Embodied approaches to cognition have touched all corners of the mind, including higher‐level judgmental processes such as social evaluation, moral reasoning and theory of mind. After further characterizing and reviewing the evidence for moderately embodied visual perception, the chapter argues that such evidence does not at all support the moderate approach to embodied cognition, even when the relevant studies and accompanying theories are taken at face value. Even if body‐related factors do influence visual perception ‐ and indeed even if spatial (...) perception is sometimes “body‐scaled” ‐ the author shows that the prevailing theories of such body‐based influences understand these effects in ways that exclude them as instances of moderately embodied cognition. The most favorable solution, then, is to accept that body‐based scaling in visual perception of which the “embodied perception” findings are intended as an example ‐ does not meet the moderate approach's criteria for embodiment. (shrink)

An opponent thesis to that of incommensurability—the commensurability approach—is proposed. The new thesis is based on the delineation of an empirical comparative metatheory for comparing theories of different paradigms. The method of multidimensional scaling together with the proximity-predictability hypothesis instantiate and substantiate this metatheory. The scaling of mind body theories, and the confirmation of certain predictions derived from MDS and the PP hypothesis concerning the relations that exist among these theories, are brought as actual examples supporting the present (...) paper's approach. (shrink)

Background and aimDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, an Internet-Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program was delivered and may be better than an in-person approach. Our study evaluated the effects of iMBSR intervention on mental health, self-efficacy, and body image in women with breast cancer in Taiwan.Materials and methodsSixty-seven women with breast cancer were allocated to a 6-week iMBSR program or a waitlist control group, without heterogeneity between group characteristics. Patients from both groups were measured at baseline and postintervention using three scales: Depression, Anxiety, (...) and Stress Scale, General self-efficacy scale, and Body Image Scale. Descriptive dataset analysis, paired t-test, and Student’s t-test were used to evaluate the data.ResultsAlthough iMBSR did not significantly improve depression and stress between groups, iMBSR could improve anxiety with medium effect sizes. Significant benefits were found for body image and self-efficacy, with large effect sizes.ConclusionOur preliminary study supports iMBSR as a program that can improve mental health, body image, and self-efficacy in women with breast cancer. During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical professionals can use Internet-based clinical health education. (shrink)

From one of the most influential scientists of our time, a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in. The former head of the Sante Fe Institute, visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term "complexity" can be misleading, however, because what makes West's discoveries so beautiful is that he has found (...) an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses. Fascinated by issues of aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science, creating a new understanding of energy use and metabolism: West found that despite the riotous diversity in the sizes of mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammal's circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficient--and lives 25% longer. This speaks to everything from how long we can expect to live to how many hours of sleep we need. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism's body. (shrink)

This article presents the first systematic typological study of emotional expressions involving body parts at the scale of a continent, namely the Australian continent. The role of body parts in figurative descriptions of emotions, a well-established phenomenon across the world, is known to be widespread in Australian languages. This article presents a typology of body-based emotional expressions across a balanced sample of 67 languages, where we found that at least 30 distinct body parts occur in emotional expressions. The belly is (...) by far the most frequent, and a dozen others also have significant representation. The study shows how the properties of these body parts – e.g., whether they are internal organs or visible facial parts – partly determine which historical scenarios led to their linguistic associations with emotions, and in turn, their semantic and figurative properties. (shrink)

Scholars and providers are coming to realize that one’s ability to notice and respond to internal body sensations contributes to an overall sense of wellbeing. Research has demonstrated a relationship between interoceptive awareness and anxiety, for example. Currently, however, tools for evaluating one’s interoception lack the conceptual foundation and clarity necessary to identify everyday behaviors that specifically reflect interoceptive awareness. Unlike existing interoceptive measures, the Sensory Profile Interoception scale is participation-based and grounded in Dunn’s Sensory Processing framework. In this study (...) we investigated concurrent validity by correlating the SPI with the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile ; we investigated construct validity by correlating the SPI with the Perth Alexithymia Scale, the Body Awareness Scale, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Using the REDCAP online platform, 74 college-aged participants completed the measures. Using Spearman rank order correlations there were statistically significant relationships between the corresponding sensory pattern subscales on SPI and A/ASP. The PAS was only weakly related to the registration subscale of the SPI. The BAS had significant relationships with seeking and avoiding on the SPI. The STAI had significant relationships with sensitivity and registrations of the SPI. Taken together, these findings provide evidence of construct validity of the SPI to identify participation patterns associated with both high and low interoception. With the more precise information the SPI provides, professionals can design tailored interventions to support everyday life goals and researchers can study interoception within authentic activities. (shrink)

Based on Embodied Cognition Theory, Inhibitory Decline Theory, and Risk Protective Factors Model, this study verified that body mass index affects secondary school students’ academic performance through the mechanism of inhibitory control. In addition, it was verified that the strength of this mechanism depends on the teacher, parent, and peer support received by secondary school students. By using height and weight measurements, the classic stroop task, and the social support scale, 264 secondary school students in Shanxi Province, China, were surveyed (...) and their academic performance was collected. The results showed that students with high BMI had poorer academic performance, and inhibitory control partially mediated the effect between BMI and academic performance, with the inhibitory control mediated effect accounting for 36.68% of the total effect. Support from teachers, parents, and peers can ameliorate the negative effects of BMI on academic performance, with teacher support and parental support also ameliorating the negative effects of BMI on inhibitory control. Thus, high BMI impairs inhibitory control and thus has a negative impact on academic performance, which can be buffered by social support. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the most prominent concepts in the literature and, in short, indicates the positive impacts of businesses on their stakeholders. Despite the growing body of literature on this concept, the measurement of CSR is still problematic. Although the literature provides several methods for measuring corporate social activities, almost all of them have some limitations. The purpose of this study is to provide an original, valid, and reliable measure of CSR reflecting the responsibilities of a (...) business to various stakeholders. Based on a proposed conceptual framework of CSR, a scale was developed through a systematic scale development process. In the study, exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the underlying factorial structure of the scale. Data was collected from 269 business professionals working in Turkey. The results of the analysis provided a four-dimensional structure of CSR, including CSR to social and nonsocial stakeholders, employees, customers, and government. (shrink)

This NATO Advanced Study Institute centered on large-scale molecular systems: Quantum mechanics, although providing a general framework for the description of matter, is not easily applicable to many concrete systems of interest; classical statistical methods, on the other hand, allow only a partial picture of the behaviour of large systems. The aim of the ASI was to present both aspects of the subject matter and to foster interaction between the scientists working in these important areas of theoretical physics and theoretical (...) chemistry. The quantum-mechanical part was mostly based on the operator-algebraic formulation of quantum mechanics and comprised quantum statistics of infinite systems with special em phasis on macroscopic observables, equilibrium conditions, irreversibility on the one hand, symmetry breaking for molecules in the radiation field and macroscopic quantum phenomena in the theory of superconductivity (BCS-theory) on the other hand. In addition, phase-space methods for many-body systems were also presented. Statistical physics was the main topic in the other lectures of the School; much emphasis was put on the statistical features of macros copic ("large") systems, the lectures dealt with mass and energy transport im polymers, in gels and in microemulsions, with aggregation and growth phenomena, with relaxation in complex, correlated systems, with conduction and optical properties of polymers, and with the means of describing disordered systems, above all fractals and related hierarchical models. (shrink)

All epistemic agents physically consist of parts that must somehow comprise an integrated cognitive self. Biological individuals consist of subunits (organs, cells, molecular networks) that are themselves complex and competent in their own context. How do coherent biological Individuals result from the activity of smaller sub-agents? To understand the evolution and function of metazoan bodies and minds, it is essential to conceptually explore the origin of multicellularity and the scaling of the basal cognition of individual cells into a coherent (...) larger organism. In this paper I synthesize ideas in cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and developmental physiology toward a hypothesis about the origin of Individuality: “Scale-Free Cognition”. I propose a fundamental definition of an Individual based on the ability to pursue goals at an appropriate level of scale and organization, and suggest a formalism for defining and comparing the cognitive capacities of highly diverse types of agents. Any Self is demarcated by a computational surface – the spatio-temporal boundary of events that it can measure, model, and try to affect. This surface sets a functional boundary - a cognitive “light cone” which defines the scale and limits of its cognition. I hypothesize that higher-level goal-directed activity and agency, resulting in larger cognitive boundaries, evolve from the primal homeostatic drive of living things to reduce stress – the difference between current conditions and life-optimal conditions. The mechanisms of developmental bioelectricity - the ability of all cells to form electrical networks that process information - suggests a plausible set of gradual evolutionary steps that naturally lead from physiological homeostasis in single cells to memory, prediction, and ultimately complex cognitive agents, via scale-up of the drive of infotaxis. Recent data on the molecular mechanisms of pre-neural bioelectricity suggest a model of how increasingly sophisticated cognitive functions emerge smoothly from cell-cell communication used to guide embryogenesis and regeneration. This set of hypotheses provides a novel perspective on numerous phenomena, such as cancer, and makes several unique, testable predictions for interdisciplinary research that have implications not only for evolutionary developmental biology but also for biomedicine and perhaps artificial intelligence and exobiology. (shrink)

This paper reports on a relationship between the University of Toronto and a non-profit, non-governmental (“third party”) certifying organization called Local Flavour Plus (LFP). The University as of August 2006 requires its corporate caterers to use local and sustainable farm products for a small but increasing portion of meals for most of its 60,000 students. LFP is the certifying body, whose officers and consultants have strong relations of trust with sustainable farmers. It redefines standards and verification to create ladders for (...) farmers, Aramark and Chartwells (the corporations that won the bid), and the University, to continuously raise standards of sustainability. After years of frustrated efforts, other Ontario institutions are expressing interest, opening the possibility that a virtuous circle could lead to rapid growth in local, sustainable supply chains. The paper examines the specificities of the LFP approach and of the Toronto and Canadian context. Individuals in LFP acquired crucial skills, insights, experience, resources, and relationships of trust over 20 years within the Toronto “community of food practice,” located in a supportive municipal, NGO and social movement context. (shrink)

In this essay, I study the contested role of magnification as an observational strategy in the generation theories of William Harvey and René Descartes. During the seventeenth century, the grounds under the discipline of anatomy were shifting as knowledge was increasingly based on autopsia and observation. Likewise, new theories of generation were established through observations of living beings in their smallest state. But the question formed: was it possible to extend vision all the way down to the first points of (...) life? Arguing that the potential of magnification hinged on the metaphysics of living matter, I show that Harvey did not consider observational focus on the material composition of blood and embryos to be conducive to knowledge of living bodies. To Harvey, generation was caused by immaterial, and thus in principle invisible, forces that could not be magnified. Descartes, on the other hand, believed that access to the subvisible scale of natural bodies was crucial to knowledge about their nature. This access could be granted through rational introspection, but possibly also through powerful microscopes. The essay thus ends with a reflection on the importance of Cartesian corpuscularianism for the emergence of microscopical anatomy in seventeenth-century England. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This article presents our experience as a multidisciplinary team systematizing and analyzing the transcripts from a large-scale (1.775 conversations) series of conversations about Chile’s future. This project called “Tenemos Que Hablar de Chile” [We have to talk about Chile] gathered more than 8000 people from all municipalities, achieving gender, age, and educational parity. In this sense, this article takes an experiential approach to describe how certain interdisciplinary methodological decisions were made. We sought to apply analytical variables derived from social science (...) theories and operationalize them through modern linguistics to guide a more theoretically informed natural language processing. The analysis was divided into three stages: (1) a descriptive analysis adapting descriptions of computational grounded theory, (2) a futurization analysis operationalizing concepts from futures studies, and (3) an argumentative analysis operationalizing concepts from argumentation theory. Overall, our methodological experimentation shed light on potential learnings for integrating a multidisciplinary perspective on NLP analysis with sensitive social content. Firstly, we developed a strategy for translation of knowledge based on the construction of what we called "analytical categories” in which a normative expectation or descriptive dimension was identified in the body of literature, operationalized through linguistics, and programmed in Python or R. Ultimately, we seek to reflect on the importance interdisciplinarity not only as means to find new analysis ideas but rather, to incorporate the critical, political and epistemological points of view to understand analysis as complex socio-technical processes. (shrink)

Accurate measurement of livestock weight is a primary indicator in the meat industry to increase the economic gain. In lambs, the weight of a live animal is still usually estimated manually using traditional scales, resulting in a tedious process for the experienced assessor and stressful for the animal. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem using computer vision techniques; thus, the proposed procedure estimates the weight of a lamb by analysing its zenithal image without interacting with the (...) animal, which speeds up the process and reduces weighing costs. It is based on a data-driven decision support system that uses RGB-D machine vision techniques and regression models. Unlike existing methods, it does not require walk-over-weighing platforms or special and expensive infrastructures. The proposed method includes a decision support system that automatically rejects those images that are not appropriate to estimate the lamb weight. After determining the body contour of the lamb, we compute several features that feed different regression models. Best results were achieved with Extra Tree Regression ($R^{2}$=91.94%), outperforming the existing techniques. Using only an image, the proposed approach can identify with a minimum error the optimal weight of a lamb to be slaughtered, so as to maximise the economic profit. (shrink)

Small things loom large as a distinct category in social and cultural analysis. However, the social construction and effects of this idiom of scale commonly remain vague and underexplored. Bringing the literature on quantification in conversation with the literature on scale-making, this article offers a theoretically-informed analysis of how smallness consolidates as a publicly salient social attribute, and how it feeds collective narratives. The empirical focus is on American Jewry – an ethnoreligious minority group whose leaders and experts have invested (...) in its quantification, including its representation as a small population. Drawing on a variety of texts and images, as well as on interviews and fieldwork, I show that American Jewish research bodies and public figures engage in a myriad of comparative arithmetic exercises and spectacles of scale to assert the smallness of the population. Deploying smallness as a generative narrative tool allows them to engage with the ambivalences implicated in the American-Jewish post-Holocaust, minority, and diasporic experience. In particular, exercises around notions of numerical negligibility, disproportional success, and numerical inferiority elicit protean narratives around endangerment, power, and a questioned diasporic future. The broader theoretical intervention of this article is to offer scalemaking as a valuable prism for understanding the narrative potency and poignancy of arithmetically-based constructs such as smallness. Instead of emphasizing the assumed epistemological strengths of numbers, this article considers the narrative work that statistics do when they lend themselves to multimodal scaling. It argues that through scaling, statistics are infused with perspective, relevance and meaning, descriptively and prescriptively. (shrink)

Chronic pain is of significant global concern. There is growing evidence that body–mind therapies and psychological approaches can contribute toward changing chronic pain perceptions. This is the first model described in the literature that combines a mindfulness-based approach with dance movement therapy and explores the potential psychological and pain-related changes for this client population. In this paper, the results from the pilot study are presented involving patients with chronic headache recruited in an outpatient rehabilitation setting.Methods: In this pilot study, 29 (...) patients with chronic headache were randomized to either the Mindful-Based Dance Movement Therapy group or the waiting list control group. The MBDMT group was offered 10 sessions in a clinical outpatient rehabilitation setting for 5 weeks. Data were collected pre- and post-intervention and 16 weeks after the intervention was finished. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire−9, Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, and Numeric Rating Scale were used as outcome measures.Results: The working model of MBDMT identifies nine therapeutic mechanisms. Per-protocol analysis reveals statistically significant reduction of pain intensity and depression scores in favor of the MBDMT group, and these improvements were maintained in the follow-up assessment.Conclusions: The results suggest that MBDMT is a feasible and promising therapy approach for chronic pain patients. The pilot study offered sufficient information and preliminary results in the desirable direction to enable the researchers to move to a randomized controlled trial stage in order to establish the efficacy of the intervention.Clinical Trial Registration: The study was registered in the www.researchregistry.com, registry. (shrink)

Over 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, which causes more disability than any other medical condition in the United States at a cost of $560–$635 billion per year. Opioid analgesics are frequently used to treat CP. However, long term use of opioids can cause brain changes such as opioid-induced hyperalgesia that, over time, increase pain sensation. Also, opioids fail to treat complex psychological factors that worsen pain-related disability, including beliefs about and emotional responses to pain. Cognitive behavioral therapy can (...) be efficacious for CP. However, CBT generally does not focus on important factors needed for long-term functional improvement, including attainment of personal goals and the psychological flexibility to choose responses to pain. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has been recognized as an effective, non-pharmacologic treatment for a variety of CP conditions. However, little is known about the neurologic mechanisms underlying ACT. We conducted an ACT intervention in women with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected pre- and post-ACT, and changes in functional connectivity were measured using Network-Based Statistics. Behavioral outcomes were measured using validated assessments such as the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, the Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, and the NIH Toolbox Neuro-QoLTM scales. Results suggest that, following the 4-week ACT intervention, participants exhibited reductions in brain activation within and between key networks including self-reflection, emotion, and cognitive control. These changes in connectivity strength were correlated with changes in behavioral outcomes including decreased depression and pain interference, and increased participation in social roles. This study is one of the first to demonstrate that improved function across the DMN, SN, and FPN may drive the positive outcomes associated with ACT. This study contributes to the emerging evidence supporting the use of neurophysiological indices to characterize treatment effects of alternative and complementary mind-body therapies. (shrink)

While neuroscience has made enormous progress in understanding the brain, the implications of these empirical findings for ontological questions in philosophy including the mind–body problem remain yet unclear. In the first paper, I discussed the model of brain that as implied and supported by the empirical data. This leads me now to the question of an empirically plausible ontology of brain. Therefore, the aim in this second paper is the ontological characterization of the brain in terms of a process-based ontology (...) that avoids what Whitehead described as “simple location” and “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. The discussion of the model of the brain is complemented by developing a process-based ontological characterization of the brain. Specifically, as based on Whitehead, I argue that “simple location” of the brain as thing or object in time and space amounts to nothing but an abstraction rendering what Whitehead described as “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. Instead of describing the brain as static, non-temporal and isolated thing or object, I characterize the brain ontologically by dynamic, temporal, and relational processes. This leads me to a process-based ontology of brain which may be specified in spatiotemporal terms. Since the world’s larger spatiotemporal range or scale contains, e.g., nests, the smaller one of the brain, I characterize their ontological relationship by “spatiotemporal nestedness” and “spatiotemporal directedness”. Such spatiotemporal relationship between world and brain precludes the confusion between the world as whole and the brain as part, e.g., “mereological confusion”. I conclude that process-based or better, more specifically, spatiotemporal ontology of the brain and its relationship to the world may offer novel views on the question for the ontological relationship between mind and brain, e.g., the mind–brain problem, by converting or reformulating it as “world-brain problem”. (shrink)

In this article, I will attempt to provide a historical case study, I suggest that the demarcation between perception and how a figure is ‘seen’ is the process of perpetual filtering between the levels of sensation and perception. I argue that this filtering operates through the basic visual principles, which may vary and have divergent functions in different paradigms. This historical case study will focus on the fifty-six plates featured in the influential work of the London surgeon William Cheselden, to (...) reveal the paradigm-based filtering in these prints by arguing that the sense data is organized in the simplest manner to view figures in their unity. Thus, I will focus on the visual principle of simplicity, which features the patterns of similarity, contrast and symmetry. An analysis of Cheselden’s usage of these patterns will demonstrate that he aims to show that every bone in human body is united to one another, which forms an organizing structure. I will conclude that these visual principles were used by Chelselden to achieve perfection by conveying right proportions and the correct number of scales of human body since his observations was laden with Newtonian paradigm. Finally, I will compare this usage to that of Ibn Sina’s, to disclose the paradigm-ladenness of scientific observations. (shrink)

The temperament of the body is an essential constituent for health conservancy and diagnosis of several diseases. Hence, general body temperament and uterine dystemperament with abnormal vaginal discharge need evaluation. In addition, we also applied a computational intelligence technique for enhancing scientific validity to classify the warm-cold and wet-dry temperaments. This trial included a total of 66 participants with a vaginal discharge of reproductive age. Data included demographic characteristics of the participants, symptoms associated with vaginal discharge, women’s general temperament, and (...) symptoms of uterine dystemperament. Correlation between general body temperament and age, abnormal vaginal discharge, and its associated symptoms was also performed. Additionally, we used the Support Vector Machine-Radial Basis Function model to classify the warm-cold and wet-dry temperaments. Warm general temperament was highly prevalent, followed by moderate on the warm-cold temperament scale. In wet-dry temperament, moderate general body temperament was more prevalent. In warm-cold and wet-dry scores, 78.78% and 74.24% had warm and wet uterine dystemperament, respectively. The age and symptoms were correlated with general temperament. A strong positive correlation was found between warm general temperament and warm dystemperament of the uterus. In addition, our SVM-RBF CV-5 classification model achieved the highest accuracy. Our results showed that vaginal discharge is more common in warm general temperament and warm-wet dystemperament of the uterus. The same has been proven by computational intelligence. Nevertheless, vaginal discharge can also happen in normal and other temperaments. (shrink)

BackgroundPrehospital delay is associated with non-modifiable factors such as age, residential region, and disease severity. However, the impact of psychosocial factors especially for job burnout on prehospital decision delay is still little understood.MethodThis internet-based survey was conducted between 14 February 2021 and 5 March 2021 in China through the Wechat platform and web page. Self-designed questionnaires about the expected and actual length of prehospital decision time and the Chinese version of Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey, Type D Personality Scale-14, and Social (...) Support Rating Scale were applied. A total of 1,039 general participants with a history of perceptible but tolerable body discomfort were included.ResultsThe top six reasons for prehospital decision delay were: endure until self-healing, too busy to ask for leave, process for seeing a doctor too complicated, too tired after work, worry about the expenditure, and fear of being identified as with serious problem. The univariate analyses revealed that older age, type D personality, job burnout, and worrying about expenditure were associated with prolonged prehospital decision time, while engaged in medical-related job and with more social support would shorten the delay. The multivariate analysis using logistic regression model with forward selecting method showed that age [per 10 years, odds ratio 1.19, p 7 days). Mediating effects were analyzed by using bias-corrected percentile bootstrap methods. Social support was found partially mediated the relationship between the determinants and prehospital decision time. The partial mediating effect of social support accounted for 24.0% of the total effect for job burnout and 11.6% for worrying about expenditure.ConclusionPsychosocial factors have a non-negligible impact on prehospital decision delay. The crucial part of prehospital decision delay may be the lack of motivation inside. Job burnout and lack of social support, as two commonly seen features in the modern world, should be given enough consideration in disease prevention and treatment. (shrink)

Recent advances have highlighted the outstanding role of the innate immune system for instructing adaptive immunity. Translating this knowledge into successful immunotherapies like vaccines, however, has proven to be a difficult task. This essay is based on the hypothesis that immune responses are tightly scaled to the infectious threat posed by a given microbial stimulus. A meticulous immunological risk‐assessment process is therefore instrumental for eliciting well‐balanced responses and maintaining immune homeostasis. The immune system makes fine distinctions, for example, between live (...) and dead bacteria, or pathogenic and non‐pathogenic microorganisms. Here, I discuss recent evidence for some of the mechanisms underlying these distinctions and speculate on strategies for therapeutically targeting the immunological risk‐assessment machinery. (shrink)

In March 2020, the World Health Organization announced the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic and restrictive measures were enacted by the Governments to fight the spread of the virus. In Italy, these measures included a nationwide lockdown, with limited exceptions including grocery shopping, certain work activities, and healthcare. Consistently with findings from previous studies investigating the psychological impact of similar pandemics [e.g., Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ], there is evidence that Covid-19 is associated with negative mental health outcomes. Given this background, (...) we conducted a cross-sectional study aimed at investigating the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent restrictive measures imposed by the Government on the psychological health of Italian men and women aged = 18 years and living in Lombardy, one of the worst-hit regions. The study also aimed at identifying what factors are associated with specific psychological outcomes. Thus, we developed an online survey that included a researcher-made questionnaire to collect sociodemographic, household, general health, and pandemic-related information. The Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and the Perceived Stress Scale were used to assess anxiety, depression, and perceived stress, respectively. We found that younger age, greater concerns about the pandemic, female gender, being unmarried, not having children, and being a student were associated with worse psychological health. These findings may provide further insight into the risk factors associated with negative psychological outcomes during the current pandemic, with identification of vulnerable groups. This body of evidence may help professionals implement targeted psychosocial treatment and prevention programs. (shrink)

BackgroundBody image is a subjective concept encompassing a person’s views and emotions about their body. Head and neck cancer diagnosis and treatment affects several psychosocial concepts including body image. Large numbers of HNC patients are diagnosed each year in India but there are no suitable measures in regional languages to assess their body image. This study assessed the psychometric properties of the Body Image Scale, a measure suitable for clinical and research use in HNC populations, translated into Tamil, Telugu and (...) Hindi and compared body image distress between language groups.MethodsTranslated versions of BIS were completed by HNC patients recruited from three cancer centers across India one time only. Psychometric evaluation was conducted including factor analysis using principal component analysis and internal consistency reliability using Cronbach’s alpha. Patients completed the EORTC Quality of Life Questionnaire C-30 and EORTC QLQ HN-35 measures to enable exploration of convergent and discriminant validity. ANOVA was used to calculate difference in mean values for body image.ResultsOur sample included 621 HNC patients. Factor analysis revealed a one-factor solution and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranged between 0.891 and 0.969 indicating good reliability. Hypothesized correlations between similar and different constructs were as expected, supporting construct validity. On the BIS, we found a statistically significant difference between means of Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi groups, with higher body image scores in Telugu and Hindi groups indicating more symptoms/body image distress, when compared to Tamil population.ConclusionThe reliability and validity of the three translated Indian versions of the BIS were maintained, providing a method for assessing body image of HNC population worldwide speaking Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi across the illness trajectory. (shrink)

Based on the conception of life and semiosis as co-extensive an attempt is given to classify cognitive and communicative potentials of species according to the plasticity and articulatory sophistication they exhibit. A clear distinction is drawn between semiosis and perception, where perception is seen as a high-level activity, an integrated product of a multitude of semiotic interactions inside or between bodies. Previous attempts at finding progressive trends in evolution that might justify a scaling of species from primitive to advanced (...) levels have not met with much success, but when evolution is considered in the light of semiosis such a scaling immediately catches the eye. The main purpose of this paper is to suggest a scaling of this progression in semiotic freedom into a series of distinct steps. The elleven steps suggested are: 1) molecular recognition, 2) prokaryote-eukaryote transformation, 3) division of labor in multicellular organisms, 4) from irritability to phenotypic plasticity, 5) sense perception, 6) behavioral choice, 7) active information gathering, 8) collaboration, deception, 9) learning and social intelligence, 10) sentience, 11) consciousness. In light of this, the paper finally discusses the conceptual framework for biosemiotic evolution. The evolution of biosemiotic capabilities does not take the form of an ongoing composition of simple signs into composite wholes. Rather, it takes the shape of the increasing subdivision and control of a primitive, holophrastic perception-action circuit already committed to “proto-propositions” reliably guiding action already in the most primitive species. (shrink)

Dynamic body feedback is used in dance movement therapy, with the aim to facilitate emotional expression and a change of emotional state through movement and dance for individuals with psychosocial or psychiatric complaints. It has been demonstrated that moving in a specific way can evoke and regulate related emotions. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of executing a unique set of kinetic movement elements on an individual mover’s experience of happiness. A specific sequence consisting of movement elements that (...) recent studies have related to the feeling of happiness was created and used in a series of conditions. To achieve a more realistic reflection of DMT practice, the study incorporated the interpersonal dimension between the dance movement therapist and the client, and the impact of this interbodily feedback on the emotional state of the client. This quantitative study was conducted in a within-subject design. Five male and 20 female participants participated in three conditions: a solo executed movement sequence, a movement sequence executed with a DMTh who attuned and mirrored the movements, and a solo executed movement sequence not associated with feelings of happiness. Participants were only informed about the movements and not the feelings that may be provoked by these movements. The effects on individuals were measured using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and visual analog scales. Results showed that a specific movement sequence based on movement elements associated with happiness executed with a DMTh can significantly enhance the corresponding affective state. An additional finding of this study indicated that facilitating expressed emotion through movement elements that are not associated with happiness can enhance feelings such as empowerment, pride, and determination, which are experienced as part of positive affect. The results show the impact of specific full-body movement elements on the emotional state and the support outcome of DMT on emotion regulation. (shrink)

Classifying spatial frames of references have placed egocentric/body-based representations on muddy grounds. The traditional taxonomy places it under the deictic distinction while the Levinson’s terminology does not provide a special status for it but classifies it along with the relative frame of reference. Research from other areas of cognition has come up with other implied classifications that are motivated by the special role played by these egocentric representation(s). Tangled among such issues is the fuzzy distinction between egocentric and body based (...) representations. The current paper takes up exactly this issue and proposes to sub classify egocentric representations into two different subtypes namely the first- and the second-order representations. The proposed distinction serves an essential purpose for understanding important cognitive processes like spatial transformation, mental perspective taking, and so on. (shrink)

Fusion validity assessments employ structural equation models to investigate whether an existing scale functions in accordance with theory. Fusion validity parallels criterion validity by depending on correlations with non-scale variables but differs from criterion validity because it requires at least one theorized effect of the scale, and because both the scale and scaled-items are included in the model. Fusion validity, like construct validity, will be most informative if the scale is embedded in as full a substantive context as theory permits. (...) Appropriate scale functioning in a comprehensive theoretical context greatly enhances a scale’s validity. Inappropriate scale functioning questions the scale but the scale’s theoretical embedding encourages detailed diagnostic investigations potentially challenging specific items, the procedure used to calculate scale values, or aspects of the theory, but also possibly recommends incorporating additional items into the scale. The scaled items should have survived prior content and methodological assessments but the items may or may not reflect a common factor because items having diverse causal backgrounds can sometimes fuse to form a unidimensional entity. Though items reflecting a common cause can be assessed for fusion validity, we illustrate fusion validity in the more challenging context of a scale comprised of diverse items and embedded in a complicated theory. Specifically we consider the Leadership scale from the Alberta Context Tool with care aides working in Canadian long-term care homes. (shrink)

Our understanding of body–world relations is caught in a curious contradiction. On one side, it is well established that many concepts that describe interaction with the outer world – ‘plasticity’ or ‘metabolism’- or external influences on the body - ‘environment’ or ‘milieu’ – appeared with the rise of modern science. On the other side, although premodern science lacked a unifying term for it, an anxious attentiveness to the power of ‘environmental factors’ in shaping physical and moral traits held sway in (...) nearly all medical systems before and alongside modern Europe. In this article, I build on a new historiography on the policing of bodies and environments in medieval times and at the urban scale to problematize Foucault’s claim about biopolitics as a modern phenomenon born in the European eighteenth-century. I look in particular at the collective usage of ancient medicine and manipulation of the milieu based on humoralist notions of corporeal permeability (Hippocrates, Galen, Ibn Sīnā) in the Islamicate and Latin Christendom between the 12th and the 15th century. This longer history has implications also for a richer genealogy of contemporary tropes of plasticity, permeability and environmental determinism beyond usual genealogies that take as a starting point the making of the modern body and EuroAmerican biomedicine. (shrink)

In the recent history of psychology and cognitive neuroscience, the notion of habit has been reduced to a stimulus-triggered response probability correlation. In this paper we use a computational model to present an alternative theoretical view (with some philosophical implications), where habits are seen as self-maintaining patterns of behavior that share properties in common with self-maintaining biological processes, and that inhabit a complex ecological context, including the presence and influence of other habits. Far from mechanical automatisms, this organismic and self-organizing (...) concept of habit can overcome the dominating atomistic and statistical conceptions, and the high temporal resolution effects of situatedness, embodiment and sensorimotor loops emerge as playing a more central, subtle and complex role in the organization of behavior. The model is based on a novel “iterant deformable sensorimotor medium” (IDSM), designed such that trajectories taken through sensorimotor-space increase the likelihood that in the future, similar trajectories will be taken. We couple the IDSM to sensors and motors of a simulated body and environment and show that under certain conditions, the IDSM forms self-maintaining patterns of activity that operate across the IDSM, the body, and the environment. We present various environments and the resulting habits that form in them. The model acts as an abstraction of habits at a much needed sensorimotor “meso-scale” between microscopic neuron-based models and macroscopic descriptions of behavior. Finally, we discuss how this model and extensions of it can help us understand aspects of behavioral self-organization, historicity and autonomy that remain out of the scope of contemporary representationalist frameworks. (shrink)

In this essay we critically evaluate the progress that has been made in solving the problem of meaning in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. We remain skeptical about solutions based on deep neural networks and cognitive robotics, which in our opinion do not fundamentally address the problem. We agree with the enactive approach to cognitive science that things appear as intrinsically meaningful for living beings because of their precarious existence as adaptive autopoietic individuals. But this approach inherits the problem of (...) failing to account for how meaning as such could make a difference for an agent’s behavior. In a nutshell, if life and mind are identified with physically deterministic phenomena, then there is no conceptual room for meaning to play a role in its own right. We argue that this impotence of meaning can be addressed by revising the concept of nature such that the macroscopic scale of the living can be characterized by physical indeterminacy. We consider the implications of this revision of the mind-body relationship for synthetic approaches. (shrink)

An empirically based view of size and distance perceptual content and phenomenology is introduced, in which perceivers measure worldly size and distance against their bodies. Central principles of the formal, representational theory of the measurement of extensive magnitudes are then applied in framing the account in a precise way. The question of whether spatial-perceptual experience is “unit-free” is clarified. The framework is used to assess Dennis Proffitt's proposal that spatial setting is perceived in various “units,” “scales,” or “rulers”, some of (...) them non-spatial—distance in terms of calories burned to traverse and the like. The debate between Proffitt and Firestone about the commensurability of differing measurement scales held by Proffitt to be relied on by perceivers is then clarified and resolved. Finally, the measurement theory framed account of size and distance perception is used to illuminate Gibson’s famous but elusive contrasts between “geometrical optics” and “ecological optics” and between the “physical world” and the “animal environment”. (shrink)

IntroductionThe world pandemic of the virus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 infection was announced by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. Due to the restrictions that were introduced in order to minimize the spread of the virus, people more often suffer from stress, depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. The aim of this study was evaluation of the stress levels and sleep disorders among nursing students during the pandemic SARS-CoV-2.Materials and Study MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study conducted among 397 nursing (...) students on March 2020. The research tools used were original questionnaires, Perceived Stress Scale, and the Athenian Insomnia Scale, as well as Coping with Stress Inventory.ResultsRespondents felt a high level of stress, which occurred in 68.8% of interviewees regarding whether there was a danger of contracting COVID-19. Respondents experienced 84% stress levels when a family member suffered from COVID-19. Sleep disorders were determined mainly by the fear of infection and contact with someone who might be infected with the virus. Nursing students who felt a high level of stress often suffered from sleep disorders more frequently than students who felt a low or average stress level. The respondents decided to cope with stress by denial, taking psychoactive substances, ceasing action, or blaming themselves. The greater the intensity of stress experienced by students, the more often they undertook avoidance behaviors or showed helplessness.ConclusionDuring the pandemic, students experienced severe stress, which resulted in sleep disorders and avoidance behaviors. (shrink)

This article is based on German and Japanese sources and shows how around 1900 European psychiatric concepts and practices embedded themselves into emerging scientific Japanese discourses. The article argues that now forgotten German–Japanese exchanges in the field of psychiatric pathology, together with the historical development of psychiatric care, were central mechanisms for the establishment of a distinctly psychiatric discourse in Japan prior to its broad institutionalization. Three discursive strategies were key: Japanese and German experts from a range of medical fields (...) reinvented a body of traditions loosely related to actual pre-modern cultural practices; they engaged in comparative evaluations of psychiatric conditions; and, through the simple but effective transformation of specific concepts and termini at the margins of European psychiatry, these experts contributed to the transfer not only of a psychiatric discourse but also affected the power relations on a national and international scale as European psychiatry permeated into new territory, namely the Japanese landscape of emerging modern scientific disciplines. (shrink)

As part of a research conducted in the field of professional didactics for the design of video-based training for saddlers, we mobilize an iterative and collaborative analysis protocol with professionals. We compare the effects produced during a debate between experts mediated by the researcher, based sometimes on a confrontation with video traces of the activity, sometimes on the temporary diagrams of a conceptual structure of the situation. Using the argumentative trilogue analysis framework, we show how these methodologies are able to (...) foster the expression of a process of conceptualization depending on whether professionals are confronted with lived images or concep-tualizations produced by the researcher. (shrink)

Barry Dainton presents a fascinating new account of the self, the key to which is experiential or phenomenal continuity. Provided our mental life continues we can easily imagine ourselves surviving the most dramatic physical alterations, or even moving from one body to another. It was this fact that led John Locke to conclude that a credible account of our persistence conditions - an account which reflects how we actually conceive of ourselves - should be framed in terms of mental rather (...) than material continuity. But mental continuity comes in different forms. Most of Locke's contemporary followers agree that our continued existence is secured by psychological continuity, which they take to be made up of memories, beliefs, intentions, personality traits, and the like. Dainton argues that that a better and more believable account can be framed in terms of the sort of continuity we find in our streams of consciousness from moment to moment. Why? Simply because provided this continuity is not lost - provided our streams of consciousness flow on - we can easily imagine ourselves surviving the most dramatic psychological alterations. Phenomenal continuity seems to provide a more reliable guide to our persistence than any form of continuity. The Phenomenal Self is a full-scale defence and elaboration of this premise. The first task is arriving at an adequate understanding of phenomenal unity and continuity. This achieved, Dainton turns to the most pressing problem facing any experience-based approach: losses of consciousness. How can we survive them? He shows how the problem can be solved in a satisfactory manner by construing ourselves as systems of experiential capacities. He then moves on to explore a range of further issues. How simple can a self be? How are we related to our bodies? Is our persistence an all-or-nothing affair? Do our minds consist of parts which could enjoy an independent existence? Is it metaphysically intelligible to construe ourselves as systems of capacities? The book concludes with a novel treatment of fission and fusion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Caring for Landscapes of Justice in Perilous Settler EnvironmentsMishuana Goemanindians are the "singing remnants" or "graffiti," in the words of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson ("i am graffiti"). The forms this graffiti takes, our inscriptions on the landscape, are as numerous as our Nations, abundant as our ancestors who loved, lived, and passed down knowledge of our lands and histories. "You are the result of the love of thousands," writes Linda (...) Hogan, who beseeches us to listen to the environment surrounding us (159). Deborah Miranda (Coastal Esselen and Chumash) reminds us that we are also the result of violent histories, in her tribal memoir Bad Indians, a book that relishes the tales of her ancestors who resist and act out to survive. This harm, genocide, and settler mapping of worlds also must be attuned to in our surroundings and in "our bodies [that are] bridges over which our descendants cross, spanning unimaginable landscapes of loss" (Miranda 74). Visual cartographic mapping has been part and parcel of the erasure of California Indians, relegated to the small, contained, and past temporal space of a romanticized mission.This paper centers on the NDN Collective's work and the photography of Cara Romero's project Tongvaland and the works of Gabrielino Tongva artist Mercedes Dorame. The setting of these projects is in the sprawling landscape of Los Angeles, or the homelands of the Gabrielino Tongva people, who call it Tovaangar. I will examine the anti-colonial aesthetics and care practices mapped out in the work rather than presenting a "true" Indigenous map or alternative map. Mapping a history of the landscape by creating a "new" narrative or "true" narrative is not enough. As Maori scholar Linda Tuhwi Smith states, "[w]e believe that history is also about justice, that understanding history will enlighten our decisions about the future. Wrong. History is also about power. In fact, history is mostly about power. … [A] thousand accounts of the truth will not alter the fact that indigenous peoples are still marginal [End Page 50] and do not possess the power to transform history into justice" (34). The Gabrielino Tongva, who comprise an estimated 2,300 people, do not possess the population power and cannot access the form of voting or democracy to make the changes needed just by telling their truth. Across California, people know about the raw deal, the embezzlement, the genocide, and the so-called lost treaties. In fact, under Eisenhower, recompense was paid out in small amounts to Tongva families of the dispossessed. Instead, to continue with the words of Smith, "[i]t is also about reconciling and reprioritizing what is really important about the past with what is important about the present" (111). What Romero and the NDN Collective—made up of numerous tribal leaders, scholars, and other artists—did was relay and prioritize how they wanted to be seen in their homelands. These billboards invite us in, in a gift of sharing, or what tribal cultural leader Craig Torres related to me as a spirit of Maxxa, a sharing, gifting, or swapping of knowledge. Dorame's beautiful and critical installations in public art spaces reflect Maxxa—they invite the viewers to think through land from her curious arrangements. As artists, part of their practice is not that of a Western version of a tortured genius but instead is energized by pulling in community and creating a collective practice. They undo settler space together and with us. The cartographic practices of these California Indians' creative arts exemplify communities of care that must be considered when we think through the unmapping of settler terrains. This question requires an approach of radical care. As Hi'ilei Hobart and Tamara Kneese make clear, the notion of care is "inseparable from systemic inequalities and power systems" (Hobart and Kneese 1).The work of the NDN Collective and Dorame counters a settler-based, commercial map of Los Angeles. Indigenous people, relegated by the settler state as expendable and erasable graffiti, confront capitalist and state ordinances at various scales. Rather than understand this as a subjugated positionality, I posit that graffiti is the critique necessary and valuable to understanding interlocking structures of oppression. In the following words of Leanne... (shrink)

To maximize brain plasticity after stroke, several rehabilitation strategies have been explored, including the use of intensive motor training, motor imagery, and action observation. Growing evidence of the positive impact of virtual reality (VR) techniques on recovery following stroke has been shown. However, most VR tools are designed to exploit active movement, and hence patients with low level of motor control cannot fully benefit from them. Consequently, the idea of directly training the central nervous system has been promoted by utilizing (...) motor-imagery (MI) based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). To date, detailed information on which VR strategies lead to successful functional recovery is still largely missing, and very little is known about how to optimally integrate BCI and VR paradigms for stroke rehabilitation. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of a BCI-VR system using a MI paradigm for post-stroke upper limb rehabilitation on functional assessments, and related changes in MI ability and brain imaging. To achieve this, a 60 years old male chronic stroke patient was recruited. The patient underwent a 3-week intervention in a clinical environment, resulting in 10 BCI-VR training sessions. The patient was assessed before and after intervention, as well as on a one-month follow-up, in terms of clinical scales and brain imaging using functional MRI (fMRI). Consistent with prior research, we found important improvements in upper extremity scores (Fugl-Meyer) and identified increases in brain activation measured by fMRI that suggest neuroplastic changes in brain motor networks. This study expands on the current body of evidence as more data are needed on the effect of this type of interventions not only on functional improvement but also through brain imaging to study the effect of the intervention on plasticity. (shrink)

This paper develops an immanent ecological ethics that locates human flourishing within sustaining ecological relationships. I outline the features of an immanent ethics drawn from Spinoza, and indicate how this model addresses gaps left by approaches based in moral considerability. I argue that an immanent ecological ethics provides unique resources for contesting anthropogenic harm, by 1) shifting the focus from what qualifies as a moral subject to what bodies can or cannot do under particular relations, 2) emphasizing the constitutive role (...) of interaction and interdependence in ecosystemic existence, and 3) extending ethical regard to ecologically-ramified scales. (shrink)

Job burnout, organizational commitment, and work environment continue to be important areas of research to be studied in the realm of company employment and employee retention. Job burnout is the state of physical and emotional exhaustion and perceiving one’s profession as dull or overwhelming. Meanwhile, organizational commitment refers to the company’s attitude towards the organization and their employees, encompassing loyalty, moral responsibility, and their willingness to work. And lastly, work environment provides opportunities for employees to establish connections, develop skills, and (...) maximize their full potential in performing tasks. For the current study, researchers utilized descriptive-correlational research design to investigate the influence of Work Environment towards the job burnout and organizational commitment of BPO agents in selected companies in Bulacan, Philippines. Hence, Danish Psychosocial Work Environment Questionnaire (DPQ), Maslach Burnout Inventory - General Survey (MBI-GS), and the Three-Dimensional Model of Organizational Commitment Scale (ACS, NCS, CCS) were employed to properly assess the study's objectives. Multiple Linear Regression Analysis was performed to analyze the collected data. Based on the analysis, findings show that work environment has no significant influence on the job burnout and organizational commitment of BPO Agents. Furthermore, the results of this study were thoroughly evaluated, leading to an in-depth discussion. Based on the findings, recommendations were made to benefit the stakeholders of the study and contributeto the existing body of knowledge. (shrink)

It remains a standing problem how and why the first nervous systems evolved. Molecular and genomic information is now rapidly accumulating but the macroscopic organization and functioning of early nervous systems remains unclear. To explore potential evolutionary options, a coordination centered view is discussed that diverges from a standard input–output view on early nervous systems. The scenario involved, the skin brain thesis, stresses the need to coordinate muscle-based motility at a very early stage. This paper addresses how this scenario with (...) its focus on coordination also deals with sensory aspects. It will be argued that the neural structure required to coordinate extensive sheets of contractile tissue for motility provides the starting point for a new multicellular organized form of sensing. Moving a body by muscle contraction provides the basis for a multicellular organization that is sensitive to external surface structure at the scale of the animal body. Instead of thinking about early nervous systems as being connected to the environment merely through input and output, the implication developed here is that early nervous systems provide the foundation for a highly specific animal sensorimotor organization in which neural activity directly reflects bodily and environmental spatiotemporal structure. While the SBT diverges from the input–output view, it is closely linked to and supported by ongoing work on embodied approaches to intelligence to which it adds a new interpretation of animal embodiment and sensorimotor organization. (shrink)

In this article, I provide phenomenological reflections on patients’ experiences of undergoing extreme isolation protocols while admitted to Intensive Care Units [ICU] during the first wave of COVID-19. Based on observation studies from within the patient isolation rooms and retrospective, in-depth phenomenological interviews with patients, I characterize this exceptional experience as one of becoming anonymous. To illustrate this, I start by establishing a perspective on embodied existence as constituted on a scale between anonymous embodiment and being enrooted into a personal (...) niche. Against the backdrop of this framework, I illustrate how being admitted to the ICU under strict isolation protocols produced extraordinary experiences of becoming anonymous. Sources of the anonymization were: (1) Mechanical expropriation, pacification and disownership of the visceral-kinaesthetic body; (2) Objectification; (3) Spatial and intercorporeal anonymity (4) Surrealism: the intermingling of objective impressions and dream-like interpretations. Finally, I illustrate how anonymization induced an experience of embodiment as raw materiality, confronting the patient with what Martin Heidegger called the facticity of naked existence. This experience is discussed against Levinas’ critique of Heidegger, while I propose that insights from this exceptional case may substantiate Heidegger’s account. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation is currently being investigated as an experimental treatment for patients suffering from treatment-refractory AN, with an increasing number of case reports and small-scale trials published. Although still at an exploratory and experimental stage, initial results have been promising. Despite the risks associated with an invasive neurosurgical procedure and the long-term implantation of a foreign body, DBS has a number of advantageous features for patients with SE-AN. Stimulation can be fine-tuned to the specific needs of the particular patient, (...) is relatively reversible, and the technique also allows for the crucial issue of investigating and comparing the effects of different neural targets. However, at a time when DBS is emerging as a promising investigational treatment modality for AN, lesioning procedures in psychiatry are having a renaissance. Of concern it has been argued that the two kinds of interventions should instead be understood as rivaling, yet “mutually enriching paradigms” despite the fact that lesioning the brain is irreversible and there is no evidence base for an effective target in AN. We argue that lesioning procedures in AN are unethical at this stage of knowledge and seriously problematic for this patient group, for whom self-control is particularly central to wellbeing. They pose a greater risk of major harms that cannot justify ethical equipoise, despite the apparent superiority in reduced short term surgical harms and lower cost. (shrink)

In today’s society, it becomes increasingly important to assess which non-human and non-verbal beings possess consciousness. This review article aims to delineate criteria for consciousness especially in animals, while also taking into account intelligent artifacts. First, we circumscribe what we mean with “consciousness” and describe key features of subjective experience: qualitative richness, situatedness, intentionality and interpretation, integration and the combination of dynamic and stabilizing properties. We argue that consciousness has a biological function, which is to present the subject with a (...) multimodal, situational survey of the surrounding world and body, subserving complex decision-making and goal-directed behavior. This survey reflects the brain’s capacity for internal modeling of external events underlying changes in sensory state. Next, we follow an inside-out approach: how can the features of conscious experience, correlating to mechanisms inside the brain, be logically coupled to externally observable properties? Instead of proposing criteria that would each define a “hard” threshold for consciousness, we outline six indicators: goal-directed behavior and model-based learning; anatomic and physiological substrates for generating integrative multimodal representations; psychometrics and meta-cognition; episodic memory; susceptibility to illusions and multistable perception; and specific visuospatial behaviors. Rather than emphasizing a particular indicator as being decisive, we propose that the consistency amongst these indicators can serve to assess consciousness in particular species. The integration of scores on the various indicators yields an overall, graded criterion for consciousness, somewhat comparable to the Glasgow Coma Scale for unresponsive patients. When considering theoretically derived measures of consciousness, it is argued that their validity should not be assessed on the basis of a single quantifiable measure, but requires cross-examination across multiple pieces of evidence, including the indicators proposed here. Current intelligent machines, including deep learning neural networks and agile robots, are not indicated to be conscious yet. Instead of assessing machine consciousness by a brief Turing-type of test, evidence for it may gradually accumulate when we study machines ethologically and across time, considering multiple behaviors that require flexibility, improvisation, spontaneous problem-solving and the situational conspectus typically associated with conscious experience. (shrink)