Picture In Mind Research Articles

Social Cognition in Parkinson's Disease after Focused Ultrasound Subthalamotomy: A Controlled Study.

Social cognition (SC) encompasses a set of cognitive functions that enable individuals to understand and respond appropriately to social interactions. Although focused ultrasound subthalamotomy (FUS-STN) effectively treats Parkinson's disease (PD) clinical motor features, its impact and safety on cognitive-behavioral interactions/interpersonal awareness are unknown. This study investigated the effects of unilateral FUS-STN on facial emotion recognition (FER) and affective and cognitive theory of mind (ToM) in PD patients from a randomized sham-controlled trial (NCT03454425). Subjects performed SC evaluation before and 4 months after the procedure while still under blind assessment conditions. The SC assessment included the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces task for FER, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) test for affective ToM, and The Theory of Mind Picture Stories Task (ToM PST) (order, questions, and total score) for cognitive ToM. The active treatment group showed anecdotal-to-moderate evidence of no worsening in SC after FUS-STN. Anecdotal evidence for an improvement was recognized in the SC score changes, from baseline to post-treatment, for the active treatment group compared with sham for the RME, ToM PST order, ToM PST total, FER total, and recognition of fear, disgust, and anger. This study provides the first evidence that unilateral FUS-STN does not impair social cognitive abilities, indicating that it can be considered a safe treatment approach for this domain in PD patients. Furthermore, the results suggest FUS-STN may even lead to some improvement in social cognitive outcomes, which should be considered as a preliminary finding requiring further investigation with larger samples sizes. © 2024 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

New clinical insight in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and innovative clinical development from the non-profit repurposing trial of the old drug guanabenz.

Drug repurposing is considered a valid approach to accelerate therapeutic solutions for rare diseases. However, it is not as widely applied as it could be, due to several barriers that discourage both industry and academic institutions from pursuing this path. Herein we present the case of an academic multicentre study that considered the repurposing of the old drug guanabenz as a therapeutic strategy in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The difficulties encountered are discussed as an example of the barriers that academics involved in this type of study may face. Although further development of the drug for this target population was hampered for several reasons, the study was successful in many ways. Firstly, because the hypothesis tested was confirmed in a sub-population, leading to alternative innovative solutions that are now under clinical investigation. In addition, the study was informative and provided new insights into the disease, which are now giving new impetus to laboratory research. The message from this example is that even a repurposing study with an old product has the potential to generate innovation and interest from industry partners, provided it is based on a sound rationale, the study design is adequate to ensure meaningful results, and the investigators keep the full clinical development picture in mind.

RESPONS PESERTA DIDIK TERHADAP BAHAN AJAR E-MODUL BERBANTUAN APLIKASI CANVA PADA PEMBELAJARAN TEKS FABEL KELAS VII SMP

Fable text learning is studied at the SMP level which conveys a picture of human behavior and mind played by animals. Based on the observation of experience that has been done, thisrresearch is motivateddby the limitedduse of teachinggmaterials in classsVII fable texts. Observations in the field found that the teaching materials used were only based on textbooks. This is due to the limitations of the projector in the class. Thus, the purposeewas to find out students' responsessto e-moduletteaching materials assisted by the Canva application in class VII fable text learning. The methoddused is a qualitativeemethod with a descriptiveeapproach. The data collectionntechniqueuused is by providing questionnaires to find out student respondents to teaching materials. The questionnaire consists of 10 statements covering the use of teaching materials, the ease and difficulty of providing e-modules. The population to be taken is class VII students with a total of 28 students' questionnaire assessment using a Likert scale guide 1-4. Based on the resultssof data processinggin thissstudy, student respondents in learning to write fable text using e-moduletteaching materials assisted by the Canvaaapplication received good responses from students SMP 3 Batujajar in class VII.

Cognitive Functions, Theory of Mind Abilities, and Personality Dispositions as Potential Predictors of the Detection of Reciprocity in Deceptive and Cooperative Contexts through Different Age Groups.

Reciprocity is a fundamental element in social interactions and implies an adequate response to the previous actions of our interactant. It is thus crucial to detect if a person is cooperating, deceiving, or cheating, to properly respond. However, older adults have been shown to have a lower ability to detect reciprocity compared to younger adults, partially tying this decline to cognitive functions. Another likely association to reciprocity in literature is made with personality dispositions, i.e., agreeableness, altruism, and empathic concern, and Theory of Mind (ToM). Consequently, the present study investigated age-related differences in the detection of the different components of reciprocity, as well as examined the predictors of reciprocity, such as cognitive measures, personality dispositions, and true and false beliefs in young (n = 98; 20-39 years), middle-aged (n = 106; 40-64 years), and older adults (n = 103; 65-96 years). The Mind Picture Story-Theory of Mind Questionnaire was used to measure the reciprocity components and true and false beliefs in each group. This study reported a significant decline in reciprocity detection from adults aged 65 years old and over. Additionally, the ability to detect reciprocity was significantly linked to cognitive functioning and ToM across all age groups, especially in older adults.

The Luck of the Draw: Wellcome's Institutional Fund for Research Culture.

Wellcome's Institutional Fund for Research Culture (IFRC) closed call is an invite-only grant call in 2023. It is a departure from Wellcome's previous methods of institutional funding, providing institutions with up to £1m of grant funding to take on ambitious projects that advance research cultures and research environments that are equitable, diverse and supportive. Recognising the broad range of topics and ideas for advancing positive research cultures, IFRC is the first ever Wellcome-funding scheme to use partial randomisation to allocate funding. Applications were grouped by a funding committee into three categories (Gold, Silver and Bronze), with the applications selected for Gold being directly recommended for funding and all applications in the Silver group being set for funding by the randomiser. Applications grouped into Bronze were not funded. To ensure that this activity Wellcome's principles for openness and transparency, we have included the Python script for the call here. IFRC comes when efforts to fund positive and inclusive research cultures are mainstream. Similar efforts to support research culture activities at scale have come from the Research England Development (RED) Fund, and the next iteration of the Research Excellence Framework (REF 2028) will also mark 25% of the assessment criteria for people, culture and environment. IFRC was not designed with the national picture in mind but is a testament to Wellcome's values as an inclusive funder. The range of projects and geographies that IFRC will fund is exciting.Still, it also threw up several interesting social and philanthropic research questions we want to explore in future community-facing activities following the call. We hope that findings from IFRC projects become a valuable resource for institutions wishing to improve their research cultures and a catalyst for future change and discussion within the sector that makes academic careers more inclusive.

The luck of the draw: Wellcome's Institutional Fund for Research Culture

Wellcome's Institutional Fund for Research Culture (IFRC) closed call is an invite-only grant call in 2023. It is a departure from Wellcome's previous methods of institutional funding, providing institutions with up to £1m of grant funding to take on ambitious projects that advance research cultures and research environments that are equitable, diverse and supportive. Recognising the broad range of topics and ideas for advancing positive research cultures, IFRC is the first ever Wellcome-funding scheme to use partial randomisation to allocate funding. Applications were grouped by a funding committee into three categories (Gold, Silver and Bronze), with the applications selected for Gold being directly recommended for funding and all applications in the Silver group being set for funding by the randomiser. Applications grouped into Bronze were not funded. To ensure that this activity Wellcome's principles for openness and transparency, we have included the Python script for the call here. IFRC comes when efforts to fund positive and inclusive research cultures are mainstream. Similar efforts to support research culture activities at scale have come from the Research England Development (RED) Fund, and the next iteration of the Research Excellence Framework (REF 2028) will also mark 25% of the assessment criteria for people, culture and environment. IFRC was not designed with the national picture in mind but is a testament to Wellcome's values as an inclusive funder. The range of projects and geographies that IFRC will fund is exciting.Still, it also threw up several interesting social and philanthropic research questions we want to explore in future community-facing activities following the call. We hope that findings from IFRC projects become a valuable resource for institutions wishing to improve their research cultures and a catalyst for future change and discussion within the sector that makes academic careers more inclusive.

Cognitive and metacognitive strategy use in poor comprehenders: an exploratory study

ABSTRACT Empirical research has shown that poor comprehenders use reading strategies less frequently than good comprehenders. Moreover, poor comprehenders tend to use simple strategies (e.g. slowing down reading when the text is hard to understand) instead of using more complex strategies (e.g. choosing between main and trivial information). The present study aimed to analyse the reading strategies used by poor (n = 37) and good comprehenders n = 141) in a sample of fifth grade Portuguese students. Results from multivariate analysis of covariance showed statistically significant differences in the use of reading strategies between the two subgroups of students, after controlling for the vocabulary. Specifically, good comprehenders reported to use significantly more strategies such as selecting relevant ideas, reviewing the text, evaluating comprehension after reading, forming pictures in mind and rereading parts of the text that are difficult to understand. Thus, the results suggested that good and poor comprehenders differed mainly in the use of more sophisticated cognitive and metacognitive strategies.

Brain Cancer Detection using Deep Learning

Late progressions in the field of cerebrum imaging innovation have empowered scientists to acquire new viewpoints on mind life systems and capability. Clinical experts depend vig- porously on these imaging components for early identification and treatment. Profound brain organizations (DNNs) have generally been powerful for order and division assignments. In any case, there is a requirement for a highlight decrease to work on the proficiency of DNNs. To address this need, a profound wavelet autoencoder (DWA) has been proposed in this article, which consolidates the element decrease capacities of autoencoders with the picture disintegration capacities of wavelet changes. The subsequent packed highlight set can be used for future DNN- based order errands. The proposed DWA-DNN picture classifier has been tried on a mind picture dataset, and its presentation has been contrasted with that of other existing classifiers, like Autoencoder-DNN and DNN. The proposed approach has shown predominant execution when considered in contrast to the presentation standards of different classifiers

Generations of Reason: A Family's Search for Meaning in Post-Newtonian England

Generations of Reason: A Family's Search for Meaning in Post-Newtonian England

QUANTUM THEOLOGY AND “‘WE’ AND ‘THEY’”

QUANTUM THEOLOGY AND “‘WE’ AND ‘THEY’”

Adiabatic theory for high Rydberg molecules

AbstractMolecules in high Rydberg states, or high Rydberg molecules, are special types of excited species. Classically, at least one of the valence electrons of such molecules is excited to a high‐energy near‐threshold orbit with a negative eccentricity. Therefore, the electron spends most of its orbiting time on roaming slowly far away from the parent ionic core. With this classical picture in mind, we develop a general adiabatic theory termed the inverse Born‐Oppenheimer approximation, in contrast to the conventional Born‐Oppenheimer adiabatic theory for molecules in ground or lower excited states, to describe high Rydberg molecules. A thorough theoretical formulation starting from the non‐relativistic molecular Hamiltonian and Schrödinger equation is presented with emphasis on the mathematical rigorousness of this theory. Quantitative calculations of the transition rate constants for many radiative and nonradiative processes involved in high Rydberg molecules are shown explicitly.

Transfiguring Medievalism: Poetry, Attention, and the Mysteries of the Body

Transfiguring Medievalism: Poetry, Attention, and the Mysteries of the Body

Energy efficiency improvement and emission reduction potential of domestic gas burners through re-orientating the angle and position of burner holes: Experimental and numerical study

The trend towards enhancing the thermal performance of domestic cooking burners necessitates developing a new design for such devices. With this picture in mind, this paper numerically and experimentally investigates the effect of burner head design configurations on the energy efficiency and CO emission of domestic gas burners. The results of a three-dimensional steady-state computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is validated with the experimental data according to Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) standard in cold start, hot start, and Simmer condition for two types of burners. Having the model validated, a step-by-step approach has been undertaken to improve the design of these reference cases, resulted in a total number of nine burner configurations analysed in this research. This is followed by determining the influence of introduced geometries on the thermal efficiency of burners. Based on the insights from the numerical model, the most efficient burner exhibits 3.3–22.2% higher thermal efficiency and 20.2–32.6% lower CO emission—depending on the gas flow rate—relative to the conventional burners. The optimised design can be implemented into existing burners with relatively little need for reconstruction. • Experimental and numerical study of natural gas combustion in domestic gas burners. • Experimental setup is designed to measure the thermal efficiency of typical burners. • A three-dimensional steady-state turbulent model is developed for numerical study. • Intense mixing induced by secondary effect improved the efficiency by 3.3–22.2%. • Optimum burner configuration lowered the carbon monoxide emission by 20.2–32.6%.

Dualism all the way down: why there is no paradox of phenomenal judgment

Epiphenomenalist dualists hold that certain physical states give rise to non-physical conscious experiences, but that these non-physical experiences are themselves causally inefficacious. Among the most pressing challenges facing epiphenomenalists is the so-called “paradox of phenomenal judgment”, which challenges epiphenomenalism’s ability to account for our knowledge of our own conscious experiences. According to this objection, we lack knowledge of the very thing that epiphenomenalists take physicalists to be unable to explain. By developing an epiphenomenalist theory of subjects and mental states, this paper argues that there is nothing paradoxical or problematic about the epiphenomenalist’s understanding of phenomenal judgments or phenomenal self-knowledge. The appearance of paradox emerges from inconsistently combining (epiphenomenalist) dualism about qualia with a physicalistic conception of subjects of experience. The lesson we should take from this is not that there is anything wrong with epiphenomenalism, but that epiphenomenalist dualists should be “dualists all the way down”—embracing a picture of mind that gives phenomenology a central place, in its understanding of both subjects and their knowledge of their own minds. Epiphenomenalist-friendly accounts of reference and memory are also developed, showing that neither of these issues creates a paradox for the epiphenomenalist.

When Do the Leaves Fall and When Do We Reap? – Semantic Analysis of Folk Month Names in the Languages of Eastern Europe

The abundance of folk month names in different languages of Eastern Europe results in specific mental pictures in a speaker's mind. Translation usually fails to communicate the elaborate connotations implied, even in the case of closely related languages. The paper gives a comparative semantical analysis of folk month names in the Slavic languages, the Baltic languages, Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Romanian and Albanian, identifying the common features, the differences and possible reasons for both. The aim of the paper is to provide data for both linguistic and ethnological mapping of Eastern Europe, as an area that had been under less influence from the Latin-dominated culture and had in that way better preserved some original, less uniform linguistic features.

Poverty in “Transition”: 30 Years After and in the Pandemic

AbstractThis article chronicles the evolution of poverty in the formerly socialist economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The article is an analytical review covering the 30 years since the launch of market reforms with a reflection on the impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic. The theoretical assumption in the 1990s of a seamless transition from a socialist, state‐led economy to a capitalist, market‐driven economy remained just that—an assumption. Many of the tangible improvements in living standards for the bulk of the population of the post‐socialist era have yet to materialize. Focusing on the smallest post‐socialist economies, with a bigger picture in mind, this study argues that a crisis of human well‐being has been lurking in the background—behind macroeconomic stabilization and growth since the early 2000s. This article contributes to the literature on socioeconomic resilience, restructuring, critical perspectives on poverty, and efforts to define and measure poverty holistically.

Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics

Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics

Regrouping scalets: Psychometric properties of the theory of mind picture stories task in a schizophrenic sample

ABSTRACT Theory of mind is one of the most intensively studied phenomena in the development of schizophrenic symptoms and impairments in social adjustment. Complex theory of mind processing requires both visual and verbal aspects of the social-perceptual and social-cognitive components of mind reading. Reliable assessment methods are considered essential for the proper conduct of research. The current study aims at investigating the psychometric properties of the Theory of Mind Picture Stories Task (ToM PST). Forty-seven patients with schizophrenia were enrolled in the study from three sites. Data from ToM PST were used for computing the consistency, reliability, and internal and construct validity of the test. Our preliminary findings showed less appropriate consistency. Therefore, we attempted to carry out structural changes on the task while preserving its scales and subscales, which measure crucial factors of ToM. The newly structured task has four scales. They show proper consistency (Sequencing: Cronbach's α = 0.70, Theory of a Single Person's Mind: α = 0.74, Switching Between Minds: α = 0.70, Comprehension of Misleading Behaviour: α = 0.67, Total: α = 0.80) with appropriate internal and construct validity, a moderate test-retest reliability over a four-month-course, and a proper inter-rater reliability.

Challenges of Managing and Diagnosing Reset Osmostat vs SIADH in a Patient With Personal and Family History of Chronic Hyponatremia

Background: Distinguishing between a reset osmostat and SIADH in a hyponatremic patient can prove to be challenging in certain circumstances. Reset osmostat is an uncommon and under recognized cause of hyponatremia. Thus, it is important to recognize it as it does not require any treatment. Clinical Case: A 48 year old male with history of chronic hyponatremia of unknown cause, fatty liver, hypertension, was in the hospital post operatively after resection of a meningioma along dura. Endocrine was consulted for management of his chronic hyponatremia. Had chronic hyponatremia for over 20 years and was always asymptomatic. Normally drank 6-7 L of water at home, mostly at night. Also found to have a spinal compression fracture of unknown cause. Both his father and brother had chronic hyponatremia of unknown cause as well, suggesting possible familial component. His baseline sodium levels were 129-133 mmol/L. In the hospital, serum sodium levels decreased to the 120s. TSH was 0.307mcunit/mL (0.27-4.2). Was also placed on 1.5 L fluid restriction. Urine osmolality was 900 mOsm/kg (500-800) with sodium of 123 mmol/L (136-145), consistent with SIADH. A rare inherited disorder, nephrogenic SIADH (NSIADH), was considered. However, it has an X-linked inheritance pattern. Fluid restriction was removed, then did fluid load with 2L of water and obtained urine sodium, serum sodium, urine osmolality, serum osmolality, Copeptin (pro-AVP) before fluid load and 1 hour after fluid load. Serum sodium level went from 127mmol/L before to 125 mmol/L after. Urine osmolality improved from 984 mOsm/kg prior to 575 mOsm/kg after. Urine sodium went from 183 mmol/L prior to 91 mmol/L after. Serum osmolality went from 278 mOsm/kg (270-310) to 268 mOsm/kg after. His co-peptin pro-AVP levels were 16.4 pmol/L (ref. <13.1). They are found to be low in NSIADH. It was decided that his chronic hyponatremia was likely due to reset osmostat. After discharge and follow up, his serum sodium was rechecked and was 128 mmol/L. It would have been challenging, but useful, to try a vaptan for diagnostic purposes and possibly to increase serum sodium. However, there are complications from overcorrection. Since patient had long standing asymptomatic chronic hyponatremia with family history, it was decided not to pursue aggressive measures just to “normalize” serum sodium. Otherwise, it would have been an example of treating the numbers and not the patient. Conclusions: Case demonstrates the importance of keeping the patient, their symptoms, and clinical picture in mind, and to not just follow numbers, as difficult as it may be, especially when managing conditions in which diagnosis may be uncertain or unclear. Sometimes no intervention is needed at all, however tempting it may be to do one, it is important to keep the former option in mind. An asymptomatic patient with longstanding chronic hyponatremia due to reset osmostat is an example of that.

The Fictional Minds of Modernism: Narrative Cognition from Henry James to Christopher Isherwood ed. by Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso

Reviewed by: The Fictional Minds of Modernism: Narrative Cognition from Henry James to Christopher Isherwood ed. by Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso Luke Mueller MIGUEL-ALFONSO, RICARDO, ed. The Fictional Minds of Modernism: Narrative Cognition from Henry James to Christopher Isherwood. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 236 pp. $99.00 hardcover; $79.20 e-book. The story of the modernist novel usually involves an “inward turn”: against the nineteenth-century realists’ highly wrought social worlds, against their moral dilemmas and ostensibly objective descriptions, modernism (as the story goes) dramatizes private minds whose contacts with the world are perspectival, partial, and tenuous. It’s true that modernist novels are deeply concerned with the mind, but the inward turn offers a picture of mental experience that looks simplistic in the context of recent work in cognitive studies. This work examines how minds are always already in the world, and it has been the subject of seminal works such as Alan Palmer’s Fictional Minds (2004), Lisa Zunshine’s Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (2006), and David Herman’s collection The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English (2011). Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso brings this broader picture of mind squarely into the realm of modernist narrative in The Fictional Minds of Modernism: Narrative Cognition from Henry James to Christopher Isherwood, a collection of essays that thoughtfully challenges the “inward turn.” Miguel-Alfonso begins The Fictional Minds of Modernism by arguing that modernist narrative (exemplified by Gertrude Stein’s work) is fundamentally about the “continuity between mind and world” (12). Narrative is both an act of mind, giving sequence and structure to phenomena, and also an act of mind made available to other minds. In other words, narrative is fundamentally public. But Miguel-Alfonso acknowledges this publicness is problematic, contending that modernist narratives engage in “relentless questioning of the relationship between mind, language, and reality” (9). The book’s contributors take up this relentless questioning, seeking a more nuanced picture of mind that is not simplistically bifurcated into “internal” and “external” aspects. In the second essay, Jukka Mikkonen warns against too quickly accepting fictional minds as means for learning “about the workings of the mind” (18). Mikkonen recognizes the propensity of readers to ascribe realistic qualities of mind to fictional characters, but he argues that fictional minds must also obey the demands of narrative necessity. Narrative minds have both mimetic and poetic aspects, and these poetic aspects make trouble for those who would claim modernist literature can faithfully represent minds. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, for example, Clarissa Dalloway’s ability to understand others borders on extraordinary, and the portrayal of the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith is haunted by the fact that Woolf may not be “a real expert of schizophrenia” (21). In other words, there is a difference between narrative minds feeling real and being real. While Mikkonen is sympathetic to those who would [End Page 192] claim “that literary narratives could widen our ‘mental universe’ or ‘the cognitive horizon of human awareness,’” he concludes that such claims “are not proportional to their supporting evidence—no matter how evidence is understood—and at times look even like dogmas” (25). While Mikkonen’s skepticism is warranted, it is somewhat tempered by two following essays that argue that normal presentations of mind are always already conceptual and linguistic—making poesis a crucial part of investigations of mental experience. Marco Caracciolo argues that metaphors for mind break down barriers between inner and outer life because they express what is “internal” in terms of “concrete things that we can directly perceive” (34). Caracciolo explores metaphors of mind in three novels: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Federigo Tozzi’s Con gli occhi chiusi (Eyes Shut), and in Mrs. Dalloway. He shows how mind is conceptualized in terms of sensory activities (perceiving, seeing, having illusions, etc.), in terms of space (Tozzi’s protagonist feels his mind is a “large hall” [42]), and in relation to physical things and processes (Tozzi’s narrator reports of the protagonist, “A familiar ache dashed his brain like a cold jet that never let him get anything done” [42]). Caracciolo believes that these metaphorical “mind styles...