Personal identity and brain death: a critical response

The authors contend that there are logical inconsistencies in a theory put forth by Michael Green and Daniel Wikler ("Brain death and personal identity," Philosophy and Public Affairs 1980 Winter; 9(2): 105-133) to justify the brain death concept of death. Green and Wikler had asserted that individuals cease to exist and are dead when the criteria for continuity in their personal identity are not met. Having argued that the theory of personal identity is misguided, Agich and Jones suggest that further research into the ontological foundation of brain death concepts should begin, not by rejecting medical or moral considerations, but by carefully defining the main competing concepts of brain death as brain stem death, cerebral death, death of the brain as a whole, and whole brain death, and then by relating these concepts to the ontological conditions for being a live individual or person.     

Temporal integration and vibrotactile backward masking

Subjects were presented with vibrotactile target patterns to their left index fingertips. The target patterns varied in the number of line segments that they contained and were presented in the presence or absence of a backward-masking stimulus. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the target and masker was varied. In an identification task, subjects' errors indicated that the effect of the masker at brief SOAs was to increase the perceived number of line segments in the target. This effect diminished with increasing SOA, and at the longest SOAs subjects confused targets with patterns containing the same number of line segments but varying in how the line segments were related. In an estimation task, the effect of the masker was to increase the number of line segments estimated to be contained in the target pattern. The effect of the masker at brief SOAs is discussed in terms of an integration theory of vibrotactile backward masking. At longer SOAs, the results suggest that the masker may interfere with the extraction of relational information in the target pattern.     

Disruption of reference in aging

A homogeneous sample of normal adults living in a religious order in a study of age effects on reference as a cohesive device in discourse production and comprehension. Narrative and procedural discourse were examined across various levels of complexity and stimulus/response requirements. Results indicate that significant ambiguity of reference emerges in the younger elderly group (age 64-76) in comparison to the middle-aged group (age 27 to 55), and increases markedly in the older elderly group (age 77-92). Related impairments of comprehension and cognition were also observed. These findings are interpreted to be general features of linguistic variation with advancing age. Communicative consequences of ambiguous reference are discussed.     

Range effects in successive discrimination

In two sets of experiments we examined pigeons' discrimination performance with a visual flicker-rate continuum, using a conventional successive discrimination procedure. In the first experiment, responses during the intermediate stimulus value were never reinforced, while responses during stimuli on either end of the continuum were reinforced periodically. In the second experiment, responses during stimuli from one end of the continuum were never reinforced, while responses during stimuli from the other end of the continuum were reinforced periodically. Results from both experiments show that discrimination between unchanged positive and negative stimulus values is a function of the range over which the total stimulus set varies. These range effects are comparable to effects found in absolute judgment tasks in human and animal psychophysics. In addition, the range effects reported here are not due to channel capacity, but may depend instead on variability in judgment criteria.     

Perceptual interactions in two-word displays: familiarity and similarity effects

Previous studies have demonstrated the existence of perceptual interactions in the processing of two-word displays such as SAND LANE. When postcued to report one of the two words, subjects often make migration errors, in that the report of the specified word includes a letter of the other word (e.g., LAND or SANE instead of SAND). We find that migrations depend on the abstract, structural similarity of the strings, but not on the physical similarity; on whether the strings are words; and on whether the possible migration responses are words. We also rule out an interpretation of migration errors that attributes them to a guessing strategy. Our findings are interpreted in terms of models in which both strings simultaneously access high-level structural knowledge, that is, knowledge about what sequences of letters fit together to form familiar wholes.     

Disturbances in exploratory behavior and functional recovery in the Y and radial mazes following dopamine depletion of the lateral septum

The effects of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) injected into the lateral septum in rats were investigated for spontaneous alternation behavior in a Y maze and for spatially oriented behavior in an 8-arm radial maze. The performance of the animals in these tests was assessed under two physiological states, food-satiated and food-deprived. The selective depletion of septal dopaminergic concentrations leads to behavioral disturbances in both the Y and the radial mazes. These deficits disappeared when the animals with 6-OHDA lesions were food-deprived. These results confirm other studies from our laboratory and support two conclusions. First, lesions of dopaminergic neurons lead to behavioral impairments which resemble those found after the total lesion of the structure they innervate. Second, these behavioral impairments are responsive to therapeutic treatments, manipulations of the internal or external environment, or the level of arousal, since under certain conditions a recovery of function can occur in the absence of dopaminergic neurons. These two points provide additional support for a nonspecific role for the dopaminergic neurons originating in the ventral tegmental area. These neurons could have a permissive role in the functioning of the forebrain structures they innervate.     

Family therapy in a community mother and toddler project

A home centred family therapy approach is described based on the McMaster model. This approach was applied in a controlled trial of three forms of intervention for mother and toddler problems. In this paper the experience of applying the approach is reported.