A prefrontal control system that is less mature than the limbic reward system in adolescence is thought to impede self-regulatory abilities, which could contribute to poor dietary choices and obesity. We, therefore, aimed to examine whether structural morphology of the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala are associated with dietary decisions and obesity in children and adolescents. Seventy-one individuals between the ages of 8–22 years participated in this study; each participant completed a computer-based food choice task and a T1- and T2-weighted (...) structural brain scans. Two indices of obesity were assessed, including age- and sex-specific body mass index and waist-to-height ratio. The behavioral task included rating 60 food stimuli for tastiness, healthiness, and liking. Based on each participant’s self-ratings, 100 binary food choices were then made utilizing a computer mouse. Dietary “self-control” was calculated as the proportion of trials where the individual chose the healthier food item over the total number of trials. Cortical thickness and amygdala subnuclei volumes were quantified using FreeSurfer 6.0 and CIT168 atlas, respectively. We found that WHtR was negatively associated with the thickness of bilateral superior frontal, left superior temporal, right insula, and right inferior temporal regions. We also found WHtR to be positively associated with the volume of the central nucleus region of the amygdala, after adjusting for the hemisphere, age, sex, and intracranial volumes. A similar data pattern was observed when BMIz was used. Moreover, we found that across all participants, thinner right superior frontal cortex and larger left CEN volumes predicted lower dietary self-control. These results suggest that differential development of the PFC and amygdala relate to obesity and dietary self-control. Further longitudinal studies are merited to determine causal relationships among altered PFC to amygdala neural circuitry, dietary self-control, and obesity. (shrink)

This article examines the construction of parenthood, drawing on Brazilian cisgender, heterosexual, and homosexual couples' experiences in using assisted reproduction technologies (ART), particularly the surrogacy. For that purpose, we interviewed: 1) a lesbian woman who had her daughter through her partner's pregnancy, using ART with anonymous donor semen; 2) a gay man who, together with his partner, used a surrogacy service under contract via a specialised offshore agency; 3) a woman who was a surrogate, in Brazil, for her sister-in-law and (...) brother who lived abroad and, from abroad, sent an embryo fertilised for surrogacy; 4) a woman who resorted to her sister-in-law in order to be a mother by surrogacy, with ovules from the woman herself fertilised with semen from her husband; and 5) the sister-in-law mentioned in 4), who acted as surrogate for her brother and his wife. These interviews made it possible to think about the discursive construction of the legitimacy of such parenthoods, as it is produced by access to, and manipulation and circulation of, reproductive technologies and persons. This biomedical management of bodies sets up a material and discursive circuit that, in turn, produces a complex web of personal, normative, legal, professional and market relationships, particularly with a view to construction of a parenthood anchored in a notion of biologically-constituted origin. In this respect, biological, affective and social bonds merge to produce a precise placement of who is the father and/or who is the mother, as well as who are the important others and how they are linked to the child in a broader web of parenthood. (shrink)

In early March 2014, some of the members of Culture on the Edge—a scholarly research collaboration of seven scholars of religion, interested in more theoretically sophisticated studies of identity, and all of whom are at different career stages and at a variety of North American institutions—had a conversation online on the use of the terms “critique” and “critical,” terms widely used in the field today but employed in such a variety of ways that the members of the group thought it (...) worthwhile to focus some attention on them. What follows is the transcript of their conversation. (shrink)

The last decade has seen a slow but steady increase in the number of postdoctoral scholars employed in faculties of education. In this article, seven postdoctoral scholars who worked in the same Ca...

National and international research cultures for the innovation of new medicines involve various value claims about the ethics of the placebo entity as differentiating comparator. Yet, in turn, the instantiation of the placebo comparator as cultural artefact for the creation and identification of the ‘control group’ depends also upon prior social understandings of ‘comparability’. Reading back the ethics controversies surrounding the Risperidone psychiatry trials in India, the paper illustrates why drug efficacies need to be studied not only through comparative techniques (...) such as randomised controlled trials, but also through analytical modes of inquiry that can begin to place the problem of efficacy within particular social and cultural contexts, as well as across disciplines. It is suggested that future bioethics debates could benefit from a revised conception of the interdisciplinary placebo — one that is rooted in ‘placebo politics’ and that listens responsively to the voices of the global South. (shrink)

En la Biblia de Ávila se encuentra el ciclo pictórico de la vida y la pasión de Cristo más completo del Románico español. Cada escena viene acompañada por una inscripción en latín añadida poco después de que se completaran las imágenes. Sin embargo, no todas las inscripciones identifican los personajes o las escenas correctamente. Uno de los errores se encuentra en el último folio del ciclo que, habiendo sido identificado como Pentecostés o la bajada del Espíritu Santo, no presenta ninguna (...) de las características iconográficas típicas de este tema. Este artículo investiga otras alternativas iconográficas que puedan explicar la peculiaridad de la imagen y la posición final del folio. (shrink)

To date, COVID-19 has spread across the world, changing our way of life and forcing us to wear face masks. This report demonstrates that face masks influence the human ability to infer emotions by observing facial configurations. Specifically, a mask obstructing a face limits the ability of people of all ages to infer emotions expressed by facial features, but the difficulties associated with the mask’s use are significantly pronounced in children aged between 3 and 5 years old. These findings are (...) of essential importance, as they suggest that we live in a time that may potentially affect the development of social and emotion reasoning, and young children’s future social abilities should be monitored to assess the true impact of the use of masks. (shrink)

This paper considers whether and how ‘vitalism’ might be considered relevant as a concept today; whether its relevance should be expressed in terms of disciplinary demarcations between the life sciences and the natural sciences; and whether there is a fundamental incompatibility between a ‘vitalism of process’ and a ‘vitalism as pathos’. I argue that the relevance of vitalism as an epistemological and ontological problem concerning the categorical distinction between living and non-living beings must be contextualized historically, and referred exclusively to (...) the epistemic horizon defined by classical physics. In contrast to this, drawing on the philosophies of Canguilhem, Whitehead, and Atlan, I propose an appreciation of the contemporary relevance of vitalism premised on the pathic and indeterminate character of nature as a whole. From this perspective vitalism expresses a politically significant ethos concerning the relationship between life, knowledge, problems and their solutions. (shrink)

In today’s society, models of God are challenged to account for more than the postmodern context in which Western Christianity finds itself; they should also consider the reality of religious pluralism. Non-monotheistic religions present a particular challenge to Western theological and philosophical God-modeling because they require a model of Gods. This paper uses an African traditional religion as a case study to problematize the effects of monotheism on philosophical models of God. The desire to uphold the image of a singular (...) God tends to invalidate religious experiences that deviate from a given scientifically-verifiable norm. It also mischaracterizes the concept of divinity in religions that maintain divine multiplicity. That is, scholars of African traditional religions affirm that “polytheism” is not an accurate naming of their traditions; rather these religions affirm a community of gods. I propose a Whiteheadian process model that describes a community of gods that has active interaction with the temporal world. Such a model not only broadens conversations of religious pluralism for Western-trained religious scholars, but also acknowledges the Western context in which many practitioners of African traditional religions live. (shrink)

O objetivo deste trabalho é investigar a produção de sentidos do Porto Maravilha na cobertura jornalística de O Globo. Utilizando como metodologia a Análise de Discurso, nos moldes propostos por Eni Orlandi (1999) e Kleber Mendonça (2007), analisamos reportagens, veiculadas entre 2010 e 2015, sobre as remoções no Morro da Providência. A construção discursiva do consenso sobre o projeto neoliberal de cidade que prometia transformar o Rio de Janeiro em cidade global, silenciou e ou normalizou o agravamento de problemas sociais, (...) como a remoção de moradores pobres e de maioria negra. Os discursos do Porto Maravilha se entrelaçaram aos dos megaeventos esportivos internacionais, visto que a legitimação dessa grande intervenção urbana se apoiou, em grande medida, na preparação da cidade para os Jogos Olímpicos de 2016. (shrink)

Las primeras historias sobre el origen de las revoluciones y emancipaciones hispanoamericanas fueron gestadas y publicadas antes de que las guerras de independencia hubieran terminado. Algunas de estas obras lo fueron en Estados Unidos. Por otro lado, historias de la revolución editadas en América española fueron reseñadas en revistas literarias estadounidenses de amplia difusión. En este artículo se estudiará entonces el papel que cumplieron los estadounidenses en la fabricación y la difusión de esta naciente historiografía hispanoamericana. El propósito es destacar (...) el protagonismo de Estados Unidos en el doble proceso del nacimiento de estos estados modernos y de sus historiografías. (shrink)

While the right to freedom of expression is of great importance in liberal societies, liberal governments should be wary of speech that disparages minority groups. This issue is particularly problematic when minority women publicly criticise gender oppression within their communities. By focusing on the controversy over the play Behzti in 2004, this article explores the difficulties involved in protecting individual women’s rights to criticise injustice, when doing so risks perpetuating negative stereotypes in society at large. If liberal polities wish to (...) preserve an ethos in society that enables minority women to speak out about their experience of oppression, then there is sometimes a case for restricting the right to free speech in these cases. By comparing Behzti with two other works, the article proposes a three-part test to indicate when liberals should seriously consider informal restrictions on free speech when this problem arises. (shrink)

A partir de la lectura de Une mort très douce, novela autobiográfica de Simone De Beauvoir, me propondré en este trabajo reflexionar sobre la noción merleau-pontiana de cuerpo vivido, particularmente en la experiencia del dolor. Más allá de las diferencias filosóficas específicas que la autora posee con Merleau-Ponty, me centraré en los préstamos que, efectivamente, ha tomado del fenomenólogo francés. Considero que Une mort très douce es un relato ejemplar que permite iluminar y profundizar algunas cuestiones que no han sido (...) lo suficientemente desarrolladas por Merleau-Ponty, a saber, la especificidad del estatus del cuerpo fenoménico sufriente hospitalizado, en una situación de enfermedad terminal. A su vez, la novela invita a reflexionar a partir de los límites establecidos entre normalidad/patología, y saber vulgar/saber científico presentados por Georges Canguilhem, que se articulan con la dimensión económica y política de la medicina como institución, señalada por Michel Foucault. Asimismo, en este texto la situación experiencial de la enfermedad permite a la filósofa revisitar su propio pensamiento desde una perspectiva más empática respecto de ciertas cuestiones sobre la maternidad sostenidas en Le deuxième sexe. De algún modo, el proceso de agonía de una persona se extiende intercorporalmente a quien está bajo su cuidado: así, este relato sobre el dolor es especialmente ilustrativo para señalar, con Merleau-Ponty, la imposibilidad de reducir el cuerpo a una descripción en tercera persona. (shrink)

In an introductory way, this essay analyzes a model of citizenship: the comunitarianism. Its political theory is elaborated in the most prestigious North American universities and it borns as a critical alternative to the liberal, standing out model in all the academic speeches. The comunitarianism is make uo by different currents and tries to improve the social organization, to increase people participation inside a framework where the values of the community are those that construct the civil identity.

Why, when and where are some moral systems supported and followed whilst others are condemned? Are moral values relative or universal? Can immoral actions be tolerated in times of crisis? Is the dream of becoming better sufficient for prompting virtuous behavior, or should we dream about what is best? Do moral values last? The divergence in practices and codes of moral belief and action present significant challenges but also offer opportunities to anthropologists for understanding social life. In this book, (...) class='Hi'>Monica Heintz explores these questions, drawing on case studies from Eastern Europe that encompass migration, religion, economic and social policies and paying particular attention to the way morality works in communities undergoing rapid social change. She uses these examples to reflect on the wider question of societal conflict and change, showing how they are driven by moral values. By highlighting the centrality of such values as engines for action and questioning the limits of universal moral values, she argues that anthropology has the capacity to shed light on the study of morality and moral values generally. The Anthropology of Morality: A Dynamic and Interactionist Approach will be of interest to students and researchers in anthropology, as well as those in politics and sociology with an interest in European politics. (shrink)

The term ‘vitalism’ is most readily associated with a series of debates among 18th- and 19th-century biologists, and broadly with the claim that the explanation of living phenomena is not compatible with, or is not exhausted by, the principles of basic sciences like physics and chemistry. Scientists and philosophers have continued to address vitalism - mostly in order to reject it - well into the second half of the 20th century, in connection with classic concepts such as mechanism, reductionism, emergence, (...) complexity and artificial intelligence, and in connection with approaches such as information theory and cybernetics. This article problematizes and transforms the claim that vitalism is obsolete by evaluating it diachronically, in the spirit of the historian and philosopher of medicine, Georges Canguilhem. It discusses the contrast between classical vitalism and Canguilhem’s own claim that vitalism is ‘an imperative rather than a method and more of an ethical system, perhaps, than a theory’. At the same time, it argues (against postmodern and post-humanist critics) that Canguilhem’s position cannot be reduced to a ‘polemical vitalism’ devoid of compromising references to reality or ontology. In relation to contemporary forms of engagement between social theory and biotechnoscience, Canguilhem’s vitalism continues to provide the critical corrective that is proper to its ‘vitality’. (shrink)

This paper examines folk theories of algorithmic recommendations on Spotify in order to make visible the cultural specificities of data assemblages in the global South. The study was conducted in Costa Rica and draws on triangulated data from 30 interviews, 4 focus groups with 22 users, and the study of “rich pictures” made by individuals to graphically represent their understanding of algorithmic recommendations. We found two main folk theories: one that personifies Spotify and another one that envisions it as a (...) system full of resources. Whereas the first theory emphasizes local conceptions of social relations to make sense of algorithms, the second one stresses the role of algorithms in providing a global experience of music and technology. We analyze why people espouse either one of these theories and how these theories provide users with resources to enact different modalities of power and resistance in relation to recommendation algorithms. We argue that folk theories thus offer a productive way to broaden understanding of what agency means in relation to algorithms. (shrink)

We asked a series of questions to Monica Cioli and David Rifkind, authors of two important books which focus on the process that enabled art and architecture to acquire a specific political meaning under fascism. The outcome is a dialogue that shows how the relationship between fascism and art is not characterized by a mere appropriation or a mutually functional exploitation between the artist or the architect and the fascist regime. Art prepares a specific appropriation of technology and serves (...) to introduce the political anthropology of the fascist man. Similarly, architecture establishes an organization of urban spaces coherent and necessary to the hierarchical order of the corporatist society. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 2 Seiten: 735-752.

ABSTRACT This article analyzes Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men as an illustrative contemporary example of cinematic cosmopolitan utopianism. Departing from the anti-utopian bias that pervaded modes of being, cultural texts and sociology in the late twentieth century, the film rearticulates utopia as a cosmopolitan method necessary to transform nonsustainable paradigms of progress and individualist worldviews. Against an apocalyptic eco-social backdrop, the evolution of the narrative and the protagonists conveys a stressed sense of directionality forward and elsewhere in search of hope. (...) The film's use of spaces and formal choices argues against social exclusion and bigotry, prompting viewers to expand their utopian horizons outside the borders of the national. Daring to envision the end of dystopia, the film ultimately hopes for a cosmopolitan remapping of the global beyond the frameworks provided by anti-utopia, nation, risk and neoliberalism. (shrink)

Luce Irigaray classically challenges what she takes to be the masculine foundations of knowledge in Western liberal culture. The present article contends not only that this epistemological challenge implicates a radical feminist politics, but that it is also more helpful in formulating a multicultural feminist theory than is often acknowledged by her readers. This is because her account responds to the false neutrality of liberal feminist approaches to multiculturalism. It does so by supporting, at the socio-political level, transformative genealogical practices (...) that are aimed at fostering women's agency in culturally sensitive ways. However, Irigaray's recent work on multiculturalism does not sustain the necessary continuity between her core epistemological critique and her political claims. In particular, the continuity between her criticism of the West's sexual indifference and the cultural multiplicity of female identity becomes problematic in her recent work. The author finally contends that Irigaray's writings pose difficulties for a multicultural feminism, because they fail to specify the different forms of policy necessary to promote diverse women's equality in the postcolonial contexts on which she recently focuses. (shrink)

As a neonatal neurologist, I serve families facing tragic decisions in which they must balance trade-offs between death and life with profound disability. I often find myself in complex discussions about future outcome, in which families sort through in real-time what information they value most in making such a choice. Will he laugh? Will he be in pain? Will he know how much he’s loved? In this month’s feature article, Brick et al share the results of an online survey aimed (...) at assessing public views on when a life is not worth living, in an effort to inform ongoing legal and clinical debates about withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment for children. These findings raise important questions about how we define and measure outcomes that matter to parents as they make these tragic decisions. It is challenging to interpret these findings in the absence of context of how decision-making for infants occurs in real-time. The nature of this study and its objective required that cases be substantially simplified. As the authors acknowledge, the prognoses and function of the children involved in these cases were often deeply contested. Prognostic uncertainty is common for children with significant …. (shrink)

The promise of genomic medicine lies in the opportunity to improve health outcomes via a personalized approach to management, grounded in genetic and genomic variation unique to an individual. However, disparities and inequities mar this remarkable landscape of genomic innovation. Prior efforts to understand these inequities have focused on populations for which genetic testing is relatively protocolized or where test utility varies greatly by ancestry groups, where equitable outcomes are more clearly defined. We therefore consider the current landscape of rare (...) disease genomics, in which diagnostic approaches vary widely and utility remains to be fully understood, and suggest a path forward: how ecosocial theory may be used to guide novel equity‐focused initiatives that incorporate illness narratives to improve population health. We present examples of narrative medicine in rare disease and reimagine the role this discipline may play in genomic sequencing studies, toward incorporation of the unique illness narrative into clinical genetics and genomics practice. Approaches that broaden the definitions of disease and of outcomes of interest will force the field to grapple with its racist history and begin to advance health equity and promote justice so that genomic medicine may truly deliver on its promise. (shrink)