Functional cortical connectivity analysis of mental fatigue unmasks hemispheric asymmetry and changes in small-world networks

Changes in functional connectivity across mental states can provide richer information about human cognition than simpler univariate approaches. Here, we applied a graph theoretical approach to analyze such changes in the lower alpha (8–10 Hz) band of EEG data from 26 subjects undergoing a mentally-demanding test of sustained attention: the Psychomotor Vigilance Test. Behavior and connectivity maps were compared between the first and last 5 min of the task. Reaction times were significantly slower in the final minutes of the task, showing a clear time-on-task effect. A significant increase was observed in weighted characteristic path length, a measure of the efficiency of information transfer within the cortical network. This increase was correlated with reaction time change. Functional connectivity patterns were also estimated on the cortical surface via source localization of cortical activities in 26 predefined regions of interest. Increased characteristic path length was revealed, providing further support for the presence of a reshaped global topology in cortical connectivity networks under fatigue state. Additional analysis showed an asymmetrical pattern of connectivity (right > left) in fronto-parietal regions associated with sustained attention, supporting the right-lateralization of this function. Interestingly, in the fatigue state, significance decreases were observed in left, but not right fronto-parietal connectivity. Our results indicate that functional network organization can change over relatively short time scales with mental fatigue, and that decreased connectivity has a meaningful relationship with individual difference in behavior and performance.     

Beyond Skills and Structure: Justice Dispositions as Antecedents of Young Citizens' Volunteering and Political Participation

Community involvement is usually attributed to opportunity structures and individuals' ability to be involved. Building on psychological justice research, this paper proposes that justice dispositions add to explaining why young citizens become active in their communities or not. Furthermore, it is argued that justice dispositions help to understand why most studies find only moderate relationships between youth volunteering and forms of political involvement. In a sample of 321 young Swiss volunteers, this study shows justice centrality and belief in a just world to predict the extent of volunteering and political participation, even after controlling for civic skills and opportunity structures. However, scrutinising the motivations to volunteer, self‐oriented motivations (enhancement, social, career and understanding) more strongly affected the level of volunteering than motivations related to justice dispositions (political responsibility and social responsibility). These findings have implications for the attraction and retention of volunteers as well as for the politics of volunteering and community development in general. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Interplay of Cross‐Situational Word Learning and Sentence‐Level Constraints

A variety of mechanisms contribute to word learning. Learners can track co‐occurring words and referents across situations in a bottom‐up manner (cross‐situational word learning, CSWL). Equally, they can exploit sentential contexts, relying on top–down information such as verb–argument relations and world knowledge, offering immediate constraints on meaning (word learning based on sentence‐level constraints, SLCL). When combined, CSWL and SLCL potentially modulate each other's influence, revealing how word learners deal with multiple mechanisms simultaneously: Do they use all mechanisms? Prefer one? Is their strategy context dependent? Three experiments conducted with adult learners reveal that learners prioritize SLCL over CSWL. CSWL is applied in addition to SLCL only if SLCL is not perfectly disambiguating, thereby complementing or competing with it. These studies demonstrate the importance of investigating word‐learning mechanisms simultaneously, revealing important characteristics of their interaction in more naturalistic learning environments.     

Unus Mundus: A New Approach to The Reading of Complexity

In the last decades of the twentieth century, there was quite a change in the scientific approaches as far as humankind and nature are concerned. The recent discoveries of quantum physics with the phenomenon of entanglement and of the neurosciences with the holographic theory of mind have furthermore amplified the epistemological perspectives of complexity, introducing completely new and amazing hypotheses concerning the human­–universe relationship. Therefore, on the basis of these quantum specifications by Bohm, we can postulate the hypothesis that if all the matter of the universe is also entangled, living matter and the cognition entangled to it, which are at the basis of the network of life, do not represent but a giant living hologram provided with specific information prerogative which, generally speaking, can flow by means of the continuous interaction of the corporeal matter of humankind together with the wider network of the whole. This interaction of humankind with the universe is studied by Ecobiopsychology, which qualifies in the “panorama” of complexity like a new discipline, which relates the informative codes of the living world and their specific languages (the ecological aspect) to the analogous languages of the human body, which sediments in itself the phylogenesis of the world (the biological aspect), to then recover the relationship between the “world” and the human “bios” in its psychological and cultural aspects expressed in myths, in the history of religions, and in the collective images of humanity (the psychological aspects). Ecobiopsychology, referring to the most recent developments of complexity, considers humankind as an organized totality provided with a meaning that can be justified only if contextualized in the relationships with its body, its mind, and its social and cultural dynamics without any of these aspects being privileged the human being, the human unit is to be seen as a node within a broader network. The human­-unity is provided with a specific organization, schema, structure, and process, the outcome of that manifestation of strength and information flowing in a continuous dynamism. The ecobiopsychological model focusing on the constant relationship between the unconscious and the body, in referring to the information “physicality” of the archetype and in evaluating the importance of the synchronicity as a rule able to bind among themselves the information of existential events together with the categories of the different forms of the universe, by means of the vital analogies and the symbols, proposes a holistic Weltanschauung of humankind. This is similar to the most modern conceptions of quantum physics.     

KAGAWA'S COSMIC PURPOSE AND MODERNIZATION IN JAPAN

Kagawa Tyohiko (1888–1960), who was a well known Christian leader and social reformer, is re‐evaluated from the perspective of a public philosophy, and as an example of the possibilities for collaboration and conflict between science and the religious humanities in East Asia. His last book, Cosmic Purpose, which appears to be a kind of natural theology, is analyzed from the perspective of the hidden topic of human evil. By considering Kagawa's deep religious sensibility and conscience, the book can be interpreted to reflect on the wrong directionality selected by modern Japan's leaders that resulted in the tragic war.     

My father,Herbert Rosenfeld

Abstract

This is the modified version of the powerpoint that Angela Rosenfeld, the elder daughter of Herbert Rosenfeld (1910–1986) – one of Melanie Klein's most important collaborators – presented in Nuremberg, his native town, on October 5, 2014, upon the invitation of the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG). In it, Angela Rosenfeld reconstructs not only her father's main life events, but also her personal relationship to him and the family climate in which she grew up. The traumas brought about by Hitler's rise to power in 1933 are partly still reflected in the holes and/or open questions that the author herself became aware of while writing and presenting the paper – and which profoundly touched and moved her audience.     

‘We’re all poor nuts and things happen,and we just get mixed in wrong,that’s all’ lessons for psychotherapy from Eugene O’Neill’s play,Anna Christie

Anna Christie, by the Irish American playwright Eugene O’Neil, is a powerful play, depicting hurt emotions, injured selves and the hardened exteriors that people fashion to blame and afford a measure of protection. It relays the story of an abandoned daughter and her reunion with her father, their (relative) reconciliation, and meeting a new man, and the consequences of her revelation of prostitution. From textual analysis of the play, the paper explores themes of shame, repudiation and self-protection, including the formidable, or ultimate defence of ‘unassailability’. It is argued that the psychotherapist has something valuable to learn from this harrowing and evocative work of literature.     

Personal Belief in a Just World and Conscientiousness: A meta-analysis,facet-level examination,and mediation model

Extensive research efforts have been devoted to understanding the nature of Conscientiousness, the only Big Five personality trait that has been robustly linked to professional achievement and longevity. We proposed that Conscientiousness is associated with Personal Belief in a Just World (PBJW), that is, the extent to which an individual believes that her or his efforts will be rewarded. To investigate this proposition, we undertook a meta-analysis synthesizing past findings regarding the relationship between PBJW and Conscientiousness; we confirmed a positive relationship between the two constructs (r = .16) based on 17 samples and 5,810 individuals. We further proposed a theoretical framework linking PBJW to specific facets of Conscientiousness. A survey of a representative sample of the US population (n = 311) confirmed that PBJW is positively correlated with the specific facets of Self-efficacy, Achievement-striving, and Self-discipline. Internal Locus of Control mediated these associations, elucidating the underlying processes linking PBJW and Conscientiousness.     

Trauma,Emotions, and Memory in World Politics: The Case of the European Union's Foreign Policy in the Middle East Conflict

This article focuses on the impact of emotions on the European Union (EU)'s international identity and agency in the context of the memory of trauma. Emotions are understood as performances through which an actor expresses itself to others while constructing its identity, creating its agency, and potentially affecting the social order. It is argued that the memory of trauma is translated into EU foreign policy practice through emotional performances of EU representatives. Empirically, we explore this impact in relation to the EU's engagement in the Israel‐Palestinian prolonged conflict that has many underlying emotions linked with past traumatic experiences. By doing so, we aim to instigate a discussion between the emotions literature in International Relations and the European Union studies literature to nuance understanding of the politics of emotions that increasingly constrain what kind of a global actor the EU actually is or can become.     

The Ecumenical Movement and 1968

The year 1968 is remembered as a turning point in ecumenical history: the 4th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Uppsala appeared to mark the end of the era of early ecumenism and the beginning of a new era. This article questions this understanding of “Uppsala” and examines the reasons for such a mythologization of the assembly through analyzing its themes and conflicts in a twofold way. First, the analysis shows the connection between the students' revolts of 1968 and the assembly. Second, the article draws on the assembly's main theme, “Behold, I make all things new,” and the key aspects of ecumenical renewal discussed at the assembly: the new relationship between the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church, the WCC's commitment to development issues, liberation from racism, and the churches' role in political conflicts. While these themes became a symbol for identifying the assembly with a groundbreaking ecumenical change, the article argues that this change had already begun in the early 1960s, and that the assembly at Uppsala was more the medial and visible expression of this continuing ecumenical turbulence than its source.