Defining the neuropsychological and neuroimaging phenotype of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is the second most common cause of early-onset dementia after Alzheimer’s disease (AD). There exists a paucity of quantifiable, sensitive, and specific biomarkers to detect this disease and track its manifestation and progression. The primary aim of this thesis was to develop and investigate new biomarkers for FTD, and focused on the examination of neuropsychological biomarkers in the behavioural variant of FTD (bvFTD) and their neuroanaotmical correlates. Chapters 4 and 5 explored social cognition in patients with FTD and the neural correlates of this behaviour. bvFTD patients displayed gross dysfunction in the perception of sarcasm and the ability to understand basic social signals, and this mapped onto a larger social cognition neural network that has previously been defined in the literature. These findings delineate a brain network substrate for the social impairment that characterises FTD syndromes. In Chapters 6 and 7, I explored the executive functions of task switching, reaction time, and neural timing in patients with FTD. Results indicated several dissociable executive capacities, which mapped onto discrete neural areas as part of a larger executive function network, suggesting that structures implicated in aspects of executive functioning can be targeted by FTD and may underpin aspects of the bvFTD phenotype. In the final Chapter, I devised a novel battery to examine the bases of psychosis in FTD patients with the C9ORF72 mutation, which demonstrated a specific and unique impairment in the ability to interpret somatosensory proprioceptive information in these patients, which may represent a candidate mechanism for psychosis. The studies described in this thesis contribute to the growing interest in characterising and understanding the neuropsychological phenotypes of bvFTD. Improved understanding of the anatomical associations of neuropsycholgical performance in this patient population could potentially facilitate earlier and more accurate diagnosis and symptom managemen

The Science of Meditation: From Mysticism to Mainstream Western Psychology

Psychological applications of meditative practice have become the ‘third-wave’ tools in the psychology clinician’s therapeutic tool kit. Meditation techniques for numerous psychological disorders, as well as the psychological impacts of chronic medical conditions, are being used by a growing number of mainstream clinicians in Western healthcare contexts, which were previously the domain of alternative practitioners, and formerly the sometimes secretive and mysterious domain of the orthodox and esoteric spiritual traditions. Many questions arise regarding how this conversion has taken place and why. This thesis explores some of the issues surrounding the adoption, reduction, and application of meditation practices from the Eastern and Western origins and transmission to mainstream Western healthcare contexts. By tracing the history of the rise in popularity of meditation in the mainstream Western health sciences, particularly within the mental health sector over the past century or so, it is intended to contribute to an answer to, in part, the question of ‘why’ and, in part, the question of ‘how’. A further question of whether sufficient cognizance has been taken of the subjective experiences and understandings of long-term meditation practitioners and what they can contribute to Western psychological understanding of meditation—its application potentials and pitfalls—is explored. Why is this important? At present, being intelligent, and highly trained, as most clinicians have come to believe they are, it has become somewhat taken for granted that reading journal articles or books on meditation, and attending a workshop or two, perhaps even a week-long residential training retreat, qualifies one to begin using meditation processes with clients. However, is clinician training and competency in the use of meditation currently sufficient to ensure its safe and appropriate use, particularly for psychologically impaired clients, given the phenomena reported by long-term meditators and the judicious preparatory processes required by teachers in the wisdom traditions of origin? Using qualitative methodology and a social constructionist viewing lens, I elucidate whether Western psychology’s reductive approach may create barriers to the growth of a knowledge-field of the potential of meditation for personal and collective development and wellbeing—which has existed since antiquity, but which current psychological interest indicates is by no means antiquated. Twenty three semi-guided indepth interviews were conducted with 18 long-term meditators from diverse backgrounds and nationalities, to explore their subjective experiences—the phenomena they encountered and the meanings they ascribed to their meditation practices. What became apparent through the course of this research was the divergence that exists between the positivist Western scientific literature on meditation and the experiences and understandings of this sample of meditators. The implications that arise from a paradigm clash between the fundamental premises of a positivist approach to a Western science of meditation for the healthcare sector and those of the wisdom traditions of origin are discussed. Finally, potential paths of resolution to enable contributions to the development of a knowledge-field of meditation for Western healthcare contexts from the understandings and technologies of both ways of knowing are mooted

Picturing Number in the Central Middle Ages.

Numeracy was as highly valued as literacy in the schools of Latin-speaking Europe around the year 1000, and the skills inculcated by masters, engendering specific modes of seeing and imagining, had demonstrable impact on contemporary visual culture. The trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic—continued to be taught as the foundation of learning, but the quadrivium, the four disciplines of number—arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music—received new emphasis. Two of the era’s greatest intellects, Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II; c.940–1003) and Abbo of Fleury (c.944–1004), gained renown for their mathematical prowess and charismatic teaching. They educated a generation of Europe's powerful elites—including Emperor Otto III—and a host of anonymous clerics, monks, and priests. In the closed economy of the central middle ages, these men were also the primary patrons, makers, and viewers of objects. Works of the time, like the Pericope Book of Henry II, reveal new qualities when examined through the lens of number. This project is located at the cathedral school of Reims and the monastery school of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire (Fleury)—where Gerbert and Abbo were masters, epicenters of a pan-European network of exchange linking monastic, episcopal, and lay institutions. Numeric knowledge was drawn from late antique and early medieval tracts by such figures as Boethius, Calcidius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, and Bede. Manuscript copies of these works produced and used at Reims and Fleury c.1000 give evidence of active engagement with their content, visual as well as verbal. Diagrammatic images earlier devised to explicate numeric concepts were now adapted and artfully elaborated for classroom use. This is evident in important introductions to the quadrivial disciplines prepared by Abbo (Explanatio in Calculo Victorii), Abbo’s student Byrhtferth of Ramsey (Enchiridion), and Gerbert (Isagoge geometriae). Accompanying images to these tracts are witness to contemporary notions of materiality, sight, and the limits of representation. Students of arithmetic became freshly attuned to placement and order. Computistic study developed an active, agile, and "curious" eye, while the practice of geometry exercised the intellectual eye, sharpening it, according to Gerbert, "for contemplating spiritual things and truths."PHDHistory of ArtUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116774/1/mcnameme_1.pd

Creating Through Mind and Emotions

The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) Creating Through Mind and Emotions were compiled to establish a multidisciplinary platform for presenting, interacting, and disseminating research. This platform also aims to foster the awareness and discussion on Creating Through Mind and Emotions, focusing on different visions relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design and Social Sciences, and its importance and benefits for the sense of identity, both individual and communal. The idea of Creating Through Mind and Emotions has been a powerful motor for development since the Western Early Modern Age. Its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts

A love of ‘words as words’: metaphor, analogy and the brain in the work of Thomas Willis (1621 - 1675)

PhDThomas Willis is commonly used as a touchstone for the modern brain sciences: his Cerebri anatome (1664) is celebrated as having placed the brain on its ‘modern footing,’ while Willis is referred to as the ‘founding father’ of neuroscience. Driven by a set of present-centred and medically orientated concerns, great emphasis has traditionally been placed upon Willis’s neuro-anatomy as a precursor to our own ways of thinking about the ‘neurological brain’. Such approaches have tended to neglect Willis’s broader theoretical contributions, particularly his physiological theories, or have failed to consider how (distinctly early modern) concepts around the soul informed Willis’s interpretation of the anatomical brain. This thesis re-examines Willis through his use of metaphors and analogies, exploring the relationship between his use of language and his physical practices around the brain (dissection, chemical experiment). Although recent scholarship on Willis has turned to social or cultural history approaches, there has yet to be a detailed examination of Willis’s use of language. Ideas around the appropriate use of metaphor and analogy in scientific writing have long informed responses to Willis. His credibility has been undermined by suggestions of theoretical embellishment and imaginative speculation – charges that necessarily pick up on the use of analogical reasoning. In contrast, this thesis argues that Willis’s concept of the brain cannot be viewed independently of the ways in which it was described and represented: rather than mere ornaments, metaphor and analogy were an essential part of Willis’s conceptual architecture and tools by which the brain (as an object of knowledge) was made to exist in the world. Willis’s use of language embeds his knowledge within a specific set of intellectual, cultural and material contexts of the late seventeenth century. His ideas around the brain cannot, therefore, be straightforwardly appropriated as part of our own understanding of neurology.Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mar

Misery to Mirth

The history of early modern medicine often makes for depressing reading. It implies that people fell ill, took ineffective remedies, and died. This book seeks to rebalance and brighten our overall picture of early modern health by focusing on the neglected subject of recovery from illness in England, c.1580–1720. Drawing on an array of archival and printed materials, Misery to Mirth shows that recovery did exist conceptually at this time, and that it was a widely reported phenomenon. The book takes three main perspectives: the first is physiological or medical, asking what doctors and laypeople meant by recovery, and how they thought it occurred. This includes a discussion of convalescent care, a special branch of medicine designed to restore strength to the patient’s fragile body after illness. Secondly, the book adopts the viewpoint of patients themselves: it investigates how they reacted to the escape from death, the abatement of pain and suffering, and the return to normal life and work. At the heart of getting better was contrast—from ‘paine to ease, sadnesse to mirth, prison to liberty, and death to life’. The third perspective concerns the patient’s loved ones; it shows that family and friends usually shared the feelings of patients, undergoing a dramatic transformation from anguish to elation. This mirroring of experiences, known as ‘fellow-feeling’, reveals the depth of love between many individuals. Through these discussions, the book opens a window onto some of the most profound, as well as the more prosaic, aspects of early modern existence, from attitudes to life and death, to details of what convalescents ate for supper and wore in bed

Misery to mirth: recovery from illness in early modern England

The history of early modern medicine often makes for depressing reading. It implies that people fell ill, took ineffective remedies, and died. This book seeks to rebalance and brighten our overall picture of early modern health by focusing on the neglected subject of recovery from illness in England, c.1580-1720. Drawing on an array of archival and printed materials, Misery to Mirth shows that recovery did exist conceptually at this time, and that it was a widely reported phenomenon. The book takes three main perspectives: the first is physiological or medical, asking what doctors and laypeople meant by recovery, and how they thought it occurred. This includes a discussion of convalescent care, a special branch of medicine designed to restore strength to the patient’s fragile body after illness. Secondly, the book adopts the viewpoint of patients themselves: it investigates how they reacted to the escape from death, the abatement of pain and suffering, and the return to normal life and work. At the heart of getting better was contrast – from ‘paine to ease, sadnesse to mirth, prison to liberty, and death to life’. The third perspective concerns the patient’s loved ones; it shows that family and friends usually shared the feelings of patients, undergoing a dramatic transformation from anguish to elation. This mirroring of experiences, known as ‘fellow-feeling’, reveals the depth of love between many individuals. Through these discussions, the book opens a window on some of the most profound, as well as the more prosaic, aspects of early modern existence, from attitudes to life and death, to details of what convalescents ate for supper and wore in bed

College of Arts and Sciences

Cornell University Courses of Study Vol. 96 2004/200

College of Arts and Sciences

Cornell University Courses of Study Vol. 96 2004/200

College of Arts and Sciences

Cornell University Courses of Study Vol. 95 2003/200