Reports Of Subjective Experience Research Articles

Rhythmic Neural Patterns During Empathy to Vicarious Pain: Beyond the Affective-Cognitive Empathy Dichotomy.

Empathy is often split into an affective facet for embodied simulation or sometimes sensorial processing, and a cognitive facet for mentalizing and perspective-taking. However, a recent neurophenomenological framework proposes a graded view on empathy (i.e., “Graded Empathy”) that extends this dichotomy and considers multiple levels while integrating complex neural patterns and representations of subjective experience. In the current magnetoencephalography study, we conducted a multidimensional investigation of neural oscillatory modulations and their cortical sources in 44 subjects while observing stimuli that convey vicarious pain (vs no-pain) in a broad time window and frequency range to explore rich neural representations of pain empathy. Furthermore, we collected participants’ subjective-experience of sensitivity to vicarious pain, as well as their self-reported trait levels of affective and cognitive empathy to examine the possible associations between neural mechanisms and subjective experiences and reports. While extending previous electrophysiological studies that mainly focused on alpha suppression, we found here four significant power modulation patterns corresponding to multiple facets of empathy: an early central (peaking in the paracentral sulcus) alpha (6–11 Hz) suppression pattern plausibly reflecting sensory processing, two early beta (15–23 Hz) suppression patterns in the mid-cingulate cortex (plausibly reflecting the affective component) and in the precuneus (plausibly reflecting the cognitive component), and a late anterior (peaking in the orbitofrontal cortex) alpha-beta (11–19 Hz) enhancement pattern (plausibly reflecting cognitive-control inhibitory response). Interestingly, the latter measure was negatively correlated with the subjective sensitivity to vicarious pain, thereby possibly revealing a novel inhibitory neural mechanism determining the subjective sensitivity to vicarious pain. Altogether, these multilevel findings cannot be accommodated by the dichotomous model of empathy (i.e., affective-cognitive), and provide empirical support to the Graded Empathy neurophenomenological framework. Furthermore, this work emphasizes the importance of examining multiple neural rhythms, their cortical generators, and reports of subjective-experience in the aim of elucidating the complex nature of empathy.

The overlooked ubiquity of first-person experience in the cognitive sciences

Science aims to transform the subjectivity of individual observations and ideas into more objective and universal knowledge. Yet if there is any area in which first-person experience holds a particularly special and delicate role, it is the sciences of the mind. According to a widespread view, first-person methods were largely discarded from psychology after the fall of introspectionism a century ago and replaced by more objective behavioral measures, a step that some authors have begun to criticize. To examine whether these views are sufficiently informed by actual scientific practice, we conducted a review of methodological approaches in the cognitive science literature. We found that reports of subjective experience are in fact still widely used in a broad variety of different experimental paradigms, both in studies that focus on subjective experience, and in those that make no explicit reference to it. Across these studies, we documented a diverse collection of approaches that leveraged first-person reports, ranging from button presses to unstructured interviews, while continuing to maximise experimental reproducibility. Common to these studies were subjects acting as sensors, intentionally communicating their experience to the experimenter, which we termed “second-person” methods. We conclude that, despite views to the contrary, first-person experience has always been and is still central to investigations of the mind even if it is not recognized as such. We suggest that the conversation ought to be reframed: instead of debating whether to accept subjects’ first-person knowledge we should discuss how best to do so.

Geoterapia: percepções e utilização em uma comunidade acadêmica

Introdução: A Geoterapia é um recurso terapêutico a base de argila amplamente utilizado. Objetivo: Mapear percepções e utilização da Geoterapia em comunidade acadêmica (estudantes, docentes e técnicos-administrativos) de um campus universitário. Método: Estudo exploratório transversal, de caráter quali-quantitativo na Universidade Federal do Paraná – Setor Litoral, Matinhos, litoral do Paraná. Foi aplicado um questionário, composto por: a) perguntas objetivas acerca do tema e experiências prévias, posteriormente tabuladas em histogramas, empregando-se análise estatística descritiva; b) questões abertas e relatos de experiências subjetivas sobre o uso da Geoterapia, cujas categorias emergentes foram analisadas tematicamente. Resultados: Dos 134 participantes 47% conhecem o termo “Geoterapia”. Entretanto, ao utilizar o termo “argila”, há um salto para 76% que conhecem seu uso em saúde. Cerca de 33% da comunidade acadêmica já fez uso da Geoterapia. Destes, 43% o fez com finalidades estética ou dermatológica, sendo o rosto a região do corpo onde houve predomínio (61%) e 48% dos que utilizaram, fizeram uso mais de três aplicações. As cores mais utilizadas foram branca e marrom e as menos empregadas foram vermelha e amarela. Dentre os que nunca utilizaram (67%), foi também expressivo (91%) o número de pessoas que relataram que utilizariam a Geoterapia se tivessem oportunidade. Conclusões: O estudo evidenciou que grande parte da comunidade universitária pesquisada admite o uso da argila na saúde, entretanto poucos reconhecem o termo Geoterapia. Tais observações indicam a necessidade de ampliação da divulgação da técnica, seus resultados e benefícios, para que a população também amplie seu conhecimento e faça sua utilização com mais frequência.

Parent–youth agreement on symptoms and diagnosis: Assessment with a diagnostic interview in an adolescent inpatient clinical population

Diagnostic information on adolescents may be elicited from both youths and their parents, especially for depressive and suicidal symptomatology. The objective of this study was to examine the degree of agreement between parent and adolescent reports of major psychiatric disorders, at the diagnostic and at the symptom level, in a severely affected inpatient clinical population. 64 parent–adolescent pairs were interviewed separately with the semi-structured diagnostic interview Kiddie-SADS-PL. Symptomatology was also assessed with 11 self-report and parent-report scales, all translated, adapted and in most cases validated in Iceland. A total of 25 subscales were included to assess emotional dimensions such as depression or anxiety and cognitive dimensions such as attention deficit or self-concept. Good agreement was found for social phobia and fair agreement for generalized anxiety disorder. Although parent–youth agreement was poor in most cases at the symptoms level, significant correlations indicated consistency for most severity scores, except those related to depressive symptomatology, attention deficit, separation anxiety or conduct disorder. The low agreement between reports of suicidal ideation is in line with results from previous studies and suggests that parents might under- or over-estimate this symptomatology. The combination of data obtained with diagnostic interviews and rating-scales confirmed results from prior empirical work, giving greater weight to parents’ reports of observable behavior and to adolescents´ reports of subjective experiences, especially depressive symptomatology. Our findings suggest that both parent and child informants are necessary to obtain adequate assessments in adolescents. Further research should explore the correspondence between discrepant diagnoses and external criteria such as parental psychopathology or parent–child relationships and attachment. Psychoanalysis could benefit from cognitive neuroscience and use cognitive assessments as interesting tools. Thus, cognitive assessments can show discrepant results according to parents’ or adolescents’ reports and can therefore shed light on the parent–child interaction and relational dynamics. Inversely, cognitive neuroscience could benefit from psychoanalysis by taking into account, when interpretating the scores, the relational dynamics and the personal history of the rater.

Life Goes on in Dreams

WHAT GOES THROUGH OUR MINDS WHILE WE FALL ASLEEP? AT SLEEP ONSET, STUDENTS PREPARING FOR EXAMS COMMONLY RE-EXPERIENCE SOME OF the material they have been revising during the day; lovers have pervasive thoughts about their romantic partner; software developers may see bits of programming codes unfold in their mind's eye. These anecdotal observations suggest that, during the transition from wakefulness to sleep, elements from daytime activities may spontaneously re-emerge in dream-like mentation also called hypnagogic imagery. In a behavioral study published in this issue of SLEEP, Wamsley and colleagues1 provide support for the existence of such spontaneous cognitive “replay” at sleep onset. In this study, healthy young participants were trained on a highly motivating visuomotor game–the downhill skiing game Alpine Racer II. In this simulated skiing game, the player stands on a movable platform while holding two ski poles. The player's goal is to use his/her body to move the platform left or right to steer and thus improve the downhill skiing of an “avatar skier” presented on a computer screen. After training on the Alpine Racer, 30% of spontaneous mentation collected at different times during pre-sleep wakefulness and light NREM sleep (up to 300 sec after sleep onset) contained imagery (of any modality, 24%) or thoughts (6%) related to the skiing game. Wamsley et al.1 also found that imagery directly related to training on the game (unambiguous representations of the Alpine Racer or of skiing) declined across time. This time-course was paralleled by a tendency for game-related incorporations to become more abstracted from the original experience. These findings do not only provide empirical evidence for spontaneous memory replay during wakefulness and light NREM sleep (stages 1 and 2), but they show that reports of subjective experience offer valuable information about cognitive processes across changing brain states.2 Consistent with animal neurophysiology data,3 human imaging studies have demonstrated that brain activity associated with waking experiences may be reactivated during subsequent sleep, and can thus contribute to memory consolidation and improved performance.4–7 However, although incorporation of the Alpine Racing game was high in the Wamsley study, suggesting abundant memory replay at sleep onset, no relationship was found between introspective measures of memory replay and later improvement in performance on the game. Whether dreaming of some tasks or stimuli may enhance subsequent memory or performance, and whether dreaming actually relates to neural reactivation subsequent to learning, are fundamental questions that still remain unanswered.8–10 The popular belief that dreams reflect waking-life activities—the “continuity hypothesis of dreaming”—has found strong empirical support in the field of dream research.11–13 The recent study by Wamsley et al.1 appears to extent the validity of the continuity hypothesis to hypnagogic imagery and offers new insights into which daytime experiences may be good candidates for cognitive replay. High levels of incorporation of Alpine Racer are most plausibly related to the strong motivational and attentional involvement of the player during the game. Consistent with this interpretation, a few participants who only observed those playing Alpine Racer also incorporated elements of the game into their sleep-onset mentation, at rates similar to the participants who were actively engaged in the game. These effects and their time-course suggest that novelty may be a critical factor for the selection of material to be mentally replayed (Figure 1). Moreover, many baseline night reports incorporated thought or imagery related to the game (compared to a control set of sleep-onset mentation reports), indicating that the mere anticipation of the task could trigger prospective memory processes that emerged at sleep onset. It is tempting to speculate that hypnagogic imagery may contribute to the integration of recent experiences with long-term memories and future goals. How this is achieved at the cognitive and neurophysiological levels is a fascinating and challenging topic for future investigations. Figure 1 Impact of novelty on dream experience. Five days after seeing a new model of an airplane in a newspaper (original photograph on the left), the dreamer reported a very similar airplane in a dream. The drawings (on the right) that accompanied the dream ... Notably, while consciousness dissipates, waking concerns may sometimes also prevent us from falling asleep. For example, pre-sleep cognitive activity has been implicated in the maintenance of sleep-onset insomnia.14,15 Therefore, manipulating hypnagogic imagery at sleep onset may also have important clinical implications for the management of sleep disorders.

Dr. Pallanti and Colleague Reply

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Letter to the EditorFull AccessDr. Pallanti and Colleague ReplySTEFANO PALLANTI, M.D., LEONARDO QUERCIOLI, M.D., and ERIC HOLLANDER, M.D., STEFANO PALLANTISearch for more papers by this author, M.D., LEONARDO QUERCIOLISearch for more papers by this author, M.D., and ERIC HOLLANDERSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., Florence, ItalyPublished Online:1 Feb 2005https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.162.2.400-aAboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail To the Editor: Dr. Mendlowicz and collaborators raise an important issue regarding the difficulties in detecting the psychopathological boundaries of mood and cognitive and anxiety disorders, particularly in schizophrenic subjects. These lifetime comorbidities were not described in detail in our article. Of note, we found no significant differences between schizophrenic subjects with (N=29) and without (N=51) comorbid social anxiety disorder in the lifetime prevalence of comorbid mood disorders (24.1% versus 21.5%). Current major depressive disorder was an exclusionary diagnosis at enrollment.Although the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV is appropriate for the diagnosis of depression in schizophrenia, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale may not be optimal for assessing depression severity in this population. Although the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale seems to give a consistent measure of the severity of social anxiety disorder in both schizophrenic as well as anxious patients, the Calgary Scale may be preferable over the Hamilton depression scale in evaluating depression in schizophrenia.The Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale describes which and how severe the social anxiety-derived behaviors are, but it does not help us to understand how these behaviors have developed (i.e., as the effect of impaired social cognition or social affect). Also, the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale does not describe the subjective expression of these symptoms (i.e., rigidity, trembling, language difficulties, blushing, sweating). This rating scale evaluates anxiety and social pervasiveness dimensionally, not the subjective experience that represents the substrate of the socially anxious behavior.We argue that a “fully dimensional” framework might be considered. From a “syndromic” point of observation, social anxiety disorder in nonschizophrenic patients may be close to depression, considering the comorbidity rates. In schizophrenic patients, the social anxiety experience resembles more closely the psychopathological constellation associated with the so-called “self-centrality” (i.e., nondelusional self-referential attitude), as described in the subjective experience “basic symptoms” model (1) of schizophrenia and subjective unawareness. Particularly, impairment in language competence in some schizophrenic patients might represent the basis of the “social incompetence” that drives social anxiety.We refer to the original concept of “endophenotypes” (2) as internal phenotypes discoverable by a “biochemical test or microscopic examination.” The method available for endophenotypic analysis has advanced, and our current armamentarium includes neurophysiological, biochemical, endocrinological, cognitive, and neuropsychological (including configured self-report data) measures. Reports of subjective experiences may turn out to be potentially useful as a psychopathological organizer of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Subjective experiences represent a strictly neuropathological expression, substrate-close disorders from which clinical symptoms and behaviors arise. Psychopathological emphasis on schizophrenia-associated disorders, such as social anxiety, may also help to integrate the search for neurodevelopmental mechanisms in schizophrenia with developmental psychology research on the ontogenesis of the self.In this search for newer models, we need to incorporate the impact of treatments. Our group is now investigating the pharmacogenetics of treatment response to clozapine in schizophrenic patients with and without comorbid social anxiety disorder and would be glad to establish collaborations with other researchers in this area.

Is the hypnotized subject complying?

To examine the role of compliance in responses to hypnotic suggestions, the authors administered a number of suggestions in the standard hypnotic manner and, also, with urging to comply. Participants' overt behavioral responses were noted, and they were questioned about their subjective experience of the suggestions, with electrodermal skin conductance responses providing a measure of the truthfulness of their reports. Results indicated that, although behavioral and verbal responses were consistent with the hypnotic suggestions under both instructional sets, responses in the standard hypnotic setting appeared to be experienced as genuine. That is, reports of subjective experiences met the criterion for truthfulness, whereas reports of suggested experiences administered with urging to comply did not meet the criterion for truthfulness.

The Search for Legitimacy and the “Expertization” of the Lay Person

Some “diseases” appear to be recognized first by sufferers. At times these diseases may be disclaimed by medical doctors and elusive to scientific categorization and description. In these cases sufferers may organize themselves together in support groups and lobby for money to finance the discovery of diagnostic markers that would legitimate and medicalize the constellation of symptoms that they experience. Chronic fatigue syndrome is such a disease; and it is characterized by varied and changing symptomatology. Its diagnostic markers are in the process of being refined. Presently, its diagnosis primarily originates in reports of subjective experience of extreme fatigue. Oftentimes people diagnose themselves after attending a support group and find a doctor through a support group network who believes in the disease. Sometimes, people then return to their own family doctors with information and try to teach their doctors about what they believe to be the nature of their disease, its prognosis and treatment. Through such paths as described in the paper, patients become “experts”: they may often know more about the illness than doctors and non-suffering others. This paper moves beyond the experience of chronic illness to describe the processes through which people seek confirmation and legitimation for the way that they feel and in a sense become the “experts.”

Experimental induction of the "sensed presence" in normal subjects and an exceptional subject.

9 of the 15 volunteers who were exposed to successive 3-min. durations of bursts of different types of weak (1 microT) complex magnetic fields or sham-fields reported the sense of a presence as indicated by a button press at the time of the experience. Reports of subjective experiences indicated that attempts to "focus" cognitively upon the location of the presence altered its location or induced its "movement." An exceptional subject who had a history of experiencing within his upper left peripheral visual field "flashing images" concerning the health and history of people [when handling their photographs] was also exposed to the burst sequences. Numbers of button presses associated with the experiences of a mystical presence, to whom the subject attributed his capacity, increased when the complex magnetic fields were applied without the subject's knowledge. The results support the hypothesis that the sense of a presence, which may be the common phenomenological base from which experiences of gods, spirits, angels, and other entities are derived, is a right hemispheric homologue of the left hemispheric sense of self.

Subjective experiences associated with thermal biofeedback treatment of hypertension

Reports of subjective experiences of 73 hypertensive patients who were treated with thermal biofeedback for hand warming were obtained over 16 treatment sessions. Most of the differential responding in subjective report occurred in the first 5 sessions. Differences in reports of throbbing were associated with medication status during treatment (presence of sympatholytic antihypertensive agent). From 4 to 9% of patients report negative subjective experiences at any one session. When short-term clinical successes (either elimination of medication or reduction of BP) were compared with short-term failures, it was found that successes reported more warmth, more likelihood of falling asleep, and more dreamlike experiences. The latter were more likely to occur suddenly for the successes. Correlational analyses revealed consistent positive associations between reports of warmth and relaxation with highest temperature achieved in the session and consistent negative associations between experiencing physical sensations and degree of temperature change within the session.