Tool use in neurodegenerative diseases: Planning or technical reasoning?

Recent works showed that tool use can be impaired in stroke patients because of either planning or technical reasoning deficits, but these two hypotheses have not yet been compared in the field of neurodegenerative diseases. The aim of this study was to address the relationships between real tool use, mechanical problem‐solving, and planning skills in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 32), semantic dementia (SD, n = 16), and corticobasal syndrome (CBS, n = 9). Patients were asked to select and use ten common tools, to solve three mechanical problems, and to complete the Tower of London test. Motor function and episodic memory were controlled using the Purdue Pegboard Test and the BEC96 questionnaire, respectively. A data‐transformation method was applied to avoid ceiling effects, and single‐case analysis was performed based on raw scores and completion time. All groups demonstrated either impaired or slowed tool use. Planning deficits were found only in the AD group. Mechanical problem‐solving deficits were observed only in the AD and CBS groups. Performance in the Tower of London test was the best predictor of tool use skills in the AD group, suggesting these patients had general rather than mechanical problem‐solving deficits. Episodic memory seemed to play little role in performance. Motor dysfunction tended to be associated with tool use skills in CBS patients, while tool use disorders are interpreted as a consequence of the semantic loss in SD in line with previous works. These findings may encourage caregivers to set up disease‐centred interventions.     

The Medical Humanities Today: Humane Health Care or Tool of Governance?

The medical humanities have been presented as a panacea for medical reductionism; a means for 'humanizing' medicine. However, there is a lack of consensus about the appropriate contributing disciplines and how curricula should be taught and assessed. This special issue critically examines the role of the medical humanities in medical education and their potential to serve, inadvertently or otherwise, as a tool of governance. The contributors, who include medical educators and medical practitioners, employ a range of perspectives for analysing the pertinent issues.     

Security Technologies Versus Citizen Roles?

The idea of securitization holds that perceived threats and the ensuing need for security measures are mobilized in speech acts to legitimate bypassing of normal practices of democratic politics and justification. Citizens, as members of the political community, are thus effectively deprived of their agency. Attempts at securitization gain clout from the severity of the mobilized threat: the more convincingly a threat is argued to cause disruptions in the functioning of society and ultimately the loss of human life, the more acceptable it will become to bypass democratic governance in order to prevent the threat. Accordingly, security technologies can be conceived of as those technologies that are constructed and mobilized in such attempts at securitization and depoliticization. However, security technologies can also be thought of as technologies that are mobilized in face of existential threats more generally, regardless of whether their mobilization has a depoliticizing effect or not. Yet, as case studies on airport security scanners and security in smart grids show, not all implementations of security, even against existential threats, show this tendency of depoliticization as essential in securitization and in technologies of security. This article further demonstrates that the agency of citizens in the governance of these technologies importantly depends on whether or not the threat is perceived as internal or external to the referent object of the security programme.     

“Too Asian?” or the Invisible Citizen on the Other Side of the Nation?

In November 2010, Maclean’s magazine published a provocative article “Too Asian?” which aroused hot debate and critique from various social groups. However, its racist nature and the role of media in reinforcing racial stereotypes, manufacturing consent, and naturalizing unequal power relations has not been examined in a systematic way. Using critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to reveal its ideological and hegemonic function in constructing unequal social identities and social relations which consequently prevents racialized minorities from accessing post-secondary educational opportunities. Four themes are identified and discussed here. First, the “Too Asian?” article reinforces an Us/Them division and a “forever foreigner” identity of racialized minorities. Second, it essentializes ethnic culture and identifies culture rather than structural constraints as an explanation for individual social behaviors. Third, it represents “Asian” students as self-segregationists who should be blamed for their own exclusion. Last, but most important, it aims to justify white privilege in the field of post-secondary education by questioning the idea of meritocracy as university admission criteria and suggests maintaining “WASP Credentials.”     

Children and Psychotropic Medication: What Role Should Advocacy Counseling Play?

There are currently millions of children with mental and emotional symptoms who are being treated with psychotropic medication. The authors critique such treatment and suggest that advocacy counseling is a responsible approach to balance the power of both the pharmaceutical companies and the medical model in the mental health arena.     

Passion or Perjury: Center or Circumference?

Are all transcendental claims a lost cause because they can have no objective empirical truth? Or does the transcendent still move among us as immanent, and, if so, how so? The question of ultimacy and the validity of the symbolic is considered through the views of Paul Ricoeur and Carl Jung.     

Gurus and Devotees: Guides or Gods? Pathology or Faith?

This research investigated whether individuals who were members of a religious group in which they participated in a guru-devotee relationship differ in particular psychological and developmental ways (the need to be mirrored, the need to idealize, and retrospective perceptions of styles of having been parented) from individuals who were members of other groups, religious or non-religious. One hundred and eight subjects were drawn from three groups: (a) a Hindu based guru-devotee group, (b) a Unitarian Universalist Church with a non-hierarchical polity, and (c) a non-religious group, a computer company. Subjects were men and women ranging in age from 23 to 83. Each completed the Goal Instability and Superiority Scales (GIS) the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) and a demographics questionnaire. Results demonstrated no statistically significant differences among the groups on the measures of idealizing, mirroring, and perceived styles of having been parented, thus challenging the conventionally held belief that guru-devotee involvement is indicative of pathology. Private practice in     

Ecology: Religious or Secular?

‘Ecology: religious or secular?’ addresses the issue of the relation between ecology and the idea of God. ‘Social’ interpretations of ecology seem to fit with traditional Christian models, such as stewardship, for grasping the relation between humanity and nature. ‘Deep’ interpretations of ecology, in which nature is understood to encompass humanity, appear, by contrast, less amenable to assimilation by Christianity. The choice – for so it is often presented – between ‘deep’ and ‘social’ forms of ecology is thus a test case for Christianity. Does the Christian theologian opt for ‘social’ ecology because it best addresses the issue of human embeddedness in nature or because it fits better with prior metaphysical commitments? This article argues that the only way such a dilemma can be addressed theologically is by thinking through at a fundamental level the character of God’s relation to the world. An enquiry in philosophical theology, through the consideration of the concept of divine simplicity, it is argued, suggests that Christianity is not condemned to ‘religious’ readings of ecology. That is, Christianity is not obliged to select evidence based on criteria derived from prior theological commitments (e.g. to the model of stewardship). Instead, beginning in the concept of God enables a truly ‘secular’ enquiry which acknowledges a wide range of evidence of our materiality. Indeed, such a ‘secular’ enquiry can only be established by reference to the idea of God.     

Holism: Revolution or reminder?

Conclusion Among the four propositions considered in this paper, we have found two which can contribute to a holistic environmental ethic: individuals acquire some of their value through participating in communities, including biotic communities, and wholes, including biotic communities, can have values which are not the sum of the values of the individuals composing them. However, accepting these propositions does not represent a revolutionary break distinguishing holism from traditional value theories or ethics. On the other hand, the holistic propositions we considered which would clearly differentiate holism from (at least some) traditional value theories and ethics are unacceptable. Consequently, if the propositions we have discussed fairly represent what goes under the name of holism, then rather than being a new kind of ethic, a viable ethical holism will make its contribution by emphasizing the communal elements of traditional ethics which have sometimes been neglected in glorifications of the individual. This would not be an inconsiderable contribution, philosophically, socially, or environmentally.     

Medicine: business or profession?

As professionals, doctors have a contractual relationship with society that trains them and confers on them exclusive power to practice medical care. In the contract, power and responsibility should be balanced. When the power is conferred by society to a profession, the profession should take responsibility for society, including the provision of high quality services, and maintain high standard principled conduct and integrity.     

Theology: Reduction or Autonomy?

Issues of the nature and task of theology remain important to the science-theology dialogue. This paper lays out a framework for understanding the nature of theology in relation to the other sciences. In particular, I argue that the primary question remains one of autonomy and reduction. If theology is a genuine academic discipline, then it should be an autonomous field with its own subject matter and norms. Wolfhart Pannenberg argues that theology is the science of God, but I suggest that theology be more broadly understood as the science of meaning. If we recognize this, the modes of interaction between theology and the other sciences becomes clearer.