Human Subjective Experience Research Articles

Beyond the lab: Feasibility of cognitive neuroscience data collection during a speleological expedition

In human cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology studies, laboratory-based research tasks have been important to establish principles of brain function and its relationship to behaviour; however, they differ greatly from real-life experiences. Several elements of real-life situations that impact human performance, such as stressors, are difficult or impossible to replicate in the laboratory. Expeditions offer unique possibilities for studying human cognition in complex environments that can transfer to other situations with similar features. For example, as caves share several of the physical and psychological challenges of safety-critical environments such as spaceflight, underground expeditions have been developed as an analogue for astronaut training purposes, suggesting that they might also be suitable for studying aspects of behaviour and cognition that cannot be fully examined under laboratory conditions. While a large range of topics and tools have been proposed for application in such environments, few have been used in the field. Methods and procedures for maximizing the robustness and scientific value of expedition research designs must first be developed and validated. We tested the feasibility of collecting human physiological, cognitive, and subjective experience data concerning brain state, sleep, cognitive workload, and fatigue, during a speleological expedition in a remote region. We document our approaches and challenges experienced, and provide recommendations and suggestions to aid future work. The data support the idea that cave expeditions are relevant naturalistic paradigms that offer unique possibilities for cognitive neuroscience to complement laboratory work and help improve human performance and safety in operational environments.

Taste enhances the ability to express a preference for a congruent odor in rats.

Foods that make up a typical diet are characterized by a rich set of sensory qualities that are perceived through multiple different modalities. It is well known that multisensory aspects of food are integrated to create our perception of flavor, which in turn affects our behavioral responses to food. However, the principles underlying multisensory integration of flavor-related sensory signals and how they inform perceptual judgments remain poorly understood, partly due to lack of control over flavor experience in human subjects. Here, we used rats as a model to overcome this limitation and tested the hypothesis that taste can enhance discriminability of retronasal odor cues. In a series of two-bottle tests, animals chose between two odorized solutions after learning to associate one of the odors with saccharin. When odors were highly similar, animals showed little preference for the saccharin-associated odor. When adding saccharin to both bottles-rendering one of the solutions' congruent-animals' preference for the saccharin-associated odor was significantly enhanced. No effect of taste was observed when using dissimilar odor pairs or novel taste stimuli. These findings suggest that congruent taste stimuli selectively enhance odor identity representations, aiding in the discriminability of perceptually similar flavors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Three-Dimensionalization Mediates the Subjective Experience of Fractal Interior Spaces

A fractal, a self-similar organic or geometric pattern that repeats at varying scales, is one of the most compelling characteristics found in nature. Previous studies on fractal patterns have demonstrated consistent trends in potential psychological benefits, such as stress reduction. However, we fall short of understanding one of the essential properties of fractals found in nature, i.e., the three-dimensionality of their appearance. In this study, we aimed at understanding the role of the three-dimensionalization of fractal patterns in spatial structures on human subjective perceptual experience. Two hundred seventy three-dimensional spatial prototype models were created for this study, spanning two dimensions: (1) the application of spatial depth (shallow; medium; deep) and (2) fractal complexity (low; medium; high). The participants rated each space on six psychological dimensions (bad–good; stressful–relaxing; ugly–beautiful; boring–interesting; leave–enter; ignore–explore). Significant effects of the application depth of fractals were observed primarily for “boring-interesting”, “ignore-explore”, and “leave-enter” dimensions and were primarily manifested within spaces with medium and high D-values. The results suggest that spatial depth plays a significant role in individuals’ experiences of fractal spaces, arguably by making the space more engaging and interesting.

Application of Machine Learning and Multi-Dimensional Perception in Urban Spatial Quality Evaluation: A Case Study of Shanghai Underground Pedestrian Street

The exploitation of urban subsurface space in urban inventory planning is closely connected to the quality of urban environments. Currently, the construction of underground pedestrian streets is characterised by inefficiency and traffic congestion, making them insufficient for fulfilling the demand for well-designed and human-centred spaces. In the study of spatial quality, traditional evaluation methods, such as satellite remote sensing and street maps, often suffer from low accuracy and slow updating rates, and they frequently overlook human perceptual evaluations. Consequently, there is a pressing need to develop a set of spatial quality evaluation methods incorporating pedestrian perspectives, thereby addressing the neglect of subjective human experiences in spatial quality research. This study first quantifies and clusters the characteristics of underground pedestrian spaces using spatial syntax. It then gathers multidimensional perception data from selected locations and ultimately analyses and predicts the results employing machine learning techniques, specifically Random Forest and XGBoost. The research results indicate variability in pedestrians’ evaluations of spatial quality across different functionally oriented spaces. Key factors influencing these evaluations include Gorgeous, Warm, Good Ventilation, and Flavour indicators. The study proposes a comprehensive and applicable spatial quality evaluation model integrating spatial quantification methods, machine learning algorithms, and multidimensional perception measurements. The development of this model offers valuable scientific guidance for the planning and construction of high-quality urban public spaces.

The Dynamics of Narrative Structure in Depicting the Repercussion of Migration Movements in Razan Naiem Almoghrabi’s Women of Wind

Writers of narrative fiction employ certain techniques in the structure of their literary works that reinforce the theme of the story. These techniques and narrative tools can be used in the various stages of the building block of the narration and enable the writers to manipulate such techniques in favor of producing certain images and ideas. Narrative voice, focalization, and interconnectedness of spatial and temporal presentations are among the most important tools available in the narrative structure of novels. Razan Naiem Almoghrabi in Women of Wind (2010) utilizes these techniques and tools available in narrative structure to depict the experiences of migrants from different nationalities who set out their migration from the shores of Libyan cities with the facilitation of human smugglers. The focus of this paper is on the effect of the narrative structure in portraying the mental and physical conditions of migrants. The major research question is how the narrative structure and techniques implemented in Women of Wind capture specific repercussion of migration movements. To depict a vivid portrayal of the suffering of migrants and the risks they encounter during their migration journey, Almoghrabi employs different narrators that allow the perception from different angles. The deployment of internal focalization through the eyes of one of characters, augmented the narration of subjective human experience. The intermingling of different voices and the nonlinear narration that shifts from one tempo-spatial presentation to another recreates in words the turbulent worlds of the characters in this novel.

A comparison of impulsive noise metrics

Impulsive sounds are transient acoustic events that can draw undesirable attention because of their abrupt nature, for example sounds produced by weights dropping onto floors in buildings. A metric that represents human experience of these sounds can guide efforts to mitigate them. This paper investigates metrics developed for impulsive sounds generated by weight or ball drops and by IT equipment. The metric for IT equipment is an impulsiveness metric formulated with psychoacoustic bands and loudness descriptions. The metric for weight or ball drops is the fast time-weighted sound pressure level implemented with various filtering schemes. The ability of the metrics in predicting subjective human experience of IT equipment transients is compared. Metric values for sounds generated by ball drops onto various floor assemblies on a concrete slab are compared.

Утомленные социально – сегодня и навсегда? Рецензия на книгу Бён-Чхоль Хана «Общество усталости. Негативный опыт в эпоху чрезмерного позитива». Москва: Издательство АСТ, 2023. 161 с.

<p style="text-align: justify;">The reviewed book presents a philosophical view on a number of social and socio-psychological problems of the modern era, a significant part of which is analyzed through the prism of subjective human experiences, including destructive ones. Depression, emotional burnout, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which are widespread today, are, according to the author's position, the natural consequences of an increasing social trend – the imperative of individual achievements characteristic of a society that expects each of its members to comply with the requirements of multitasking and constant acceleration. Such a society naturally replaces open violence against a person with the practice of self–exploitation, and its value guideline is "positivity" (orientation to all positive things), leading to the denial of real social diversity, and eventually to social atomization. The author sees a constructive way out for a person of the "fatigue society" in the need for non-action and conscious contemplation, which immanently imply openness to the world.</p>

Special Subsection Afterword: ESP Research and Cognitive Neuroscience: Possibly Incompatible - But Methodologically Complementary

This commentary considers the fields of extrasensory perception (ESP) research and cognitive neuroscience, discussing points of conflict and domains where they may be complementary. ESP research challenges the assumption in cognitive neuroscience that the mind is the product of known physical processes in the brain. Cognitive neuroscience methods and tools applied to ESP research could benefit and bridge the gap between the two fields. Firstly, concurrently studying subjective experiences and neural activity during ESP tasks would allow us to better characterize subjective states typically associated with ESP. Secondly, similarities between mind-wandering and free-response ESP experimental designs allow us to speculate on the potential implication of the default-mode network during the percipient’s experience. Finally, tools developed in computational neurolinguistics and natural language processing may become valuable to automatize judging procedures in free-response ESP paradigms such as remote viewing. Despite potentially incompatible assumptions about the mind and the brain, ESP research can gain new insights from cognitive neuroscience methods and approaches and can contribute in its own way to the study of human subjective experiences and cognition.

Self-directed professional development activities: An autoethnography

This article explores my participation in teacher professional development (PD) practices. In a form of an autoethnography, I present an account of my experiences in self-directed PD activities and institution-mandated ones, highlighting benefits of PD activities that were self-initiated. My self-directed PD activities seem to promote ongoing engagements. In this article, I also reflect on how financial costs affected my attitude towards institution-mandated PD. However, in self-directed PD, I invested my time and financial resources. This article also highlights the way self-directed PD activities shaped my worldview, from questioning the legitimacy of qualitative research to celebrating the subjective human experience.

Ego: An Epistemological Analysis of Self-Centric Consciousness Through Cultural Perspectives and Spiritual/Theological Dimensions in Hinduism and Buddhism

This Article probes into the profound intricacies of ego, a multifaceted paradigm of self-centric consciousness that has garnered significant scholarly interest across various disciplines, with a specific focus on its conceptualization within the cultural contexts of the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. By drawing on philosophical and psychological theories, this rigorous exploration aims to elucidate the nuanced dimensions of ego, shedding light on its ontological essence and intricate interaction within the human psyche. Additionally, this article explores how the cultural context influences the conceptualization and experience of ego in Eastern philosophies and religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, in comparison to Western philosophical and psychological frameworks. The work also deliberates the spiritual and theological dimensions of ego, exploring how self-centric consciousness intersects with spiritual perspectives. Drawing on a range of spiritual traditions and theological perspectives, this comprehensive exploration aims to shed light on the diverse understandings and implications of ego within the realm of spirituality. By undertaking a comparative analysis, this research seeks to uncover the cultural variations in understanding ego, encompassing diverse perspectives on self-identity, interconnectedness, and the role of ego within these distinct traditions. By examining the influence of cultural context, this investigation contributes to a deeper comprehension of the cultural contingency of ego, ultimately enriching our understanding of this fundamental construct in the broader landscape of human consciousness and subjective experience.

An interdisciplinary course on evolution and sustainability increases acceptance of evolutionary theory and increases understanding of interdisciplinary application of evolutionary theory

BackgroundAlthough evolutionary theory is foundational and integrative in modern biology, there remains widespread lack of acceptance among U.S. residents. An interdisciplinary approach to teaching evolutionary theory at the undergraduate level has many advantages, such as giving students a context for learning about evolution and application of evolutionary theory to other academic disciplines and everyday life. While there are foundational examples of interdisciplinary approaches to teaching evolutionary theory, there are few examples of courses with application of evolutionary theory to issues of sustainability, such as conservation or global climate change. We build on the practical and theoretical work of others to create an interdisciplinary course on evolutionary theory for non-science majors, with ties to sustainability. Our course is taught in three modules, with extensive readings and hands-on lab activities. The first module is focused on honey bee biology, with hands-on beekeeping experiences; the second module on native plants and community education on sustainability; and the third module on the evolution of the subjective human experience of free will.ResultsWe found that students in our course experienced an increased acceptance of evolutionary theory. We found that students also met the course leaning objectives, of basic knowledge of evolutionary theory and application of evolutionary theory to other disciplines, assessed through group and individual major assignments. We also found that students had an expanded perspective on interdisciplinary application of evolutionary theory, assessed through closed-ended survey questions and analysis of open-ended writing.ConclusionsStudents in our course experienced an increase of acceptance of evolutionary theory and an expanded perspective on interdisciplinary application of evolutionary theory, despite the fact that many students were not science majors.

View From the Other Side of the Stethoscope

View From the Other Side of the Stethoscope

Human Not in the Loop: Objective Sample Difficulty Measures for Curriculum Learning.

Curriculum learning is a learning method that trains models in a meaningful order from easier to harder samples. A key here is to devise automatic and objective difficulty measures of samples. In the medical domain, previous work applied domain knowledge from human experts to qualitatively assess classification difficulty of medical images to guide curriculum learning, which requires extra annotation efforts, relies on subjective human experience, and may introduce bias. In this work, we propose a new automated curriculum learning technique using the variance of gradients (VoG) to compute an objective difficulty measure of samples and evaluated its effects on elbow fracture classification from X-ray images. Specifically, we used VoG as a metric to rank each sample in terms of the classification difficulty, where high VoG scores indicate more difficult cases for classification, to guide the curriculum training process We compared the proposed technique to a baseline (without curriculum learning), a previous method that used human annotations on classification difficulty, and anti-curriculum learning. Our experiment results showed comparable and higher performance for the binary and multi-class bone fracture classification tasks.

Personality According to Personality Psychology

Personality psychology is a scientific study that aims to understand individual personalities as individual beings who have unique traits with other people. The uniqueness can be seen from the behavior, thoughts, feelings, and motivations that exist within each person. Nevertheless, these differences can also show certain patterns which then have similarities with other people. Modern psychology separates God from human subjective experience. Subjective-religious experience is still seen as unscientific. In a scientific perspective, it must meet logical-rational-empirical standards. As the heir to modernism, psychology is also under the scientific method as other sciences. Therefore, the development of modern psychology is supported by three main pillars. First, psychology is universal, second, based on empirical methods, third, research as a locomotive of progress. The method in this paper is literature review. Literature review is an activity of collecting scientific data, especially in the form of theories, methods, or research that has been done before, both in the form of books, document manuscripts, journals, and others that are already in the library. We found that there are similarities in meaning between character and personality according to modern psychology

Mesoscale cortex-wide neural dynamics predict self-initiated actions in mice several seconds prior to movement

Volition - the sense of control or agency over one's voluntary actions - is widely recognized as the basis of both human subjective experience and natural behavior in nonhuman animals. Several human studies have found peaks in neural activity preceding voluntary actions, for example the readiness potential (RP), and some have shown upcoming actions could be decoded even before awareness. Others propose that random processes underlie and explain pre-movement neural activity. Here, we seek to address these issues by evaluating whether pre-movement neural activity in mice contains structure beyond that present in random neural activity. Implementing a self-initiated water-rewarded lever-pull paradigm in mice while recording widefield [Ca++] neural activity we find that cortical activity changes in variance seconds prior to movement and that upcoming lever pulls could be predicted between 3 and 5 s (or more in some cases) prior to movement. We found inhibition of motor cortex starting at approximately 5 s prior to lever pulls and activation of motor cortex starting at approximately 2 s prior to a random unrewarded left limb movement. We show that mice, like humans, are biased toward commencing self-initiated actions during specific phases of neural activity but that the pre-movement neural code changes over time in some mice and is widely distributed as behavior prediction improved when using all vs. single cortical areas. These findings support the presence of structured multi-second neural dynamics preceding self-initiated action beyond that expected from random processes. Our results also suggest that neural mechanisms underlying self-initiated action could be preserved between mice and humans.

Spirituality as The Foundation of The Hierarchy of Needs in The Humanistic Psychology of Abraham Maslow and Sufi Psychology of Said Nursi

Abraham Maslow’s theory discredits the existence of religion and substitutes it with secular spirituality. It provides a space for anthropocentrism and materialism philosophy, freedom, authorization, and a single human potentiality. On the other hand, Said Nursi’s Sufi Psychology sets religious teachings as the radiance of spirituality. It identifies the genuineness of human beings as creatures who are obedient to God. This study aims to reveal how humanistic psychology and Sufi psychology perceive the need for spirituality by referring to Abraham Maslow and Said Nursi. Researchers identify, select, and formulate relevant and constructive narratives to support each theory stated. They then conducted a deductive content analysis of the references using the available variables, categories, and content tabulations. This research finds that Maslow's spirituality relies on subjective human experience, and life satisfaction can be achieved by maximizing one's potential. On the other hand, Nursi's spirituality is based on the Shari'a and leads to fundamental happiness. For Maslow, the existence of God has been alienated from the human mind, and religion has become a secondary component. At the same time, Nursi has a Tauhidic perspective on reality and believes that religion is the primary guidance of life. Meanwhile, secular spirituality promises nothing but illusory pseudo-happiness. This concept originated from the confusion of Modern Western Psychology on the nature of God, religion, and human psychology. This confusion will vanish if it refers to religious teaching as the ultimate truth. Although both have differences in their ontological nature and conceptual psychological foundations, they both present a similar understanding of recognizing a Higher Entity capable of controlling human life. This entity is called God. In conclusion, Nursi's concept of Tawhid-based spirituality offers a solution to modern man's anxiety, emptiness, and powerlessness of their life problems.

The Lived Experience of Postpartum Anxiety During COVID-19: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study

The experience of pregnancy and postpartum anxiety disorders results in adverse birth outcomes and the disrupted development of infants and children. Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has designated pregnant and postpartum women as more vulnerable to COVID-19 (CDC, 2021), and perinatal mood and anxiety disorders rates have increased. However, research regarding the lived experience of women with postpartum anxiety (PPA) during a global pandemic remains lacking. Using van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenological research method, we interviewed eight women self-identifying as having had PPA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysis revealed five themes describing the lived experience of PPA during COVID-19: Wired, Trapped, Lost in Time, No Safety Net, and Doubting Myself. The lived experience of PPA was both mirrored and masked by the lived experience of a global pandemic, exacerbating PPA due to the unknown and constricting nature of the pandemic. These findings suggest the need for future research to include subjective human experiences as pivotal components in creating support practices and a deeper understanding of PPA in the context of unprecedented life events.

Ein gutes Gewissen ist ein sanftes Ruhekissen... Bemerkungen über Phraseologismen mit dem Potenzial zum ethischen Bewerten

This article examines the linguistic expression of moral values in selectedGerman phrasemes which have the potential for formulating judgements concerning humanattitudes based on ethical criteria. An attempt was made to identify factors affecting therobustness of that potential, the ways in which that potential is manifested, and the type ofrelationships between the analyzed phrasemes and moral values. The moral convictions oflanguage users that are embedded in the German language were also analyzed. The studydemonstrated that in colloquial German, morality is portrayed in an intellectual and emotivecontext as the essence of subjective human experience. Linguistic data confirm that moralnorms are perceived by language users as an objective truth that should be respected. Thepotential of phrasemes for passing ethical judgements stems from the relationship betweenphrasemes and their characteristic formal attributes, including their figurative and expressivemeaning. This potential is manifested explicitly or implicitly, and its perlocutionary strength isoften determined by the metaphorical motivation of a given phraseme. The analysis confirmedthat the potential of phrasemes is also influenced by the connotative dimension of the lexicon n specific phrasemes. In the most general and broadest sense, the potential of phrasemes forformulating ethical judgements about human attitudes is conditioned by the anthropocentricinterpretation of reality. The study revealed that phrasemes with a potential for making ethicaljudgements are bound by three types of relationships with morality: they should be regarded asa tool for assessing human attitudes, as a source of knowledge about moral values preferred by language users, and as carriers of moral values that are co-responsible for embedding thesevalues in collective memory. The results of this study have practical implications for researchin axiological linguistics and applied ethics.

Problematics of research of administrative and legal support of the education system in Ukraine: theoretical and methodological aspects

The article is devoted to the review and systematization of the theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of administrative and legal support of the education system in Ukraine that dominate in domestic legal science. The authors focus on the issues of taking into account the peculiarities of the current state of education and its administrative and legal support, as well as the dynamics of their development, in any study.
 The study takes into account the views of domestic researchers on the role of philosophy of law and the theory of humanitarian logic. It was found that the methodology of analysis researchers include: philosophical and philosophical approaches; general scientific methods; group methods. Instead, the logic of humanitarian knowledge is formed on the basis of the logic of historical knowledge, the specificity of which is manifested in the special meaning of singular sets that receive direct and indirect meaning, form the appropriate logical connections in drawing conclusions.
 Approaches to the use of existentialism as a current of modern idealist philosophy are outlined, in the plane of which society is opposed to the individual, the objectivity of being is denied, but only human existence and subjective experiences are considered real.
 Particular attention is paid to systemic and synergetic approaches as the most relevant for use in the study of administrative and legal support of the education system. The advantage of a systematic approach is the ability to apply almost all the tools of scientific knowledge. At the same time, its disadvantage is the neglect of the features of individual components of the system. The use of a synergetic approach makes it possible not only to understand the processes occurring in the study area, but also to identify existing and projected results of the interaction of system components.

Complex negative emotions induced by electrical stimulation of the human hypothalamus

BackgroundStimulation of the ventromedial hypothalamic region in animals has been reported to cause attack behavior labeled as sham-rage without offering information about the internal affective state of the animal being stimulated. ObjectiveTo examine the causal effect of electrical stimulation near the ventromedial region of the human hypothalamus on the human subjective experience and map the electrophysiological connectivity of the hypothalamus with other brain regions. MethodsWe examined a patient (Subject S20_150) with intracranial electrodes implanted across 170 brain regions, including the hypothalamus. We combined direct electrical stimulation with tractography, cortico-cortical evoked potentials (CCEP), and functional connectivity using resting state intracranial electroencephalography (EEG). ResultsRecordings in the hypothalamus did not reveal any epileptic abnormalities. Electrical stimulations near the ventromedial hypothalamus induced profound shame, sadness, and fear but not rage or anger. When repeated single-pulse stimulations were delivered to the hypothalamus, significant responses were evoked in the amygdala, hippocampus, ventromedial-prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices, anterior cingulate, as well as ventral-anterior and dorsal-posterior insula. The time to first peak of these evoked responses varied and earliest propagations correlated best with the measures of resting-state EEG connectivity and structural connectivity. ConclusionThis patient's case offers details about the affective state induced by the stimulation of the human hypothalamus and provides causal evidence relevant to current theories of emotion. The complexity of affective state induced by the stimulation of the hypothalamus and the profile of hypothalamic electrophysiological connectivity suggest that the hypothalamus and its connected structures ought to be seen as causally important for human affective experience.