Does Religious Activity Distinguish the Mortality Experiences of Older Taiwanese? An Analysis Using Eighteen Years of Follow-Up Data

This paper extends investigation of religiosity and longevity to Taiwan using a 1989 survey: N = 3849, aged 60+, with 18 years of follow-up. Religious activity is measured as worship and performance of rituals. A Gompertz regression, adjusted and non-adjusted for covariates and mediating factors, shows the hazard of dying is lower for the religiously active versus the non-active. Transformed into life table functions, a 60-year-old religiously active Taiwanese female lives more than 1 year longer than her non-religious counterpart, ceteris paribus. Mainland Chinese migrants are examined carefully because of unique religious and health characteristics. They live longer, but the religiosity gap is similar.

     

Does high educational level protect against intellectual decline in older adults?: A 10‐year longitudinal study

This study examined the relation between educational level and intellectual change in Japanese older adults. Participants (age = 65–79 years, n = 593) comprised the first‐wave participants of the National Institute for Longevity Sciences‐Longitudinal Study of Aging (NILS‐LSA). They were followed for 10 years and were tested six times. Educational levels were divided into two groups (low‐educated or high‐educated), and intellectual changes for the 10 years were assessed using the Japanese Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale‐Revised Short Forms (JWAIS‐R‐SF); subtests included Information, Similarities, Picture Completion, and Digit Symbol. General linear mixed‐model analyses revealed that education had not affected 10‐year changes of the Information, Similarities, and Picture Completion subtest scores. In contrast, education was significantly associated with a change in the Digit Symbol subtest score; individuals with higher levels of education showed greater decline than those with less education, although they had higher ability at every time point. These findings suggest that higher education does not protect against intellectual decline in late life, although it is associated with long‐term individual differences in intelligence.     

Affection of contact and transcendental telepathy in schizophrenia and autism

This paper seeks to demonstrate the structural difference in communication of schizophrenia and autism. For a normal adult, spontaneous communication is nothing but the transmission of phantasía (thought) by means of perceptual objects or language. This transmission is first observed in a make-believe play of child. Husserl named this function “perceptual phantasía,” and this function presupposes as its basis the “internalized affection of contact” (which functions empirically in eye contact, body contact, or voice calling me). Regarding autism, because of the innate lack of affection of contact, intersubjective perceptual phantasía does not occur spontaneously. Consequently, autistics do not engage in make-believe play but in stereotyped and solipsistic play. Without the formation of perceptual phantasía, there is no differentiation between phantasía and perception. For this reason, people with Asperger's syndrome consider conversation not an immediate communication of thought but a logical transmission of concepts. Schizophrenia is characterized by a distortion in the internalized affection of contact, resulting in a disturbance of perceptual phantasía, and this later is covered by various symptoms—for example, delusion as a pathological kind of communication of thought. This delusion is based on the pathological internalized affection of contact represented by a terrifying Other.     

Effect of unpleasant loud noise on hippocampal activities during picture encoding: an fMRI study

The functional link between the amygdala and hippocampus in humans has not been well documented. We examined the effect of unpleasant loud noise on hippocampal and amygdaloid activities during picture encoding by means of fMRI, and on the correct response in humans. The noise reduced activity in the hippocampus during picture encoding, decreased the correct response and increased the activity of the amygdala. A path diagram using structural equation modeling suggested that hippocampus activity might be depressed by high amygdala activity. Therefore, noise should diminish memory by reducing hippocampal activity, which might be depressed by high amygdala activity.     

Kant’s Categories of Quantity and Quality,Reconsidered: From the Point of View of the History of Logic and Natural Science

Philosophia - According to Kant, the division of the categories “is not the result of a search after pure concepts undertaken at haphazard,” but is derived from the...