The influence of sex hormones on functional cerebral asymmetries in postmenopausal women

Studies investigating changes in functional cerebral asymmetries (FCAs) with hormonal fluctuations during the menstrual cycle in young women have led to controversial hypotheses about an influence of estrogen (E) and/or progesterone (P) on FCAs. Based on methodical, but also on principal problems in deriving conclusions about hormone effects from correlational designs, the present study investigated hemispheric asymmetries in postmenopausal women, who received hormone replacement either with E alone (E group, n = 32), an E–P combination (E–P group, n = 29) or no hormone substitution (control group, n = 31). Speed and accuracy of responses to a word- and a face decision task, both presented laterally by means of the visual half field technique, were assessed. The control group showed the typical pattern of hemispheric asymmetry with more correct responses to verbal stimuli presented in the right visual field (RVF) and to face stimuli presented in the left visual field (LVF). A hormone-effect was demonstrable only for the verbal task, in which the E group showed an enhanced performance of the right hemisphere (LVF). The E–P group showed no significant differences to the control group or the E group. The results suggest a role of E in the modulation of FCAs at least with regard to verbal processing.     

虚拟空间语言学研究现状和展望

传统空间语言学研究范式已经难以适应符号学当前研究的需要,本文探讨了以虚拟现实技术为支持的虚拟空间语言学的现存研究范例及其在下列七大方面的创新点 ：兼顾高内部效度和外部效度、保证个人空间的无意识加工特性、可精确控制非言语行为额外变量、保证凝视的平衡作用、实现拥挤压力源的实验研究、实现对实验环境和实验刺激精确的可重复性、优化传统数据收集方法。最终提出了该创新研究范式在本土化符号学和跨文化非言语交际学研究领域中所呈现出的重要理论价值和实践意义。     

视觉加工的双侧视野优势及其脑机制

等量的视觉任务呈现在双侧视野比仅仅呈现在单侧视野能够获得更好的任务表现, 这被称为双侧视野优势(bilateral field advantage BFA)。BFA产生于两个紧密连接的机制：枕叶视皮层内的竞争性相互作用及背侧额顶叶网络自上而下的注意调控。前者主要发生在V1–V4等与视网膜存在拓扑映射关系的视皮层区, 后者则主要涉及两侧的顶内沟、右侧楔前叶及额眼区。未来的研究可以进一步采用三维立体视觉材料探讨BFA, 考察它与其它视野效应间交互的脑机制, 同时也可尝试解决背侧额顶叶网络的各脑区在系统的功能连接方面尚存的争议。     

Clinical implications of Bion's thought

The author focuses on some clinical implications of Bion's thought. He takes into particular consideration the great technical importance of Bion's concept of 'waking dream thought'. He also proposes some developments of Bion's thought. Psychoanalytic exercises like those suggested by Bion are presented along with clinical material in order to render the author's theoretical-technical ideas as clear as possible. Furthermore, he deals with the fertile connection between Bion's theories and the fi eld concept in psychoanalysis.     

The basolateral amygdala modulates specific sensory memory representations in the cerebral cortex

Stress hormones released by an experience can modulate memory strength via the basolateral amygdala, which in turn acts on sites of memory storage such as the cerebral cortex [McGaugh, J. L. (2004). The amygdala modulates the consolidation of memories of emotionally arousing experiences. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 1–28]. Stimuli that acquire behavioral importance gain increased representation in the cortex. For example, learning shifts the tuning of neurons in the primary auditory cortex (A1) to the frequency of a conditioned stimulus (CS), and the greater the level of CS importance, the larger the area of representational gain [Weinberger, N. M. (2007). Associative representational plasticity in the auditory cortex: A synthesis of two disciplines. Learning & Memory, 14(1–2), 1–16]. The two lines of research suggest that BLA strengthening of memory might be accomplished in part by increasing the representation of an environmental stimulus. The present study investigated whether stimulation of the BLA can affect cortical memory representations. In male Sprague–Dawley rats studied under urethane general anesthesia, frequency receptive fields were obtained from A1 before and up to 75 min after the pairing of a tone with BLA stimulation (BLAstm: 100 trials, 400 ms, 100 Hz, 400 μA [±16.54]). Tone started before and continued after BLAstm. Group BLA/1.0 (n = 16) had a 1 s CS–BLAstm interval while Group BLA/1.6 (n = 5) has a 1.6 s interval. The BLA/1.0 group did develop specific tuning shifts toward and to the CS, which could change frequency tuning by as much as two octaves. Moreover, its shifts increased over time and were enduring, lasting 75 min. However, group BLA/1.6 did not develop tuning shifts, indicating that precise CS–BLAstm timing is important in the anesthetized animal. Further, training in the BLA/1.0 paradigm but stimulating outside of the BLA did not produce tuning shifts. These findings demonstrate that the BLA is capable of exerting highly specific, enduring, learning-related modifications of stimulus representation in the cerebral cortex. These findings suggest that the ability of the BLA to alter specific cortical representations may underlie, at least in part, the modulatory influence of BLA activity on strengthening long-term memory.     

Evidence against integration of spatial maps in humans: generality across real and virtual environments

A real-world open-field search task was implemented with humans as an analogue of Blaisdell and Cook’s (Anim Cogn 8:7–16, 2005) pigeon foraging task and Sturz, Bodily, and Katz’s (Anim Cogn 9:207–217, 2006) human virtual foraging task to 1) determine whether humans were capable of integrating independently learned spatial maps and 2) make explicit comparisons of mechanisms used by humans to navigate real and virtual environments. Participants searched for a hidden goal located in one of 16 bins arranged in a 4 × 4 grid. In Phase 1, the goal was hidden between two landmarks (blue T and red L). In Phase 2, the goal was hidden to the left and in front of a single landmark (blue T). Following training, goal-absent trials were conducted in which the red L from Phase 1 was presented alone. Bin choices during goal-absent trials assessed participants’ strategies: association (from Phase 1), generalization (from Phase 2), or integration (combination of Phase 1 and 2). Results were inconsistent with those obtained with pigeons but were consistent with those obtained with humans in a virtual environment. Specifically, during testing, participants did not integrate independently learned spatial maps but used a generalization strategy followed by a shift in search behavior away from the test landmark. These results were confirmed by a control condition in which a novel landmark was presented during testing. Results are consistent with the bulk of recent findings suggesting the use of alternative navigational strategies to cognitive mapping. Results also add to a growing body of literature suggesting that virtual environment approaches to the study of spatial learning and memory have external validity and that spatial mechanisms used by human participants in navigating virtual environments are similar to those used in navigating real-world environments.     

Transformations in dreaming and characters in the psychoanalytic field1,2

Having reviewed certain similarities and differences between the various psychoanalytic models (historical reconstruction/development of the container and of the mind's metabolic and transformational function; the significance to be attributed to dream‐type material; reality gradients of narrations; tolerability of truth/lies as polar opposites; and the form in which characters are understood in a psychoanalytic session), the author uses clinical material to demonstrate his conception of a session as a virtual reality in which the central operation is transformation in dreaming (de‐construction, de‐concretization, and re‐dreaming), accompanied in particular by the development of this attitude in both patient and analyst as an antidote to the operations of transformation in hallucinosis that bear witness to the failure of the functions of meaning generation. The theoretical roots of this model are traced in the concept of the field and its developments as a constantly expanding oneiric holographic field; in the developments of Bion's ideas (waking dream thought and its derivatives, and the patient as signaller of the movements of the field); and in the contributions of narratology (narrative transformations and the transformations of characters and screenplays). Stress is also laid on the transition from a psychoanalysis directed predominantly towards contents to a psychoanalysis that emphasizes the development of the instruments for dreaming, feeling, and thinking. An extensive case history and a session reported in its entirety are presented so as to convey a living impression of the ongoing process, in the consulting room, of the unsaturated co‐construction of an emotional reality in the throes of continuous transformation. The author also describes the technical implications of this model in terms of forms of interpretation, the countertransference, reveries, and, in particular, how the analyst listens to the patient's communications. The paper ends with an exploration of the concepts of grasping (in the sense of clinging to the known) and casting (in relation to what is as yet undefined but seeking representation and transformation) as a further oscillation of the minds of the analyst and the patient in addition to those familiar from classical psychoanalysis.     

Ghost and self: Jung's paradigm shift and a response to Zinkin

Abstract :  Zinkin's lucid challenge to Jung makes perfect sense. Indeed, it is the implications of this 'making sense' that this paper addresses. For Zinkin's characterization of the 'self' takes it as a 'concept' requiring coherence; a variety of abstract non-contextual knowledge that itself has a mythical heritage. Moreover, Zinkin's refinement of Jung seeks to make his work fit for the scientific paradigm of modernity. In turn, modernity's paradigm owes much to Newton's notion of knowledge via reductionism. Here knowledge or investigation is divided up into the smallest possible units with the aim of eventually putting it all together into 'one' picture of scientific truth. Unfortunately, 'reductionism' does not do justice to the resonant possibilities of Jung's writing. These look forward to a new scientific paradigm of the twenty-first century, of the interactive 'field', emergence and complexity theory. The paper works paradoxically by discovering Zinkin's 'intersubjective self' after all, in two undervalued narratives by Jung, his doctoral thesis and a short late ghost story. However, in the ambivalences and radical fictional experimentation of these fascinating texts can be discerned an-Other self, one both  created and found .     

Countertransference and the Erotic

Eros is like a huge spark that ignites our passion and then confronts us with the problem of living out this fire in ordinary space and time. What do we each know of this spark, this flame? Who or what was it’s object? Where have we felt this force for unity in ourselves, with another person, with life itself? Where are we unlived erotically? Where are the chinks in our erotic life? In focusing on the erotic in clinical work, we usually begin with the analysand’s transference. I want to explore eros in the life of the analyst for our relation to eros influences the clinical work we do. When eros is constellated, two possibilities of relationship present themselves: to an actual other who must be reckoned with as real, and to a psychic content, equally real, which we do not invent or control. How do we experience this electricity? What is our desire like? What does it take us back to, and toward what unseen purpose does it propel us? Eros brings with it a sense of purpose, of going somewhere important, something that enlists body, soul, and spirit.