Eating Disorders in Men: Current Considerations

Over the past two decades, there has been a change in the way men think about their bodies. The media portrays images of men with muscular bodies and a six pack abdomen. These images can create body dissatisfaction in males. With the change in the way that the media and society in the United States look at men, so has the drive for men to achieve this ideal body image. Eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and strict exercise and diet regimens seem to plague young men as do the images in advertisements. Although eating disorders in men are similar to what women experience, men seem to strive for more body mass whereas women try to obtain thinness. Gay men and heterosexual men seem to experience eating disorders in the same way although there are differences between how they perceive their bodies. This paper outlines how the media contributes to body dissatisfaction in men. In addition to understanding how the media affects men, it is important to review and possibly revise out understanding of eating disorders and body dysmorphia symptoms to gain a solid understanding of how these symptoms appear in men today.     

The effect of dohsa-hou on body consciousness in disabled sportsmen

In this study, body is considered to be the actual state of a person's existence and is not divided from the mind as the human organism. Body affects the self through body movement, and in this study the author considers that the clients' consciousness and feeling about their bodies has an effect upon their postural appearance and body movement. By applying dohsa training – a Japanese psycho-rehabilitation method – to disabled sportsmen with problems regarding standing balance, standing firm on the ground (fumishime in Japanese), unbalanced walking, and poor coordination of hands and legs during walking and running, their change of body consciousness, change of body posture and movement, and possible change of sports performance are investigated. As a result of training, the public aspect of their body consciousness changed the most by experiencing a new mode of motor action which was different from the one they experienced before the training; they gained a better balance of their body while walking and running, and they improved their sports record time. The results indicated that this training is a useful method for helping disabled sportsmen to improve their body consciousness, to gain control over both their own bodies and minds, and that it may be useful in devising training programs for them.     

Body Weight Reduction by Water Deprivation and Schedule-Induced Phenomena

On of the most important factors in the generation of schedule induced polydipsia, and schedule induced self-injection of drugs is the prior reduction of the animals' body weight to 80% of their free-feeding weight by food deprivation. It is suggested that reductio of body weight to 80% by water deprivation should produce similar results. The series of experiments reported here showed that rats reduced to 80% body weight by water deprivation did not develop either schedule-induced polydipsia or schedule induced wheelrunning. The results thus suggest that body weight reduction may not be a critical condition in the development of schedule-induced phenonmena.     

Testing a Low-Intensity Single-Session Self-Compassion Intervention for State Body Shame in Adult Women: A Dismantling Randomized Controlled Trial

State body shame is a risk factor for eating disorders, and self-compassion is emerging as a potentially effective treatment option in such cases. This study tested the efficacy of a brief (15-minute) self-compassion intervention in reducing state body shame. Using dismantling trial methodology, participants were randomly allocated to an active compassion condition (n = 23), an inactive control compassion condition (n = 23), or an educational control condition (n = 23). Measures of state body image and state shame were collected pre-intervention, immediately after the intervention, and a day after the intervention. Subjective units of state body shame (SUBS) were intensively measured during each invention. Self-compassion interventions were equally efficacious at protecting against deterioration of state body shame and were effective at reducing state shame compared to the educational control condition, with medium effect sizes (respectively – n_p² = .07 and n_p² = .08). Reductions in state shame were retained at follow-up. None of the interventions had an effect on body image (n_p² = .04). Findings demonstrate the clinical promise of brief self-compassion interventions, particularly as evidenced-based “homework” exercises.     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem , by David Ray Griffin
Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam , by Talal Asad
This is Biology: The Science of the Living World , by Ernst Mayr
River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life , by Richard Dawkins     

Neuroscience, the Person, and God: An Emergentist Account

Strong forms of dualism and eliminative materialism block any significant dialogue between the neurosciences and theology. The present article thus challenges the Sufficiency Thesis, according to which neuroscientific explanations will finally be sufficient to fully explain human behavior. It then explores the various ways in which neuroscientific results and theological interpretations contribute to an overall theory of the person. Supervenience theories, which hold that mental events are dependent on their physical substrata but not reducible to them, are explained. Challenging the determinism of "strong" supervenience, I defend a version of "soft" supervenience that allows for genuine mental causation. This view gives rise in turn to an emergentist theory of the person. Still, I remain a monist: there are many types of properties encountered in the world, although it is only the one nature that bears all these properties. The resulting position, emergentist monism , allows for diversity within the context of the one world. This view is open at the top for theological applications and interpretations while retaining the close link to neuroscientific study and its results. Theology offers an interpretation of the whole world based on a yet higher order of emergence, although the notion of God moves beyond the natural order as a whole. It therefore supplements the natural scientific study of the world without negating it.     

心理剧中的替身概念:具身模拟的视角

替身技巧是心理剧治疗的核心技巧之一,主张通过对主角的身体模仿来理解主角。具身模拟理论认为,理解是基于镜像神经机制的心理模拟。文章梳理、分析了替身技巧和具身模拟的概念和内含,并将二者相结合,在神经生理的层面上揭示了替身技巧的治疗机制与操作原理,以期通过认知神经研究来考察和解释替身技巧的效能。     

Harnessing the Power of a Novel Program for Dynamic Balance Perturbation with Supported Body Weight

Abstract

Self-initiated postural adjustments commonly occur in daily life. To accessibly measure this type of dynamic balance, we developed a simple computer program to induce virtual perturbations and combined it with a commercially available balance board and portable EMG system to measure resulting self-initiated postural adjustments. When performing perturbed balance tests, safety harness with body weight support (BWS) is often used. However, influences of these harnesses on postural reactions are not well known. This study investigated the sensitivity of our assessment tool under different BWS conditions and muscle responses during postural adjustments following perturbation at different directions. Fifteen neurologically intact participants performed self-initiated postural adjustments under conditions with: (1) no harness; (2) harness with no BWS; and (3) harness with 10% BWS. Postural adjustment time and muscle activities of the lower leg were measured. We observed significant increases in postural adjustment time in the harness with no BWS condition and differneces in lower leg muscles response to virtual perturbation. Our findings suggest that the combination of our customized program with EMG is a sensitive and convenient tool to measure postural adjustments that approximate real-world scenarios. This method can be used with light body weight support to ensure safety without influencing muscle synergies.     

Loneliness,eating, and body mass index in parent–adolescent dyads from the Family Life,Activity, Sun,Health, and Eating study

Loneliness is a salient risk factor for obesity, emotional eating, and poor diet. Because adolescents and parents are embedded within a family unit, their experiences of loneliness may be associated with both their own and one another's behaviors. To examine the extent to which parent and child loneliness predict body mass index (BMI) and eating in parents and adolescents, an actor–partner interdependence model of loneliness, eating, and BMI in adolescent–parent dyads was analyzed. There were actor effects among adolescents such that greater loneliness was positively associated with emotional eating and BMI‐z, and there was an actor effect among parents such that higher loneliness was positively related to emotional eating. There was a partner effect among adolescents such that greater parental loneliness was positively associated with adolescent emotional eating, and there was a partner effect among parents such that higher adolescent loneliness was positively associated with parental emotional eating. There were several actor–partner effects for loneliness and junk food in dyads with boys. Findings highlight the importance of dyadic models of loneliness in adolescent–parent dyads.     

‘Something in the way you move’: Infants are sensitive to emotions conveyed in action kinematics

Body movements, as well as faces, communicate emotions. Research in adults has shown that the perception of action kinematics has a crucial role in understanding others’ emotional experiences. Still, little is known about infants’ sensitivity to body emotional expressions, since most of the research in infancy focused on faces. While there is some first evidence that infants can recognize emotions conveyed in whole‐body postures, it is still an open question whether they can extract emotional information from action kinematics. We measured electromyographic (EMG) activity over the muscles involved in happy (zygomaticus major, ZM), angry (corrugator supercilii, CS) and fearful (frontalis, F) facial expressions, while 11‐month‐old infants observed the same action performed with either happy or angry kinematics. Results demonstrate that infants responded to angry and happy kinematics with matching facial reactions. In particular, ZM activity increased while CS activity decreased in response to happy kinematics and vice versa for angry kinematics. Our results show for the first time that infants can rely on kinematic information to pick up on the emotional content of an action. Thus, from very early in life, action kinematics represent a fundamental and powerful source of information in revealing others’ emotional state.