Perception of suffering and compassion experience: brain gender disparities

Compassion is considered a moral emotion related to the perception of suffering in others, and resulting in a motivation to alleviate the afflicted party. We compared brain correlates of compassion-evoking images in women and men. BOLD functional images of 24 healthy volunteers (twelve women and twelve men; age=27±2.5 y.o.) were acquired in a 3T magnetic resonance scanner while subjects viewed pictures of human suffering previously verified to elicit compassion and indicated their compassionate experience by finger movements. Functional analysis revealed that while women manifested activation in areas involved in basic emotional, empathic, and moral processes, such as basal regions and cingulate and frontal cortices, activation in men was restricted mainly to the occipital cortex and parahippocampal gyrus. These findings suggest that compassion and its moral elements constitute gender-relative subjective phenomena emerging from differently evolved neural mechanisms and socially learned features possibly related to nurturing skills.     

Archetypes and Spirits: A Jungian Analysis of Puerto Rican Espiritismo

In this paper a comparison is made between Jung's approach to healing with a traditional healing system practised in Puerto Rico, called ‘Espiritismo’. Jungian psychology and ‘Espiritismo’ have several strong similarities in their conception of the therapeutic process, similarities which suggest that the healing process itself has generic properties which can be found in several therapeutic systems. In addition, by analysing Jung's development as a healer, it is possible to draw parallels between his development as a psychotherapist and the process of becoming a spiritist healer. In both healing systems, a transpersonal dimension is recognized as an integral element in the healing process. In ‘Espiritismo’, the suffering individual has to confront the spirit world; in analytical psychotherapy the patient has to confront the collective unconscious. This parallel was explicitly recognized by Jung in his autobiography when he compared the collective unconscious with the land of the dead. For Jung, knowledge of the figures of the unconscious enormously facilitates the individuation process; in ‘Espiritismo’ it is necessary to know the spirit world and to establish a relationship with the spirits. In Jungian psychology, healing is a process of ‘exorcizing’ some types of complexes or integrating others to consciousness. On the other hand, spiritist healers ‘exorcize’ ignorant spirits in order to heal a client or help him/her to identify spirit guides. In both systems, healing is essentially a process of establishing a dialogue with a transpersonal dimension (archetypes or spirits). Healing in ‘Espiritismo’ and Jungian psychology is a process of transcending the limited perspective of the ego (the ‘material world’) in order to experience a much broader reality (spiritual world or collective unconscious). Both systems emphasize the need to work with resources beyond the boundaries of the ego and to connect with forces that belong to a different reality.     

LEX I and II: Two databases of surface word forms for psycholinguistic research in Spanish

Two databases of Spanish surface word forms are presented. Surface word forms are words considered as orthographically or phonologically specified without reference to their meaning or syntactic category. The databases are based on the productive written vocabulary of children between the ages of 6 and 10 years. Statistical and structural information is presented concerning surface word-form frequency, consonant-vowel (CV) structure, number of syllables, syllables, syllable CV structure, and subsyllabic units. LEX I was intended to aid in the study of reading processes. Entries were orthographic surface word forms; words were divided in their components following orthographic criteria. LEX II was designed for spoken language research. Accordingly, words were transcribed phonologically and phonological criteria were applied in extracting the internal units. Information about stress location was also provided. Together, LEX I and LEX II represent a useful tool for psycholinguists interested in the study of people acquiring Spanish as a first or foreign language and of Spanish-speaking populations in general.     

Understanding Disorders in Agrammatic Patients: Capacity or Structural Deficits?

Several hypotheses have been advanced in recent years to understand difficulties in agrammatic patients. Some of them are of a structural kind, as the deficiency is said to lie in some of the linguistic system components. Others are of a functional type, as it is stated that the problem of these patients lies in the loss of processing capacity.Using the existence of a syntactic type of structure in Spanish, that active sentences do not follow the canonical S-V-O order, we will try to prove in this article whether agrammatic patients' problems are due to memory span loss or to one of the syntactic process mechanisms. To this end, the performances of three groups of patients are contrasted. Agrammatic, anomic, and normal Spanish speakers are given several tasks of sentence–picture matching and tests of memory span.Results show that agrammatic patients have specific difficulties processing certain syntactical structures; however, their memory deficiencies are not more pronounced than in other patients. It can be concluded, therefore, that the deficiencies of agrammatic patients are of a structural character rather than due to memory span loss.     

The nature of cross-modal color-word interference effects

Cowan and Barron (1987) and Cowan (1989b) reported that color-naming performance was slowed by spoken color names drawn from the same set but presented in an order unrelated to the printed colors. Although Miles, Madden, and Jones (1989) and Miles and Jones (1989) were unable to replicate this cross-modal effect, it is replicated here in two experiments with much better experimental control than before. However, the effect is shown to depend upon the relative timing of the color and word in a way that conflicts with the theoretical account that Cowan and Barron offered. While Cowan and Barron suggested that an irrelevant color word would contaminate the response set if this word occupied short-term memory when the color was about to be named, it appears that interference actually occurs only if the memory representation was formed very recently and had not been inhibited. Further implications for processing are discussed.     

The role of the anterodorsal thalami nuclei in the regulation of adrenal medullary function, beta-adrenergic cardiac receptors and anxiety responses in maternally deprived rats under stressful conditions

Maternal separation can interfere with growth and development of the brain and represents a significant risk factor for adult psychopathology. In rodents, prolonged separation from the mother affects the behavioral and endocrine responses to stress for the lifetime of the animal. Limbic structures such as the anterodorsal thalamic nuclei (ADTN) play an important role in the control of neuroendocrine and sympathetic-adrenal function. In view of these findings we hypothesized that the function of the ADTN may be affected in an animal model of maternal deprivation. To test this hypothesis female rats were isolated 4.5 h daily, during the first 3 weeks of life and tested as adults. We evaluated plasma epinephrine (E) and norepinephrine (NE), cardiac adrenoreceptors and anxiety responses after maternal deprivation and variable chronic stress (VCS) in ADTN-lesioned rats. Thirty days after ADTN lesion, in non-maternally deprived rats basal plasma NE concentration was greater and cardiac beta-adrenoreceptor density was lower than that in the sham-lesioned group. Maternal deprivation induced a significant increase in basal plasma NE concentration, which was greater in lesioned rats, and cardiac beta-adrenoreceptor density was decreased in lesioned rats. After VCS plasma catecholamine concentration was much greater in non-maternally deprived rats than in maternally-deprived rats; cardiac beta-adrenoreceptor density was decreased by VCS in both maternally-deprived and non-deprived rats, but more so in non-deprived rats, and further decreased by the ADTN lesion. In the plus maze test, the number of open arm entries was greater in the maternally deprived and in the stressed rats. Thus, sympathetic-adrenal medullary activation produced by VCS was much greater in non-deprived rats, and was linked to a down regulation of myocardial beta-adrenoceptors. The ADTN are not responsible for the reduced catecholamine responses to stress in maternally-deprived rats. Maternal deprivation or chronic stress also induced a long term anxiolytic effect, which was also not affected by ADTN lesion.     

Normative data and naming times for action pictures

The present article provides Spanish norms for name agreement, printed word frequency, word compound frequency, familiarity, imageability, visual complexity, age of acquisition, and word length (measured by syllables and phonemes) for 100 line drawings of actions taken from Druks and Masterson (2000). In addition, through a naming-time experiment carried out with a group of 54 Spanish students in a pool of 63 of these line drawings, we determined the best predictors of naming actions. In the multiple regression analysis, age of acquisition and name agreement emerged as the most important determinants of action-naming reaction time.     

On the connection between physical defects and the character type of the "exception"

A clinical and theoretical study is presented of the effects of physical defects on character structure, especially on its narcissistic aspects. The basic thesis of this paper is that there are two differentiable responses to awareness of a physical disability: various forms of denial, and a clinging to narcissistic overgratifications as a compensation for negative feelings about the self. The first response, of overusing denial, is universal, and of course leaves its mark on a person's character. However, only the second sort of response, of clinging to overgratifications, leads to the character type of the "exception" (Freud 1916). The distinction between moral ideals, embodied in the ego ideal narrowly defined, and nonmoral ideals, embodied especially in the wishful self-image, is presented as a useful tool in understanding various psychological effects of physical disabilities.     

Economic Poverty and Happiness in Rural Ecuador: the Importance of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Buen Vivir</Emphasis> (Living Well)

This research paper addresses the endemic dimensions of having or not having a good life using a concept of poverty based on self-reported subjective well-being. We build a subjective well-being poverty (SWBP) line and compare it with two income poverty (IP) lines. The endemic dimension comes from rural Ecuador and the indigenous happiness idea of Buen Vivir (Living Well), which has been the focus of growing attention in the scientific and the political arena. Discrepancies between SWBP and IP are deeply explored building models that explain SWBP with IP, as well as control variables and Buen Vivir related variables. We show that income poor households are more likely to be poor in terms of their reported subjective well-being. However, households that grow their own food and are in an indigenous community are less likely to report to be subjective well-being poor. The results suggest that low SWBP values in contrast with high IP may be explained by idiosyncratic components of the Buen Vivir philosophy. The components of the Buen Vivir ethos related to SWBP give rise to the idea of building multidimensional concepts of poverty based on what ethnic people consider to be good or bad for their specific way of life. In a general context, our study raises the importance of considering poverty and its dimensions taking into account the endemic factors of specific groups of people and cultures. That is, to take into account what is important for their lives.