In the bracket mushroom, Schizophyllum commune, a recessive genetic alteration, mnd, causes abnormally hyperplastic three‐dimensional mounds of hyphae to rise from the surface of both haploid and dikaryotic mycelia. mnd, although not a genetic block in the fruiting body developmental pathway, is at least partially epistatic to fruiting. Within dikaryons containing both mutant and wild‐type nuclei, [mnd + mnd+], a nonreciprocal somatic recombination event can lead to stable conversion of the mnd+ region of the wild‐type nucleus to mnd. This (...) transformation to the homoallelic [mnd + mnd] condition involves no genomic areas other than the mnd region and permanently prevents any further fruiting. Studies relating to the recombination mechanism have ruled out a diploid intermediate state and other concomitants of orthodox somatic recombination, as well as whole chromosome transfer. Instead, a novel form of internuclear genetic transfer is postulated whereby a nearby locus, mob+, controls the mobilization of the mnd chromosomal region alone from one nucleus to the other within the binucleate cells of dikaryotic mycelia. (shrink)

Current theories suggest that the brain is the sole source of mental illness. However, affective disorders, and major depressive disorder (MDD) in particular, may be better conceptualized as brain-body disorders that involve peripheral systems as well. This perspective emphasizes the embodied, multifaceted physiology of well-being, and suggests that afferent signals from the body may contribute to cognitive and emotional states. In this review, we focus on evidence from preclinical and clinical studies suggesting that afferent thermosensory signals contribute to well-being and (...) depression. Although thermoregulatory systems have traditionally been conceptualized as serving primarily homeostatic functions, increasing evidence suggests neural pathways responsible for regulating body temperature may be linked more closely with emotional states than previously recognized, an affective warmth hypothesis. Human studies indicate that increasing physical warmth activates brain circuits associated with cognitive and affective functions, promotes interpersonal warmth and prosocial behavior, and has antidepressant effects. Consistent with these effects, preclinical studies in rodents demonstrate that physical warmth activates brain serotonergic neurons implicated in antidepressant-like effects. Together, these studies suggest that (1) thermosensory pathways interact with brain systems that control affective function, (2) these pathways are dysregulated in affective disorders, and (3) activating warm thermosensory pathways promotes a sense of well-being and has therapeutic potential in the treatment of affective disorders. (shrink)

Research on patients with damage to ventromedial frontal cortices suggests a key role for emotions in practical decision making. This field of investigation is often associated with Antonio Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis—a putative account of the mechanism through which autonomic tags guide decision making in typical individuals. Here we discuss two questionable assumptions—or ‘myths’—surrounding the direction and interpretation of this research. First, it is often assumed that there is a single somatic marker hypothesis. As others have noted, however, (...) Damasio’s ‘hypothesis’ admits of multiple interpretations (Dunn et al. [2006]; Colombetti [2008]). Our analysis builds upon this point by characterizing decision making as a multi-stage process and identifying the various potential roles for somatic markers. The second myth is that the available evidence suggests a role for somatic markers in the core stages of decision making, that is, during the generation, deliberation, or evaluation of candidate options. On the contrary, we suggest that somatic markers most likely have a peripheral role, in the recognition of decision points, or in the motivation of action. This conclusion is based on an examination of the past twenty-five years of research conducted by Damasio and colleagues, focusing in particular on some early experiments that have been largely neglected by the critical literature. 1 Introduction2 What is the Somatic Marker Model?3 Multiple Somatic Marker Hypotheses3.1 Are somatic markers necessary for practical decision making?3.2 Speed, accuracy, or both?3.3 At which of the five stages of decision making are somatic markers engaged?4 Anecdotal Evidence Suggests a Peripheral Role for Somatic Markers4.1 Chronic indecisiveness4.2 Extreme impulsiveness4.3 Enhanced decision making in the lab4.4 Lack of motivation. 5 Early Experiments Suggest that VMF Damage Leaves Core Processes Intact5.1 The evocative images study5.2 Five problem solving tasks6 Recent Experiments Fail to Discriminate among Alternate Versions of SMH7 Conclusion. (shrink)

Patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) are often described as having impaired ability for planning and decision making despite retaining intact capacities for explicit reasoning. The somatic marker hypothesis is that the VMPFC associates implicitly represented affective information with explicit representations of actions or outcomes. Consequently, when the VMPFC is damaged explicit reasoning is no longer scaffolded by affective information, leading to characteristic deficits. These deficits are exemplified in performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) in (...) which subjects with VMPFC perform significantly worse than neurotypicals in a task which requires them learn from rewarding and punishing experience to make decisions. The somatic marker theory adopts a canonical theory of emotion, in which emotions function as part of a valencing system, to explain the role of affective processes. The first part of the paper argues against this canonical account. The second part provides a different account of the role of the role of the VMPFC in decision-making which does not depend on the canonical account of emotion. Together the first and second parts of the paper provide the basis for a different interpretation of results on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). In fact the IGT may be probing a deficit in what has been called mental time travel: the ability to access and use information from previous experience and imaginatively rehearse future experiences as part of the process of deliberation. (shrink)

Dorion Cairns correctly interprets the preconstituted stratum of Edmund Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation to be the primordial ego and not the social world, as was thought by Alfred Schutz, who considered Husserl to be insufficiently attentive to the social world’s hold upon us. Following Cairns’s interpretation, which involves recovering and reconstructing strata that may never exist independently, one better understands how the transfer of sense animate organism involves automatic association, or somatic apprehension. This sense-transfer extends to any animate organism, (...) not just humans, and draws on extensive unreflected-upon similarities despite the distinctive fact that the other’s body is never given to oneself as is one’s own. Following Cairns’s interpretation, one can also understand the second epoché as an imaginative, reconstructive abstraction rather than as an example of failed ascesis. Consequently, Husserl appears as less intellectualized in his approach to empathy than often thought to be and more confident in the phenomenologist’s capacity to imagine and attend selectively to experience. (shrink)

This paper argues that the DSM diagnostic category 'major depression' is so permissive that it fails to distinguish the phenomenology of depression from a general 'feeling of being ill' that is associated with a range of somatic illnesses. We start by emphasizing that altered bodily experience is a conspicuous and commonplace symptom of depression. We add that the experience of somatic illness is not exclusively bodily; it can involve more pervasive experiential changes that are not dissimilar to those (...) associated with depression. Then we consider some recent work on inflammation and depression, which suggests that the experience of depression and the 'feeling of being ill' are, in some cases at least, much the same . However, we add that the phenomenology of depression is heterogeneous and that many cases involve additional or different symptoms. We conclude that 'major depression' is a placeholder for a range of different experiences, which are almost certainly aetiologically diverse too. (shrink)

The case of Andrew Gobea, the first child to receive experimental gene therapy for SCID, and a reflection on the associated ethical implications of gene therapy research.

Somatic awareness is bodily sensation imbued with consciousness. Directing and cultivating somatic awareness is a practice fundamental to many therapeutic and spiritual enterprises. Recent developments in neuroscience attempt to explain the operational aspects of somatic awareness. But it has long been a topic of conversation in other paradigms, from philosophy to health care. Somatic input provides information for use in wellness treatment applications, including therapeutic bodywork. Yet few massage therapy scholarly investigations aim to capture the quality (...) of body awareness experience. The essence of the experience and its associated language remain imprecise and under-explored holistically.This article implements the therapeutic practice technique of the Body Scan to capture the essence of an inner body exploration. Based on a narrative collected during a verbally self-directed exercise, a phenomenological description is explicated to represent one incidentof internal body experience. The pilot study suggests that the Body Scan offers potential as a research tool, as well as a modality for therapeutic intervention. (shrink)

Somatic awareness is bodily sensation imbued with consciousness. Directing and cultivating somatic awareness is a practice fundamental to many therapeutic and spiritual enterprises. Recent developments in neuroscience attempt to explain the operational aspects of somatic awareness. But it has long been a topic of conversation in other paradigms, from philosophy to health care. Somatic input provides information for use in wellness treatment applications, including therapeutic bodywork. Yet few massage therapy scholarly investigations aim to capture the quality (...) of body awareness experience. The essence of the experience and its associated language remain imprecise and under-explored holistically.This article implements the therapeutic practice technique of the Body Scan to capture the essence of an inner body exploration (proprioception and interoception). Based on a narrative collected during a verbally self-directed exercise, a phenomenological description is explicated to represent one incidentof internal body experience. The pilot study suggests that the Body Scan offers potential as a research tool, as well as a modality for therapeutic intervention. (shrink)

High levels of somatic symptom distress represent a core component of both mental and physical illness. The exact aetiology and pathogenesis of this transdiagnostic phenomenon remain largely unknown. The Affective Picture Paradigm (APP) represents an innovative experimental paradigm to study somatic symptom distress. Based on the HiTOP framework and a population-based sampling approach, associations between facets of somatic symptom distress and symptoms induced by the APP were explored in two studies (N1 = 201; N2 = 254) (...) using structural equation bi-factor models. Results showed that the APP effect was significantly positively correlated with general somatic symptom distress (PHQ-15, HiTOP), cardio-respiratory symptoms (PHQ-15), as well as difficulties identifying feelings. In conclusion, negative affective cues in the APP can elicit somatic symptoms, particularly in people with higher levels of somatic symptom distress. Difficulties identifying feelings might contribute to this phenomenon. Results are compatible with a predictive processing account of somatic symptom perception. (shrink)

This essay explores the lines of thought focused on the relationship between gesture and technique, examining the theories which have conceptualized the transfer of gestural matrices into inert matter, and understood technique as a result of this process. Although associated mainly with the writings of the palaeontologist André Leroi-Gourhan, this thought actually predates his work, and consists of multiple branches: having first taken root at the end of the nineteenth century, it became diffused throughout the following decades in different forms. (...) These nevertheless shared a constant reference to cinema, both as a privileged place that captures gestures, and as a technique that can absorb their quintessence. From Espinas to Simondon, via Jousse and Eisenstein, the theory of gestural transmission breaks down various polarities, such as body and environment, organic and inorganic, animated and inanimate, performativity and inner life. It foregrounds the imaginative logic of the body and the many forms of somatic thinking developed by man. Such forms lie at the heart of the creative processes and have found their highest appreciation in cinema, as a machine that, from its very origins, has been grafted not only on the eye but on the whole body. (shrink)

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) remains a controversial technique, one that has elicited a variety of regulatory responses throughout the world. On March 29, 2005, Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act came into force. This law prohibits a number of research activities, including SCNT. Given the pluralistic nature of Canadian society, the creation of this law stands as an interesting case study of the policy-making process and how and why a liberal democracy ends up making the relatively rare decision to (...) use a statutory prohibition, backed by severe penalties, to stop a particular scientific activity. In this article, we provide a comprehensive and systematic legal analysis of the legislative process and parliamentary debates associated with the passage of this law. (shrink)

Even more than for other treatments, great importance must be given to informed consent in the case of electroconvulsive therapy. In a percentage of cases, the symbolic connotation of the treatment, even if mostly and intrinsically negative, may actually be a determining factor in the patient’s motives for giving consent. On an ethical and medicolegal level, the most critical point is that concerning consent to the treatment by a psychotic subject with a severely compromised ability to comprehend the nature and (...) objective of the proposed therapy, but who nonetheless expresses his consent, for reasons derived from delusional thoughts. In fact, this situation necessarily brings to light the contradiction between an explicit expression of consent, a necessary formality for the commencement of therapy, and the validity of this consent, which may be severely compromised due to the patient’s inability to comprehend reality and therefore to accept the proposal of treatment, which is intrinsic to this reality. With the use of an electric current, the symbolic experience associated with anaesthesia, and the connection to convulsions, ECT enters the collective consciousness. In relation to this, ECT is symbolic of these three factors and hooks on to the thoughts, fears, feelings and expectations of delusional patients. These are often exemplified in the violent intervention of the persecutor in the patient with schizophrenia, the expected punishment for the ’error’ committed for which the depressed patient blames himself and the social repression of the maniacal patient’s affirmation of his inflated self-esteem. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of somatic maturation in anthropometric, physical, and game-related variables in youth basketball age groups under-13 and under-15. One-hundred and eighty-five basketball players performed anthropometrical and physical tests during a non-official youth basketball tournament. Predicted maturity offset and game-related variables were also analyzed. Cluster analysis was used to analyze the between-maturation status differences in all parameters in each age group. Also, regularized generalized canonical correlation analysis was used to assess relative (...) contributions of maturational, physical, and game-related variables within each age group. Based on MO, two different clusters were identified within each age category. Greater differences in MO were identified among U-13 clusters than among U-15 clusters. No significant differences were observed between clusters in terms of physical and game-related variables. High correlations between maturational, physical, and game-related variables were found for boys. In girls, different trends in terms of correlations were observed. The strongest association between blocks was observed between physical tests and game-related variables in all age categories, except for U-15 girls. Knowing and identifying performance profiles according to biological age is of upmost importance since it allows the coach to create challenging situations adjusted to the individual’s needs. (shrink)

BackgroundMore than 15% of Chinese respondents reported somatic symptoms in the last week of January 2020. Promoting resilience is a possible target in crisis intervention that can alleviate somatization.ObjectivesThis study aims to investigate the relationship between resilience and somatization, as well as the underlying possible mediating and moderating mechanism, in a large sample of Chinese participants receiving a crisis intervention during the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic.MethodsParticipants were invited online to complete demographic information and questionnaires. The Symptom Checklist-90 somatization subscale, (...) 10-item Connor–Davidson resilience scale, and 10-item Perceived Stress Scale were measured.ResultsA total of 2,557 participants were included. Spearman correlation analysis revealed that lower resilience was associated with more somatic symptoms. The conditional process model was proved. The interaction effects between perceived stress and sex predicted somatization.ConclusionResilience is a key predictor of somatization. The mediating effects of perceived stress between resilience and somatization work in the context of sex difference. Sex-specific intervention by enhancing resilience is of implication for alleviating somatization during the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic. (shrink)

Introduction: Placebo and nocebo effects are positive and negative health outcomes that can be elicited by the psychosocial context. They can be mediated by expectations, and may emerge in somatic symptoms even when people are aware of these effects. Interindividual differences could impact placebo and nocebo responding, but findings are inconsistent.Methods: The current work examined expectation as a mediator of the association between verbal placebo and nocebo suggestions and histamine-induced itch across three experimental studies. Moreover, we examined whether interindividual (...) differences, body ignorance) modulated: the direct association between VSs and itch, and the indirect, expectation-mediated association between VSs and itch. Positive VSs were compared to neutral instructions or negative VSs in an open-label or closed-label context using PROCESS. First, mediation of VSs effects on itch by expectations was tested. Next, moderation by individual traits was explored using conditional process analyses.Results: The effects of VSs on itch were significantly mediated by expectation in Study 1 and in the open-label contexts of Studies 2 and 3. Ignorance of bodily signals marginally moderated the direct effects of VSs on itch when closed-label suggestions were given: at low levels of body ignorance, effects of positive and negative VSs were stronger. Moreover, moderated mediation was observed in the open-label groups of Studies 2 and 3: The expectation-mediated effects of VSs on itch were stronger when BAS drive was lower.Conclusion: Overall, the effects of VSs on itch were mediated by expectations in the open-label, but not the closed-label context. Moreover, the current work suggests that placebo and nocebo effects may be moderated by ignorance of bodily signals and the BAS. There was limited evidence that other interindividual differences modulated placebo and nocebo responding in itch. (shrink)

IntroductionLittle is known about risk factors for both Long COVID and somatic symptoms that develop in individuals without a history of COVID-19 in response to the pandemic. There is reason to assume an interplay between pathophysiological mechanisms and psychosocial factors in the etiology of symptom persistence.ObjectiveTherefore, this study investigates specific risk factors for somatic symptom deterioration in a cohort of German adults with and without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.MethodsGerman healthcare professionals underwent SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody testing and completed self-rating questionnaires (...) at baseline and 21 months later between April 2020 and February 2022. Differences in variables between the time points were analyzed and a regression analysis was performed to predict somatic symptom deterioration at follow-up.ResultsSeven hundred fifty-one adults completed both assessments. Until follow-up, n = 58 had contracted SARS-CoV-2 confirmed by serology. Between baseline and follow-up, signs of mental and physical strain increased significantly in the sample. Symptom expectations associated with COVID-19 and a self-reported history of COVID-19, but not serologically confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, significantly predicted somatic symptom deterioration at follow-up. A further predictor was baseline psychological symptom burden.ConclusionsThis study supports a disease-overarching biopsychosocial model for the development of burdensome somatic symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic and supports research findings that symptom burden may be more related to the psychosocial effects of the pandemic than to infection itself. Future studies on Long COVID should include SARS-CoV-2 negative control groups and consider symptom burden prior to infection in order to avoid an overestimation of prevalence rates. (shrink)

Mastery imagery (i.e., images of being in control and coping in difficult situations) is used to regulate anxiety. The ability to image this content is associated with trait confidence and anxiety, but research examining mastery imagery ability's association with confidence and anxiety in response to a stressful event is scant. The present study examined whether trait mastery imagery ability mediated the relationship between confidence and anxiety, and the subsequent associations on performance in response to an acute psychological stress. Participants (...) (N= 130; 55% male;Mage= 19.94 years;SD= 1.07 years) completed assessments of mastery imagery ability and engaged in a standardized acute psychological stress task. Immediately prior to the task, confidence, cognitive and somatic anxiety intensity, and interpretation of anxiety symptoms regarding the task were assessed. Path analyses supported a model whereby mastery imagery ability mediated the relationship between confidence and cognitive and somatic anxiety interpretation. Greater mastery imagery ability and confidence were both directly associated with better performance on the stress task. Mastery imagery ability may help individuals experience more facilitative anxiety and perform better during stressful tasks. Improving mastery imagery ability by enhancing self-confidence may help individuals successfully cope with anxiety elicited during stressful situations. (shrink)

The emotions distinctive of human beings, as opposed to other animals, are emotions that presuppose possession of a language and hence powers of intellect and rational will. The objects distinctive of human emotions presuppose mastery of a language and possession of rational abilities. Music itself has been considered to be the purest artistic expression of human emotions and of the striving of the human will. The emotions, in particular temporary emotions, have characteristic multiple associations, manifestations, and forms of expression. (...) This chapter distinguishes between the neural/physiological and somatic associations, on the one hand, and the behavioural manifestations and verbal expressions of the emotions, on the other. Behavioural manifestations and expressions of emotion and emotionally motivated actions lie along a volitional spectrum that ranges from the non‐voluntary to the involuntary, and from the voluntary but not intentional to the intentional and deliberate. (shrink)

Purpose: To analyze how individual characteristics and the social context are associated with mental distress symptoms in the Brazilian population.Method: A multilevel cross-sectional study with data from the 2013 National Health Survey. There were two dependent variables: decreased vital energy and somatic symptoms, the presence of depressive thoughts. The independent variables were biological characteristics, education and income, habits and lifestyle, and context variables. Bivariate analysis was performed, and Prevalence Ratios calculated in a Poisson Regression. A multilevel Poisson Regression was (...) performed to verify the effect of individual and contextual variables.Results: Regarding depressive thoughts, young and middle-aged individuals, low education, women, absence of partner, smokers or former smokers, and absence of health insurance were the categories at highest risk; belonging to classes D-E and living in states with lower expected years of schooling proved to be protective factors. Similar results were found for the second outcome.Conclusions: Symptoms of mental distress were associated with the individual characteristics and contextual aspects of the federation unit. These findings indicate the importance of strengthening psychosocial care aimed at vulnerable groups. (shrink)

Patients with insomnia complain of problems with sleep onset or sleep maintenance or early morning awakenings, or a combination of these, despite adequate opportunity and circumstances for sleep. In addition, to fulfill the diagnostic criteria for insomnia the complaints need to be associated with negative daytime consequences. For chronic insomnia, the symptoms are required to be present at least 3 days per week for a duration of at least 3 months. Lastly, for insomnia to be defined as a disorder, the (...) sleep complaints and daytime symptoms should not be better explained by another sleep disorder. This criterion represents a diagnostic challenge, since patients suffering from other sleep disorders often complain of insomnia symptoms. For instance, insomnia symptoms are common in e.g., obstructive sleep apnea and circadian rhythm sleep-wake disorders. It may sometimes be difficult to disentangle whether the patient suffers from insomnia disorder or whether the insomnia symptoms are purely due to another sleep disorder. Furthermore, insomnia disorder may be comorbid with other sleep disorders in some patients, e.g., comorbid insomnia and sleep apnea. In addition, insomnia disorder is often comorbid with psychological or somatic disorders and diseases. Thus, a thorough assessment is necessary for correct diagnostics. For chronic insomnia disorder, treatment-of-choice is cognitive behavioral therapy, and such treatment is also effective when the insomnia disorder appears comorbid with other diagnoses. Furthermore, studies suggest that insomnia is a heterogenic disorder with many different phenotypes or subtypes. Different insomnia subtypes may respond differently to treatment, but more research on this issue is warranted. Also, the role of comorbidity on treatment outcome is understudied. This review is part of a Research Topic on insomnia launched by Frontiers and focuses on diagnostic and treatment challenges of the disorder. The review aims to stimulate to more research into the bidirectional associations and interactions between insomnia disorder and other sleep, psychological, and somatic disorders/diseases. (shrink)

Previous studies suggest in line with dual process models that interoceptive skills affect controlled decisions via automatic or implicit processing. The “framing effect” is considered to capture implicit effects of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli on decision-making. We hypothesized that cardiac awareness, as a measure of interoceptive skills, is positively associated with susceptibility to the framing effect. Forty volunteers performed a risky-choice framing task in which the effect of loss versus gain frames on decisions based on identical information was assessed. The results (...) show a positive association between cardiac awareness and the framing effect, accounting for 24% of the variance in the framing effect. These findings demonstrate that good interoceptive skills are linked to poorer performance in risky choices based on ambivalent information when implicit bias is induced by task-irrelevant emotional information. These findings support a dual process perspective on decision-making and suggest that interoceptive skills mediate effects of implicit bias on decisions. (shrink)

_Discusses philosophers Mencius and Aristotle as socio-ecological thinkers._ Mencius (385–303/302 BCE) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) were contemporaries, but are often understood to represent opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum. Mencius is associated with the ecological, emergent, flowing, and connected; Artistotle with the rational, static, abstract, and binary. Douglas Robinson argues that in their conceptions of rhetoric, at least, Mencius and Aristotle are much more similar than different: both are powerfully socio-ecological, espousing and exploring collectivist thinking about the circulation of energy (...) and social value through groups. The agent performing the actions of _pistis_, “persuading-and-being-persuaded,” in Aristotle and _zhi_, “governing-and-being-governed,” in Mencius is, Robinson demonstrates, not so much the rhetor as an individual as it is the whole group. Robinson tracks this collectivistic thinking through a series of comparative considerations using a theory that draws impetus from Arne Naess’s “ecosophical” deep ecology and from work on rhetoric powered by affective ecologies, but with details of the theory drawn equally from Mencius and Aristotle. (shrink)

The World Health Organization, in its last review of its International Classification of Diseases, established a new classification for chronic pain. Among the principal categories, of particular interest is chronic primary pain as a new type of diagnosis in those cases in which the etiology of the disease is not clear, being termed as chronic primary visceral pain when it is situated in the thorax, abdomen, or pelvis. Due to the novelty of the term, the objective of the systematic review (...) was to examine the psychopathological and neuropsychological disorders associated with chronic primary visceral pain. We carried out a search of the scientific literature following the PRISMA directives using the Pubmed, Medline, PsycInfo and Scopus databases. A total of 33 articles were selected after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The analysis of the studies showed that most persons with chronic primary visceral pain suffer from at least one psychological disorder; the most prevalent being anxiety, depressive or somatoform disorders. The most frequent psychopathological symptoms are anxiety, depression and somatization. Similarly, the findings are insufficient to determine the existence of deficits in the domains of executive functioning, memory and intelligence. However, the existence of attention biases does seem to be clear. This review supposes a starting point for conceptualizing chronic primary visceral pain. It is necessary to continue further research so as to obtain a better understanding of this pathology and the disorders associated. (shrink)

Emotion-processing impairment represents a risk factor for the development of somatic illness, affecting negatively both health-related quality of life and disease management in several chronic diseases. The present pilot study aims at investigating the associations between alexithymia and depression, anxiety, and HRQoL in patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis ; examining the association between these three psychological conditions together with HRQoL, and thyroid autoantibodies status as well as thyroid echotexture in patients with HT; and comparing the intensity of all these (...) clinical psychological features in patients with HT versus controls. Twenty-one patients with serologically or ultrasonographically verified HT and 16 controls with non-toxic goiter or postsurgical hypothyroidism were recruited for this study. Serum thyrotropin and free thyroxine, as well as thyroid autoantibodies, were assayed. Alexithymia, depression, anxiety, and HRQoL were assessed with Toronto Alexithymia Scale; Beck Depression Inventory, second edition; Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale; and Health Survey Short-Form 36, respectively. A negative relationship between the difficulty to describe feelings and the cognitive component of depression was found. Besides, patients with seronegative HT had lower somatic anxiety than patients with HT who tested positive. Besides, no statistically significant difference was found between patients with HT and controls with regard to somatic anxiety. The present study suggests the relevance of alexithymia in patients suffering from HT, which may be intertwined with a possible state of underreported depression that is mainly expressed through physical complaints. Promoting the capability to describe and communicate feelings could contribute to psychological elaboration and coping with the disease and, consequently, to the improvement of self-management and perceived HRQoL. (shrink)

Port-wine birthmarks (PWBs) are caused by somatic, mosaic mutations in the G protein guanine nucleotide binding protein alpha subunit q (GNAQ) and are characterized by the formation of dilated, dysfunctional blood vessels in the dermis, eyes, and/or brain. Cutaneous PWBs can be treated by current dermatologic therapy, like laser intervention, to lighten the lesions and diminish nodules that occur in the lesion. Involvement of the eyes and/or brain can result in serious complications and this variation is termed Sturge-Weber syndrome (...) (SWS). Some of the biggest hurdles preventing development of new therapeutics are unanswered questions regarding disease biology and lack of models for drug screening. In this review, we discuss the current understanding of GNAQ signaling, the standard of care for patients, overlap with other GNAQ-associated or phenotypically similar diseases, as well as deficiencies in current in vivo and in vitro vascular malformation models. (shrink)

Somatic cell count is a diagnostic test of milk for mastitis in cows. Its specificity and sensitivity are less than 1.0, making test results uncertain. I discuss epistemological problems of the test such as underdetermination, undercalibration and underdiscrimination, in the solution of which biomedical and economic factors may play a role. Diagnostics of the SCC should be considered as an epistemological network, functioning in a network in which farmers, veterinarians, epidemiologists and milk industry shift their position following biomedical, technological (...) and economic changes, which is described as an actor-network to understand how human and non-human agents in mastitis may be associated. (shrink)

Somatic or inherited mutations in the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene are a frequent cause of colorectal cancer in humans. APC protein has an important tumor suppression function to reduce cellular levels of the signaling protein β‐catenin and, thereby, inhibit β‐catenin and T‐cell‐factor‐mediated gene expression. In addition, APC protein binds to microtubules in vertebrate cells and localizes to actin‐rich adherens junctions in epithelial cells of the fruit fly Drosophila (Fig. 1). Very little is known, however, about the function of (...) these cytoskeletal associations. Recently, Hamada and Bienz have described a potential role for Drosophila E‐APC in cellular adhesion,1 which offers new clues to APC function in embryonic development, and potentially colorectal adenoma formation and tumor progression in humans. BioEssays 24:771–774, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The science of genetics is undergoing a paradigm shift. Recent discoveries, including the activity of retrotransposons, the extent of copy number variations, somatic and chromosomal mosaicism, and the nature of the epigenome as a regulator of DNA expressivity, are challenging a series of dogmas concerning the nature of the genome and the relationship between genotype and phenotype. According to three widely held dogmas, DNA is the unchanging template of heredity, is identical in all the cells and tissues of the (...) body, and is the sole agent of inheritance. Rather than being an unchanging template, DNA appears subject to a good deal of environmentally induced change. Instead of identical DNA in all the cells of the body, somatic mosaicism appears to be the normal human condition. And DNA can no longer be considered the sole agent of inheritance. We now know that the epigenome, which regulates gene expressivity, can be inherited via the germline. These developments are particularly significant for behavior genetics for at least three reasons: First, epigenetic regulation, DNA variability, and somatic mosaicism appear to be particularly prevalent in the human brain and probably are involved in much of human behavior; second, they have important implications for the validity of heritability and gene association studies, the methodologies that largely define the discipline of behavior genetics; and third, they appear to play a critical role in development during the perinatal period and, in particular, in enabling phenotypic plasticity in offspring. I examine one of the central claims to emerge from the use of heritability studies in the behavioral sciences, the principle of minimal shared maternal effects, in light of the growing awareness that the maternal perinatal environment is a critical venue for the exercise of adaptive phenotypic plasticity. This consideration has important implications for both developmental and evolutionary biology. (shrink)

In Curanderismo and other traditional medicine systems, illnesses are understood to have somatic and emotional components and symptoms may be elicited by disruptions in interpersonal relationships between community members. An aspect of ritual interventions involves returning interpersonal relationships to balance and restoring harmonious interactions between members of the community. Important are shared understandings of the meaning of the symptoms, the mode of transmission of the illness, and the resolution that occurs through the process of the healer’s ritual interventions. In (...) this essay, I present a narrative description of the illness, La Envidia, which is associated with the expression of the emotion, envy. The narrative was shared with me by a person who is a migrant from an Afromestizo community of the Pacific Coast of Mexico to Atlanta, Georgia. The illness, La Envidia, is discussed and interpreted framed by perspectives including Participation Mystique and blurred psychological boundaries, traditional indigenous conceptualizations of illness, shamanism and symbolization processes, shared meaning, traditional Yoruba informed African conceptualizations of illness and healing practices, and somatic and embodied ritual experiences. (shrink)

Myofascial Pain Syndrome is somatic pain due to muscular tension associated with muscular-skeletal imbalance. The pain and discomfort of the patient is not simply due to some isolated tension, but in the dynamic relationships between related structures. As the body adjusts to reestablish balance and symmetry, the tension and pain in one area “diagonalizes,” creating a tense correlate along a diagonal axis. This diagonalization of tension exacerbates and perpetuates the initial condition of pain and dysfunction. The purpose of this (...) paper is to argue that there are moral and social analogues to MFPS with their own forms of diagonalized asymmetry. Following the Aristotelian model of virtue and vice, whereby moral traits and dispositions become vice as a result of a loss of balance in conduct, and George Herbert Mead’s social psychology, which describes the self in terms of dynamic interrelation and co-operation of multiple sub-selves, I maintain that otherwise positive strengths in personal character, when overemphasized or exaggerated, can be juxtaposed to analogous weaknesses in related areas of personal health and conduct. I will argue that the descriptive analogy of MFPS has a corollary set of prescriptions for restoring balance in a moral subject. (shrink)

Depression might be associated with accelerated cellular aging. However, does this result in an irreversible state or is the body able to slow down or recover from such a process? Telomeres are DNA‐protein complexes that protect the ends of chromosomes and generally shorten with age; and therefore index cellular aging. The majority of studies indicate that persons with depression have shorter leukocyte telomeres than similarly aged non‐depressed persons, which may contribute to the observed unfavorable somatic health outcomes in the (...) depressed population. Some small‐scale preliminary studies raise the possibility that behavioral or pharmacological interventions may either slow down or else reverse this accelerated telomere shortening, possibly through increasing the activity of the telomere‐lengthening enzyme telomerase. This paper covers the current state of evidence in the relationship between depression and the telomere‐telomerase system and debates whether depression‐related cellular aging should be considered a reversible process or permanent damage. (shrink)

Alexithymia is associated with emotion processing deficits, particularly for negative emotional information. However, also common are a high prevalence of somatic symptoms and the perception of somatic sensations as distressing. Although little research has yet been conducted on memory in alexithymia, we hypothesized a paradoxical effect of alexithymia on memory. Specifically, recall of negative emotional words was expected to be reduced in alexithymia, while memory for illness words was expected to be enhanced in alexithymia.Eighty-five high or low alexithymia (...) participants viewed and rated arousing illness-related , emotionally positive , negative , and neutral words . Recall was assessed 45 min later.High alexithymia participants recalled significantly fewer negative emotion words but also more illness-related words than low alexithymia participants. The results suggest that personal relevance can shape cognitive processing of stimuli, even to enhance retention of a subclass of stimuli whose retention is generally impaired in alexithymia. (shrink)

Medical assistance in dying, which includes voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, is legally permissible in a number of jurisdictions, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada. Although medical assistance in dying is most commonly provided for suffering associated with terminal somatic illness, some jurisdictions have also offered it for severe and irremediable psychiatric illness. Meanwhile, recent work in the philosophy of psychiatry has led to a renewed understanding of psychiatric illness that emphasises the role of the relation between the (...) person and the external environment in the constitution of mental disorder. In this paper, I argue that this externalist approach to mental disorder highlights an ethical challenge to the practice of medical assistance in dying for psychiatric illness. At the level of the clinical assessment, externalism draws attention to potential social and environmental interventions that might have otherwise been overlooked by the standard approach to mental disorder, which may confound the judgement that there is no further reasonable alternative that could alleviate the person’s suffering. At the level of the wider society, externalism underscores how social prejudices and structural barriers that contribute to psychiatric illness constrain the affordances available to people and result in them seeking medical assistance in dying when they otherwise might not have had under better social conditions. (shrink)

Eugen Bleuler, in 1911, renamed the group of mental disorders with poor prognosis which Emil Kraepel in had called ``dementia praecox'' ``group of schizophrenias'',because for him the splitting of personality was the main symptom.Biographical, scientific and methodological influences on Bleuler's concept of schizophrenia are shown with special reference to Kraepelin and Freud.Bleuler was a passionate and very experienced clinician. He lived with his patients, taking care of them and writing down his observations. Methodologically he was an empiricist and an eclecticist (...) with a wide reading knowledge.In an impaired association of ideas, in disordered affectivity, in marked ambivalence and autism Bleuler saw the main symptoms of schizophrenia. For him these so-called pathological phenomena actually seemed to be only exaggerations of normal psychic functions. So there were only a quantitative, not a qualitative difference between schizophrenia and normal psychic processes and studies on schizophrenic ``pathology'' –seen as a disturbance, not as a disease – might analogously illustrate normal psychic reactions and vice versa.In etiology as well as in therapy Bleuler took into account psychological and (neuro)physiological(somatic) mechanisms – thus combining organicism and dynamic psychiatry and coming very close to modern concepts, e.g. the one of stress and vulnerability. Bleuler's main merit is the stressing of an idiographic ``understanding'' of the patient and a plausible and subtle explanation of schizophrenia which helped to reduce the alienation of the affected persons. (shrink)

Severe obesity has been associated with reduced performance on tests of verbal memory in bariatric surgery candidates. There is also some evidence that bariatric surgery leads to improved verbal memory, yet these findings need further elucidation. Little is known regarding postoperative memory changes in the visual domain and how patients subjectively experience their everyday memory after surgery. The aim of the current study was to repeat and extend prior findings on postoperative memory by investigating visual, verbal, and self-reported everyday memory (...) following surgery, and to examine whether weight loss and somatic comorbidity predict memory performance. The study was a prospective, observational study in which participants underwent cognitive testing at baseline, 1 and 2 years after bariatric surgery. Repeated measures analyses of variance revealed significantly poorer visual and verbal memory performance at the 1-year follow-up, with performance subsequently returning to baseline levels after 2 years. Verbal learning and self-reported everyday memory did not show significant postoperative changes. Memory performance at 1 year was not significantly predicted by weight loss, changes in C-reactive protein levels or postoperative somatic comorbidity. The study demonstrated poorer visual and verbal memory performance at 1-year follow-up that returned to baseline levels after 2 years. These findings are in contrast to most previous studies and require further replication, however, the results indicate that postoperative memory improvements following bariatric surgery are not universal. Findings suggest that treatment providers should also be aware of patients potentially having poorer memory at 1 year following surgery. (shrink)

What is the primary function of consciousness in the nervous system? The answer to this question remains enigmatic, not so much because of a lack of relevant data, but because of the lack of a conceptual framework with which to interpret the data. To this end, we have developed Passive Frame Theory, an internally coherent framework that, from an action-based perspective, synthesizes empirically supported hypotheses from diverse fields of investigation. The theory proposes that the primary function of consciousness is well-circumscribed, (...) serving the 'somatic nervous system[. For this system, consciousness serves as a frame that constrains and directs skeletal muscle output, thereby yielding adaptive behavior. The mechanism by which consciousness achieves this is more counterintuitive, passive, and “low level” than the kinds of functions that theorists have previously attributed to consciousness. Passive frame theory begins to illuminate (a) what consciousness contributes to nervous function, (b) how consciousness achieves this function, and (c) the neuroanatomical substrates of conscious processes. Our untraditional, action-based perspective focuses on olfaction instead of on vision and is 'descriptive' (describing the products of nature as they evolved to be) rather than 'normative' (construing processes in terms of how they should function). Passive frame theory begins to isolate the neuroanatomical, cognitive-mechanistic, and representational (e.g., conscious contents) processes associated with consciousness. (shrink)

Excerpt: 1. Introduction This chapter provides insight into the diverse ethical debates on genetics and epigenetics. Much controversy surrounds debates about intervening into the germline genome of human embryos, with catchwords such as genome editing, designer baby, and CRISPR/Cas. The idea that it is possible to design a child according to one’s personal preferences is, however, a quite distorted view of what is actually possible with new gene technologies and gene therapies. These are much more limited than the editing and (...) design metaphors suggest. Such metaphors are therefore highly problematic phrases in the context of new gene technologies, for two reasons. On one hand, to design a child of choice by modifying the genome would require modifying any gene of choice, which is more than can be done with current gene technologies, such as CRISPR/Cas. On the other hand, a modification of genes would need to be enough to create any characteristic of choice in the future child. The latter presupposes the assumption of genetic determinism. Moreover, the CRISPR/Cas technology can not only be used in a potentially therapeutic manner at the germline level. In addition, there is the (more likely) scenario of a future clinical therapeutic use of these new gene technologies for modifying the DNA sequence of other cells of the body (somatic genome editing). There is also the option of modifying the epigenome, that is, the spatial configuration of DNA (epigenome editing) (see table 1). Like genetics and genome editing, epigenetics has been at the center of recent popular scientific and ethical discourse as well as scientific debates. The concept of epigenetics has given rise to very different notions of inheritability and responsibility for health, which, however, are oftentimes based on scientifically controversial basic assumptions. That there continues to be covert genetic determinism in the form of epigenetic determinism (see table 2) in debates about epigenetics has been pointed out in ethical analyses of epigenetics. Neither genetic determinism nor epigenetic determinism has been confirmed scientifically. It is therefore important to recognize the concepts that are discussed (and sometimes harshly criticized) in debates about genome editing and epigenetics—for example, concepts about the causal role of DNA for our own life course. This importance is based on the fact that if we understand such controversial concepts, we will be able to remain critical when evaluating scientific knowledge and ethical arguments about genome editing and epigenetics. This chapter, therefore, explains some of these concepts. For an ethical analysis of epigenetics as well as of genome editing, it is necessary to understand and critically reflect upon the underlying concepts of genetic determinism and other, related -isms. The following section offers a detailed introduction to these -isms (section 2; see also table 2). Section 3 provides an ethical analysis of genome editing and epigenetics based on the explanations in section 2. Section 3 focuses on inheritability and responsibility, justice, safety, the problem of consent, and the effects of genome editing and epigenetics on embryos and future generations. This section does not discuss in detail further points that can be found in ethical debates about epigenetics as well as in ethical debates about genome editing. These points include (among others): • fear that the findings of epigenetics and that the methods of genome editing are misused—this also with respect to eugenics and enhancement; • naturalness—an issue we mention in passing a few times in the following analysis; • a possible connection between the genome/epigenome and the concept of human dignity, and the derived danger of instrumentalization and infringement of autonomy when intervening in the genome or epigenome. Since current discourse about ethical issues associated with genome editing focuses mainly on germline interventions, which are, for instance, interventions into a human embryo’s genome, we mainly focus on germline interventions when comparing the debates on genome editing and on epigenetics in section 3. (shrink)

This study provides evidence supporting the operation of a novel cognitive process of a somatic seat of attention, or ego-center, whose somatic location is under voluntary control and that provides access to differential emotional resources. Attention has typically been studied in terms of what it is directed toward, but it can also be associated with a localized representation in the body image that is experienced as the source or seat of attention—an aspect that has previously only been studied (...) by subjective techniques. Published studies of this phenomenon under terms such as egocenter or self-location suggest that the seat of attention can be situated in various ways within the experienced body, resulting in what are here referred to as different attentional stances. These studies also provide evidence that changes in attentional stance are associated with differences in cognitive skill, emotional temperament, self-construal, and social and moral attitudes, as well as with access to certain states of consciousness. In the present study, EEG results from multiple trials of each of 11 specific attentional stances confirmed that patterns of neural activity associated with the voluntarily control of attentional stances can be reliably measured, providing evidence for a differential neural substrate underlying the subjective location of the seat of attention. Additionally, brain activation patterns for the attentional stances showed strong correlations with EEG signatures associated with specific positive emotional states and with arousal, confirming that differential locations of the seat of attention can be objectively associated with different emotion states, as implied in previous literature. The ability to directly manage the seat of attention into various attentional stances holds substantial potential for facilitating access to specific cognitive and emotional resources in a new way. (shrink)

Tech companies have eagerly utilised mindfulness techniques in order to increase both creativity and productivity among their managers and employees. However, while a growing number of studies within fields of clinical psychology and psychiatry suggest that mindfulness provides myriad health benefits, such literature does not critically evaluate the societal and affective influences of mindfulness and other wellness practices on working bodies. By focusing on discourses related to mindfulness training, this paper explores the conception of ‘being present’. Drawing on the phenomenology (...) of the body, affect theory, and critical mindfulness studies, we develop a new theoretical framework for analysing mindfulness as a somatic and social force in technology-driven business contexts. Using research material drawn from the online advertising of mindfulness programmes for managers, this paper describes ‘presence’ as a new labour concept associated with the cultivated performance skill of the managerial body in the era of late capitalism. We conclude that mindfulness training – transforming the somatic into an affective investment – has transformed Buddhist meditation into capital that can be bought and consumed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophical Perspectives on Galen of Pergamum. Four Case-Studies on Human Nature and the Relation between Body and Soul by Robert VinkesteijnJulien DevinantVINKESTEIJN, Robert. Philosophical Perspectives on Galen of Pergamum. Four Case-Studies on Human Nature and the Relation between Body and Soul. Leiden: Brill, 2022. viii + 357 pp. Cloth, $155.00Vinkesteijn's book, stemming from his 2020 dissertation at Utrecht University, explores Galen's views on (human) nature and the soul. (...) Opting to sidestep the debate on the unity of Galen's thought, he offers a series of close readings of some of Galen's most philosophical writings, radiating from the short treatise The Capacities of the Soul Follow the Mixtures of the Body (QAM), which encapsulates the questions he investigates throughout the book. Although many of the texts and themes examined have been extensively discussed in previous scholarship, its strength lies in its steadfast and coherent defense of a long-favored interpretation of Galen as "somatizing the soul."Case Study 1 revisits QAM, which has sparked considerable debate in Galenic studies. It defends the idea, recently criticized, that despite Galen's agnostic statements about the substance of the soul elsewhere, he supports here the physicalist and more speculative thesis that the whole soul is indeed identical to the specific mixture of elemental qualities in the homoeomerous parts of the main psychic organs. Vinkesteijn maintains that this thesis aligns with Galen's general physiology, and that Galen's analysis of the soul as a formal aspect in a hylomorphic whole represents not an exegetical stance on Aristotelian positions but his own viewpoint, applicable to both the nonrational and rational parts. The study then rightly emphasizes Galen's conviction that our actions and affections can and should be modified by habituation. It argues that there is no basis for assuming that the identity thesis leads to a radically deterministic ethic. Indeed, it showcases the possibility of a second formation of our bodily mixture, with Galen attributing to the rational part of the soul a godlike potential for change and improvement of the soul's virtues—although it concedes the unlikelihood of such personal enhancement, as it hinges on rare natural predispositions.Case Study 2 focuses on Galen's definition of nature and his elemental theory; it focuses on the first book of Galen's Commentary on Hippocrates's On the Nature of Man (HNH) and examines the notable absence of the soul as an explanatory factor in an account of human nature. It argues that Galen articulates a concept of nature as a primary hylomorphic substance, shared by all beings subject to generation and decay and determining their secondary properties. The study then [End Page 557] examines Galen's use of his allegedly Hippocratic/Platonic method of division to dissect nature into its constantly interacting elemental powers of heating, cooling, moistening, and drying. Vinkesteijn then underscores the complexities in delineating mixtures from nature as an intelligent creator, challenging the dichotomy between a transcendent and an immanent formation of natural beings and pinpointing the difficulty in differentiating between the causality of nature and that of the soul in humans.Case Study 3 explores Galen's engagement with Plato's Timaeus, focusing on the soul–body relationship. It drives home the argument of the first study and aims to show how the fragments of Galen's lost Commentary on the Timaeus offer a somatizing interpretation of the soul. Extensively drawing on the disputed but recently reassessed Larrain fragments, it convincingly argues that they align with passages from Galen's attested works. Vinkesteijn highlights Galen's creative reading of the Timaeus, tailored to mirror his own doctrines. Beyond incorporating Aristotelian notions into his analysis, Galen is depicted as ingeniously reinterpreting the Platonic soul–body distinction. Notably, Vinkesteijn shows how Galen takes the river metaphor literally, as an indication of moisture abundance, and applies it beyond its original context of generation. This approach enables Galen to reinterpret Plato's ideas through the prism of elemental qualities and emphasize the association of the soul with lightlike or dry and hot substances, bridging the gap between the Platonic concept of the soul and Galen's physiological understanding of human nature.Case... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Bodyheartminding” (xin 心): Reconceiving the Inner Self and the Outer World in the Language of Holographic Focus and FieldRoger T. Amesin body consciousness: a philosophy of mindfulness and somaesthetics, Richard Shusterman expands upon a professional oeuvre in which his exploration of the phenomenon of “body consciousness” has effected nothing less than a somatic turn in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative.1 But his contribution does not end there. Over (...) the past two decades, the reach and influence of his “somaesthetics” has been extended to the gates of China. Indeed, it has become a theme engaged by scholars of China’s indigenous philosophical traditions, thus providing an opportunity for a further edifying conversation between the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions.2 And it is this conversation, as it has been inspired by Shusterman’s work, that I propose to join in this short essay.In Body Consciousness, Shusterman tells the story of how John Dewey advances the pragmatic project of not only understanding the body better, but indeed of applying the Alexander Technique as his way of using his own body properly.3 Just as Dewey has been a prominent resource for Shusterman in his development of somaesthetics, for Dewey in turn, it was William James’s Principles of Psychology that was a self-confessed inspiration for the development of his own evolving interpretation of pragmatism.4 Indeed, one way of reading Dewey’s philosophical career and his thirty-seven-volume opus is that it is a sustained effort to take the radical “stream-of-consciousness” insights developed in James’s Principles to their logical, systematic conclusion. In pursuing this project, while appreciative, Dewey is at times impatient with James’s dualistic lapses in which he continues to separate individuals from community, mind from body, emotions from intellect, agents from actions, and theory from practice. Dewey takes these unfortunate reversions to old ways of thinking as serving only to confound James’s holistic doctrines of pure experience and radical empiricism. Given Dewey’s own postulate of [End Page 100] immediate and continuous empiricism, one way of tracking his journey from having been inspired by James’s biological naturalism to achieving his own philosophical coherence is to register his unrelenting aversion to dualism in any form.But Dewey himself was not always consistent in this respect. Shusterman gives an account of the early neo-Hegelian Dewey who, affirming the familiar transcendent conception of soul we associate with idealism, unsurprisingly embraces a clear soul and body dualism. And in spite of the philosophically mature Dewey’s best efforts to think “process,” he has no choice but to use both a language and a grammar freighted with substance ontology that resists his more holistic insights. On occasion, even while trying to remain consistent in his thinking, Dewey seems to fall victim to terminology that if not dualistic is at best ambiguous. Dewey’s struggle against this problem of equivocation is particularly apparent in some of the language he appeals to in attempting to put the Humpty Dumpty of mind and body together again. In his effort to register the irreducible continuity and inseparability of the nonanalytic abstractions we differentiate as body and mind—the ontological givenness or “hadness” of “bodyminding”—Dewey still at times invokes terms such as “combination,” “integration,” “unity,” and so on, that take as their suppressed premise “two things becoming one.” By way of contrast, in the correlative vocabulary of Chinese process cosmology, expressions such as yinyang 陰陽, the natural/cultural and the human (tianren 天人), and knowing and doing (zhixing 知行), primacy is given to vital relationality and the continuity it entails. It is not putting two things together that is referenced with these binomials, but the deepening of the horizon of constitutive, internal relationships that transforms the two aspects of the same phenomenon qualitatively into harmonics (he 和) for yinyang, sagacity (sheng 聖) for tianren, and acting wisely (zhi 智) for zhixing. In each instance, the two aspects themselves are simply conceptual abstractions from a complex relational process. The proper and effective measure (du 度) sought in this Confucian cosmology is not quantitatively more or less of two distinct things—taking mind and body as our example—but rather a qualitative and transformative change that... (shrink)

The article presents a study of gift-giving practices in the context of the development of modern biomedicine and shows their relationship to the realization of epistemic virtues. In biomedicine, the gain and production of knowledge (the gift of knowledge) is often grounded in bodily gift (sacrifice) and donor practices. The latter are associated with a number of mishaps in the history of biomedicine, reflecting the violation of moral norms in the process of obtaining scientific data and demonstrating the need for (...) a clear differentiation of intellectual and moral virtues. An important factor in the formation of the epistemic norms of modern biomedicine has been the transformation of the values of scientific knowledge from practices of coercion to giving. As a result, the involuntary sacrifice of biomaterials to science was replaced by voluntary practices of somatic giving and informational exchange that determine the process of mutual recognition in science. It is shown that gift-giving in science is closely associated with intellectual virtues, with intellectual generosity characterizing the idea of openness in science and scientists’ intention for production and constant growth of knowledge, and can also be related to the idea of altruistic service to science, involving the exchange of received scientific data and access to free information in the network space. A number of examples of the modern digital gift ethos and the implementation of the principles of openness of knowledge and knowledge exchange in the context of the creation of biomedical expert digital platforms, the formation of social scientific networks – platforms with open access to scientific information, the development of the phenomenon of “garage” science and other “zones of exchange” experience are considered. (shrink)

BackgroundPrevious studies have indicated that failure to report ethical approval is common in health science articles. In social sciences, the occurrence is unknown. The Swedish Ethics Review Act requests that sensitive personal data, in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), should undergo independent ethical review, irrespective of academic discipline. We have explored the adherence to this regulation. MethodsUsing the Web of Science databases, we reviewed 600 consecutive articles from three domains (health sciences with and without somatic (...) focus and social sciences) based on identifiable personal data published in 2020. ResultsInformation on ethical review was lacking in 12 of 200 health science articles with somatic focus (6%), 21 of 200 health science articles with non-somatic focus (11%), and in 54 of 200 social science articles (27%; p < 0.001 vs. both groups of health science articles). Failure to report on ethical approval was more common in (a) observational than in interventional studies (p < 0.01), (b) articles with only 1–2 authors (p < 0.001) and (c) health science articles from universities without a medical school (p < 0.001). There was no significant association between journal impact factor and failure to report ethical approval.ConclusionsWe conclude that reporting of research ethics approval is reasonably good, but not strict, in health science articles. Failure to report ethical approval is about three times more frequent in social sciences compared to health sciences. Improved adherence seems needed particularly in observational studies, in articles with few authors and in social science research. (shrink)

Patents recognize economic right and are important for both individual and social economic benefit. Nonetheless, mere economic right does not eliminate the requirement for moral assessment when adjudicating intellectual property claims, especially in the case of claims associated with applications of biomedical technology [e.g., somatic cell nuclear transfer methods]. This is so for applications for patent in the case of live-born animal clones, as governed in the setting of the judicial system of the USA. Here recent federal court decisions (...) in the USA are reviewed, and the ethical ambiguities of this judicial review are engaged in light of the current prohibitions on human reproductive cloning. It is concluded that the legal proscription of patents on animal clones bodes well for human accountability to present and future generations in the event of human reproductive cloning. (shrink)

The process dissociation procedure (PDP) of implicit sequence learning states that the correct inclusion-task response contains the incorrect exclusion-task response. However, there has been no research to test the hypothesis. The current study used a single variable (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony SOA: 850 ms vs. 1350 ms) between-subjects design, with pre-task resting-state fMRI, to test and improve the classical PDP to the mutually exclusive theory (MET). (1) Behavioral data and neuroimaging data demonstrated that the classical PDP has not been validated. In (...) the SOA = 850 ms group, the correct inclusion-task response was at chance, but the incorrect exclusion-task response occurred greater than chance. In the SOA = 850 ms group, the two responses were not correlated, but in the SOA = 1,350 ms group and putting the two groups together, the two responses were in contrast to each other. In each group, brain areas whose amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (ALFFs) in the resting-state related to the two responses were either completely different or opposite to one another. However, the results were perfectly consistent with the MET proposed by the present study which suggests that the correct inclusion-task response is equal to the correct exclusion-task response is equal toC+A1, and the incorrect exclusion-task response is equal toA2.Cdenotes the controlled response andA1andA2denote two different automatic responses. (2) The improved PDP was proposed to categorize the 12 kinds of triplets as delineating four knowledge types, namely non-acquisition of knowledge, uncontrollable knowledge, half-controllable knowledge, and controllable knowledge with the MET. ALFFs in the resting-state could predict the four knowledge types of the improved PDP among two groups. The participants’ control of the four knowledge types (degree of consciousness) gradually improved. Correspondingly, the brain areas in the resting-state positively related to the four knowledge types, gradually changed from the sensory and motor network to the somatic sensorimotor network, and then to the implicit learning network, and then to the consciousness network. The brain areas in the resting-state negatively related to the four knowledge types gradually changed from the consciousness network to the sensory and motor network. As SOA increased, the brain areas associated with almost all the four knowledge types changed. (3) The inhomogeneous hypothesis of the MET is best suited to interpret behavioral and neuroimaging data; it states that the same components among the four knowledge types are not homogeneous, and the same knowledge types are not homogeneous between the two SOA groups. (shrink)

In its October 2001 issue, this journal published a series of articles questioning the Whole-Brain-based definition of death. Much of the concern focused on whether somatic integration - a commonly understood basis for the whole-brain death view - can survive the brain's death. The present article accepts that there are insurmountable problems with whole-brain death views, but challenges the assumption that loss of somatic integration is the proper basis for pronouncing death. It examines three major themes. First, it (...) accepts the claim of the "disaggregators" that some behaviors traditionally associated with death can be unbundled, but argues that other behaviors (including organ procurement) must continue to be associated. Second, it rejects the claims of the "somaticists," that the integration of the body is critical, arguing instead for equating death with the irreversible loss of "embodied consciousness," that is, the loss of integration of bodily and mental function. Third, it defends higher-brain views against the charge that they are necessarily "mentalist," that is, that they equate death with losing some mental function such as consciousness or personhood. It argues, instead, for the integration of bodily and mental function as the critical feature of human life and that its irreversible loss constitutes death. (shrink)

This book is based on the work done by a group of British and Italian psychoanalysts who have been meeting twice yearly since 2003 to study clinically the relationship between the mind and the body of their patients The analytical dyad became the focus of a dialectical movement between body and mind and between subject and object. Containing contributions from a range of distinguished British and Italian analysts, this book covers such key topics as somatic symptoms, the embodied unconscious, (...) bodily expressions of affect, sexuality, violence, self-harm, suicide attempts, hypochondria, hysteria, anorexia and bulimia, splits and fragmentation associated with the body. The theoretical understanding is inspired by various psychoanalytic theoreticians, including Freud, M. Klein, Winnicott and Bion and their theories on sexuality, infantile sexuality, libido, aggressiveness, dead instinct, Oedipus complex and mother-child relationship. Offering new advances in theoretical thinking and practical applications for clinical work, this book will be essential for all psychoanalysts and mental health clinicians interested in understanding serious mental disturbance that is represented in the body. (shrink)