Illusory Essences: A Bias Holding Back Theorizing in Psychological Science

The reliance in psychology on verbal definitions means that psychological research is unusually moored to how humans think and communicate about categories. Psychological concepts (e.g., intelligence, attention) are easily assumed to represent objective, definable categories with an underlying essence. Like the “vital forces” previously thought to animate life, these assumed essences can create an illusion of understanding. By synthesizing a wide range of research lines from cognitive, clinical, and biological psychology and neuroscience, we describe a pervasive tendency across psychological science to assume that essences explain phenomena. Labeling a complex phenomenon can appear as theoretical progress before there is sufficient evidence that the described category has a definable essence or known boundary conditions. Category labels can further undermine progress by masking contingent and contextual relationships and obscuring the need to specify mechanisms. Finally, we highlight examples of promising methods that circumvent the lure of essences and suggest four concrete strategies for identifying and avoiding essentialist intuitions in theory development.</p

Interoception and inflammation in psychiatric disorders

Despite a historical focus on neurally-mediated interoceptive signaling mechanisms, humoral (and even cellular) signals also play an important role in communicating bodily physiological state to the brain. These signaling pathways can perturb neuronal structure, chemistry and function leading to discrete changes in behavior. They are also increasingly implicated in the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. The importance of these humoral signaling pathways is perhaps most powerfully illustrated in the context of infection and inflammation. Here we provide an overview of how immune activation of neural and humoral interoceptive mechanisms interact to mediate discrete changes in brain and behavior and highlight how activation of these pathways at specific points in neural development may predispose to psychiatric disorder. As our mechanistic understanding of these interoceptive pathways continues to emerge it is revealing novel therapeutic targets, potentially heralding an exciting new era of immunotherapies in psychiatry

Calling International Rescue: knowledge lost in literature and data landslide!

We live in interesting times. Portents of impending catastrophe pervade the literature, calling us to action in the face of unmanageable volumes of scientific data. But it isn't so much data generation per se, but the systematic burial of the knowledge embodied in those data that poses the problem: there is so much information available that we simply no longer know what we know, and finding what we want is hard – too hard. The knowledge we seek is often fragmentary and disconnected, spread thinly across thousands of databases and millions of articles in thousands of journals. The intellectual energy required to search this array of data-archives, and the time and money this wastes, has led several researchers to challenge the methods by which we traditionally commit newly acquired facts and knowledge to the scientific record. We present some of these initiatives here – a whirlwind tour of recent projects to transform scholarly publishing paradigms, culminating in Utopia and the Semantic Biochemical Journal experiment. With their promises to provide new ways of interacting with the literature, and new and more powerful tools to access and extract the knowledge sequestered within it, we ask what advances they make and what obstacles to progress still exist? We explore these questions, and, as you read on, we invite you to engage in an experiment with us, a real-time test of a new technology to rescue data from the dormant pages of published documents. We ask you, please, to read the instructions carefully. The time has come: you may turn over your papers

Psychotherapy and the Embodiment of the Neuronal Identity: A Hermeneutic Study of Louis Cozolino\u27s (2010)\u3ci\u3e The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain \u3c/i\u3e

In recent years, there have been several ways in which researchers have attempted to integrate psychotherapy and neuroscience research. Neuroscience has been proposed as a method of addressing lingering questions about how best to integrate psychotherapy theories and explain their efficacy. For example, some psychotherapy outcome studies have included neuroimaging of participants in order to propose neurobiological bases of effective psychological interventions (e.g., Paquette et al., 2003). Other theorists have used cognitive neuroscience research to suggest neurobiological correlates of various psychotherapy theories and concepts (e.g., Schore, 2012). These efforts seem to embody broader historical trends, including the hope that neuroscience can resolve philosophical questions about the relationship between mind and body, as well as the popular appeal of contemporary brain research. In this hermeneutic dissertation I examined a popular neuropsychotherapy text in order to explore the historical fit between neuroscience and psychotherapy. The study identifies the possible understandings of the self (i.e., what it means to be human) that could arise from Western therapy discourses that are based on neuroscientific interpretations of psychotherapy theories. The methodology of this dissertation consisted of a critical textual analysis of Louis Cozolino\u27s (2010) The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain. The primary content, rhetorical strategies, and recurring themes in Cozolino\u27s book were outlined and interpreted from a hermeneutic perspective. This included a historical critique of Cozolino\u27s claims about the origins, purpose, and efficacy of psychotherapy, his assertions about the relationship between self and brain, and examples of his psychotherapy case vignettes. Rhetorical strategies in his writing included analogy, ambiguity, speculative language, and figures of speech such as metaphor and personification. A discussion of these findings addressed the implications of Cozolino\u27s efforts with regards to patient care, psychotherapy theory integration, and the possible effects that these efforts may have on the profession of psychology. The electronic version of this dissertation is at OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/et

Exploring Sense-Making in Health Policy: Implementing Health Policy in Nigeria

This study employed the concept of sense-making as an interpretive lens to explore the cognitive dimensions of the actions of policy actors implementing the Nigerian Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) – a major health policy reform launched in 2005.The research follows emergent body of work by cognitive implementation theorists who have demonstrated that the conventional (top-down compliance model) of policy implementation is fundamentally deficient because it pays scant attention to the link between the sense-making of implementing actors and deviations from policy intentions (Spillane et al., 2002; Peck and 6, 2006).Put differently, the sense-making of implementers results in evolution of policy during implementation (Browne and Wildavsky, 1983; Spillane et al, 2002).Using a case study design, the research investigated individual, and collective/distributed sense-making across a spectrum of the actors implementing the NHIS. More specifically, the study investigated the role of formal and informal interactions on actor sense-making , the impact of communities of practice on collective sense-making , and the shaping influences of the political, organisational and bureaucratic context on the sense-making of actors. The conceptual framework for the study assembled theories and concepts covering individual, and collective/distributed sense-making, sense-giving , communities of practice theory, and the role of power and politics in sense-making. A sample of 29 purposively selected policy actors from the ranks of NHIS/Community insurance Scheme officials, HMO executives, medical providers, and three external health policy advisers were interviewed to generate the primary data. Secondary data was obtained from in-depth examinations of various archival and publicly available documents. The research findings confirm the central thesis that sense-making is socially re-constructed, negotiated and organised. Significantly, individual sense-making variations (based on cognition and affect) in the cues that actors extracted from the NHIS policy message resulted in different framings of that message. The limitations of the notion of homogeneity within communities of practice, and the relevance of power as a dynamic in communities of practice, were also revealed. Notably, the findings empirically demonstrate the critical impact of power and politics in sense-making. A significant contribution of the study to the literature is the linkage that it establishes between power distance orientation and sense-making

Minds Online: The Interface between Web Science, Cognitive Science, and the Philosophy of Mind

Alongside existing research into the social, political and economic impacts of the Web, there is a need to study the Web from a cognitive and epistemic perspective. This is particularly so as new and emerging technologies alter the nature of our interactive engagements with the Web, transforming the extent to which our thoughts and actions are shaped by the online environment. Situated and ecological approaches to cognition are relevant to understanding the cognitive significance of the Web because of the emphasis they place on forces and factors that reside at the level of agent–world interactions. In particular, by adopting a situated or ecological approach to cognition, we are able to assess the significance of the Web from the perspective of research into embodied, extended, embedded, social and collective cognition. The results of this analysis help to reshape the interdisciplinary configuration of Web Science, expanding its theoretical and empirical remit to include the disciplines of both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind

Toward a formal theory for computing machines made out of whatever physics offers: extended version

Approaching limitations of digital computing technologies have spurred research in neuromorphic and other unconventional approaches to computing. Here we argue that if we want to systematically engineer computing systems that are based on unconventional physical effects, we need guidance from a formal theory that is different from the symbolic-algorithmic theory of today's computer science textbooks. We propose a general strategy for developing such a theory, and within that general view, a specific approach that we call "fluent computing". In contrast to Turing, who modeled computing processes from a top-down perspective as symbolic reasoning, we adopt the scientific paradigm of physics and model physical computing systems bottom-up by formalizing what can ultimately be measured in any physical substrate. This leads to an understanding of computing as the structuring of processes, while classical models of computing systems describe the processing of structures.Comment: 76 pages. This is an extended version of a perspective article with the same title that will appear in Nature Communications soon after this manuscript goes public on arxi

Precis of neuroconstructivism: how the brain constructs cognition

Neuroconstructivism: How the Brain Constructs Cognition proposes a unifying framework for the study of cognitive development that brings together (1) constructivism (which views development as the progressive elaboration of increasingly complex structures), (2) cognitive neuroscience (which aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying behavior), and (3) computational modeling (which proposes formal and explicit specifications of information processing). The guiding principle of our approach is context dependence, within and (in contrast to Marr [1982]) between levels of organization. We propose that three mechanisms guide the emergence of representations: competition, cooperation, and chronotopy; which themselves allow for two central processes: proactivity and progressive specialization. We suggest that the main outcome of development is partial representations, distributed across distinct functional circuits. This framework is derived by examining development at the level of single neurons, brain systems, and whole organisms. We use the terms encellment, embrainment, and embodiment to describe the higher-level contextual influences that act at each of these levels of organization. To illustrate these mechanisms in operation we provide case studies in early visual perception, infant habituation, phonological development, and object representations in infancy. Three further case studies are concerned with interactions between levels of explanation: social development, atypical development and within that, developmental dyslexia. We conclude that cognitive development arises from a dynamic, contextual change in embodied neural structures leading to partial representations across multiple brain regions and timescales, in response to proactively specified physical and social environment

Health, solidarity and justice : a discourse theoretical perspective

PhDThis thesis analyses the relationship between health, solidarity, and justice from a discourse theoretical perspective. Jürgen Habermas links justice to free, uncoerced, and inclusive processes of discursive consensus building. The realisation of these rational discourses, however, depends on a sense of solidarity between participants: solidarity is the counterpart of justice. Yet, in modern capitalism solidarity is the scarcest social resource. This leaves societies with the task of reconstructing the conditions that would make solidarity, and therefore justice, sustainable. This thesis argues that health offers an important contribution to this project. Habermas‟s universal pragmatics is used to analyse different concepts of health, and in adopting the perspective of the participant an intersubjective understanding of health is proposed. Placed within Habermas‟s theory of society, health is conceptualised as a sub-system of the lifeworld that contributes to social reproduction at the cultural, normative, and personality levels by: reproducing lay and medical knowledge; nurturing social solidarity through nets of formal and informal healthcare; and contributing to the development of personalities capable of and motivated to joining relationships of mutual recognition. These last two contributions reveal the relevance of health in fostering conditions for justice. The growing literature on the social determinants of health is explored to the conclusion that the relationship between health and justice is reciprocal and closer than commonly assumed. This insight is then applied to the context of the right to health. The thesis refutes different liberal challenges to the right to health and explores the right from the perspective of Habermas‟s reconstruction of the system of rights and procedural paradigm of law. The thesis concludes that discourse theory provides a better understanding of the relationship between health and justice, and therefore, better grounds for interpreting health as a legitimate human right