Witnessing Together to Christ's Compassionate Love

This is the text of the address on 31 August 2022 of the moderator of the central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) to the WCC's 11th Assembly, which took place in Karlsruhe, Germany, from 31 August to 8 September 2022.     

Ecumenism in the 21st Century

This article explores the challenges facing the ecumenical movement at the beginning of the 21st century: global demographic trends and a shift in the centre of gravity of Christianity toward the global South; the need for ecumenical structures and institutions to change in response to new realities; the need to widen the ecumenical fellowship so that Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, and evangelicals who have not played a part in the WCC may participate more fully; the urgency of inter‐religious dialogue; and the need to discover a “spirituality of engagement” in interaction with the world and its people.     

Emilio Castro: A Passion for the Gospel

This article reviews the role of Emilio Castro as general secretary of the World Council of Churches (1985–1992), highlighting his involvement in the Conciliar Process for Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation; his appreciation for Orthodox spirituality and theology; and his commitment to strengthening relationships with Pentecostals and evangelicals.     

Philip Potter: Faith and Action

This article reviews the role of Philip Potter as general secretary of the World Council of Churches (1972–1984), highlighting his background in the Caribbean, his involvement in mission, and his support for the Programme to Combat Racism. In doing so, it considers those issues to which Potter was deeply committed, including the fundamental unity of Christian witness and service, the correlation of faith and action, and the inseparable connection between the personal spiritual life of Christian believers and their obedient action in the world.     

‘Eppur si move’: The Association Between Electrophysiological and Psychophysical Signatures of Perceived Movement Illusions

Vibration applied to muscle tendons induces an illusory perception of movement by activating spindle receptors and Ia afferent fibers. While neural structures supporting such illusions are quite defined, functional and psychophysical correlates of their perception have not been deeply investigated. The authors aimed at exploring subjective perception of illusory movements thanks to a repeated-stimulation multimodal approach. The integrated analysis of electroencephalography, source data (standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography–sLORETA), and psychophysical evaluation pointed at the activation of a frontoparietal sensorimotor network, with prefrontal-medial regions mainly involved in supporting the awareness for illusory movements. Further, illusions showed consistency in terms of presence, vividness, and duration. Finally, superior parietal structures seemed to play an important role in self-attribution of agency and ownership during such experiences.     

The Post-Movement Beta Rebound and Motor-Related Mu Suppression in Children

Abstract

Age-related EEG activity change is a prominent feature that reflects the functional development of the brain. The current study investigated the beta and mu rhythms of 16 children (7.7 ± 1.5 years, 5 to 9.6 years) and 13 adults when a self-determining arm motion was performed. The results indicated that mu power was decreased during movement and returned to baseline level after the movement for both children and adults. However, although a decrease in beta power was observed for both children and adults during movement, the post-movement beta power rebound (PMBR) was observed in adults but not in children. These results suggest that motor-related mu suppression develops early in children; PMBR develops later and may be associated with a more prolonged motor development process.     

Characteristics of Unintentional Movements by a Multijoint Effector

The authors explored the phenomenon of unintentional changes in the equilibrium state of a multijoint effector produced by transient changes in the external force. The subjects performed a position-holding task against a constant force produced by a robot and were instructed not to intervene voluntarily with movements produced by changes in the robot force. The robot produced a smooth force increase leading to a hand movement, followed by a dwell time. Then, the force dropped to its initial value leading to hand movement toward the initial position, but the hand stopped short of the initial position. The undershoot magnitude increased linearly with the peak hand displacement and exponentially with dwell time (time constant of about 1 s). For long dwell times, the hand stopped at about half the total distance to the initial position. The authors interpret the results as consequences of a drift of the referent hand coordinate. Our results provide support for back-coupling between the referent and actual body configurations during multijoint actions and produce the first quantitative analysis of this phenomenon. This mechanism can also explain the phenomena of slacking and force drop after turning visual feedback off during accurate force production task.     

Attention allocation in social anxiety during a speech

Cognitive models assume that social anxiety is associated with and maintained by biased information processing, leading to change in attention allocation, which can be measured by examining eye movement. However, little is known about the distribution of attention among positive, neutral and negative stimuli during a social task and the relative importance of positive versus negative biases in social anxiety. In this study, eye movement, subjective state anxiety and psychophysiology of individuals with high trait social anxiety (HSA) and low trait social anxiety (LSA) were measured during a speech task with a pre-recorded audience. The HSA group showed longer total fixation on negative stimuli and shorter total fixation on positive stimuli compared to the LSA group. We observed that the LSA group shifted attention away from negative stimuli, whereas the HSA group showed no differential attention allocation. The total duration of fixation on negative stimuli predicted subjective anxiety ratings. These results point to a negative bias as well as a lack of a positive bias in HSA individuals during social threat.     

广告心理学中的眼动研究和发展趋势

通过眼动分析可以比较深入地考察人们在观看广告时的心理活动。早在二十世纪二十年代国外已经有人进行了这方面的研究。本文对国外的广告心理学的眼动研究进行了较为全面的回顾．同时对这个领域的研究现状和发展趋势进行了简要的评述与展望。     

Anxiety, a benefit and detriment to cognition: behavioral and magnetoencephalographic evidence from a mixed-saccade task

Anxiety is typically considered an impediment to cognition. We propose anxiety-related impairments in cognitive-behavioral performance are the consequences of enhanced stimulus-driven attention. Accordingly, reflexive, habitual behaviors that rely on stimulus-driven mechanisms should be facilitated in an anxious state, while novel, flexible behaviors that compete with the former should be impaired. To test these predictions, healthy adults (N=17) performed a mixed-saccade task, which pits habitual actions (pro-saccades) against atypical ones (anti-saccades), under anxiety-inducing threat of shock and safe conditions. Whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) captured oscillatory responses in the preparatory interval preceding target onset and saccade execution. Results showed threat-induced anxiety differentially impacted response times based on the type of saccade initiated, slowing anti-saccades but facilitating erroneous pro-saccades on anti-saccade trials. MEG source analyses revealed that successful suppression of reflexive pro-saccades and correct initiation of anti-saccades during threat was marked by increased theta power in right ventrolateral prefrontal cortical and midbrain regions (superior colliculi) implicated in stimulus-driven attention. Theta activity may delay stimulus-driven processes to enable generation of an anti-saccade. Moreover, compared to safety, threat reduced beta desynchronization in inferior parietal cortices during anti-saccade preparation but increased it during pro-saccade preparation. Differential effects in inferior parietal cortices indicate a greater readiness to execute anti-saccades during safety and to execute pro-saccades during threat. These findings suggest that, in an anxiety state, reduced cognitive-behavioral flexibility may stem from enhanced stimulus-driven attention, which may serve the adaptive function of optimizing threat detection.