Rupillary response/semantic differential scale relationships

Subjects of both sexes were shown a series of pictures consisting of three affective themes: Benign, Disease, and Nudes. Both the pupillary response and the two relevant dimensions yielded by the semantic differential scale (SDS), attention-interest (AI) and pleasantness-evaluation (PE), were significantly different to the three themes. Across themes, the pupil was most closely related to PE. Within themes there was a significant correspondence between pupil and the SDS indexes only to the Disease theme. The evidence supports the following conclusions: men and women respond similarly to sexually evocative materials, psychopupillary constriction can be reliably induced, and both the pupil and SDS indexes can serve to discriminate between affective themes.     

Spirituality and mental health status among Northern Plain tribes

Spirituality measures often show positive associations with preferred mental health outcomes in the general population; however, research among American Indians (AIs) is limited. We examined the relationships of mental health status and two measures of spirituality – the Midlife Development Inventory (MIDI) and a tribal cultural spirituality measure – in Northern Plains AIs, aged 15–54 (n?=?1636). While the MIDI was unassociated with mental health status, the tribal cultural spirituality measure showed a significant relationship with better mental health status. Mental health conditions disproportionately affect AIs. Understanding protective factors such as cultural spirituality that can mitigate mental health disorders is critical to reducing these health disparities.     

A mind to go out of: reflections on primary and secondary consciousness

Dreaming and waking are two brain-mind states, which are characterized by shared and differentiated properties at the levels of brain and consciousness. As part of our effort to capitalize on a comparison of these two states we have applied Edelman's distinction between primary and secondary consciousness, which we link to dreaming and waking respectively. In this paper we examine the implications of this contrastive analysis for theories of mental illness. We conclude that while dreaming is an almost perfect model of organic psychosis, it is less so for schizophrenia and major affective disorder where it must serve a primarily heuristic role helping us to model hallucinations and delusions but not the diseases themselves.