Taste-aversion learning has been a popular paradigm for examining associative processes because it often produces outcomes that are different from those observed in other classical conditioning paradigms. One such outcome is taste-mediated odor potentiation in which aversion conditioning with a weak odor and a strong taste results in increased or synergistic conditioning to the odor. Because this strengthened odor aversion was not anticipated by formal models of learning, investigation of taste-mediated odor potentiation was a hot topic (...) in the 1980s. The present manuscript reviews the history of potentiation research with particular focus given to the stimuli that produce potentiation, the conditions that produce potentiation, the possible mechanism of this phenomenon, and possible reasons for the decline of research in this area. Although the number of published reports of potentiation has decreased since the 1980s, recent physiological and behavioral assessments have advanced the field considerably, and the opportunities for future research are bountiful. Recent physiological experiments, for example, have identified the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala as the key brain region to produce taste-mediated odor potentiation (e.g., Hatfield andGallagher, 1995). Also, recent behavioral experiments have extended the generality of synergistic conditioning effects. Studies have shown that odor can potentiate responding to taste (Slotnick, Westbrook and Darling, 1997) and that augmented responding can be produced in the A+/AX+blocking design (e.g., Batsell and Batson, 1999). With the current understanding of where synergistic conditioning may occur in the brain and the new tools to explore synergistic conditioning, we propose various directions for future research to determine whether taste-aversion learning and synergistic conditioning require unique explanations. (shrink)

Taste-aversion learning has been a popular paradigm for examining associative processes because it often produces outcomes that are different from those observed in other classical conditioning paradigms. One such outcome is taste-mediated odor potentiation in which aversion conditioning with a weak odor and a strong taste results in increased or synergistic conditioning to the odor. Because this strengthened odor aversion was not anticipated by formal models of learning, investigation of taste-mediated odor potentiation was a hot topic (...) in the 1980s. The present manuscript reviews the history of potentiation research with particular focus given to the stimuli that produce potentiation, the conditions that produce potentiation, the possible mechanism of this phenomenon, and possible reasons for the decline of research in this area. Although the number of published reports of potentiation has decreased since the 1980s, recent physiological and behavioral assessments have advanced the field considerably, and the opportunities for future research are bountiful. Recent physiological experiments, for example, have identified the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala as the key brain region to produce taste-mediated odor potentiation (e.g., Hatfield andGallagher, 1995). Also, recent behavioral experiments have extended the generality of synergistic conditioning effects. Studies have shown that odor can potentiate responding to taste (Slotnick, Westbrook and Darling, 1997) and that augmented responding can be produced in the A+/AX+blocking design (e.g., Batsell and Batson, 1999). With the current understanding of where synergistic conditioning may occur in the brain and the new tools to explore synergistic conditioning, we propose various directions for future research to determine whether taste-aversion learning and synergistic conditioning require unique explanations. (shrink)

Role congruity theory affirms that female managers face more difficulties at work because of the incongruity between female gender and leadership role expectations. Furthermore, due to this incongruity, it is harder for female managers to perceive themselves as authentic leaders. However, followers’ attributions of prototypicality could attenuate this role incongruity and have implications on a managers’ organizational identification. Hence, we expect male managers to be more authentic and to identify more with their organizations, when compared to female managers who are (...) low in prototypicality. We hypothesized that authentic leadership dimensions mediate the relation between managers’ biological gender and their OID. However, this indirect effect is conditional of these managers' team prototypicality. For testing these hypotheses, we conducted an online experiment with 149 participants from different work sectors using a 2 × 2 between-subject design. As predicted, men scored higher on authentic leadership, and three dimensions partially mediated the effect of participants’ biological gender on OID. In the low team prototypicality condition female managers scored lower in authentic leadership and identified less with the organization, whereas in the high team prototypicality condition, no gender differences were found. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has been analysed as a distinct from, but concurrent with, more typical racist events, such as police killings in the United States. This article argues that one can conceptualise these two events as inter-related and synergistically enhanced. Anti-Black racism is a dynamic that utilises different social inequalities and violent events to manage the Black population within the United States. This article suggests that theorists would benefit from a syndemic analysis of disease and anti-Black violence in future theorisations (...) of Black oppression. (shrink)

Inclusive fitness theory provides conditions for the evolutionary success of a gene. These conditions ensure that the gene is selfish in the sense of Dawkins (The selfish gene, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1976): genes do not and cannot sacrifice their own fitness on behalf of the reproductive population. Therefore, while natural selection explains the appearance of design in the living world (Dawkins in The blind watchmaker: why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design, W. W. Norton, New York, (...) 1996), inclusive fitness theory does not explain how. Indeed, Hamilton’s rule is equally compatible with the evolutionary success of prosocial altruistic genes and antisocial predatory genes, whereas only the former, which account for the appearance of design, predominate in successful organisms. Inclusive fitness theory, however, permits a formulation of the central problem of sociobiology in a particularly poignant form: how do interactions among loci induce utterly selfish genes to collaborate, or to predispose their carriers to collaborate, in promoting the fitness of their carriers? Inclusive fitness theory, because it abstracts from synergistic interactions among loci, does not answer this question. Fitness-enhancing collaboration among loci in the genome of a reproductive population requires suppressing alleles that decrease, and promoting alleles that increase the fitness of its carriers. Suppression and promotion are effected by regulatory networks of genes, each of which is itself utterly selfish. This implies that genes, and a fortiori individuals in a social species, do not maximize inclusive fitness but rather interact strategically in complex ways. It is the task of sociobiology to model these complex interactions. (shrink)

In this article, we present ideas related to three key aspects of mindfulness training: the regulation of attention via noradrenaline, the importance of working memory and its various components (particularly the central executive and episodic buffer), and the relationship of both of these to mind-wandering. These same aspects of mindfulness training are also involved in the preparation and execution of movement and implicated in the pathophysiology of psychosis. We argue that by moving in a mindful way, there may be an (...) additive effect of training as the two elements of the practice (mindfulness and movement) independently, and perhaps synergistically, engage common underlying systems (the default mode network). We discuss how working with mindful movement may be one route to mindfulness training for individuals who would struggle to sit still to complete the more commonly taught mindfulness practices. Drawing on our clinical experience working with individuals with severe and enduring mental health conditions, we show the real world application of these ideas and how they can be used to help those who are suffering and for whom current treatments are still far from adequate. (shrink)

Empirical evidence suggests that while people hold the capacity to control their data in high regard, they increasingly experience a loss of control over their data in the online world. The capacity to exert control over the generation and flow of personal information is a fundamental premise to important values such as autonomy, privacy, and trust. In healthcare and clinical research this capacity is generally achieved indirectly, by agreeing to specific conditions of informational exposure. Such conditions can be openly stated (...) in informed consent documents or be implicit in the norms of confidentiality that govern the relationships of patients and healthcare professionals. However, with medicine becoming a data-intense enterprise, informed consent and medical confidentiality, as mechanisms of control, are put under pressure. In this paper we explore emerging models of informational control in data-intense healthcare and clinical research, which can compensate for the limitations of currently available instruments. More specifically, we discuss three approaches that hold promise in increasing individual control: the emergence of data portability rights as means to control data access, new mechanisms of informed consent as tools to control data use, and finally, new participatory governance schemes that allow individuals to control their data through direct involvement in data governance. We conclude by suggesting that, despite the impression that biomedical big data diminish individual control, the synergistic effect of new data management models can in fact improve it. (shrink)

Purpose. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the anthropological and socio-philosophical dimensions of human existence of the older age group given the challenges of pandemic threats caused by COVID-19. To this end, it is planned to solve a number of tasks, among which one should distinguish the following: 1) to investigate the manifestations of age discrimination in the context of the social and labor areas of human existence; 2) to focus on the asymmetry of the behavior of society (...) and the state relative to persons of the older age group in the field of healthcare in the context of a pandemic crisis; 3) to represent the anthropological features of changes in the socialization and activity of older people under the current conditions of globalization-pandemic challenges. Theoretical basis. Despite such a broad representation of the age-related issue in public relations, there are still no practical guarantees that would apply to discriminatory aspects of older age groups in various areas of their manifestation. The synergistic evolution of social reality requires substantive analysis of the issue under the current conditions for the transformation of social life, which is affected by globalization crises caused by the pandemic threats of COVID-19. Originality. The stereotypical assumptions underlying legal policy and established social relations are based solely on the application of chronological age. The novelty is in justifying an individual approach to the elderly through the personification of the personal characteristics of a person. The study of anthropological and socio-philosophical dimensions of the existence of a person of the older age group in the face of the challenges of pandemic threats caused by COVID-19 has made it possible to analyze the destructive nature of age discrimination in the context of the social and labor areas of human existence. As well as focus on the asymmetry of the behavior of society and the state in relation to these persons in the field of health care, and emphasize the anthropological features of changes in the socialization and human activity under the current conditions of globalization-pandemic challenges. Conclusions. External threats to human existence call for special attention to the implementation and protection of human rights, freedoms, individual freedoms, and identity. Pandemic threats have transformed all dimensions of human existence, especially for those groups of society that are less socially protected. The pandemic crisis has created additional grounds for discrimination against older people in various areas of human existence. Equalization of persons by age without personifying the personal characteristics of an individual is discrimination on an age basis, which violates the principles of democracy and humanism in the society, leads to stigmatization of the person, is the cause of the anthropological crisis of a person. (shrink)

Contemporary textbooks often define evolution in terms of the replication, mutation, and selective retention of DNA sequences, ignoring the contribution of the physical processes involved. In the closing line of The Origin of Species, however, Darwin recognized that natural selection depends on prior more basic living functions, which he merely described as life’s “several powers.” For Darwin these involved the organism’s capacity to maintain itself and to reproduce offspring that preserve its critical functional organization. In modern terms we have come (...) to recognize that this involves the continual generation of complex organic molecules in complex configurations accomplished with the aid of persistent far-from-equilibrium chemical self-organizing and self-assembling processes. But reliable persistence and replication of these processes also requires constantly available constraints and boundary conditions. Organism autonomy further requires that these constraints and co-dependent dynamics are reciprocally produced, each by the other. In this paper I argue that the different constraint-amplifying dynamics of two or more self-organizing processes can be coupled so that they reciprocally generate each other’s critical supportive boundary conditions. This coupling is a higher-order constraint that effectively constitutes a sign vehicle “interpreted” by the synergistic dynamics of these co-dependent self-organizing process so that they reconstitute this same semiotic-dynamic relationship and its self-reconstituting potential in new substrates. This dynamical co-dependence constitutes Darwin’s “several powers” and is the basis of the biosemiosis that enables evolution. (shrink)

Human subjects seem to have a type of introspective access to their mental states that allows them to immediately judge the types and intensities of their occurrent emotions, as well as what those emotions are about or “directed at”. Such judgments manifest what I call “emotion-direction beliefs”, which, if reliably produced, may constitute emotion-direction knowledge. Many psychologists have argued that the “directed emotions” such beliefs represent have a componential structure, one that includes feelings of emotional responses and related but independent (...) representations of what those feelings are about. I argue that such componentiality may help to explain how emotion-direction knowledge is achievable. I begin by developing a hybrid view of introspection that combines David Chalmers’ phenomenal realism with Alvin Goldman’s “partial redeployment” account of meta-belief content. I then provide a process-reliabilist account of introspectively gained emotion-direction knowledge that outlines the minimum conditions of reliably forming emotion-direction beliefs, and specifies several ways in which the warrant of such beliefs could be defeated by relevant counterfactual alternatives. The overall account suggests how distinct introspective processes might be epistemically synergistic. (shrink)

Stephen Darwall notes that for Cudworth the fundamental ethical motive is love, but that the Cambridge Platonist tells us little about love’s character, aim and object. In this article I examine Cudworth’s doctrine of ‘superintellectual instinct’ as a natural love for or inclination to the good as it takes shape in two of his unpublished freewill manuscripts. I show that in these manuscripts he assumes a threefold model of how this higher love as a natural or ‘created’ grace fits into (...) the overall moral life of a person, together with human free will and special grace. I argue that although Cudworth adopts an Origenist synergistic position on the question of the relationship between grace and free will, stating that special grace is a necessary condition of salvation conjointly with free will and creation grace, in reality he struggles to show the strict necessity of special grace. (shrink)

Encounters with illness, impairment, and aging can disrupt one’s experiential relationship with self, body, others, and world. “Healing” takes place when the individual is able to re-integrate his or her world, even if the condition is not medically curable. Drawing on work in the phenomenology of the body, this article examines a series of eight “healing strategies” individuals employ, each representing a different way of orienting toward the painful or impaired body. One may lean into freeing oneself from the body, (...) through strategies of “refusing,” “ignoring,” “objectifying,” or “transcending” its problems. Conversely, one may choose to embrace the body, through strategies such as “accepting,” “listening,” “befriending,” or “witnessing.” It can be beneficial to have a good number of such coping strategies at one’s disposal, enhancing flexible response to chronic challenges. They also are often used in synergistic or complementary combinations. (shrink)

Feminist epistemology aims to propose epistemic reasons for increasing the representation of women or socially subordinated people in science. This is typically done—albeit often only implicitly—by positing a causal mechanism through which the representation of sociodemographic minorities exerts a positive effect on scientific advancement. Two types of causal theories can be identified. The “epistemic diversity thesis” presents a causal path from sociodemographic diversity to scientific progress mediated by epistemic diversity. The “thesis of epistemic advantage” proposes a causal path from social (...) subjugation to capacity for inquiry. The latter theory is defined with substantial ambiguity in the existing literature, and I present an explicit causal reformulation that disambiguates it. The epistemic diversity thesis focuses on the effect of group composition on collective epistemic performance and is largely silent about what kind of characteristics lead to individual epistemic excellence. On the other hand, the thesis of epistemic advantage seeks to identify sociodemographic background conditions that make certain epistemic agents strictly better knowers or inquirers than others and pays little attention to the synergistic effects of diverse group composition. Such a difference in the causal structure reflects the diverging political characteristics of the two theories. (shrink)

The urgency of the research is that the simulacra of the virtual-online culture of the information society and the conditions for its formation are analyzed. The term "simulacrum" by J. Baudrillard is related to the virtual-online culture of the information society, because a person uses substitutes, copies of things, and not their originals. Setting objectives. This problem is caused by the fact that today the personality is formed in an artificially created virtual world that distorts the personality and forms its (...) torn and inappropriate image. This type of society as a virtual-online one needs its interpretation and analysis of a new conceptual-categorical apparatus. Analysis of recent research and publications. These are works by J. Baudrillard "Simulacra and simulations", as well as R. Simmel, R. Bart, R. Deborah, G. Bataille, G. Lacan, M. McLuhan, M. Foucault, G. Deleuzae, J. Derrida.The questions of the philosophy of postmodernism and the theory of simulacra of J. Baudrillard are considered in the works of such researchers: A. Gritsanov, N. Katsuk, A. Dyakov, N. Zinchenko, N. Mankovskaya, O. Pechenkina, O. Scalatska, V. Ferroni and others. The question of the simulacrum is considered by J. Baudrillard in a number of works: "Symbolic Exchange and Death", "Seduction", "Simulacra and Simulation", "Transparency of Evil" and others. The selection of unexplored parts of the general problem is the conceptualization of the concept of "simulacrum" and its discovery in the virtual-online information society. The basis of the research is the conceptualization of the basic patterns of simulacra and the virtual-online culture of the information society, which is a scientific novelty. Setting the objective - the usage of approaches, in particular, structural-synergistic and practical synergetic methodology that makes it possible to analyze the simulacra of postmodern as complex constuctions. Presenting main material. The analysis of formation and development of online-virtual culture of personality which uses simulacra; the definition of "simulacrum" is presented; an analysis was made of the fact that the game constituent has become a dominant component of the modern virtual world, and the game itself became a marker of the postmodern society with the performing "I"-game in the middle; the definition of "online virtual culture" is given in the context of which "I" is implemented; the network society is shown as a new type of culture of virtual reality. Conclusions - the simulacra of the virtual-online culture of the information society in the conceptual survey of postmodernists has been formed. (shrink)

Each generation of evolutionary biologists has brought a fresh wave of attempts to answer the evolutionary riddle of altruism. However, none describe how such a condition could incrementally evolve from a prior condition of non-cooperation. This chapter describes a mechanism that could spontaneously and incrementally give rise to a synergistic codependence among individuals within a social group. It shows that prolonged social living in the absence of reproductive cost can mask selection-maintaining traits important for autonomous living, causing them to (...) drift and degrade to the point where individuals can no longer succeed outside the social context. This ‘social addiction’ will subsequently favour traits that maintain social cohesion because of the high cost of group dispersion. This mechanism contributes a missing complementary component to existing selection-based explanations of the evolution of pro-social and altruistic behaviours. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Vice and Naturalistic OntologyChristopher R. Williams (bio)Keywordscausality, criminality, determinism, medical model, positivismThese questions have been posed: Is vice (encompassing criminal and other wrongful conduct) best regarded as “sick” behavior, “immoral” behavior, or some other type altogether? Are we to understand vice in natural-medical terms, or are we better served by utilizing a moral framework? Is criminality reducible to and best categorized as a metaphysical type the essential features of (...) which are neurological or otherwise biological in nature? Or, perhaps, is criminality closer to a (non-natural) sociological type, the essential features of which can be understood only through reference to social norms and cultural conventions? These are torturously involved philosophical and theoretical questions that have given rise to an equally torturous volume of literature. Without pretending to do justice to these questions or their corresponding literature, several key considerations that must be inserted into and accounted for within the discursive pursuit of these inquiries are worth noting.Where a naturalistic ontology is employed within the study of vice, we reduce the intricacies of deviant behavioral phenomena to what we presume to be their underlying medical/biological properties. It is worth remembering that behavior itself cannot rightfully be said to be “sick”; rather, what we mean to say is that the behavior in question—in our case, various forms of “vice”—is symptomatic of some underlying illness or medical/biological condition. The presumed underlying sickness and the behavior itself are distinct, ontologically linked only through their theorized relationship to one another. This, then, is a key assumption of the medical approach to vice and its ontological classification as a natural-medical kind: that there exists a relationship between the behavior (a symptom) and the underlying illness or medical condition, and that the relationship is of the causal kind. Vice, it is suggested, is a change in state that is caused by (or, at the very least, is a direct consequence of) sickness or illness. Second, to legitimate such attributions, the illness supplying the requisite causal force must be identifiable and its causal connection to the behavior must be or be capable of being sufficiently explicated. In other words, once we have identified the relevant medical/biological properties and the behavior to which they stand in causal relatedness, we must be prepared to characterize this dynamic—we must be able to show exactly how and why such and such a condition gives rise to such and such a behavior.Problematically, causation itself is and has always been a contentious metaphysical specimen. Hume (1955) reminded us of the troubling reality [End Page 39] that we cannot ever “see” one thing cause or necessitate another. We are left, rather, to merely presume the existence of causal relationships between things. How is it, exactly, that disorder in neurodevelopment can necessitate certain behavioral outcomes? Even if we can “see” (in the empirical sense) the disorder and equally “see” the behavior, we cannot of course witness the precise causal action of the former upon the latter. Even if we are content inferring causal action in such cases, we still need to demonstrate the basic conditions of causality. To show that Condition X is causally related Behavior Y, we need to show that they are regularly associated with one another, that Condition X temporally preceded Behavior Y and, most challengingly, that no other conditions or factors have an intervening (e.g., additive, synergistic) influence. Hypothetically, if we were to posit a causal relationship between schizotypal personality traits and violent behavior, we would need to establish: (1) that schizotypal traits and violent behavior regularly coexist; (2) that those traits presented before the manifestation of the violent behavior; and (3) that no other factors (biological, psychological, and/or sociological) contributed in any meaningful way to those manifestations. We would thus need to systematically rule out family dynamics, income, education, intelligence, substance use, and so forth, as contributing factors. If, in turn, we were to determine that the presence of schizotypal traits alone is not sufficient—even if a necessary condition—to produce violent behavior but, rather, that those traits act in concert with other variables to produce the behavior, then we would not truly be... (shrink)

What is the experience of creating a synergistic approach to arts and sciences practice in a learning community focused on the notion of sustainable development? In this article, I answer this question through an evolutionary approach to societal transformation. My social research inquiry integrates the arts and sciences, a learning and design community, sustainable development, and Internet networking. Codesigners created the conditions to explore in multimodal dialogue and engage, guide, and design the emergence of what I call evolutionary artscience (...) through portfolios and a new systems design space-the ArtSciLAB (an online artscience laboratory). Eighteen individuals working in nine countries participated in the Evolutionary Learning Community Network. Our learning and design experience, guided by Evolutionary Systems Design inquiry supports General Evolution Theory. We guided the Evolutionary Learning Community Network and designed the ArtSciLAB to incubate localized knowledge for development in learning regions worldwide. (shrink)

IntroductionPreoperative neurocognitive disorder is a common condition affecting 14–51. 7% of the elderly population. General anesthesia has already been associated with the one-year post-operative neurocognitive disorder, specifically, a deficit in executive function, measured by the Trail Making Test B, but its long-term effects on cognitive function have not been investigated. We aimed to detect preO-NCD prevalence in patients scheduled for cardiac surgery and further investigate the possible role of previous general anesthesia in general preoperative cognitive status [measured via the Montreal (...) Cognitive Assessment ] and/or in executive functioning.MethodsIn this observational, prospective study, 151 adult patients scheduled for elective cardiac surgery underwent MoCA and TMT-B. Data on age, education, pGA, comorbidities, and laboratory results were collected.ResultsWe discovered a general cognitive function impairment of 79.5% and an executive function impairment of 22%. Aging is associated with an increased likelihood and education with a decreased likelihood of general cognitive impairment, but only education was significantly associated with a decreased likelihood of executive function impairment. While pGA did not significantly affect preO-NCD, a noteworthy interaction between aging and pGA was found, resulting in a synergistic effect, increasing the likelihood of executive function impairment.ConclusionWe found a high prevalence of preO-NCD in patients scheduled for cardiac surgery. General cognitive function impairment is highly associated with advancing age. However, older patients with at least one pGA appeared to be at an increased risk of preO-NCD, especially executive function impairment, suggesting that TMT-B should be associated with MoCA in the preoperative cognitive evaluation in this population. (shrink)

The relevance of this topic is determined by the processes of “globalization 4.0”, taking place in a new industrial revolution, which brings about both positive and negative consequences in science, medicine, engineering, financial sphere, geopolitical, and cultural dimensions. Digital technologies based on software and social networks become more effective and integrated, causing transformation in all spheres of the global economy. The purpose of the study is to analyze the development of smart technologies in medicine in conditions of “Globalization 4.0”. The (...) objective of the study is social and philosophical analysis of the “globalization 4.0” phenomenon and the revolutions that preceded itin the context of these revolutions the problems of smart technologies in medicine are developing; the study of the interaction problems of society, man and innovations in the sphere of medicine as mutually determined phenomena of human existence that satisfy, enrich and complement each other. The state of theme study that initiated problem solution: the concept of “globalization 4.0” entered the scientific world due to the works of Klaus Schwab, a German economist, founder and president of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the author of the book “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”. Various aspects of this phenomenon that influenced its formation were reflected in the articles and monographs of Ukrainian scholars - V. Voronkova, V. Lukianets, O. Kravchenko, L. Ozadovska, V. Liakh, V. Pazeniuk, C. Raida, and others, as well as a series of Western scholars such as Ken Robinson, Samuel Greengard, Aarathi Prasad, Martin Ford, Kevin Kelli and others. Study methodology. The study methodology includes analysis of new smart technologies phenomena in medicine in the context of “globalization 4.0” that is developing in front of our eyes and is built on the basis of an integrated approach in the context of interdisciplinary character. The article uses such methods of scientific knowledge as analysis and synthesis, measurement, transition from abstract to concrete, synergistic approach, due to which it was possible to analyze complex problems of smart technologies in medicine. The scientific novelty of the study – is the identification of interaction problems between man, society and medicine in the conditions of “globalization 4.0”, which contribute to the formation of a new technological space. Results of the study: the positive and negative effects of “globalization 4.0” for the development of society, medicine and human beings are analyzed; the future scenarios in overcoming of dangerous diseases for humanity are revealed. Conclusion - the feature and fundamental difference of “globalization 4.0” is the synthesis of these technologies and their interaction in physical, digital and biological domains. (shrink)

There are indications that simple reaction time might have slowed in Western countries, based on both cohort- and multi-study comparisons. A possible limitation of the latter method in particular is measurement error stemming from methods variance, which results from the fact that instruments and experimental conditions change over time and between studies. We therefore set out to measure the simple auditory reaction time (SRT) of 7,081 individuals (2,997 males and 4,084 females) born in Sweden 1959-1985 (subjects were aged between 27 (...) and 54 years at time of measurement). Depending on cut-offs and adjustment for ageing related slowing on SRT, the data suggest that SRT has increased between 3 and 16 ms in the 27 birth years covered in the present sample. The slowing is unlikely to be explained by attrition, as evaluated by comparing the general intelligence × birth-year interactions and standard deviations for both male participants and dropouts, utilizing military conscript cognitive ability data. The present result is consistent with previous studies employing alternative methods, and may result from several synergistic factors, such as possible recent micro-evolutionary trends favouring lower g in Sweden and the effects of industrially produced neurotoxic substances on peripheral nerve conduction velocity. (shrink)

Empirical studies among small-scale societies show that participation in national development programs impact traditional norms of community cooperation. We explore the extent to which varying levels of village and individual involvement in development policies relate to voluntary cooperation within community settings. We used a field experiment conducted in seven villages from an indigenous society in Indonesia known for their strong traditional cooperative norms, the Punan Tubu. We framed the experiment in terms of an ongoing government house-building program. The results indicate (...) that there were synergistic and antagonistic interactions between existing cooperative norms and government development policies. Participants’ cooperation in the experimental setting was low, probably because the Punan Tubu are used to cooperating and sharing both under demand and in a context in which uncooperative behavior is largely unpunished. Variation in experimental behavior was related to both village- and individual-level variables, with participants living in resettlement villages and participants living in a house constructed under the government program displaying more cooperative behavior. The cooperation evident in resettled villages may indicate that people in these villages are more comfortable interacting in anonymous settings and less committed to the demand-sharing norms still prevalent in the upstream villages. The more cooperative behavior among villagers who have previously received a house might indicate that they recognize that they are now better off than others and feel more obliged to cooperate. Policies aiming to capitalize on existing cooperative behavior to stimulate community collective action should consider the specific conditions under which cooperation occurs in real settings since traditional norms that regulate cooperative behavior might not translate well to cooperation in government-led programs. (shrink)

Opera is a performing art in which music plays the leading role, and the acting of singers has a synergistic effect with the music. The mirror neuron system represents the neurophysiological mechanism underlying the coupling of perception and action. Mirror neuron activity is modulated by the appropriateness of actions and clarity of intentions, as well as emotional expression and aesthetic values. Therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that an opera performance induces mirror neuron activity in the audience so (...) that the performer effectively shares an embodied performance with the audience. However, it is uncertain which aspect of opera performance induces mirror neuron activity. It is hypothesized that although auditory stimuli could induce mirror neuron activity, audiovisual perception of stage performance is the primary inducer of mirror neuron activity. To test this hypothesis, this study sought to correlate opera performance with brain activity as measured by electroencephalography in singers while watching an opera performance with sounds or while listening to an aria without visual stimulus. We detected mirror neuron activity by observing that the EEG power in the alpha frequency band was selectively decreased in the frontal-central-parietal area when watching an opera performance. In the auditory condition, however, the alpha-band power did not change relative to the resting condition. This study illustrates that the audiovisual perception of an opera performance engages the mirror neuron system in its audience. (shrink)

Advances in multiagent simulation techniques make it possible to study more realistic dynamics of complex systems and allow evolutionary theories to be tested. Here I use simulations to assess the relative importance of reproductive systems (haplodiploidy vs. diploidy), mate selection (assortative mating vs. random mating) and social economics (pay-off matrices of evolutionary games) in the evolutionary dynamics leading to the emergence of social cooperation in the provision of parental care. The simulations confirm that haplo-diploid organisms and organisms mating assortatively have (...) a higher probability for fixing alleles and require less favorable conditions for their fixation, than diploids or organisms mating randomly. The simulations showed that social behavior was most likely to emerge a) when the cost for parental investment was much lower than the benefits to the offspring, b) when cooperation improved synergistically the fitness of offspring compared to the corresponding egoistic behavior and c) when alleles coding for altruistic or social behavior could be rapidly fixed in the population, thanks to mechanisms such as haplo-diploidy and/or assortative mating. Cooperative social behavior always appeared if sociality conferred much higher fitness gains compared to non cooperative alternatives suggesting that the most important factors for the emergence and maintenance of social behavior are those based on energetic or efficiency considerations. The simulations, in congruence with the scant experimental evidence available, suggest that economic considerations rather than genetic ones are critical in explaining the emergence and maintenance of sociality. (shrink)

The urgency of the study of the formation of the concept of information and communication society in the context of theoretical and methodological analysis is conditioned by the development of information and communication technologies and the Internet in the XXI century. One of the results of the development of Internet technologies is the emergence of an information and communicative society through the Internet as a social system that needs a theoretical and methodological context of measurement. In today's conditions of the (...) information revolution, the communicative clarification of social reality, the place and role in it of the individual, the study of communicative actions and communicative competences of the individual is important. The central problem is the phenomenon of an information and communication society as a complex social phenomenon. The problem of the research is to analyze theoretical and methodological principles of the formation of the concept of an information and communication society, based on advanced information and communication technologies. Methods and approaches - synergistic, anthropological, axiological, which allowed penetrating the essence of the information and communication society, analyze the socio-anthropological, socio-economic and socio-cultural dimensions of the information and communication society. The result of the research - the modern information world, informationalism and the economy are completely dependent on networks and are created by information technologies, which in general forms an information and communication paradigm of society. Information resources are presented digitally or electronically using electronic means. Conclusion. The intensive use of information and computer technologies has been acquired at the present stage of social development of a global nature, which forms new contours of modern civilization. Information and communicative development of society as a civilizational paradigm of the XXI century forms such a kind of society, which was called the informational, determined by the informatization of life, caused by information and computer revolution. (shrink)

The security issue emerges acutely in modern conditions of turbulence where the objects are the individual, society, and the state. The spiritual collapse inherent in this period leads to the loss of the traditional foundations of existence and the purpose of human life, which is expressed in the dominance of the rational-intelligent component over the spiritual world. That is why psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and religious scholars pay more and more attention to the spiritual component of security. Problem setting: to investigate (...) theoretical approaches to the consideration of the spiritual security phenomenon in the conditions of socially turbulent processes.Two angles of research were formed from the point of view of the identified scientific approaches diversity: at the individual and the societal levels (interaction of the individual with society and communication of social structures).The author’s vision of the spirituality concept at the individual level is considered as an individual manifestation in the system of individual desires of such fundamental needs as ideal self-knowledge and own place in society. Spirituality is not only the desire to acquire the meaning of life, morality, and the human ability to create but also the search for truth, and awareness of the need for connection with a transcendent principle.As to the second angle of research, spiritual security is defined as a set of conditions that ensure the security and development of society as an independent and self-sufficient spiritual community.The following conclusions were made as a result of the study.The spiritual life of an individual has its characteristics and dynamics of existence, in contrast to the principles of spirituality on which the doctrine of the society and the state security is based.The intersubjective level of spiritual security is related to the existential-personal level, and sociocultural conditions constitute the second, relatively autonomous level of a person’s spiritual being and have their logic of deployment and “coercive” power.Spiritual security at the personal level means a dynamic and synergistic connection between the transcendental divine and the immanent human.Spiritual security at the social level is ensured by the interaction of society, religious institutions, and individuals by forming a negative attitude to violence and aggression in any form, developing the ability for inter-ethnic and inter-religious interaction, tolerant communication with representatives of society regardless of their affiliation and worldview.The study results can be used for further searches for effective solutions to the problem of security at the personal, social, and state levels in the conditions of modern turbulent processes. (shrink)

A previous study demonstrated that consonant recognition improved significantly in normal hearing listeners when useful frequency and time ranges were intensified by 6 dB. The goal of this study was to determine whether bilateral cochlear implant and bilateral hearing aid users experienced similar enhancement on consonant recognition with these intensified spectral and temporal cues in noise. In total, 10 BCI and 10 BHA users participated in a recognition test using 14 consonants. For each consonant, we used the frequency and time (...) ranges that are critical for its recognition, identified from normal hearing listeners. Then, a signal processing tool called the articulation-index gram was utilized to add a 6 dB gain to target frequency and time ranges. Consonant recognition was monaurally and binaurally measured under two signal processing conditions, unprocessed and intensified target frequency and time ranges at +5 and +10 dB signal-to-noise ratio and in quiet conditions. We focused on three comparisons between the BCI and BHA groups: AI-Gram benefits, enhancement in binaural benefits via the AI-Gram processing, and reduction in binaural interferences via the AI-Gram processing. The results showed that the mean AI-Gram benefit was significantly improved for the BCI and BHA groups. However, the mean binaural benefit was not improved after AI-Gram processing. Individual data showed wide ranges of the AI-Gram benefit and binaural benefit for both groups. Individual data also showed a decrease in binaural interference in both groups after AI-Gram processing. These results suggest that the frequency and time ranges, intensified by the AI-Gram processing, contribute to consonant enhancement for monaural and binaural listening and both BCI and BHA technologies. The intensified frequency and time ranges helped to reduce binaural interference but contributed less to the synergistic binaural benefit in consonant recognition for both groups. (shrink)

The authors deal with the classic paradox of ethical theories, “Hume’s guillotine,” based on the contradiction in morality between what is and what should be. At the same time, the theological justification of moral principles is beyond this criticism, because the sacred commandments “by definition” combine what is and what should be, overcoming the “secular” gap between being and duty, and thus “the problem of transition from description to evaluation is removed.” Modern ways of removing this contradiction, revealed by Hume, (...) are considered from several points of view. Special attention is paid to the analogy between the development of ethical and mathematical theories, a synergistic approach to the formation of ethics, as well as to the ethical choice associated with the development of digital reality, which humanity will face soon. A synergistic approach can be viewed as a bridge “over the abyss of two cultures - natural science and humanities.” Now it has become clear that there can be many logics, geometries, versions of analysis of infinitely small, etc. Ethics can also be constructed and then put into practice. A classic example is the ethical code of King Lycurgus. Separate ethical systems are not able to ensure the survival of humanity under extreme conditions. Existence of general ethical rules in global crises allows many to survive. Without them, everyone would die. True amazement is the fact that the eight Dyakonov phase transitions in human history completely coincide with the crises periodicity presented in the text of the Apocalypse, where crises are figuratively called “beasts.” Then a vivid picture is given, a picture of the civilization transformation into a post-singular state, which goes beyond the horizon of scientific forecast. (shrink)

People can discriminate the synchrony between audio-visual scenes. However, the sensitivity of audio-visual synchrony perception can be affected by many factors. Using a simultaneity judgment task, the present study investigated whether the synchrony perception of complex audio-visual stimuli was affected by audio-visual causality and stimulus reliability. In Experiment 1, the results showed that audio-visual causality could increase one's sensitivity to audio-visual onset asynchrony (AVOA) of both action stimuli and speech stimuli. Moreover, participants were more tolerant of AVOA of speech stimuli (...) than that of action stimuli in the high causality condition, whereas no significant difference between these two kinds of stimuli was found in the low causality condition. In Experiment 2, the speech stimuli were manipulated with either high or low stimulus reliability. The results revealed a significant interaction between audio-visual causality and stimulus reliability. Under the low causality condition, the percentage of “synchronous” responses of audio-visual intact stimuli was significantly higher than that of visual_intact/auditory_blurred stimuli and audio-visual blurred stimuli. In contrast, no significant difference among all levels of stimulus reliability was observed under the high causality condition. Our study supported the synergistic effect of top-down processing and bottom-up processing in audio-visual synchrony perception. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe presence of two or more chronic diseases results in worse clinical outcomes than expected by a simple combination of diseases. This synergistic effect is expected to be higher when combined with some conditions, depending on the number and severity of diseases. Multimorbidity is a relatively new term, with the first fundamental definitions appearing in 2015. Studies usually define it as the presence of at least two chronic medical illnesses. However, little is known regarding the relationship between mental disorders (...) and other non-psychiatric chronic diseases. This review aims at investigating the association between some mental disorders and non-psychiatric diseases, and their pattern of association.MethodsWe performed a systematic approach to selecting papers that studied relationships between chronic conditions that included one mental disorder from 2015 to 2021. These were processed using Covidence, including quality assessment.ResultsThis resulted in the inclusion of 26 papers in this study. It was found that there are strong associations between depression, psychosis, and multimorbidity, but recent studies that evaluated patterns of association of diseases had heterogeneous results. Quality assessment of the papers generally revealed low quality among the included studies.ConclusionsThere is evidence of an association between depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and psychosis with multimorbidity. Studies that tried to examine the patterns of association between diseases did not find stable results.Systematic review registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42021216101, identifier: CRD42021216101. (shrink)

The relevance of the topic of research of humanitarian capital as a set of values of social sciences today plays an exceptional role, because human capital is a great character and its goal is the process of mastering the world through the development of humanistic knowledge and methods of cultural education, aimed at personality formation. The Central problem for modern conditions is management education with a view that human capital formed by all humanist-oriented sciences, must be directed to the development (...) and fulfillment of personality. The main task of higher school is the identification, preservation and effective use of human knowledge as a set of humanistic values, which together constitute the human capital needed to ensure a comprehensive and creative personality. The article explains the essence, objectives and main directions of human capital with the aim to form comprehensive and creative personality, based on cultural development of man as his self-development and self-actualization. Objectives of the study are the conceptualization of human capital as a set of humanitarian values, which are implemented in practice of educational process of higher school. The methodological basis for the formation of humanitarian capital in the information society is a synergetic methodology aimed at revealing the intellectual and creative personality, which incorporates all the values of the Humanities, presented by specific synergistic tools. Conclusions – management of education in modern conditions should be directed on formation of mechanisms of human capital as a set of values created by mankind and implemented by social sciences and disciplines. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the notion of progress, the social and environmental record of our age poses serious doubts for the present and the future. Technology, being the mainspring of progress, may be seen, accordingly, as the master of history more than the servant of society. In line with this view, a case can be made to strengthen the value of technology and to weaken the deterministic character of history. To do so, the paper canvasses the use of artificial markets designed to improve (...) compliance of technology with environmental or social standards. The emerging interest in following this path poses a radical departure from the traditional policy approach to technology assessment. The traditional approach may be described asex ante, relying on cost-benefit analysis to anticipate the welfare effects of technology, combining this analysis with bureaucratic management based on command and control. Cost-benefit analysis, however, is piecemeal and shortsighted and, in a dynamic and synergistic world, can be considered of limited value to ensure longer-term goals. On the other hand, artificial markets operateex post and on the basis of ambient standards. As such, they constitute an artificial device that does not require discretion and a predictive capacity that social science cannot offer. Nonetheless, and given political will, this new approach offers the potential to ensure efficient and sustainable outcomes under conditions of uncertainty. (shrink)

Evaluative Conditioning (EC) refers to changes in our liking or disliking of a stimulus due to its pairing with other positive or negative stimuli. In addition to stimulus-based mechanisms, recent research has shown that action-based mechanisms can also lead to EC effects. Research, based on action control theories, has shown that pairing a positive or negative action with a neutral stimulus results in EC effects (Stimulus-Response binding). Similarly, research studies using Operant Conditioning (OC) approaches have also observed EC (...) effects. The aim of the present study is to directly compare EC effects elicited by two different response-based approaches – S-R bindings and OC. To this end, participants were randomly assigned to an S-R binding procedure and an OC procedure. EC effects were measured in conditions and compared. Implications for EC theory are discussed. (shrink)

The work of scientists and doctors in advancing genetic research and its applications has been accompanied by plenty of discussion in the popular press—from Good Housekeeping and Forbes to Ms. and the Congressional Record—about such ...

Richard Jeffrey espoused an antifoundationalist variant of Bayesian thinking that he termed ‘Radical Probabilism’. Radical Probabilism denies both the existence of an ideal, unbiased starting point for our attempts to learn about the world and the dogma of classical Bayesianism that the only justified change of belief is one based on the learning of certainties. Probabilistic judgment is basic and irreducible. Bayesian conditioning is appropriate when interaction with the environment yields new certainty of belief in some proposition but leaves (...) one’s conditional beliefs untouched (the ‘Rigidity’ condition). Although Richard Jeffrey denied the general applicability of this condition, one of his main contributions to probabilistic thinking is a form of belief updating—now typically called ‘Jeffrey conditioning’ or ‘probability kinematics’—that is appropriate in circumstances in which Rigidity is satisfied, but where the interaction causes one to reevaluate one’s probability judgments over some partition of the possibility space without conferring certainty on any particular element. The most familiar occasion for Jeffrey conditioning is receipt of uncertain evidence: things partially perceived or remembered. But it also serves to illuminate belief updating occasioned by a change in one’s degrees of conditional belief, a kind of belief change largely ignored by classical Bayesianism. I argue that such changes in conditional belief can also be basic (in the sense of not being analyzable as a consequence of conditioning on factual information) and offer a kinematical model for a particular kind change in conditional belief. Both are applied to changes in preference. Finally, I argue that Rigidity can fail when changes of belief give inferential grounds for changes in conditional belief (and vice versa). These failures show that conditioning methods are properly regarded, not as valid rules of inference, but as tools in the ‘art of judgment’. (shrink)

In his recent book, Time and Chance, David Albert claims that by positing that there is a uniform probability distribution defined, on the standard measure, over the space of microscopic states that are compatible with both the current macrocondition of the world, and with what he calls the “past hypothesis”, we can explain the time asymmetry of all of the thermodynamic behavior in the world. The principal purpose of this paper is to dispute this claim. I argue that Albert's proposal (...) fails in his stated goal—to show how to use the time‐reversible dynamics of Newtonian physics to “underwrite the actual content of our thermodynamic experience” (Albert 2000, 159). Albert's proposal can satisfactorily explain why the overall entropy of the universe as a whole is increasing, but it does not and cannot explain the increasing entropy of relatively small, relatively short‐lived systems in energetic isolation without making use of a principle that leads to reversibility objections. (shrink)

This article argues that military conditioning (MC) systematically violates the human dignity of soldiers. The argument relies on an absolute deontologist account of human dignity understood as a claim-right to live in self-respect, which is a right to decide on one’s own behalf about, and to be in control of, essential aspects of one’s own life. The article claims that MC violates soldiers’ dignity so understood because the largely automatic physical killing reflex that MC instills aims to remove their (...) freedom of choice to kill or not to kill, while the MC practices that rationalize the killing of opponents aim to subvert soldiers’ moral deliberation in relation to this behavior. MC thus aims to take away soldiers’ control over a very essential aspect of human life: the decision whether to take life in war. Thereby, MC systematically violates their human dignity. The article concludes with a proposal for an amendment to international law that would allow legal institutions to do more justice to soldiers’ dignity. (shrink)