Descriptions of body imagery and body parts are evident in expressions of Old Testament texts. Although there is no single term for ‘body’ in the Hebrew mind, the concept of ‘body’ functions in its different parts. As part of anthropomorphic descriptions of God and expressions attached to humankind, body parts have special significance, contributing to the theological dimension of texts. The poems in the Psalter are no exception. Several body parts are mentioned in Psalm 38, an individual lament song. In (...) addition to God’s hand (v. 3) and an allusion to his voice (v. 16), several body parts describe the psalmist’s condition. These include ‘flesh’ (bāšār, 3, 8), bones (‘ætsæm, 3), head (rôsh, 5), loins (kæsæl, 8), heart (lēb, 9, 11), eyes (‘yn, 11), mouth (pæh, 14, 15), and feet (rægæl, 17). In addition, allusions to the ear (14, 15) and injured body (wounds, 6) form part of the psalmist’s lamenting experience.Contribution: This presentation touches on the general meaning of these body imagery in the Old Testament and their specific function and meaning in the text of Psalm 38. A textual analysis will portray their theological significance. (shrink)

As innovations in the field of vascular composite allotransplantation (VCA) progress, whole-eye transplantation (WET) is poised to transition from non-human mammalian models to living human recipients. Present treatment options for vision loss are generally considered suboptimal, and attendant concerns ranging from aesthetics and prosthesis maintenance to social stigma may be mitigated by WET. Potential benefits to WET recipients may also include partial vision restoration, psychosocial benefits related to identity and social integration, improvements in physical comfort and function, and (...) reduced surgical risk associated with a biologic eye compared to a prosthesis. Perioperative and postoperative risks of WET are expected to be comparable to those of facial transplantation (FT), and may be similarly mitigated by immunosuppressive protocols, adequate psychosocial support, and a thorough selection process for both the recipient and donor. To minimize the risks associated with immunosuppressive medications, the first attempts in human recipients will likely be performed in conjunction with a FT. If first-in-human attempts at combined FT-WET prove successful and the biologic eye survives, this opens the door for further advancement in the field of vision restoration by means of a viable surgical option. This analysis integrates recent innovations in WET research with the existing discourse on the ethics of surgical innovation and offers preliminary guidance to VCA programs considering undertaking WET in human recipients. (shrink)

In May 2023, the world’s first whole-eye and partial-face transplant was performed, representing the first known whole-eye transplant in history and the “only successful combined transplant case of...

. In the wake of the February 1997 announcement that Dolly the sheep had been cloned, Muslim religious scholars together with Muslim scientists held two conferences to discuss cloning from an Islamic perspective. They were organized by two influential Islamic international religioscientific institutions: the Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences and the International Islamic Fiqh Academy. Both institutions comprise a large number of prominent religious scholars and well‐known scientists who participated in the discussions at the conferences. This article gives a comprehensive (...) analysis of these conferences, the relation between science and religion as reflected in the discussions there, and the further influence of these discussions on Muslims living in the West. Modern discussions on Islamic bioethics show that formulating an Islamic perspective on these issues is not the exclusive prerogative of religious scholars. Formulating such perspectives has become a collective process in which scientists play an essential role. Such a collective approach strengthens the religious authority of Muslim scholars and makes it more influential rather than undermining it. (shrink)

Chimpanzee/human technological differences are vast, reflect multiple interacting behavioral processes, and may result from the increased information-processing and hierarchical mental constructional capacities of the human brain. Therefore, advanced social, technical, and communicative capacities probably evolved together in concert with increasing brain size. Interpretations of these evolutionary and species differences as continuities or discontinuities reflect differing scientific perspectives.

During development of the anterior eye segment, cells that originate from the surface epithelium or the neuroepithelium need to interact with mesenchymal cells, which predominantly originate from the neural crest. Failures of proper interaction result in a complex of developmental disorders such Peters' anomaly, Axenfeld–Rieger's syndrome or aniridia. Here we review the role of transcription factors that have been identified to be involved in the coordination of anterior eye development. Among these factors is PAX6, which is active in both epithelial (...) and mesenchymal cells during ocular development, albeit at different doses and times. We propose that PAX6 is a key element that synchronizes the complex interaction of cell types of different origin, which are all needed for proper morphogenesis of the anterior eye. We discuss several molecular mechanisms that might explain the effects of haploinsufficiency of PAX6 and other transcription factors, and the broad variation of the resulting phenotypes. BioEssays 26:374–386, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This study examines whether human gaze lacking the confounding factor of eye whites can be processed unconsciously and explores the critical aspects for such process. Utilizing the continuous flash suppression paradigm, a schematic face—with direct or averted gaze, and with neutral, fearful or happy expressions—was presented to one eye while dynamic masks rendered it invisible to the other eye. Schematic faces were used to avoid unwanted influence from salient eye whites. Participants’ detection time of anything other than the masks (...) was used as an index of unconscious processing time. Faster detection was found for faces with direct gaze than those with averted gaze. However, there was no difference between detection times for different facial expressions and upright-face, inverted-face, and eyes-only conditions . These results confirm that, with schematic faces, gaze can be processed unconsciously regardless of facial expression, and eyes alone are sufficient for such process. (shrink)

In order to solve the problem of unsmooth and inefficient human-computer interaction process in the information age, a method for human-computer interaction intention prediction based on electroencephalograph signals and eye movement signals is proposed. This approach is different from previous methods where researchers predict using data from human-computer interaction and a single physiological signal. This method uses the eye movements and EEG signals that clearly characterized the interaction intention as the prediction basis. In addition, this approach is (...) not only tested with multiple human-computer interaction intentions, but also takes into account the operator in different cognitive states. The experimental results show that this method has some advantages over the methods proposed by other researchers. In Experiment 1, using the eye movement signal fixation point abscissa Position X, fixation point ordinate Position Y, and saccade amplitude to judge the interaction intention, the accuracy reached 92%, In experiment 2, only relying on the pupil diameter, pupil size and fixed time, fixed time of eye movement signals can not achieve higher accuracy of the operator’s cognitive state, so EEG signals are added. The cognitive state was identified separately by combining the screened EEG parameters Rα/β with the eye movement signal pupil diameter and fixation time, with an accuracy of 91.67%. The experimental combination of eye movement and EEG signal features can be used to predict the operator’s interaction intention and cognitive state. (shrink)

Some accounts of human distinctiveness focus on anatomical features, such as bipedalism and brain size. Others focus on cognitive abilities, such as tool use and manufacture, language, and social cognition. Embodied approaches to cognition highlight the internal relations between these two groups of characteristics, arguing that cognition is rooted in and shaped by embodiment. This paper complements existing embodied approaches by focusing on an underappreciated aspect of embodiment: the appearance of the human body as condition of human (...) sociality and cognition. I approach this issue through Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the animate body as an intertwining of perceiving and perceivable aspects. The eye is both an animal’s embodied, perceptual openness onto the world, and the means by which that experiential openness can be perceived by others. The morphology and appearance of its embodiment condition how an animal comes to understand others and itself as animate subjects. I interpret the perceivable appearance of the human eye and skin in comparison with those of other animals. An underappreciated dimension of human distinctiveness, I argue, is the way the human sense organs render human perceiving comparatively more perceivable to conspecifics. (shrink)

Long considered "the noblest of the senses," vision has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by a wide range of thinkers who question its dominance in Western culture. These critics of vision, especially prominent in twentieth-century France, have challenged its allegedly superior capacity to provide access to the world. They have also criticized its supposed complicity with political and social oppression through the promulgation of spectacle and surveillance. Martin Jay turns to this discourse surrounding vision and explores its often contradictory implications (...) in the work of such influential figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Jay begins with a discussion of the theory of vision from Plato to Descartes, then considers its role in the French Enlightenment before turning to its status in the culture of modernity. From consideration of French Impressionism to analysis of Georges Bataille and the Surrealists, Roland Barthes's writings on photography, and the film theory of Christian Metz, Jay provides lucid and fair-minded accounts of thinkers and ideas widely known for their difficulty. His book examines the myriad links between the interrogation of vision and the pervasive antihumanist, antimodernist, and counter-enlightenment tenor of much recent French thought. Refusing, however, to defend the dominant visual order, he calls instead for a plurality of "scopic regimes." Certain to generate controversy and discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences, _Downcast Eyes_ will consolidate Jay's reputation as one of today's premier cultural and intellectual historians. (shrink)

"Every culture needs to appropriate the universal truth of human suffering," says Fernando Escalante, ". . . to give its own meaning to this suffering, so that human existence is bearable." Originally published in Spanish as La mirada de Dios: Estudios sobre la cultura del sufrimiento, this book is a remarkable study of the evolution of the culture of suffering and the different elements that constitute it, beginning with a reading of Rousseau and ending with the appearance of (...) the Shoah in the Western consciousness--"The memory endures, and this constitutes a fundamental transition for the Western conscience: we have witnessed." Drawing on writings from the Greeks to Cervantes, Voltaire to Nietzsche, and Freud to William James, Escalante combines his considerable knowledge of politics and political theory with a vast array of literary examples to arrive at an intellectual understanding of the history and meaning of suffering. His investigation encompasses the rise of popular politics, the role of messianism in modern nationalism, and the contemporary implications of the Shoah. This book will appeal to a wide audience: students of political theory, humanism, and philosophy, as well as the general reader interested in a glimpse into the mind of a highly original Latin American thinker. (shrink)

Background: Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have pronounced difficulties in attending to relevant visual information during social interactions. Method: We designed and evaluated the feasibility of a novel method to train this ability, by exposing participants to virtual human characters displayed on a screen which was entirely blurred, except for a gaze-contingent viewing window that followed participants’ eyes direction. The goal was to incite participants to direct their gaze towards the facial expressions of the virtual characters. Twenty-one adolescents (...) with ASD who attended ordinary school were randomized to either an experimental group, who was trained during a month and a half, or to a control group. Social communicative abilities were assessed during pre, post and follow-up tests. Results: After training, the experimental group showed significantly more interest in facial expressions on a test which involved understanding a dialogue. Significant differences were not found for the other tests used. Conclusions: This outcome suggests that the training method fostered participants’ awareness of the relevance of facial expressions. (shrink)

Experiments in animal models have shown that running increases neuronal activity in early visual areas in light as well as in darkness. This suggests that visual processing is influenced by locomotion independent of visual input. Combining mobile electroencephalography, motion- and eye-tracking, we investigated the influence of overground free walking on cortical alpha activity and eye movements in healthy humans. Alpha activity has been considered a valuable marker of inhibition of sensory processing and shown to negatively correlate with neuronal firing rates. (...) We found that walking led to a decrease in alpha activity over occipital cortex compared to standing. This decrease was present during walking in darkness as well as during light. Importantly, eye movements could not explain the change in alpha activity. Nevertheless, we found that walking and eye related movements were linked. While the blink rate increased with increasing walking speed independent of light or darkness, saccade rate was only significantly linked to walking speed in the light. Pupil size, on the other hand, was larger during darkness than during light, but only showed a modulation by walking in darkness. Analyzing the effect of walking with respect to the stride cycle, we further found that blinks and saccades preferentially occurred during the double support phase of walking. Alpha power, as shown previously, was lower during the swing phase than during the double support phase. We however could exclude the possibility that the alpha modulation was introduced by a walking movement induced change in electrode impedance. Overall, our work indicates that the human visual system is influenced by the current locomotion state of the body. This influence affects eye movement pattern as well as neuronal activity in sensory areas and might form part of an implicit strategy to optimally extract sensory information during locomotion. (shrink)

Given advances in microsurgical techniques, immunomodulation protocols, and neuro-regenerative therapies, there is a growing likelihood that first-in-human whole-eye transplantation (WET) may be at...

This paper examines the proposition that movement offers new insight into the relationship between human and non-human animals, a relationship that is important to understanding contemporar...

Given a subject so imbued with contention and conflicting theoretical stances, it is remarkable that automated instruments ever came to replace the human eye as sensitive arbiters of color specification. Yet, dramatic shifts in assumptions and practice did occur in the first half of the twentieth century. How and why was confidence transferred from careful observers to mechanized devices when the property being measured – color – had become so closely identified with human physiology and psychology? A fertile (...) perspective on the problem is via the history of science and technology, paying particular attention to social groups and disciplinary identity to determine how those factors affected their communities’ cognitive territory. There were both common and discordant threads motivating the various technical groups that took on the problems of measuring light and color from the late nineteenth century onwards, and leading them towards the development of appropriate instruments for themselves. The transition from visual to photoelectric methods could be portrayed as a natural evolution, replacing the eye by an alternative roviding more sensitivity and convenience – indeed, this is the conventional positivist view propounded by technical histories. However, the adoption of new measurement technologies seldom is simple, and frequently has a significant cultural component. Beneath this slide towards automation lay a raft of implicit assumptions about objectivity, the nature of the observer, the role of instruments, and the trade-offs between standardization and descriptive power. While espousing rational arguments for a physical detector of color, its proponents weighted their views with tacit considerations. The reassignment of trust from the eye to automated instruments was influenced as much by the historical context as by intellectual factors. I will argue that several distinct aspects were involved, which include the reductive view of color provided by the trichromatic theory; the impetus provided by its association with photometry; the expanding mood for a quantitative and objective approach to scientific observation; and, the pressures for commercial standardization. As suggested by these factors, there was another shift of authority at play: from one technical specialism to another. The regularization of color involved appropriation of the subject by a particular set of social interests: communities of physicists and engineers espousing a ‘physicalist’ interpretation, rather than psychologists and physiologists for whom color was conceived as a more complex phenomenon. Moreover, the sources for automated color measurement, and instrumentation for measuring color, were primarily from the industrial sphere rather than from academic science. To understand these shifts, then, this chapter explores differing views of the importance of observers, machines and automation. (shrink)

Laspro et al. (2024) contemplate the first whole eye transplant (WET) procedure in humans. They discuss the implications of such a procedure on the physical, social, and psychological well-being of...

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 218 Seiten: 91-117.

Horror movies have discovered an easy recipe for making people creepy: alter their eyes. Instead of normal eyes, zombies’ eyes are vacantly white, vampires’ eyes glow with the color of blood, and those possessed by demons are cavernously black. In the Academy Award winning Pan’s Labyrinth, director Guillermo del Toro created the creepiest of all creatures by entirely removing its eyes from its face, placing them instead in the palms of its hands. The unease induced by altering eyes may help (...) to explain the uncanny valley, which is the eeriness of robots that are almost—but not quite—human. Much research has explored the uncanny valley, including the research reported by MacDorman & Entezari, which focuses on individual differences that might predict the eeriness of humanlike robots. In their paper, they suggest that a full understanding of this phenomenon needs to synthesize individual differences with features of the robot. One theory that links these two concepts is mind perception, which past research highlights as essential to the uncanny valley. Mind perception is linked to both individual differences—autism—and to features of the robot—the eyes—and can provide a deeper understanding of this arresting phenomenon. In this paper, we present original data that links uncanniness to the eyes through aberrant perceptions of mind. (shrink)

Horror movies have discovered an easy recipe for making people creepy: alter their eyes. Instead of normal eyes, zombies’ eyes are vacantly white, vampires’ eyes glow with the color of blood, and those possessed by demons are cavernously black. In the Academy Award winning Pan’s Labyrinth, director Guillermo del Toro created the creepiest of all creatures by entirely removing its eyes from its face, placing them instead in the palms of its hands. The unease induced by altering eyes may help (...) to explain the uncanny valley, which is the eeriness of robots that are almost—but not quite—human. Much research has explored the uncanny valley, including the research reported by MacDorman & Entezari, which focuses on individual differences that might predict the eeriness of humanlike robots. In their paper, they suggest that a full understanding of this phenomenon needs to synthesize individual differences with features of the robot. One theory that links these two concepts is mind perception, which past research highlights as essential to the uncanny valley. Mind perception is linked to both individual differences—autism—and to features of the robot—the eyes—and can provide a deeper understanding of this arresting phenomenon. In this paper, we present original data that links uncanniness to the eyes through aberrant perceptions of mind. (shrink)

Horror movies have discovered an easy recipe for making people creepy: alter their eyes. Instead of normal eyes, zombies’ eyes are vacantly white, vampires’ eyes glow with the color of blood, and those possessed by demons are cavernously black. In the Academy Award winning Pan’s Labyrinth, director Guillermo del Toro created the creepiest of all creatures by entirely removing its eyes from its face, placing them instead in the palms of its hands. The unease induced by altering eyes may help (...) to explain the uncanny valley, which is the eeriness of robots that are almost—but not quite—human. Much research has explored the uncanny valley, including the research reported by MacDorman & Entezari, which focuses on individual differences that might predict the eeriness of humanlike robots. In their paper, they suggest that a full understanding of this phenomenon needs to synthesize individual differences with features of the robot. One theory that links these two concepts is mind perception, which past research highlights as essential to the uncanny valley. Mind perception is linked to both individual differences—autism—and to features of the robot—the eyes—and can provide a deeper understanding of this arresting phenomenon. In this paper, we present original data that links uncanniness to the eyes through aberrant perceptions of mind. (shrink)

In this paper I critique the ethical implications of automating CCTV surveillance. I consider three modes of CCTV with respect to automation: manual, fully automated, and partially automated. In each of these I examine concerns posed by processing capacity, prejudice towards and profiling of surveilled subjects, and false positives and false negatives. While it might seem as if fully automated surveillance is an improvement over the manual alternative in these areas, I demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case. In (...) preference to the extremes I argue in favour of partial automation in which the system integrates a human CCTV operator with some level of automation. To assess the degree to which such a system should be automated I draw on the further issues of privacy and distance. Here I argue that the privacy of the surveilled subject can benefit from automation, while the distance between the surveilled subject and the CCTV operator introduced by automation can have both positive and negative effects. I conclude that in at least the majority of cases more automation is preferable to less within a partially automated system where this does not impinge on efficacy. (shrink)

—Human eyes not only serve the function of enabling us “to see” something, but also perform the vital role of allowing us “to show” our gaze for non-verbal communication, such as through establishing eye contact and joint attention. The eyes of service robots should therefore also perform both of these functions. Moreover, they should be friendly in appearance so that humans may feel comfortable with the robots. Therefore we maintain that it is important to consider gaze communication capability and (...) friendliness in designing the appearance of robot eyes. In this paper, we propose a new robot face with rear-projected eyes for changing their appearance while simultaneously realizing the showing of gaze by incorporating stereo cameras. Additionally, we examine which shape of robot eyes is most suitable for gaze reading and gives the friendliest impression, through experiments where we altered the shape and iris size of robot eyes. Keywords: Gaze reading; facial design; projector camera system. (shrink)