HIERARCHIES: THE CORE ARGUMENT FOR A NATURALISTIC CHRISTIAN FAITH

This article takes on a perhaps impossible task: not only to reconstruct the core argument of Arthur Peacocke's program in science and religion but also to evaluate it in two major areas where it would seem to be vulnerable, namely, more recent developments in systems biology and the philosophy of mind. If his theory of hierarchies is to be successful, it must stand up to developments in these two areas and then be able to apply the results in a productive way to Christian theological reflection. Peacocke recognized that one's model of the mind‐body relation is crucial for one's position on the God‐world relation and divine action. Of the three models that he constructed, it turns out that only the third can serve as a viable model for theology if it is to be more than purely deistic or metaphorical.     

Right hemispatial neglect: frequency and characterization following acute left hemisphere stroke

The frequency of various types of unilateral spatial neglect and associated areas of neural dysfunction after left hemisphere stroke are not well characterized. Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) in distinct spatial reference frames have been identified after acute right, but not left hemisphere stroke. We studied 47 consecutive right handed patients within 48h of left hemisphere stroke to determine the frequency and distribution of types of right USN using cognitive testing and MRI imaging. The distribution of USN types was different from the previously reported distribution following acute right hemisphere stroke. In this left hemisphere stroke population, allocentric neglect was more frequent than egocentric neglect.     

Manipulating noise frequencies alters hemispheric contributions to decision making

Participants listened to the Asian disease problem framed in terms of either gains or losses and chose between two plans to combat the disease. All participants heard the problem embedded in other sounds; for some it was the relatively lower-frequency information, and for others it was the relatively higher-frequency information. The classic framing effect appeared only for those participants for whom the problem was the relatively lower-frequency information (p<.05). These results suggest that mixing filtered speech signals and noise may be a way to assess the role of the left and right hemisphere in various aspects of decision making.     

Felt presence: paranoid delusion or hallucinatory social imagery?

Cheyne and Girard characterize felt presence (FP) during sleep paralysis attacks as a pre-hallucinatory expression of a threat-activated vigilance system. While their results may be consistent with this interpretation, they are nonetheless correlational and do not address a parsimonious alternative explanation. This alternative stipulates that FP is a purely spatial, hallucinatory form of a common cognitive phenomenon—social imagery—that is often, but not necessarily, linked with threat and fear and that may induce distress among susceptible individuals. The occurrence of both fearful and non-fearful FPs in a multiplicity of situations other than sleep paralysis attacks supports the notion that FPs are hallucinatory variants of social imagery and that they are not necessarily bound to threat-activated vigilance. Evidence linking FPs with anxiety disorders supports the notion that the distress they evoke may be mediated by a more general affective distress personality factor. To illustrate the predominantly spatial character of FP hallucinations, similarities between FP and phantom limbs are summarized and the possibility that these two phenomena are parallel expressions (self- vs. other-presence) of a mirror neuron system is considered.     

An assessment of response, direction and place learning by rats in a water T-maze

Behavioral data suggest that distinguishable orientations may be necessary for place learning even when distal cues define different start points in the room and a unique goal location. We examined whether changes in orientation are also important in place learning and navigation in a water T-maze. In Experiment 1, rats were trained to locate a hidden platform and given a no-platform probe trial after 16 and 64 trials with the maze moved to a new position. Direction and response strategies were more prevalent than a place strategy. In Experiment 2, acquisition of place, response and direction strategies was assessed in a water T-maze that was moved between two locations during training. Rats were impaired on the place task when the maze was translated (moved to the L or R) but were successful when the maze was rotated across trials. These data are consistent with findings from appetitive tasks.     

Brain activation and deactivation during location and color working memory tasks in 11-13-year-old children

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and n-back tasks we investigated whether, in 11-13-year-old children, spatial (location) and nonspatial (color) information is differentially processed during visual attention (0-back) and working memory (WM) (2-back) tasks and whether such cognitive task performance, compared to a resting state, results in regional deactivation. The location 0-back task, compared to the color 0-back task, activated segregated areas in the frontal, parietal and occipital cortices whereas no differentially activated voxels were obtained when location and color 2-back tasks were directly contrasted. Several midline cortical areas were less active during 0- and 2-back task performance than resting state. The task-induced deactivation increased with task difficulty as demonstrated by larger deactivation during 2-back than 0-back tasks. The results suggest that, in 11-13-year-old children, the visual attentional network is differently recruited by spatial and nonspatial information processing, but the functional organization of cortical activation in WM in this age group is not based on the type of information processed. Furthermore, 11-13-year-old children exhibited a similar pattern of cortical deactivation that has been reported in adults during cognitive task performance compared to a resting state.     

Sociopsychological profiles of students that leave the ingroup or engage in social competition

We present a study of the sociopsychological profiles of students who are disposed to engage in social competition on behalf of ingroup interests. Five predictors were selected: the advantageous or unfavourable context for ingroup interests, group identification, meritocracy, just-world beliefs, and social dominance orientation. It was found that those students who were prepared to invest personal resources on behalf of ingroup interests were characterized by a strong group identification and middle or low scores in the meritocracy and social dominance orientation. In contrast, students with the lowest disposition to social competition were defined by their low identification and/or middle-high scores in the meritocracy and social dominance orientation. Against our expectation, the manipulation of the favourable versus unfavourable situation of the ingroup did not have a significant influence. In order of their importance, the variables that showed stronger effects were group identification, followed by meritocracy, social dominance orientation, and world-just beliefs.     

Spatial cognition in the gerbil: computing optimal escape routes from visual threats

Previous studies in our laboratory have shown that when presented with a sudden stimulus simulating an oncoming predator, Mongolian gerbils can compute the optimal trajectory to a safe refuge, taking into account the position of the threat, the location of a clearly visible refuge, and several other contextual variables as well. In the present studies, the main goal was to explore the abilities of gerbils to use mental representations of spaces that were visually occluded by opaque barriers to compute efficient escape trajectories. In all studies, gerbils were placed into a round open field containing a single refuge. On each trial, an overhead visual stimulus was caused to ‘fly’ overhead, eliciting robust escape movements from the gerbils. By manipulating the shape and position of a series of opaque barriers that were interposed between the gerbils and the refuge, we were able to show that gerbils can compute the shortest route to an invisible target, even when the available routes to the target are made complex by using elaborate barrier shapes. These findings suggest that gerbils can maintain representations of their locations with respect to salient environmental landmarks and refuges, even when such locations are not continuously visible.     

Flexible use of spatial cues in the southern flying squirrel (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Glaucomys volans</Emphasis>)

Insects, birds, and mammals have been shown capable of encoding spatial information in memory using multiple strategies or frames of reference simultaneously. These strategies include orientation to a goal-specific cue or beacon, to the position of the goal in an array of local landmarks, or to its position in the array of distant landmarks, also known as the global frame of reference. From previous experiments, it appears that birds and mammals that scatter hoard rely primarily on a global frame of reference, but this generalization depends on evidence from only a few species. Here we examined spatial memory in a previously unstudied scatter hoarder, the southern flying squirrel. We dissociated the relative weighting of three potential spatial strategies (beacon, global, or relative array strategy) with three probe tests: transposition of beacon and the rotation or the expansion of the array. The squirrels’ choices were consistent with a spatial averaging strategy, where they chose the location dictated by at least two of the three strategies, rather than using a single preferred frame of reference. This adaptive and flexible heuristic has not been previously described in animal orientation studies, yet it may be a common solution to the universal problem of encoding and recalling spatial locations in an ephemeral physical landscape.     

Spider monkey ranging patterns in Mexican subtropical forest: do travel routes reflect planning?

Although it is well known that frugivorous spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi yucatanensis) occupy large home ranges, travelling long distances to reach highly productive resources, little is known of how they move between feeding sites. A 11 month study of spider monkey ranging patterns was carried out at the Otochma’ax Yetel Kooh reserve, Yucatán, Mexico. We followed single individuals for as long as possible each day and recorded the routes travelled with the help of a GPS (Global Positioning System) device; the 11 independently moving individuals of a group were targeted as focal subjects. Travel paths were composed of highly linear segments, each typically ending at a place where some resource was exploited. Linearity of segments did not differ between individuals, and most of the highly linear paths that led to food resources were much longer than the estimate visibility in the woodland canopy. Monkeys do not generally continue in the same ranging direction after exploiting a resource: travel paths are likely to deviate at the site of resource exploitation rather than between such sites. However, during the harshest months of the year consecutive route segments were more likely to retain the same direction of overall movement. Together, these findings suggest that while moving between feeding sites, spider monkeys use spatial memory to guide travel, and even plan more than one resource site in advance. This contribution is part of the special issue “A Socioecological Perspective on Primate Cognition” (Cunningham and Janson 2007).