Mammalian sensory cortices detect changes both inside and outside of the body. They identify sensory information from the surrounding world, evaluate the current situation, and generate top-down signals to induce emotional and behavioral outputs. The cortices also detect physiological changes inside of the body, such as internal pain, thirst, fever, and retronasal odors. Thus, the cortical attention is directed to either the outside or inside of the body. As consciousness seems to be generated by sensory stimuli together with the recollected memory scene, self-cognition may be divided into two categories: one for the outside world and the other for the inside world. We have previously proposed that in the mammalian olfactory system, orthonasal and retronasal odor signals are separately detected in the inhalation and exhalation phases during respiration by the lateral and medial parts of the olfactory bulb, respectively. We further speculated that orthonasal and retronasal olfactory information are transmitted to the higher-order cognitive areas by the lateral pathway for outer-world information and medial pathway for inner-world information, respectively. In the present article, we propose that the late exhalation phase provides the time frame for generating internal attention and internal signals for behavioral and emotional outputs. We will discuss how the recognition of external objects is combined with internal emotion to generate associative memory of object-feeling, namely emotional episodic memory. It will also be discussed how the two types of attention directed toward the outer and inner worlds are switched from one to the other to reset self-cognition and consciousness.
The sunset of the late classics (second half IV century BC) is a time of crisis of the polis lifestyle, the way out of which was found in the transition from a “small cozy polis” to huge multi-ethnic multicultural empires, which was accompanied by profound transformations of spiritual culture and religious consciousness. In the new socio-political reality, where social relations mediated in space and time dominate, the system of consciousness is becoming more complicated. The areas of personal and social needs are divided, political particularism gives way to motives of ethnointegration, cosmopolitanism, the individual has the opportunity to delve into his own personality, the world of human feelings is enriched, the role of moral self-regulation increases, spiritual culture differentiates into elite and mass, actively reproducing a mystical worldview. With the increasing complexity of the thinking system, the process of cognition rises to a theoretical level. The cognitive and value-semantic components of the cognitive process are separated, which in theology manifested itself in the formation of two approaches. The first one is aimed at searching for generalized meanings expressing the relations of the profane and sacred worlds, in the lifestyle and actions of a person. He was represented by the so-called Socratic schools (Cynics, Cyrenaics, Megarian school, etc.). The history of these schools has shown that such meanings are not expressed by generalizing the experience of individualized personality sensuality. Cultural and historical experience is needed here, which was realized as the need to give cosmic meaning to mental constructions. Therefore, the Cynics evolve towards Stoicism, the Cyrenaics towards Epicureanism, and the Megarians towards Neoplatonism. The second approach (the construction of “authentic divinity”, a conceptual model of the sacred world) was developed by Aristotle. He integrates ontology, cosmology and theology on the basis of the extremely abstract concept of God - the only, eternal, immobile, indivisible, incorporeal, not set in motion by anything else, the beginning of all beginnings and the cause of all causes, a pure theorist and a perfect philosopher contemplating his own thinking. At the same time, Aristotelian theology is not devoid of residual elements of unreflected subjectivity (mythologism, hylozoism, ethical and aesthetic features), which further opened up the possibility of its synthesis with the theologies of the Abrahamic religions, formed on the abstract-conceptual reconstruction of the Old and New Testament mythologies.
Jackie Wai Yi Wo, Weiyan Liao, Janet Hui-wen Hsiao
Abstract Previous studies suggested that social anxiety is associated with interpretation bias, theory of mind deficit, and eye gaze avoidance when identifying facial emotions. We tested the hypothesis that socially anxious individuals would be more affected by mask use during facial emotion recognition. 88 healthy undergraduates with various levels of social anxiety were invited. Participants judged the emotions of masked and unmasked facial expressions. Eye Movement Analysis with Hidden Markov Models was used to analyze participants’ eye movement patterns during the task. Potential confounders including gender, depressive symptoms, stress, and executive planning ability were controlled for in the analyses. Results failed to support our hypothesis. Instead, higher social anxiety was associated with higher accuracy rates for angry and fearful faces and lower false alarm rates for sad faces. Eye movement patterns were similar across social anxiety levels. Interestingly, an exploratory moderation analysis revealed that an increase in using a more eye-centered strategy due to mask use was significantly associated with a larger drop in accuracy rate for fearful faces among individuals with higher social anxiety, while non-significantly associated with a smaller drop among individuals with lower social anxiety. Thus, our study indicates social anxiety, at least at subclinical levels, may be associated with a generally heightened sensitivity to negative emotions. However, such heightened sensitivity diminishes if they switch to a more eye-centered strategy when viewing masked facial emotions. Potential mechanisms and implications were discussed.
Abstract Drivers must respond promptly to a wide range of possible road hazards, from trucks veering into their lane to pedestrians stepping onto the road. While drivers’ vision is tested at the point of licensure, visual function can degrade, and drivers may not notice how these changes impact their ability to notice and respond to events in the world in a timely fashion. To safely examine the potential consequences of visual degradation on hazard detection, we performed two experiments examining the impact of simulated optical blur on participants’ viewing duration thresholds in a hazard detection task, as a proxy for eyes-on-road duration behind the wheel. Examining this question with older and younger participants, across two experiments, we found an overall increase in viewing duration thresholds under blurred conditions, such that younger and older adults were similarly impacted by blur. Critically, in both groups, we found that the increment in thresholds produced by blur was larger for non-vehicular road hazards (pedestrians, cyclists and animals) compared to vehicular road hazards (cars, trucks and buses). This work suggests that blur poses a particular problem for drivers detecting non-vehicular road users, a population considerably more vulnerable in a collision than vehicular road users. These results also highlight the importance of taking into account the type of hazard when considering the impacts of blur on road hazard detection.
Digital media have changed the ways people mobilise and act collectively in times of crisis. During the Russian aggression against Ukraine, they have been at the forefront of war coverage giving users the possibility to share experiences of wartime reality. To critically engage in the mediatisation of the current war in the context of war witnessing, this article aims at studying the war diaries shared on media during the Russo-Ukrainian war. More precisely, this study focuses on the analysis of Facebook and MyWar platform digital war diaries that were triggered by Russia's full-fledged invasion of Ukraine 2022. The article seeks to understand the main tools for experiencing and constructing wartime reality and war trauma. The experimental work presented here provides one of the first investigations into how wartime witnessing of Russian aggression is happening and how it is shared in the contemporary space of digital media and fosters intellectual discussion about the dynamics of digital participation while witnessing and narrating war experiences.
Communication. Mass media, Consciousness. Cognition
Julie Bertels, Julie Bertels, Adelaïde de Heering
et al.
Snakes and primates have coexisted for thousands of years. Given that snakes are the first of the major primate predators, natural selection may have favored primates whose snake detection abilities allowed for better defensive behavior. Aligning with this idea, we recently provided evidence for an inborn mechanism anchored in the human brain that promptly detects snakes, based on their characteristic visual features. What are the critical visual features driving human neural responses to snakes is an unresolved issue. While their prototypical curvilinear coiled shape seems of major importance, it remains possible that the brain responds to a blend of other visual features. Coloration, in particular, might be of major importance, as it has been shown to act as a powerful aposematic signal. Here, we specifically examine whether color impacts snake-specific responses in the naive, immature infant brain. For this purpose, we recorded the brain activity of 6-to 11-month-old infants using electroencephalography (EEG), while they watched sequences of color or grayscale animal pictures flickering at a periodic rate. We showed that glancing at colored and grayscale snakes generated specific neural responses in the occipital region of the brain. Color did not exert a major influence on the infant brain response but strongly increased the attention devoted to the visual streams. Remarkably, age predicted the strength of the snake-specific response. These results highlight that the expression of the brain-anchored reaction to coiled snakes bears on the refinement of the visual system.
Over the past decades, the field of memory studies has produced a wealth of research on explicit (conscious, commemorative, official) collective memory. But beyond this realm of the visible, there is a largely hidden world of ‘implicit collective memory’. Elements of this invisible world include narrative schemata, stereotypes, patterns of framing, or world models, which are usually not explicitly known or addressed, but get passed on from generation to generation – in order to shape perception and action in new situations. Implicit collective memory is pervasive and powerful. But it is difficult to trace. It is therefore time to join forces for its systematic study: Drawing on approaches from psychology, sociology, communication studies, anthropology, media culture studies, literary studies, and mnemohistory, this article proposes some building blocks for a future transdisciplinary field of research on implicit collective memory.
Communication. Mass media, Consciousness. Cognition
Maayan Pereg, Danielle Harpaz, Katrina Sabah
et al.
The ability to learn abstract generalized structures of tasks is crucial for humans to adapt to changing environments and novel tasks. In a series of five experiments, we investigated this ability using a Rapid Instructed Task Learning paradigm (RITL) comprising short miniblocks, each involving two novel stimulus-response rules. Each miniblock included (a) instructions for the novel stimulus-response rules, (b) a NEXT phase involving a constant (familiar) intervening task (0–5 trials), (c) execution of the newly instructed rules (2 trials). The results show that including a NEXT phase (and hence, a prospective memory demand) led to relatively more robust abstract learning as indicated by increasingly faster responses with experiment progress. Multilevel modeling suggests that the prospective memory demand was just another aspect of the abstract task structure which has been learned.
Understanding the determinants of consciousness is crucial for theories that see it as functionally adaptive, and for explaining how consciousness affects higher-level cognition. The invention of continuous flash suppression (CFS), a long-duration suppression technique, resulted in a proliferation of research into the process of prioritization for consciousness. We developed a new technique, repeated masked suppression (RMS), that facilitates the measurement of long suppression times, but relies on different visual principles. RMS enables a theoretical leap: It allows scientists to examine the central process of prioritization across different suppression methods. In five experiments (n = 282) we collected chronometric RMS and CFS data, finding that the previously reported face inversion effect and the face priority-dimension generalize beyond CFS. Our results validate the use of multi-method designs in the study of prioritization for consciousness. Furthermore, we show how RMS could be used online to reach diverse samples, previously beyond the reach of consciousness science.
Allison J Brager, Sukru Demiral, John Choynowski
et al.
Objective: We constructed research camps at single-effort ultramarathons (50 and 100 miles) in
order to study human endurance capabilities under extreme sleep loss and stress. It takes > 24h,
on average, to run 100 miles on minimal sleep, allowing us to construct 24h human performance
profiles (HPP). Methods: We collected performance data plotted across time (race splits) and
distance (dropout rates; n=257), self-reported sleep and training patterns (n=83), and endpoint data
on cardiovascular fitness/adaptation to total sleep deprivation and extreme exercise/stress (n=127).
Results: In general, we found that self-reported napping was higher for 100-miler versus 50-miler
runners and that ultra-endurance racing may possibly pre-select for early morning risers. We also
compared HPPs between the first 50 miles completed by all runners in order to examine amplitude
and acrophase differences in performance using a cosinor model. We showed that even though all
runners slowed down over time, runners who completed a 100-miler ultramarathon had an earlier
acrophase shift in race pace compared to non-finishers. Discussion: We were able to identify timedependent
predictions on overall performance under minimal sleep, warranting the ultramarathon
athlete as a unique demographic for future study of sleep and chronobiological relationships in the
real world.
Chamini Wijesundera, Chamini Wijesundera, Algis J. Vingrys
et al.
Most clinical diagnoses of stroke are based on the persistence of symptoms relating to consciousness, language, visual-field loss, extraocular movement, neglect (visual), motor strength, and sensory loss following acute cerebral infarction. Yet despite the fact that most motor actions and cognition are driven by vision, functional vision per se is seldom tested rigorously during hospitalization. Hence we set out to determine the effects of acute stroke on functional vision, using an iPad application (Melbourne Rapid Field-Neural) that can be used to assess vision (visual acuity and visual field sensitivity) at the bedside or in the emergency ward in about 6 min per eye. Our convenience sample comprised 60 (29–88 years, 65 ± 14 years, 33 males) of 160 sequentially presenting first episode, acute (<7 days) ischemic stroke patients at Sunshine Hospital, Melbourne. One hundred patients were excluded due to existing eye disease, inadequate radiological confirmation, inability to comply with English directions or too ill to participate. Stroke cases were compared with 37 (29–85 years, 64 ± 12 years,14 males) similar-aged controls using a Mann-Whitney U-test. A significant loss in visual field sensitivity was measured in 68% of stroke cases (41/60, Mean Deviation: Stroke: −5.39 ± 6.26 dB, Control: 0.30 ± 0.60 dB, MWU = 246, p < 0.0001). Surprisingly, 44% (18/41) of these patients were unaware of their field loss. Although high contrast visual acuity was unaffected in most (55/60) patients, visual acuity-in-noise was reduced in 62% (37/60, Stroke: mean 6/12−2, log MAR 0.34 ± 0.21 vs. Control: mean 6/7·5–2, log MAR 0.14 ± 0.10; MWU = 470, p < 0.0001). Visual field defects were associated with all occipital, parietal and posterior cerebellar artery strokes while 9/15 middle cerebral artery lesions and 11 lesions in other brain regions were also associated with visual field defects. Our findings demonstrate that ~2/3 of acute first episode ischemic stroke patients experience acquired vision deficits, often unrelated to the confirmed lesion site. Our results also imply that visual dysfunction may be associated with a more generalized cerebral dysfunction while highlighting the need for bedside testing of vision for every stroke patient and demonstrating the translational clinical value of the “Melbourne Rapid Field- Neural” iPad application.Clinical Trial:http://www.ANZCTR.org.au/ACTRN12618001111268.aspx.
Keterampilan toileting merupakan salah satu tugas perkembangan pada masa anak usia dini untuk melatih kemandirian dalam kehidupan sehari-hari. Maka dirasa perlu untuk membiasakan anak agar dapat melakukan kegiatan toileting secara mandiri. Tujuan utama dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui apakah program “Aku Bisa ke Toilet Sendiri” dapat meningkatkan keterampilan toileting anak usia dini. Kuasi eksperimen yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah bentuk nonequivalent control group design. Partisipan terdiri dari 16 orang siswa yang berusia 4-6 tahun (8 siswa kelompok eksperimen dan 8 siswa kelompok control). Instrumen penelitian yang digunakan pada penelitian ini adalah skala keterampilan toileting, lembar observasi keterampilan toileting anak, serta modul program “Aku Bisa ke Toilet Sendiri”. Analisis data menggunakan independent sample T-test. Hasil analisis menunjukkan (t(14)=1,761; p=0,055, p>0,05). Tidak ada perbedaan skor yang signifikan antara kelompok eksperimen yang mendapat perlakuan berupa program “Aku Bisa ke Toilet Sendiri” dengan kelompok kontrol yang hanya mendapat perlakuan berupa pemutaran video yang bertemakan lagu-lagu mengenai keterampilan toileting.
Tomoya Nakamura, Trong Ha Dinh, Makoto Asai
et al.
Background: Human clinical studies reported that several electroencephalographical (EEG) parameters can be used as biomarkers of psychiatric disorders. EEGs recorded from non-human primates (monkeys) is useful for understanding of human pathologies of psychiatric disorders and development of new therapeutic agents. New methods: In this study, we expand a previous non-invasive head holding system with face masks for awake monkeys to be applied to scalp EEG recording. The new design of a head holding system allows to attach scalp EEG electrodes on the positions comparable to human electrode placement and to present auditory stimuli. Results: With this system, we could record auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) in auditory sensory gating and oddball paradigms, which are often used as biomarkers of psychiatric disorders in animal models and human patients. The recorded AEPs were comparable to previous human clinical data. Comparison with existing methods: Compared with previous non-invasive head holding systems, top, side (cheek and ears), and rear of the head can be open for attachment of EEG electrodes and auditory stimulation in the present system. Conclusions: The results suggest that the present system is useful in EEG recording from awake monkeys. Furthermore, this system can be applied to eye-tracking and chronic intra-cerebral recording experiments.
Intimate Partner Violence is a global health issue with higher prevalence
worldwide, mostly in women, higher social and economic costs and devastating
physical and mental health consequences for the victims. Sleep disturbances has
been associated with other mental health issues, being an important symptom when
diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or anxiety. It can also
constitute an important sign to help health professionals to identify potential
victims of intimate partner violence. This review paper main objectives are to
address the connection between intimate partner violence and sleep disruption,
the role and barriers of health professionals in screening this type of violence
when sleep problems are present, and to describe good practices in order to
identify these victims and to provide support. It has been found that intimate
partner victims commonly experience significant sleep disturbances that include
truncated sleep, nightmares and less restful sleep. Health professionals are
first-line professionals with a pivot role to screen and identify women victims.
However, a set of personal (e.g., lack of knowledge and inadequate perceptions
about violence, cultural issues) and organizational barriers (e.g., time
constraints, lack of training, absence of institutional protocols) may limit the
accurate reading of those symptoms. Accordingly, health professionals must be
alert not only to physical health conditions associated with violence (acute
physical injuries, chronic physical injuries, obstetric and genital injuries),
but also psychological problems, like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress
disorder, alcohol or drug misuse, sleep disturbances, insomnia and nightmares.
In the presence of alert symptoms related to violence, health professionals
become able to screen, identify and provide ongoing care for women, promoting a
trusting relationship and assuming an attentive non-judgmental listening.
In the research literature, attention and working memory are often intimately linked. In his excellent target article, Oberauer concludes that attention is not a necessary requirement for working memory maintenance. In our reply, we argue that attention is an emergent property of maintaining the current task goal. Humans can flexibly transfer the storage of information between different states and different memory systems as the need arises. Only information in service of currently active task goals requires attentional resources for maintenance. In this state, memoranda can bias behavior and are susceptible to interference from additional attention demanding tasks.