1,720,955 research outputs found
Preserved Consciousness in the Absence of a Cerebral Cortex, the Legal and Ethical Implications of Redefining Consciousness and Its Neural Correlates: A Case for a Subcortical System Generating Affective Consciousness
Get PDFHistorically, the scientific and medical communities have taken a corticocentric view on consciousness, emphasizing the need for a cortex in producing the conscious experience. The preserved consciousness observed in hydranencephalic children and decorticated rats suggests that some form of consciousness may be produced by a subcortical network. The brainstem, a phylogenetically ancient and conserved brain structure, could serve as the major integrative machinery to produce this form of consciousness, which is called affective consciousness—the evolutionary antecedent to the reflective consciousness that allows humans to reflect on their experiences. The functional convergence of the brainstem with the amygdala, motor system, and other subcortical structures provides the necessary architecture to support an affective state of consciousness by which instinctual-emotional goal-directed behavior is produced. This subcortical system operates by what Merker (2007) calls the selection triangle—an interface between bodily actions (action selection), the world (target selection), and personal motivation—to produce action through integration. By this model, it is possible that consciousness may persist in the absence of a cortex, such as in the persistent vegetative state. Because of this, it is necessary to establish that multiple forms of consciousness exist and to distinguish between affective and reflective consciousness, because such a distinction would have tremendous ethical implications in the conventional medical treatment of those with disorders of consciousness
The Brainstem as a Conserved System for Consciousness: Integrating Phylogeny, Neurology, and Psychology
Get PDFHistorically, scientists and physicians have taken a corticocentric view of consciousness, emphasizing the need for a cortex in producing the conscious experience. The preserved consciousness observed in hydranencephalic children and decorticated rats suggests that some form of consciousness may be produced by a subcortical network. The brainstem, a phylogenetically conserved brain system, could serve as the major integrative network to produce this form of consciousness—referred to as ‘affective consciousness’, the evolutionary antecedent to the reflective consciousness allowing humans to reflect on experiences. The functional integration of the brainstem with the amygdala, motor network, and other subcortical structures provides the architecture necessary to support an affective state of consciousness by which instinctual-emotional goal-directed behavior is produced. This subcortical system operates by what Merker (2007) calls the selection triangle—an interface between bodily actions (action selection), the world (target selection), and personal motivation—thus producing action through integration. Accordingly, a form of consciousness may persist in the absence of the cortex, such as that observed in the persistent vegetative state (PVS). As such, it is helpful to distinguish between affective and reflective consciousness, inasmuch as this distinction would have ethical implications in treatment of those with disorders of consciousness
Controversy in Consciousness: Is the Brainstem Sufficient for Sentience?
Get PDFOur understanding of consciousness is quite possibly in need of further discussion, elaboration, and updating. What was once principally the domain of philosophical inquiry has entered the era of advanced research methods and biomedical ethics – both of which have influenced the need to reconsider this most challenging of topics. The challenge for those interested in consciousness is at least twofold: 1) to further operationally define what is meant by consciousness, with a greater understanding of how consciousness can be manifest, and 2) to better identify the neural mechanisms subserving the diverse presentations/manifestations of consciousness, and reconcile the developing literatures addressing human clinical, experimental, and animal behavioral research. Advances in medical technology allows modern medicine to keep people alive despite a paucity of evidence to suggest they are sentient according to the traditional use of the word. And yet, prolonging and sustaining life has provided an opportunity to further study the human brain during these states of ostensible non-consciousness, thus offering additional insights into the functional consequences of severe neural trauma. And, it is here that researchers have discovered issues of concern with respect to how we make determinations of conscious awareness and evaluations of “life worth living”. Indeed, it is at this juncture of biology, phylogeny (i.e., trans-species perspective), neurology, and cognitive/affective psychology that researchers are most likely to find answers to questions – or at least more questions that demand answers
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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