plan: on the one hand, a reading of the essence of body, in the primordial facticity of Nature, in which a sort of ontology on the cavity lodges itself and, on the other hand, the possible philosophical result of a corporeity which thinks and which, through the art of painting, makes see a thought no longer founded on representation, and is, at the end of the day, a post-metaphysical thought. And that is not without consequences for the relation of the human with the world and with philosophy. (shrink)

La pensée du corps. Un parcours esthétique chez le dernier Merleau-PontyLe but de cette contribution est de chercher à reconstruire un parcours théorique, entre plusieurs autres possibles, en mesure de montrer comment l’art, en particulier la peinture, incarne chez le dernier Merleau-Ponty la possibilité d’un autre type de pensée. Il s’agit de la tentative de suivre une idée qui semble faire son chemin au sein de la réflexion que l’auteur consacre à la Nature et puis à l’Etre brut et sauvage, (...) ou bien aussi dans celle d’une pensée enracinée dans la corporéité, qui devient une chose qui pense et qui fait penser. Une hypothèse de sens qui ouvre à une investigation de la chair humaine, et qui aboutit au résultat visible de cette pensée qui est corps et qui trouve dans la vision de l’art moderne ses signes les plus paradigmatiques.Il s’agit d’un itinéraire exégétique qui propose, en substance, un double plan: d’une part, une lecture de l’essence du corps, dans la facticité primordiale de la Nature, dans lequel se loge une sorte d’ontologie de la cavité et, de l’autre, le résultat philosophique possible d’une corporéité qui pense et qui, à travers l’art de la peinture, fait voir une pensée non plus fondée sur la représentation, en dernière instance, une pensée post-métaphysique. Et cela n’est pas sans conséquences pour le rapport de l’homme avec le monde et avec la philosophie.The Thought of Body. An Aesthetic Path in the Final Merleau-PontyThe purpose of this contribution is to try to reconstruct a theoretical path, between several other possibilities, capable of showing how art, in particular painting, incarnates in the final Merleau-Ponty the possibility of another type of thinking. What is at issue is an attempt to follow an idea which seems to make its way within the reflection that Merleau-Ponty dedicates first to Nature, and then to brute and wild Being, or as well in that of a thought rooted in corporeity, which becomes a thing which thinks and which requires thinking. We are following a hypothesis concerning the sense which opens to an investigation of human flesh, and which leads to the visible result of this thought which is body and which finds its most paradigmatic signs in the vision of modern art.What is at issue is an exegetical itinerary which proposes, in substance, a double plan: on the one hand, a reading of the essence of body, in the primordial facticity of Nature, in which a sort of ontology on the cavity lodges itself and, on the other hand, the possible philosophical result of a corporeity which thinks and which, through the art of painting, makes see a thought no longer founded on representation, and is, at the end of the day, a post-metaphysical thought. And that is not without consequences for the relation of the human with the world and with philosophy. (shrink)

We invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions, or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of depoliticization? Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst debate the uses and misuses of tolerance, an exchange (...) that highlights the fundamental differences in their critical practice despite a number of political similarities. Both scholars address the normative premises, limits, and political implications of various conceptions of tolerance. Brown offers a genealogical critique of contemporary discourses on tolerance in Western liberal societies, focusing on their inherent ties to colonialism and imperialism, and Forst reconstructs an intellectual history of tolerance that attempts to redeem its political virtue in democratic societies. Brown and Forst work from different perspectives and traditions, yet they each remain wary of the subjection and abnegation embodied in toleration discourses, among other issues. The result is a dialogue rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity. (shrink)

The European Union Data Protection Regulation will have profound implications for public health, health services research and statistics in Europe. The EU Commission's Proposal was a breakthrough in balancing privacy rights and rights to health and healthcare. The European Parliament, however, has proposed extensive amendments. This paper reviews the amendments proposed by the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and their implications for health research and statistics. The amendments eliminate most innovations brought by the Proposal. Notably, (...) derogation to the general prohibition of processing sensitive data shall be allowed for public interests such as the management of healthcare services, but not health research, monitoring, surveillance and governance. The processing of personal health data for historical, statistical or scientific purposes shall be allowed only with the consent of the data subject or if the processing serves an exceptionally high public interest, cannot be performed otherwise and is legally authorised. Research, be it academic, government, corporate or market research, falls under the same rule. The proposed amendments will make difficult or render impossible research and statistics involving the linkage and analysis of the wealth of data from clinical, administrative, insurance and survey sources, which have contributed to improving health outcomes and health systems performance and governance; and may illegitimise efforts that have been made in some European countries to enable privacy-respectful data use for research and statistical purposes. If the amendments stand as written, the right to privacy is likely to override the right to health and healthcare in Europe. (shrink)

A novel and versatile polarization-entanglement scheme is adopted to investigate the violation of the EPR local realism for a non-maximally entangled two-photon system according to the recent “nonlocality proof” by Lucien Hardy. In this context the adoption of a sophisticated detection method allows direct determination of any “element of physical reality” (viz., determined “with probability equal to unity” in the words of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen) for the pair system within complete measurements that are largely insensitive to the detector quantum-efficiencies (...) and noise. (shrink)

We invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions, or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of depoliticization? Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst debate the uses and misuses of tolerance, an exchange (...) that highlights the fundamental differences in their critical practice despite a number of political similarities. Both scholars address the normative premises, limits, and political implications of various conceptions of tolerance. Brown offers a genealogical critique of contemporary discourses on tolerance in Western liberal societies, focusing on their inherent ties to colonialism and imperialism, and Forst reconstructs an intellectual history of tolerance that attempts to redeem its political virtue in democratic societies. Brown and Forst work from different perspectives and traditions, yet they each remain wary of the subjection and abnegation embodied in toleration discourses, among other issues. The result is a dialogue rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity. (shrink)

Objectives: To foster the development of a privacy-protective, sustainable cross-border information system in the framework of a European public health project. Materials and methods: A targeted privacy impact assessment was implemented to identify the best architecture for a European information system for diabetes directly tapping into clinical registries. Four steps were used to provide input to software designers and developers: a structured literature search, analysis of data flow scenarios or options, creation of an ad hoc questionnaire and conduction of a (...) Delphi procedure. Results: The literature search identified a core set of relevant papers on privacy. Technicians envisaged three candidate system architectures, with associated data flows, to source an information flow questionnaire that was submitted to the Delphi panel for the selection of the best architecture. A detailed scheme envisaging an “aggregation by group of patients” was finally chosen, based upon the exchange of finely tuned summary tables. Conclusions: Public health information systems should be carefully engineered only after a clear strategy for privacy protection has been planned, to avoid breaching current regulations and future concerns and to optimise the development of statistical routines. The BIRO project delivers a specific method of privacy impact assessment that can be conveniently used in similar situations across Europe. (shrink)

This volume constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Fuzzy Logic and Applications held in Naples, Italy, in October 2003. The 40 revised full papers presented have gone through two rounds of reviewing and revision. All current issues of theoretical, experimental and applied fuzzy logic and related techniques are addressed with special attention to rough set theory, neural networks, genetic algorithms and soft computing. The papers are organized in topical section on fuzzy sets and systems, (...) fuzzy control, neuro-fuzzy systems, fuzzy decision theory and application, and soft computing in image processing. (shrink)