Domains Of Praxis Research Articles

It really does depend: Towards an epistemology (and ontology) for everyday social pedagogical practice

Understandings of knowledge in social work, in the UK at least, are based on an assumption that theory – increasingly derived from ‘scientific’ or ‘evidence-based’ perspectives – can be abstracted and applied to practice. Essentially, knowledge acquisition and utilisation are seen as transactional, instrumental endeavours. Such a view does not fit with the realities of everyday social pedagogical practice. This article begins to develop an alternative conception of social work/social pedagogical knowledge from an Aristotelean position, within which the relationship between theory and practice happens in the domain of praxis; this is not a direct mapping of theory onto practice but operates in a constant dialectic within which one informs and indeed collapses into the other. Effective praxis requires Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of phronesis (practical reasoning or judgement). Phronesis understands practice within its wider moral purpose and foregrounds the virtues and dispositions of practitioners rather than a set of rules. Knowing and being (epistemology and ontology) therefore come together in how practitioners engage in everyday practice. This proposition challenges dominant technical and instrumental conceptions of knowledge and, more generally, of the way in which professional practice is currently understood.

Impact of mass effect, tumor location, age, and surgery on the cognitive outcome of patients with high-grade gliomas: a longitudinal study

High-grade gliomas are the most frequently occurring brain tumors and carry unfavorable prognosis. Literature is controversial regarding the effects of surgery on cognitive functions. We analyzed a homogenous population of 30 patients with high-grade glioma who underwent complete resection. Patients underwent extensive neuropsychological analysis before surgery, 7 days after surgery, and approximately 40 days after surgery, before adjuvant treatments. Thirty-four neuropsychological tests were administered in the language, memory, attention, executive functions, and praxis domains. The preoperative percentage of patients with impairment in the considered tests ranged from 0% to 53.3% (mean 20.9%). Despite a general worsening at early follow-up, a significant recovery was observed at late follow-up. Preoperative performances in language and verbal memory tasks depended on the joint effect of tumor volume, volume of surrounding edema, and tumor localization, with major deficits in patients with left lateralized tumor, especially insular and temporal. Preoperative performances in attention and constructive abilities tasks depended on the joint effect of tumor volume, volume of surrounding edema, and patient age, with major deficits in patients ≥ 65 years old. Recovery at late follow-up depended on the volume of resected tumor, edema resorption, and patient age. Longitudinal neuropsychological performance of patients affected by high-grade glioma depends, among other factors, on the complex interplay of tumor volume, volume of surrounding edema, tumor localization, and patient age. Reported results support the definition of criteria for surgical indication based on the above factors. They may be used to propose more customized surgical, oncological, and rehabilitative strategies.

Cognitive Subdomain Responses to Galantamine in Alzheimer’s Disease

We investigated the effects of galantamine on cognitive subdomains in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Sixty-six patients with mild-to-moderate AD received open-label galantamine for 52 weeks. Cognitive function was measured using the Korean version of the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-cognitive subscale (ADAS-cog-K). Response to galantamine was defined as "improvement or no deterioration" on the total scores of the ADAS-cog-K at 26 weeks. In the overall intent-to-treat sample, we found less cognitive decline during 26 and 52 weeks than the expected untreated course as predicted by Stern's equation. The operationally defined response rate at 26 weeks was 66.7%. The responders differed significantly from the nonresponders only in the memory and language domains but not in the domains of praxis or frontal/executive function or in secondary outcome measures of neuropsychiatric symptoms and activities of daily living. The subdomain analysis revealed an effect of galantamine on preservation of memory that was not apparent in the overall analysis. Failure to achieve responder status by 26 weeks was associated with no further possibility of response.

Mirror system activity for action and language is embedded in the integration of dorsal and ventral pathways

We develop the view that the involvement of mirror neurons in embodied experience grounds brain structures that underlie language, but that many other brain regions are involved. We stress the cooperation between the dorsal and ventral streams in praxis and language. Both have perceptual and motor schemas but the perceptual schemas in the dorsal path are affordances linked to specific motor schemas for detailed motor control, whereas the ventral path supports planning and decision making. This frames the hypothesis that the mirror system for words evolved from the mirror system for actions to support words-as-phonological-actions, with semantics provided by the linkage to neural systems supporting perceptual and motor schemas. We stress the importance of computational models which can be linked to the parametric analysis of data and conceptual analysis of these models to support new patterns of understanding of the data. In the domain of praxis, we assess the FARS model of the canonical system for grasping, the MNS models for the mirror system for grasping, and the Augmented Competitive Queuing model that extends the control of action to the opportunistic scheduling of action sequences and also offers a new hypothesis on the role of mirror neurons in self action. Turning to language, we use Construction Grammar as our linguistic framework to get beyond single words to phrases and sentences, and initiate analysis of what brain functions must complement mirror systems to support this functionality.