“NEUROSCIENCE IS RELEVANT FOR PHILOSOPHY”
Professor Patricia S. Churchland interviewed by Bruno Mölder
Professor Patricia S. Churchland interviewed by Bruno Mölder
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Professor Patricia S. Churchland interviewed by Bruno Mölder
Professor Patricia S. Churchland interviewed by Bruno Mölder
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The present work indicates that changes in the study of memory continue at a rapid rate, perhaps exponentialy, but the basic structure of human's memory is always constant. we know that memory actually is not such an entity at all, but rather an aspect of the functioning of a complex information processing system. Items of information-words, propositions- are fed into the system and, in a sense, are later retrieved. However, we have no reason to think that between input and output the words or propositions are stored in specific locations somewhere in the head.
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A small group of elementary school students (age 10.4 to 13.10 yrs) with specific developmental disability of scholastic skills (app. F81.0/81.3 according to ICD-10) was retested by REVISK (locally standardized approximate of WISC-III) within, in average, 3 yrs post diagnosis, for detecting possible changes in their general ability performance. REVSIK measures were adjoined by 3 and 4-factor schemes proposed by Kaufman and Bannatyne. The results have indicated significant decline of the total IQ score (average difference=-3.0, t=2.434, df=24, t=2.434, df=24, t<0.05), intra-subtest variability on the verbal subscale (-1.3, t=2.397, df=24, p<0.05) and Bannatyne’s factors of Acquired Knowledge (-1.5, t= 4.375, df=24, p<0.01) and Spatial factor (-0.6, t=2.701, df=24, p<0.05). No homogenous subtest profiles were detected in original either repeated testing. The results and implications for the future studies are discussed against the background of contemporary theory and research in this field, as well as of empirically-based constraints in recognizing this population in a local setting.
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Despite the evolutionary distance between fish and humans, in the last period there is an explose on studying fish responses at different human diseases and not only that. This fact is possible due to the existence of a certain base from where all the component structures of humans evolved. Pain is a sensation which, many times, induces a certain mood and it is often considered as a disease symptom . The perception of pain requires particular nervous network which was discovered in fish and presents similarity with that found in humans after numerous experiments, where fish were tested with various stimulus. In this review, we described the mechanism of pain perception behind a previous exposure to a noxious stimulus on humans and then on fish, especially zebrafish which is known nowadays as an adequate animal model, as this could have further relevance for human neuropsychiatric diseases, as our group previously described several times before.
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In the proposed article we tackled the issues of sustainable development in the context of disorders classified in ICD-10. We used the empirical method using proprietary tools and psychology tests. The research material was subjected to statistical analysis. The results are presented in the article.
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In leadership, a follower-centric approach, that emphasizes the importance of the follower in the leadership process presenting one of the latest approaches in leadership research, is considered to be one of the fields that can advance the leadership theory as well as contribute to developing more effective leadership within an organization. During the dyadic interaction between the leader and the follower, emotions play a key role and can enhance the outcomes of the leadership process as well as improve the overall performance of the organization. Despite the importance of the follower in leadership, previous studies have been paying more attention to the leader’s emotions and their influence on the follower’s performance. Moreover, these studies and leadership literature fail to explain the importance of emotions during the leader-follower interaction and do not include the most recent developments in diverse disciplines, e.g., social neuroscience, psychology. Consequently, there are gaps in literature regarding the interactions between the leader and the follower from the perspective of the exchange of emotions. A key aspect in the dyadic interaction between the leader and the follower is that the follower’s emotions can influence the leader’s emotions even though up till now leadership research has been mainly focusing on the effects of the leader’s emotions on the follower. Hence, emotions of individuals participating in the communication process are sort of exchange and influence both individuals who are taking part in communication. Literature suggests that emotional contagion develops between the interacting individuals. The emotional contagion theory has captured researchers’ from different disciplines,,e.g., psychology, neuroscience attention but is still poorly represented in leadership research and literature. The most recent literature in the field of leadership calls for research integrating perspectives and paradigms (see Anderson et al, 2008) to advance the leadership theory and contribute to more effective leadership in an organization. A need for such research is relevant due to a broad spectrum of fields of science that present the most recent and promising findings regarding the emotional contagion process and can be beneficial to the development of the leadership theory and contribute to its advancement. Based on the above, the purpose of this article is to explain the dyadic interaction between the leader and the follower through the review of diverse literature on the theory of emotional contagion in e.g., neuroscience, neuroleadership psychology and to lay out the propositions how to describe the process of emotional contagion between the leader and the follower. Analytical, interpretative and comparative research methods were used. The findings of this theoretical study suggest that follower-centric approaches vary in leadership depending on the underlying theoretical approach. Literature on follower-centric leadership emphasizes followers’ active role in the leadership process and the leader’s influence on them, affecting the outcomes of the leadership process. A follower-centric approach presents a different perception of followers as not just sole observers but also as evaluators of leadership. Furthermore, followers are considered to be the main evaluators of the leader and leadership effectiveness since leadership is not leadership unless it is recognized as one by the follower.
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This paper examines whether the use of multimedia technology increases the accuracy of phonological skills assessment. To that aim we conducted a comparative study that investigates the results obtained by means of formal assessment tools and technology enhanced assessment tools. A number of 30 students attending “Constantin Păunescu” Special School were assessed using both standard tests (NEPSY II Phonological Processing subtest) and nonstandard tests (PAST - Phonological Awareness Skills Test), followed by teacher-made technology enhanced phonological assessment tools. The results suggest technology enhanced assessment tools promote a higher level of engagement with the learning task which, in turn, increases the accuracy of the assessment by simply keeping them focused and giving them alternative ways to complete tasks.
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Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a connection path that directly connects the system of central nervous with external devices without the peripheral nerves reliance. The applications of BCI attain beyond medical applications where it used to improve the life of patients. Many achievements were established during the latest years in the prosthetics field particularly using the latest achievements of technology into these products. However, some problems have emerged in the prosthetics like being cost-expensive, difficult to install and maintain, or the need for invasive procedures. The medical issue here is the need to develop an affordable and functional prosthetic arm that has an intuitive and natural control that permits the patient to adapt effortlessly to his/her new limb. In this paper, the average band power of brainwaves is successfully extracted from the brain of the subject using the EMOTIV™ Insight headset. We intend to develop low-cost, accurate, easy to use and smart functional upper body prosthetic arm controlled by non-invasive BCI and made of lightweight materials aiming to give the patients comfortable and easiness to handle the artificial arm. The arm will be controlled through commands of the brain obtained by an electroencephalography (EEG) headset without any surgical invasion. The system will be used by the patients who will learn how to train and control the prosthetic using their brain commands. The prosthetic arm can be considered as an e-learning system for educational purposes for persons that are in touch with some medical fields such as medical students, medical engineering students, physicians, researchers, etc., who needs to study the technology of prosthetics in an easy approach and to set goals for such systems.
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In contemporary societies, social life is strongly mediated by digital technology, which influences both knowledge of oneself and knowledge of others. Digital technologies can facilitate communication, increase professional efficiency, improve quality of life, or change one’s perspective on society. Digital instruments have started to be used also as "emotionally intelligent bots" which might help individuals in building emotional resilience, promising "no judging", "privacy", "reflective space" and being "your 4 AM friend". Human - non-human relationships have gradually become a reality through friendly interactions and learning processes in both direction: from device to human and from human to device. How is the human - non-human interaction constructed through chatbots? How are the human and nonhuman agents portrayed in chatbot interaction? How are learning processes built through emotional support apps? These are some of the questions which will be addressed through this paper. This paper aims to analyze the learning role of the emotional support chatbots focusing on learning processes and the knowledge produced through the human - non-human interaction. In the first part of the paper, we will synthesize some of the main articles relevant for this theme. The second part of the paper will include a review of the existing apps promising emotional support followed by a case study on two apps, with two objectives: (1) understanding the learning effects of the interaction between human and chatbot, and (2) analyzing types of knowledge produced through this interaction.
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A main problem for the development of students is to have some psychological problems. Such disorders can pose a serious threat to the learning and educational process of the students. In this article we present an intelligent Android system that can help students with such disorders or the psychotherapists that are treating them. The implemented technique is based on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing - a recent developed technique in psychology. To the best of our knowledge, there is no such system reported in the existing literature. We are the first to report it. The system can have also an educational role, for example, for the students in psychology. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy treatment designed to cure distress associated with traumatic events and the memories associated with them. Through EMDR the subject must keep his attention on two things, the traumatic event that remained in his memory and a rhythmic bilateral stimulation. This process induces some changes and can stimulate brain areas associated with information processing. The purpose of this technique is to access the traumatic memory network in order to facilitate a new association between the traumatic event and more adaptive information about the event. After a successful treatment distress is relieved, negative thoughts are reinterpreted and physiological arousal is reduced. During the therapy, the client is encouraged to relive, throughout memories, his emotionally disturbing material while focusing on external stimuli like: directed lateral eye movement, hand-tapping or audio sounds. The implications of this procedure are multiple and can be applied both in the field of mental health and education. Our implementation consists of an AI personal assistant who performs EMDR in the form of an Android application.
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The cognitive load (CL) and the emotion that encompasses each learning process, despite its type or level, represent very challenging aspects of a learning process, their assessment being difficult mainly due to the subjective appreciation. On the other hand, nowadays, students learn by spending most of their time on using digital devices. Therefore, analyzing the emotional state during learning, evaluating the visual effort, and assessing the cognitive load level, all induced using software applications or electronic devices, becomes a necessity. Emotions are defined as mental and physiological sensorial states that influence human perception, thinking, experience, learning, behavior, and decision making. They are apprehended as a short and conscious experience characterized by an intense mental activity classified between negative or unpleasant and positive or pleasant feelings. Some peripheral physiological signals such as heart rate, arterial pressure, electrodermal activity, or body temperature reflect the excitement level, but they are unable to discern the positivity and the negativity relative to a reference state. A student's concentration effort or its emotional state could be evaluated as well by using precise measurements of the pupil dimension of the blinking frequency or the eye movement. Instruction should aim to reduce the extrinsic CL and to optimize the intrinsic CL enhancing the learning relevant CL. Nevertheless, only EEG signals offer precise information concerning the emotional state and the CL level through sensors placed on the scalp according to the functioning of the cerebral lobes and their reactions to certain short-term or long-term stimuli. Recording and processing physiological signals or cerebral waves are some of the most explored solutions of the last decade that are leading to encouraging results. This paper mainly studies and illustrates some approaches to evaluating the cognitive load and emotional state of students during a learning process. Essentially, this paper focuses on elaborating experimental sessions, choosing the proper stimulus and equipment, exploiting adequate recording and preprocessing methods for the involved physiological information, and engaging artificial intelligence techniques for feature selection and data classification to achieve the best calibration, appreciation, and monitoring of a learning process.
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The aim of the study was the comparison of intellectually gifted secondary grammar school students with students from the average population of secondary grammar school students, in the level of overexcitability and prediction of intellectual giftedness through the various types of overexcitability. The research sample consisted of 88 secondary grammar school students aged 16-17 years. The target group, who were identified as intellectually gifted students, consisted of 44 students, whereas the control group consisted of 44 students from an average population of secondary grammar school students. We used tests of intellectual ability, Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices Test, Intelligence Structure Analysis, and Urban's Figural Test of Creative Thinking to identify intellectually gifted secondary grammar school students. Types of overexcitability were assessed by means of the Overexcitability Questionnaire. Statistical analysis showed significant differences in the level of overexcitabilities between intellectually gifted secondary grammar school students and students from the average population of secondary grammar school students. Significant predictive power of intellectual and emotional overexcitability was found in relation to intellectual giftedness.
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Prader-Willi syndrome belongs to the group of rare genetic diseases, and it is most often caused by the absence of a few genes on chromosome 15 (the absence of paternal genes in the 15q11q13 region or the absence of both maternal chromosomes 15), being the most common cause of infantile morbid obesity. People diagnosed with this disease have typical physical characteristics, neurological, behavioral and endocrine abnormalities, so its approach requires a multidisciplinary team to help the patient adapt to the environment. This paper presents the case of a patient who has multiple associated pathologies, thus requiring continuous supervision in order to increase the quality of life.
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The aim of this paper is to investigate how the emotions experienced by physicians and patients in their interaction with each other in the long-run affect changes in their behavior and health care outcomes. Physicians and patients learn from previous experiences and their behavior evolves so that they more often choose strategies that achieve higher-than-average psychological utility. In the analysis of this problem from a dynamic perspective complex mathematical tools of evolutionary game theory and replicator dynamics are used, which include a detailed study of the behavior of systems of differential equations. The scientific contribution of this paper is reflected in the analysis of different scenarios of the impact of frustrations, regrets and guilt on the long-term behavior of physicians and patients and shows that system behavior depends significantly on the extent and strength of emotions experienced by physicians and patients. In this way, it is possible to find effective policy measures. Given that the wider set of emotions experienced by the doctor and the patient in interaction with each other significantly affects the possible behavior of the system, the results derived in this paper should be interpreted critically.
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The pandemic generated by the new COVID-19 virus forced governments of the world to adopt austerity measures to prevent and combat the spread of this virus on a large scale. Although the measures supported the aim of the spread, their adverse effects have not been delayed. Recent studies in most areas of activity involving the individual, but especially those in the fields of psychology, nutrition and psychiatry, shows that the consequences will affect societies in the long term. Starting from mental health in general, to significant increases in unhealthy eating behavior, we are actually talking about the need of an increased attention that should be paid to certain areas that are subject to unhealthy eating behavior caused by the pandemic context.This study aims to bring to the attention of specialists and researchers in the field of mental health the importance of changes in eating behavior caused by the context of COVID-19. If for people with no psychiatric diagnosis this pandemic has rather led to the adoption of cognitive patterns and dysfunctional behavior, for patients with psychiatric diagnosis we will notice a worsening of the disorders and increased difficulty in maintaining the treatment. That is why we wanted to build a global point of view of these changes brought by COVID-19 for eating behavior and to identify what we can do to reduce the negative consequences in this sphere.
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Psychiatric literature generally recognizes the importance of religion and spirituality in the care of religious psychiatric patients. In this work we aimed to investigate the influence of a supportive religious program on religious patients with suicidal ideation. The results confirmed the theoretical predictions of the psychiatric literature regarding the broad positive value of a complementary religious support applied to religious psychiatric patients. A potential negative effect of the most influential Christian Orthodox religious practices used in the therapy of suicidal patients was also noted. These findings may have significant implications for medium and long-term psychiatric interventions in faith-based settings.
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Schizoaffective disorder represents a psychiatric condition characterized by symptoms of both schizophrenia and mood disorders, such as bipolar disorder or depression. Together, these two conditions have a major impact on individuals and affect many aspects of their lives. Moreover, practicians often have difficulties in diagnosing and treating the patients suffering from this disorder. In patients with psychiatric conditions, including schizoaffective disorder, the lack of insight is frequently a significant problem. Objectives: This paper aims to provide a general perspective upon the evolution of schizoaffective disorder and to emphasize the patients' limited capacity to recognise their condition and the need for treatment. Methods: This article will present the clinical case of a 37-year old woman, who is brought by the police to the ER of "Socola” Institute of Psychiatry for psychomotor agitation, emotional lability, mood swings, delusions of prejudice and persecution, impulsive behavior and aggressiveness towards her parents, especially her father. Conclusions: Impairment of insight is considered an important characteristic of psychiatric disorders, including schizoaffective disorder. It is crucial for physicians to develop trusting relationships with both the patient and the patient’s family in order to improve the quality of life of both patients and their families.
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Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that requires lifelong treatment. Early intervention can help control symptoms before other complications occur and can help improve the long-term outlook. There is evidence that pharmacological interventions, when used early and in a sustained manner, can improve the long-term prognosis. Because schizophrenia is difficult to diagnose before the onset of acute symptoms, treatment may be delayed for a significant period of time. In some situations, the symptoms may be evident since childhood, in early-onset, disorganized or hebephrenic type, with a very severe prognosis. Unfortunately, the symptoms of this period often go unnoticed, especially due to the fact that the parents and the child's entourage do not have the necessary information to notice them. In this context, the question arises whether a form of screening and monitoring of children with early behavioral changes, through teachers, school doctors and psychologists, could lead to early therapeutic intervention, with better long-term results. The present case shows a frequent situation, in which the patient presents at adult age due to an aggravation of the symptoms, which were present since childhood. Due to the delayed intervention, the patient's evolution was marked by frequent relapses and resistance to most of the treatments. The prognosis is a reserved one, emphasizing the importance of implementing methods for early detection of the pathology, since childhood, when an early intervention could have better results.
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Although nonverbal learning disability does not have a clinical representation in the International Classification of Diseases and American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic andStatistical Manual of Mental Disorders, researchers have been working on the disorder since the 1960s. Only fragmentary mentions of the disorder have been found in the professional literature in Slovak language. There is a non-uniform terminological definition in foreign literature, the disorder is also referred to a developmental visuospatial or right-hemisphere learning disability, or experts lean towards related diagnostic units for which is this disorder often mistaken (autism spectrum disorder,dyscalculia, dyspraxia, or ADHD). Individuals with this disorder have difficulties in visuospatialperception, executive functions, social functioning, and from the academic abilities the most serious impairment is in mathematical abilities, which over time are associated with psychological problems such as anxiety and depression. Children and adolescents with this disorder need the support of several experts: a psychologist, a special education teacher, an occupational therapist, a speech and language therapist, or psychiatrist. In this paper, we analyse current views on this clinical unit in the neurobiological and neuropsychological terms and discuss its diagnostic validity.
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The main goal of this study was to examine and analyze the abilities of the understanding of reversible sentences in persons with aphasia caused by stroke. The study was conducted on a random sample of 25 patients/respondents who had a stroke and who were diagnosed by neurological examination and speech-language therapist examination of a speech and language disorder defined as aphasia. The control group consisted of the same number of respondent, but without aphasia. The assessment of reversible sentences comprehension in patients/respondents was performed using a Reversible Sentences Comprehension Test (Byng and Black, 1999). Analysis of the research results showed that there are significant differences in abilities of understanding reversible sentences between persons with aphasia and those without aphasia. Persons with aphasia have difficulties in understanding reversible sentences. These difficulties can be of varying shape and intensity, from severe to milder interference. Persons with Wernicke’s aphasia suffer from the majority of difficulties and persons with anomic aphasia have the least difficulties.
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