Instinctive Response Research Articles

Using the concept of ideomotor therapy in the treatment of a patient with chronic neck pain: A single system research design

Background A contemporary understanding of pain neurophysiology describes the experience of pain as a multi-system output mechanism in which the perception and localisation of pain sensations cannot be separated from concurrent motor output responses generated to resolve a perceived threat to tissues. It has been suggested that the resolution of pain is dependant on an appropriate motor response, and that such a response should proceed as the result of instinctive, in-built mechanisms. Ideomotor movements constitute the prevailing expression of instinctive movement response in humans. The enhancement of corrective ideomotor movement expression may lead to improvements in pain intensity and disability in symptomatic patients whose instinctive responses have been suppressed. A manual technique can be employed therapeutically to elicit fuller expression of ideomotor movement in patients suffering pain. Objectives To document the outcome of short-term pain and disability in a patient with chronic neck and shoulder girdle pain treated with ideomotor-based manual therapy and self-management exercise using a single system experimental design. Methods A prospective A–B–C single system experimental design consisting of a 3-week baseline data collection phase (A), a 3-week treatment and self-management phase (B), and a 3-week self-management phase (C). Treatment and self-management were provided using a light touch technique based on ideomotor principles. Five validated outcome measures were recorded weekly and displayed graphically for visual inspection and analysis. Results Visual analysis of the plotted outcome measures as a function of time indicated a reduction in pain intensity and perceived disability concurrent with the introduction of treatment (Phase B). These changes appear to be clinically relevant. Conclusions The results imply a relationship between the introduction of ideomotor-based manual therapy and self-management, and clinically relevant reductions in pain intensity and perceived disability in a patient suffering severe chronic neck and shoulder girdle pain. It is hoped that this study will provoke further interest in this concept and draw attention to a possible mechanism and explanation for some of the effects of commonly used indirect manual therapy techniques.

Did Descartes Have a Jamesian Theory of the Emotions?

René Descartes and William James had “body first” theories of the passions or emotions, according to which sensory stimulation causes a bodily response that then causes an emotion. Both held that this bodily response also causes an initial behavioral response (such as flight from a bear) without any cognitive intervention such as an “appraisal” of the object or situation. From here they differ. Descartes proposed that the initial processes that produce fear and running are entirely mechanical. Even human beings initially run from the bear as a result of physiological processes alone, without mental contribution. These physiological processes also cause a mental passion, which is a cognitive representation of the situation (as regards novelty, benefit, or harm), and which motivates the will to continue the behavior already in progress. According to James, emotions are caused by instinctive bodily responses that are triggered by noncognitive but nonetheless conscious perceptual states. Emotions are bare feelings of internal physiological stirrings that accompany an instinctual response that has evolved through Darwinian natural selection. Jamesian emotions initially have no motivational or cognitive content, which they subsequently acquire through learning. The methodological legitimacy of comparing these positions across the centuries is defended, and the two theories are compared to recent theories.

Bach: Luther’s Musical Prophet?

It is impossible to read much theological analysis of Bach without encountering Martin Luther. The reformer’s name is ubiquitous: he is given both as source and as ultimate authority for the theological ideas supposedly expressed in Bach’s music. Most would agree that Luther provides a vital context for interpreting Bach’s sacred music.Perhaps it is unsurprising that musicologists have turned to Luther when interpreting Bach. Despite many critiques of the hermeneutic method-such as that of Carolyn Abbate (2004)-musicologists still search out meaning in music by investigating a suitable “horizon of expectations” within which to situate music’s meaning and affect historically. My own view is that hermeneutics is inescapable to most of us brought up within the musicological tradition; I tend to agree with Karol Berger’s assertion, contra Abbate, that “we cannot help it: we are hermeneutic creatures through and through”. Abbate argues for the privileging of the experience of performed music over its hermeneutic interpretation; Berger counters that, while aesthetic experience is indeed an important and under-appreciated part of academic study, the hermeneutic and the experiential cannot be so neatly separated. I side with Berger on this point: whether because of training, conditioning, or instinctive response, many-perhaps most-listeners to Bach’s music seem to want to contextualize and understand theirresponses by studying what Bach himself might have thought about his music’s purpose and origin.

Equine learning behaviour: Limits of ability and ability limits of trainers

Towards the end of their review, Murphy and Arkins (2007) oint out that for horses to successfully adapt to domestic life, hey must learn to suppress instinctive responses and learn alterative behaviour that is acceptable to their trainers and that fits ithin the constraints of the domestic environment. We ask a lot rom a plains living prey species when we bring it into the connes of a stable, ask it suppress it’s flee instincts and instead learn o problem solve the commands of its riders. Yet, as Murphy nd Arkins (2007) acknowledge, despite the high economic and ompanion value humans place on their horses, there is surrisingly low levels of understanding of the learning ability of orses, and there is lamentably scant evidence of knowledge nd application of the principles of learning by their trainers McClean and McGreevy, 2004). Murphy and Arkins (2007) introduce us to Thomas’ (1986) ierarchy of learning ability (Table 1), which provides a frameork for hanging research evidence to support a review of earning abilities in horses. The first three levels of this hierarchy re the basic building blocks of horse training. (1) Habitation to nvironmental stimuli to suppress instinctive flee responses so orses are safe to manage and ride; and sensitisation to cues iven as aids. (2) Classical conditioning of commands to unconitional stimuli to elicit a desired response is an essential part of raining, for example substituting a voice command for a flick f a lunging whip. (3) Simple operant conditioning of desirble responses is usually based upon negative reinforcement, ith positive reinforcement of the desired behavioural response nd punishment of the undesirable from the range of potential esponses made by the horse. The fourth learning ability level, chaining operant responses, orms part of more advanced training where the horse is asked to erform a series of moves before being reinforced. Good trainers

Elgon

Elgon Lily Mabura (bio) Her face was averted beneath the reed hat but he could already tell that she did not like him any more than he liked her. They were standing under the narrow verandah of the forest station, and a knot of autocatalytic despair was tightening in his gut. His despair was mostly brought on by the rain, which had been falling nonstop for three days. There was dark mud everywhere, as on the shores of the Congo River, and he could smell it deep in his lungs. The station's warden was huddled inside the dank stone building, a walking marionette in threadbare fatigues. "Martin . . . Dr. Martin Honge," he now jabbered. "You're the man from BIOTA Africa, aren't you?" Be gracious, Martin, he told himself. Gracious. So he took a step back inside and said: "Yes. If you should recall, sir, I had asked for someone—" "Who has, preferably, worked with olive baboons before," the forest warden said before he could finish, his glazed cataracts impatient. "What is this? You think she has not?" Bugger the warden, he thought, back on the verandah. The girl, woman—he really could not tell which—would have to do. He wondered where she had found the small yellow dress; it clung to her skeletal body like old crepe, in thin web-like patterns. She needed, he thought, a new yellow dress. "I want us to begin by identifying a suitable baboon troop to observe," he said. "Suitable?" she asked. "One with the most females," he elaborated. "I'm collecting data on mating behavior." She stepped out into the rain, as if glad to escape the little confining verandah, and headed for a tapering path leading into a dense shrub of wet Dracaena fragrans. She walked with surefooted steps, treading the running mud proudly. She held her head high, as fearless as a jungle queen, while her Gabon Viper fang earrings dangled from each side like twin charms. He had worried that she might be afraid of the forest, but she obviously was not. He saw that now—it was evident in her walk, a trait he had learnt to recognize in guides. How easy it was to lose one's mind and body to this natural phenomenon when there was nothing to cast one's eyes upon all day but rows upon rows of tree trunks lined with a wet, moquette-like surface of lichen and moss. But for a good guide, nothing could help if you really got lost, not your over-anxious mind, not your soul, not civilization—least of all civilization, with its basic first aid kit and emergency rations, anti-venom shots, tubes of the most potent antihistamines, a tranquilizer gun, a flare gun, a pistol . . . Well, a pistol perhaps would, but only if you were willing to pull the trigger as Kop Bachunn, his fellow researcher, had three weeks ago. [End Page 527] It was an angst which came upon you, Martin had concluded, experienced in its pure wholesome state in this wet bizarre foliage and scampering shadows. Some men, like Kop Bachunn, could not endure that. He had brought Kop, delirious with fever, from the middle of the forest, to a Red Cross hospital along the Congo River. When he had visited the following day he had found an empty bed, a bloody mess on the white sheets, and a hole in the mattress. You could have easily mistaken it all for the avant-garde. The doctor had brought him Kop's pistol on a silver hospital tray, a livid look on his black face, a note of contempt in his voice—like that of a man who had been thwarted in his task. He had refused to be bothered with a diagnosis of Kop's illness. "What's the use?" he had asked. "He is dead." They came upon the baboons suddenly: wet hairy bodies swaying from one tree to another. They barked and leaped and gathered their young closer to themselves. Even as a boy he had felt an instinctive response to that primate pandemonium at an animal orphanage in Nairobi, an understanding only possible in the first ages. Is...

Case Analysis in Clinical Ethics

This book demonstrates clinical ethical deliberation in practice. It takes a complex clinical case and shows how it can be analysed from different theoretical ethical perspectives. The history is presented by a clinical geneticist and includes her own narrative, and those of the two relevant patients, their general practitioners and an oncologist. It relates the story of a young mother, with a strong family history of breast cancer, who is contemplating prophylactic bilateral mastectomy. Unknown to her, but known to the genetics team, her aunt, who has been treated for breast cancer, is a carrier of the relevant gene mutation. This knowledge could allow predictive testing of the young woman—if the result were negative, mastectomy would be unnecessary. The aunt, however, refuses to divulge her clinical and genetic history, despite strenuous attempts at persuasion by the genetics team. The dilemma is whether to breach the aunt's confidentiality in order to provide substantial benefit to her niece, or to respect confidentiality at significant cost to the younger woman. The case is analysed by experts in several theoretical ethical approaches. These include the mainstream utilitarian and ‘four principle’ perspectives, and approaches which are currently attracting increasing interest, including narrative, virtue and feminist ethics, hermeneutic, post-structural and phenomenological analysis, and deliberative and empirical ethics. Finally, the clinical geneticist and the editors offer clinical and philosophical reflections, respectively, on the exercise. All chapters are written clearly, even those on hermeneutic and post-structuralist analysis. This should not only enlighten, but also reassure, the clinician reader whose instinctive response to these latter approaches might be one of suspicion. Though the case history was comprehensive, several ethicists laid emphasis on different aspects of it, requested more information or suggested that some relevant information be teased out in greater detail. This shows how different ethical methodological approaches can lend richness and depth to the analysis of a clinical ethical problem. Perhaps not surprisingly, the ethicists reached a range of differing conclusions, from justifying breach of the aunt's confidentiality to the opposite conclusion. Several experts acknowledged that neither their own approaches nor the alternatives could solve the dilemma. This is not necessarily a comfort to the scepticist, rather it emphasizes that ethical deliberation serves not necessarily to compute the correct answer, but to ensure that all relevant information and factors have been considered and given due weight. The book succeeds in its aim of illuminating the wide array of methods and theoretical approaches currently in use in clinical ethics. It would be of interest and value to trainees and career doctors in general and specialist practice.

Erectile dysfunction in Fragile X patients

To report the clinical experience during collecting sperm samples in the Fragile X syndrome (FXS) male patients. Two different polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based methods were used for the molecular diagnosis of FXS. Sperm collection was done mostly according to the laboratory manual of the World Health Organization. We failed to collect sperm samples from five Fragile X subjects aged 18-60 years as a result of an unexpected erectile dysfunction (ED). Multiple examinations of the same subject at different times, and of different subjects from different provinces examined by different physicians, showed the same result consistently in all the five subjects. Erectile reflex is an instinctive response in all healthy males. The absence of erection can be caused by hormonal, physical or neuronal malfunction. As hormonal profiles were reported to be generally normal in Fragile X men, we propose that an unknown physical factor or the neuronal circuit, or both, underlying the erection is compromised. The finding of this symptom in Fragile X patients may help better understand the clinical spectrum and pathogeneses of the disease.

On the Role of Reparative Processes in Childhood: Pathological Development and Therapeutic Change

This article continues my discussion of the process of therapeutic change in psychodynamic child therapy. In a previous essay (Barish, 2004), I stressed the therapeutic benefit of enhancing the child's positive affects as well as developing his or her capacity to tolerate painful affects. I now propose an extension of these ideas, a perspective on the nature of psychopathology in childhood and the implications of this perspective for our understanding of the therapeutic process, based on the clinical concepts of emotional injury and normal reparative processes. Every emotional injury evokes in the child a complex affective experience, comprised of painful emotions as well as an intensification of the child's instinctive self-protective responses—some form of withdrawal and/or retaliatory response. In normal psychological development, as in healthy biological systems, reparative processes function to heal injuries. Failure of these normal reparative processes sets in motion malignant psychological events in the mind of the child: painful affects and associated fantasies increasingly dominate the child's sense of self and others, leading to prolonged states of withdrawal and demoralization or defiant rage. The therapeutic process, especially the therapist's empathy, intervenes to arrest this malignant development, helping unlock the child's exuberant energies and restore in the child a more confident and joyful participation in life.

East European epicentre

‘Poland’ may not be the normal instinctive response on hearing the words ‘electronics industry’. But, in a determined and very pragmatic fashion, the homeland of Jan Czochralski and his single-crystal growth method has set out to make its mark as a significant electronics location in Europe. While it is already an acknowledged source of highly skilled analogue engineers, the Warsaw-Poznan-Gdansk triangle is home to a small but nicely balanced infrastructure for a growing electronics industry.

The Opto-Kinetic Cervical Reflex Observed in Pilots Viewing a Synthetic Vision Display and Electronic Attitude Indicator

Prior research indicates that during roll maneuvers in visual meteorological conditions (VMC) pilots exhibit the opto-kinetic cervical reflex (OKCR), an instinctive postural response that humans use to maintain awareness of their spatial orientation. This simulator study was conducted to see if a moving-horizon attitude indicator (AI), electronic attitude indicator (EAI), or Synthetic Vision System (SVS) would elicit the OKCR. The current research found evidence of the OKCR in pilots who viewed both an SVS display and an EAI. Pilots viewing a standard moving-horizon AI produced very little OKCR response.

Molecular detection of pheromone signals in mammals: from genes to behaviour.

The instinctive and species-specific behavioural response of animals to pheromones has intrigued biologists for a long time. Recent molecular and electrophysiological approaches have provided new insights into the mechanisms of pheromone detection in rodents and into the sensory coding of pheromone signals that lead to gender discrimination and aggressive behaviour.

A day at the museum: science centres and museums play an increasingly important role in bringing science and technology to the public.

Blue, yellow, fluorescent lighting, computer terminals in every corner, exhibits resembling a Fisher Price toy or a wooden building kit—museums and science centres nowadays appear to be a cross between a computer technology exhibition and a child's dream of a playground. They reflect many of the efforts that are currently being devoted to making science and technology interesting for the younger generation, the one that will give rise to the scientists and engineers of the future. But also as science and technology increasingly impact on society, the 'shelf‐life' of formal education is becoming shorter and informal lifelong learning is becoming more important. The result is a flurry of activities instigated by politicians, scientists and educators to bring science to the people and increase their understanding. National Science Week, science buses touring the countryside and visitor days in research institutes are just a few examples of how they are reaching out to the public and, importantly, to the next generation of students. Museums and science centres form a prominent base for the communication of science, but despite their comparatively long history, the art of exhibiting science is relatively in its infancy. Dating back to the late 19th century, museums were then the theme parks of the day and important collections have been amassed in such mighty institutions as London's Science Museum, Munich's Deutsches Museum, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Particularly during the last decade, the USA has pioneered the creation of more informal interactive science centres, most famously with the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1969. Today, virtually every major American city boasts its own version, some 300 in all. Europe has also witnessed a similar trend, to the extent that the distinction between museums and science centres …

Culture as Action

Culture as Action

A London sumting dis ...

There are plenty of opportunities for sophistry in playing with the concept of postcoloniality. There may even be political gains to be made if the term can help to promote coalitions between marginalized and victimized people whose immiseration is a residual product of the shocks that followed the loss of Britain's empire. But the vicissitudes of most postcolonial theorizing hold scant appeal for me. The postcolonial character of contemporary London has a simple facticity which leaves it not really amenable to debate. The spirit in which our discussion of it is engaged during the next two days of this conference is therefore absolutely critical. We can appreciate London's cosmopolitan vernaculars, its vernacular cosmopolitanisms and the patterns of resistance to both. We will observe the city's ethnographic complexities. Its perverse heterocultural details may bring pleasure as well as fear, but the temptation to evaluate and assess contemporary London as though it could be a simpler, more homogeneous and less irreducibly diverse place is something we should regard with the utmost suspicion. That impulse is linked not only to fantasies of return to the imaginary homogeneity of past whiteness and the restoration of Britain's imperial status; it is also marked by the lingering suggestion that 'race', like the black bodies that are its primary bearers and signifiers, belongs elsewhere. In turn, this can feed the comforting idea that true-Brits have been suffering from the misguided social engineering of a race relations industry that has curbed their instinctive responses of suspicion and hatred with the blunt instrument of the law. At their worst, these views endorse an analysis of empire and colony as essentially unrelated to the ecologies of belonging created in the core of the old imperial system. Colonial history gets allocated and confined to its victims. Any postcolonial opportunities remain theirs alone. I want to suggest a different orientation that has the additional merit of bypassing any leftover agonizing about being black and British. It is premised on the idea that colonial cultures, aspi? rations and mentalities extended into and conditioned the life of this metropolis in the most intimate and comprehensive ways over long periods of time. The boundaries of postcoloniality became blurred, but its irreversibility now constitutes the starting point. From this angle, the basic idea of postcolonial London has such a clanging, vivid obviousness about it that to unwittingly endorse a game of 'postcolonial London for or against?' would be absurd. To engage in sport of that type brings new dangers now that the reinvention of conservatism is seeking new language and imagery with which to revive and legitimate the oldest of Ultranationalist and racist anxieties. The close associations between the history of Britain's phobic responses to the difficult presence of difference and the life of this city have been repeatedly overlooked. Sustained confrontations between same and different, black and white, native and interloper, have been staged for the benefit of the national community as a whole in urban environments, usually though not exclusively those that London has supplied. This politics of 'race' and representation has featured a cavalcade of mythic figures. Illegal immigrants and black power militants, maimed imams, muggers, dreads, posses, Yardies, steamers, gangsters, fundamentalists and Holy Smokes are only a few of the horrifying characters that have brought inner London's testing encounters with Middle England to vivid life. Their potency was enhanced where they were revealed to prey upon the wholesome, beleaguered and inappropriately tolerant responses of lost and lonely people whose roots went deeper into the local landscape than the immigrants could ever manage. Conservative and nationalist opponents of Britain's postcolonial culture produced grim evidence drawn from the destruction and transformation of London's inner cities to support their cause. In their populist political imagination, new commonwealth immi? grants completed the tasks that Hitler's Luftwaffe had been unable to accomplish. The noisy alien encampments that had sprung up where peace and quiet had formerly reigned supplied incontrovertible proof of a catastrophic confrontation between incompatible cultures and civilizations. Charles Moore, now editor of the Telegraph, spoke for this tendency in his 1982 response to Lord Scarman's report on the Brixton riots. He offered a memorable diagnosis of Lambeth's ills that linked mass immigration to the other statist perfidies of modernizing Labour in government: Unhappiness exists because an old and coherent way of life has been broken up, not really by the ordinary passage of time, or even by

The tropical Asian house

A selection of 27 outstanding contemporary houses from South East Asia; a culturally-rich region which has seen in recent years some of the world's most dynamic architectural development. Fom Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka, this selection represents the work of talented architects including Geoffrey Bawa and Charles Correa, as well as others who are searching for their own cultural imprint. The interior and exterior of each house is shown. Each project is described and analysed by the author who focuses his instinctive response to each house in its particular geographical context The cultural influences affecting the organization of spaces are identified together with a study of how tradition, religion, Western ideas and the forces of globalization fuse together to produce a distinctive contemporary tropical architecture.

Conflict Management

A school leader cannot avoid dealing with conflict. The successful leader is one that will be proactive and anticipates problems. The role of the school leader in resolving conflict is one that requires outstanding interpersonal skills as well as an ability to think critically. For a leader to deal more successfully with conflict, it is critically important that one is cognizant of many strategies and models necessary to resolve a disagreement toward a successful resolution. When a conflict occurs, the instinctive response of most persons involved is to win. Conflict management techniques are most definitely some of the most valuable tools we can teach all people in leadership positions. This article provides a foundational background of conflict, as well as conflict management methods one may adopt to enhance their leadership style.

Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs

Two themes which figure repeatedly in the history of the Western Church are the contrasting ones of tradition and renewal. To emphasize tradition, or continuity, is to stress the divine element in the continuous collective teaching and witness of the Church. To call periodically for renewal and reform is to acknowledge that any institution composed of people will, with time, lose its pristine vigour or deviate from its original purpose. At certain periods in church history the tension between these two themes has broken out into open conflict, as happened with such dramatic results in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformers seem to present one of the most extreme cases where the desire for renewal triumphed over the instinct to preserve continuity of witness. A fundamentally novel analysis of the process by which human souls were saved was formulated by Martin Luther in the course of debate, and soon adopted or reinvented by others. This analysis was then used as a touchstone against which to test and to attack the most prominent features of contemporary teaching, worship, and church polity. In so far as any appeal was made to Christian antiquity, it was to the scriptural texts and to the early Fathers; though even the latter could be selected and criticized if they deviated from the primary articles of faith. There was, then, no reason why any of the Reformers should have sought to justify their actions by reference to any forbears or ‘forerunners’ in the Middle Ages, whether real or spurious. On the contrary, Martin Luther’s instinctive response towards those condemned by the medieval Church as heretics was to echo the conventional and prejudiced hostility felt by the religious intelligentsia towards those outside their pale.

Polowania wielokrotne rysia i lisa oraz wykorzystywanie zdobyczy przez niektóre ssaki drapieżne

Three observations on multiple hunting are reported and analysed. Wild lynx Lynx lynx Linnaeus, 1758 killed 3 roe deer Capreolus capreolus (Linnaeus, 1758) and hurt another one during one night in the forest enclosure. The lynx carefully covered the quarries with grass, litter and dirt and was returning to feed on the cache during 5 consecutive nights. Tamed female red fox Vulpes vulpes Linnaeus, 1758 rearing young was observed during a multiple hunt in a farmyard when it killed 5 domestic hens and negligently buried them in sand. The same vixen was observed when it got into the house and hurt 5 hens during 1-min hunt. In the first and the second case the predators tried to obtain and secure as much food as the favourable conditions would allow. The multiple hunting was undertaken after the evaluation of promising situation. The third case was the classic example of so-called hen house syndrome. Therefore, multiple hunting and surplus killing by carnivores cannot be regarded the incidental and instinctive response to superabundant, vulnerable prey which then is not consumed but mainly wasted. Multiple hunting is often an adaptive behaviour, and is undertaken by a predator after the evaluation of a chance to acquire much food at low expense. Surplus food may be valuable or even critical during reproduction period of predator or in unfavourable conditions. Observation on polecat Mustela putorius Linnaeus, 1758 showed that the access to superabundant food ensured 14-day maintenance of a predator in winter.

Bobcat Year by Hope Ryden

358 Western American Literature bond with those who have gone before her. Moffat writes of a literal, pioneer trail and a metaphoric, personal one. She tells us that for her they fuse, that the literal and the metaphoric come together in the western moun­ tains. At the start of her trip, Moffat’s first descriptions are so factual that it is not easy to recognize preoccupations with states of mind. The land, not Moffat, is “alien”; morning is “like a bad day in the Scottish Highlands.” (She had lost a friend there.) Moffat, as seen by us through language, is unresponsive, better-oriented to things she already knows, caring about quantitative measure, using language that is controlled, unimaginative, unfeeling, but without falsification. “The country looked flat, but once into it, it was a maze of dry gullies of varying depths.” By Wyoming there are changes. Moffat reports herself “punch-drunk with images.” As she becomes changed by experience her sentences expand, her ideas become more complex, and image and metaphor become abundant. She uses cliches, seldom chooses what gives pleasure as a perfect word; and yet words work for her. She can call a “vista” a “world,” and when her statement comes after paragraphs of increasingly-expansive prose a reader can set aside cliché and believe that Moffat means and feels that what she looks out on could in fact be everything. Hard. Road West depends on language that makes dual statements. The language of experience, that looks as if it derived from an actual preliminary journal, gives us emergent metaphor and style that come spontaneously when life becomes joyous; superimposed, controlling metaphors order the book and establish its overview. Sometimes the languages are distinct; sometimes they blend; always they interrelate. We cannot tell how near an actual journal, how near spontaneity the book is. And metaphor can tease. Specu­ lation on those problems could well be a reader’s hard road west. JOANNA LLOYD, Rutgers University Bobcat Year. By Hope Ryden. (New York: The Viking Press, 1981. 211 pages, $15.95.) Nature writing as a literary genre has become increasingly popular as the public’s environmental awareness has increased. Consequently, there have emerged a number of writers with the special combination of creative writing ability and scientific knowledge necessary for true nature writing. The combination of undistorted, unsentimentalized factual accuracy with vivid, evocative writing that creates an experience of nature in the imagina­ tion of the reader makes special demands that not every writer can meet. Hope Ryden is one who has achieved that combination. Reviews 359 This is Ryden’s seventh book about wild animals, three of those for children. Her others have dealt with wild horses, coyotes, and the Florida Key deer. She is an accomplished nature photographer as well as writer, and this book, like her others, presents a series of photographs to illustrate her text. This book, however, is different in approach. Her original plan had been to observe a captive bobcat family from the birth of a litter of kittens on through their growth and development. When her plans went irretriev­ ably awry with the death of the litter, she was left with a variety of observa­ tions of and experiences with bobcats in various parts of the West, but with no other unifying element than the species itself. Ryden solved her problems by writing a fictional narrative of a year in the lives of a population of bobcats in Idaho. Such an approach presents many dangers to the nature writer — anthropomorphism, sentimentality, excessive dramatization — but Ryden has avoided them all. Birth and sudden death, hunting and play, failure and success are all presented sim­ ply as accepted elements in the life of a wild predator whose survival is always precarious. In such a presentation, she deals with behavioral patterns, including problem-solving techniques and motivation, but she carefully keeps these processes within the range of a bobcat’s conscious awareness and instinctive response. She uses patterns she has actually observed in various contexts in various places, fitting them into her narrative framework in ways that seem acceptably probable. Ryden’s style is clear, direct, and interesting without being overly dra­ matic. Her sympathy...

Instinctive Navigation of Birds … food for medical thought?

It is suggested that instinctive phototactic responses can offer a base explanation for a previously inexplicable scientific event … avian migration. Hopefully this article will stimulate medical research into the avian pecten structure and its neurological associations. This short article is based on an introductory extract from the author's 1981 publication ‘Instinctive Navigation of Birds’ which runs to nearly 100,000 words and 105 diagrams.