Search results for " mind"

The impact of attachment distress on affect-centered mentalization: An experimental study in psychosomatic patients and healthy adults

2018

Introduction We investigated the impact of attachment distress on affect-centered mentalization in a clinical and a non-clinical sample, comparing mentalization in a baseline condition to mentalization under a condition of attachment distress. Methods The sample consisted of 127 adults who underwent inpatient psychosomatic treatment, and 34 mentally healthy adults. Affect-centered mentalization was assessed by analyzing participants’ narratives on interpersonal situations in a baseline condition with the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), and an experimental condition inducing attachment distress with the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP). Unlike the LEAS, the AAP is…

Social and emotional functions in three patients with medial frontal lobe damage including the anterior cingulate cortex

2006

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study was to explore social and emotional functions in patients with medial frontal damage including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). METHODS: Three patients with medial frontal lobe lesions primarily involving the ACC performed tasks on motivational decision making, emotional facial expression recognition, and social cognition, including theory of mind (ToM). Their performance on these tasks was compared with age and education matched healthy controls. RESULTS: Patient performance on the motivational decision making and social situations tasks did not differ from controls. Selective emotional facial expression recognition impairment for fear was evident in…

Conscious and unconscious identification of female anorectic patients in in-patient psychotherapy

2009

Women are up to ten times more likely to develop anorexia nervosa (AN) than men. Psychoanalytic explanations of this disparity generally emphasize female identification problems due to unresolved conflicts with maternal representations. Based on clinical observation, we identify a subtype of AN patients characterized, first, by consistent idealization of the father who needs the patient for the fulfilment of his own narcissistic needs and, second, by the patient's need to be idealized by the father due to suffering in connection with early emotional malnutrition on the part of the mother. To illustrate this hypothesis, we present the case of a well-educated young woman displaying unconsciou…

Abstract. Towards a Theory of Cognitive Responsibility: Action, Perception and Normativity from Plato to Searle.

2011

The talk articulates the normative commitments allowing us to consider perceptual experience as a form of knowledge - that is, as a form of the human activity situated in the normative space of reason of which we can be held responsible. More specifically, John Searle's characterization of the logical structure of perceptual experiences as causally selfreferential intentional states can be developed into an account of the causal and normative-intentional aspects of experience, the genealogy of which can be traced back to Plato's Theaetetus and Meno. In these dialogues, in fact, a picture of experience as "knowledge" seems to be based on a specific "reasoning about the cause" as the specific…

The function of mirror neurons in the learning process

2017

In the last years, Neurosciences have developed very much, being elaborated many important theories scientific research in the field. The main goal of neuroscience is to understand how groups of neurons interact to create the behavior. Neuroscientists studying the action of molecules, genes and cells. It also explores the complex interactions involved in motion perception, thoughts, emotions and learning. Brick fundamental nervous system is the nerve cell, neuron. Neurons exchange information by sending electrical signals and chemical through connections called synapses. Discovered by a group of Italian researchers from the University of Parma, neurons - mirror are a special class of nerve …

The experience of no experience Elevator UX and the role of unconscious experience

2013

Elevators are designed to facilitate the smooth and efficient transportation of people from one architectural floor to the next. If they work well, people should not think about the journey at all. Instead, their concentration should remain focused on the activity they were engaged in before entering the elevator usage interaction. In other words, if the design works properly, people should not consciously experience elevator interaction. This paper presents the issue of studying no (conscious) user experience. It takes a theoretical perspective to explain aspects of consciousness and embodiment. While most studies on user experience focus on remarkable and affective interaction experiences…

Default Semantics and the architecture of the mind

2011

In this paper, I explore the relationship between Relevance Theory and Jaszczolt's Default Semantics, framing this debate within the picture of massive modularity tempered by the idea of brain plasticity (Perkins, 2007). While Relevance Theory focuses on processing (see cognitive efforts and contextual effects interplay), Default Semantics focuses on types of sources from which addressees draw information and types of processes that interact in providing it. In particular, I argue that Relevance Theory interacts with default semantics by standardizing inferences which are ultimately compressed (to use a term by Bach, 1998) into a default semantics. I briefly discuss potential obstacles to t…

What Can Modularity of Mind Tell Us about the Semantics/Pragmatics Debate?

2010

In this paper I make connections between two domains of information, research on the semantics/pragmatics debate and on modularity of mind, in the hope that establishing connections and parallel structure may be fruitful in deepening knowledge of the interface between semantics and pragmatics. In particular I want to inquire if modularity of mind can help us move towards the resolution of important theoretical problems like Grice's circle, the cancellability of explicatures/implicatures, the analogy between perceptual enrichments and explicatures due to free enrichments, the routing problem for explicatures (do they strictly take input from implicatures?), and satisficing strategies in prag…

Methods for studying unconscious learning

2005

One has to face numerous difficulties when trying to establish a dissociation between conscious and unconscious knowledge. In this paper, we review several of these problems as well as the different methodological solutions that have been proposed to address them. We suggest that each of the different methodological solutions offered refers to a different operational definition of consciousness, and present empirical examples of sequence learning studies in which these different procedures were applied to differentiate between implicit and explicit knowledge acquisition. We also show how the use of a sensitive behavioral method, the process dissociation procedure, confers a distinctive adva…

2021

Abstract Pantomime has a long tradition in clinical neuropsychology of apraxia. It has been much more used by researchers and clinicians to assess tool-use disorders than real tool use. Nevertheless, it remains incompletely understood and has given rise to controversies, such as the involvement of the left inferior parietal lobe or the nature of the underlying cognitive processes. The present article offers a comprehensive framework, with the aim of specifying the neural and cognitive bases of pantomime. To do so, we conducted a series of meta-analyses of brain-lesion, neuroimaging, and behavioral studies about pantomime and other related tasks (i.e., real tool use, imitation of meaningless…