Humour as social dreaming:Stand-up comedy as therapeutic performance

Stand-up comedy binds dramatic cultural spectacle to ritualised, intimate exposure. Examining ‘case’ examples from live comic performance, this paper describes stand-up as a kind of social dreaming. The article proposes a theoretical frame drawing on Thomas Ogden’s notion of ‘talking as dreaming’ and psychoanalytic accounts connecting humour and melancholia. Locating the stand-up comedian’s propensity for humour in a specialist capacity to hone, display and process traumata, the paper characterises stand-up as a performative oscillation evoking paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties. A psychosocial gloss places stand-up as a cultural resource in the service of the popular-as-therapeutic. The paper articulates complementarities between Henri Bergson’s formulations on the function of laughter and an emergent object relations account in order to help to recognise ‘containing’ and ‘cultural-restorative’ aspects of much stand-up, understood as contemporary psychosocial ritual

Variety of transversus thoracis muscle in relation to the internal thoracic artery: an autopsy study of 120 subjects

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The transversus thoracis muscle is a thin muscular layer on the inner surface of the anterior thoracic wall that is always in concern during harvesting of the internal thoracic artery. Because the muscle is poorly described in the surgical literature, the aim of the present study is to examine in details its variations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The data was obtained at standard autopsies of 120 Caucasian subjects (Bulgarians) of both sexes (97 males and 23 females), ranging in age from 18 to 91 years (mean age 52.8 ± 17.8 years). The transversus thoracis morphology was thoroughly examined on the inner surface of the chest plates collected after routine incisions.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>An overall examination revealed that in majority of cases the transversus thoracis slips formed a complete muscular layer (left - 75.8%, right - 83.3%) or some of the slips (left - 22.5%, right - 15%) or all of them (left - 1.7%, right - 1.7%) were quite separated. Rarely (left - 3.3%, right - 5.8%), some fibrous slips of the transversus thoracis were noted. In 55.8% of the cases there was left/right muscle symmetry; 44.2% of the muscles were asymmetrical. Most commonly, the highest muscle attachment was to the second (left - 53.3%, right - 37.5%) or third rib (left - 29.2%, right - 46.7%). The sixth rib was the most common lowest attachment (left - 94.2%, right - 89.2%). Most frequently, the muscle was composed of four (left - 31.7%, right - 44.2%) or fifth slips (left - 53.3%, right - 40.8%).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study provides detailed basic information on the variety of the transversus thoracic muscle. It also defines the range of the clearly visible, uncovered by the muscle part of the internal thoracic artery and the completeness of the muscular layer over it. The knowledge of these peculiar muscle-arterial relations would definitely be beneficial to cardiac surgeon in performing fast and safe arterial harvesting.</p

White matter damage in frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease measured by diffusion MRI

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer's disease are sometimes difficult to differentiate clinically because of overlapping symptoms. Using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measurements of fractional anisotropy (FA) can be useful in distinguishing the different patterns of white matter degradation between the two dementias. In this study, we performed MRI scans in a 4 Tesla MRI machine including T1-weighted structural images and diffusion tensor images in 18 patients with FTD, 18 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 19 cognitively normal (CN) controls. FA was measured selectively in specific fibre tracts (including corpus callosum, cingulum, uncinate and corticospinal tracts) as well as globally in a voxel-by-voxel analysis. Patients with FTD were associated with reductions of FA in frontal and temporal regions including the anterior corpus callosum (P < 0.001), bilateral anterior (left P < 0.001; right P = 0.005), descending (left P < 0.001; right P = 0.003) cingulum tracts, and uncinate tracts (left P < 0.001; right P = 0.005), compared to controls. Patients with Alzheimer's disease were associated with reductions of FA in parietal, temporal and frontal regions including the left anterior (P = 0.003) and posterior (P = 0.002) cingulum tracts, bilateral descending cingulum tracts (P < 0.001) and left uncinate tracts (P < 0.001) compared to controls. When compared with Alzheimer's disease, FTD was associated with greater reductions of FA in frontal brain regions, whereas no region in Alzheimer's disease showed greater reductions of FA when compared to FTD. In conclusion, the regional patterns of anisotropy reduction in FTD and Alzheimer's disease compared to controls suggest a characteristic distribution of white matter degradation in each disease. Moreover, the white matter degradation seems to be more prominent in FTD than in Alzheimer's disease. Taken together, the results suggest that white matter degradation measured with DTI may improve the diagnostic differentiation between FTD and Alzheimer's disease

Sillo temporo-pariétal externe

Le Double A.-F. Sillo temporo-pariétal externe. In: Bulletins de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, V° Série. Tome 3, 1902. pp. 684-685

Sur quelques variations des trous optiques

Le Double A.-F. Sur quelques variations des trous optiques. In: Bulletins de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, V° Série. Tome 3, 1902. pp. 551-554

A propos d'un cas de communication de la fente sphénoïdale et du trou grand rond de l'alisphénoïde humain

Le Double A.-F. A propos d'un cas de communication de la fente sphénoïdale et du trou grand rond de l'alisphénoïde humain. In: Bulletins de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, V° Série. Tome 3, 1902. pp. 550-551

Du redressement de la courbure à concavité inférieure et de l'état rectiligne de l'articulation squamo-pariétale

Le Double A.-F. Du redressement de la courbure à concavité inférieure et de l'état rectiligne de l'articulation squamo-pariétale. In: Bulletins de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, V° Série. Tome 3, 1902. pp. 682-684

Le canal cranio-pharyngien, hypophysaire ou pituitaire de l'homme

Le Double A.-F. Le canal cranio-pharyngien, hypophysaire ou pituitaire de l'homme. In: Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, V° Série. Tome 4, 1903. pp. 82-99

Côtes lombaires dans l'espèce humaine

Le Double A.-F. Côtes lombaires dans l'espèce humaine. In: Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, VI° Série. Tome 2, 1911. pp. 413-427

Côtes cervicales chez l'homme

Le Double A.-F. Côtes cervicales chez l'homme. In: Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, VI° Série. Tome 2, 1911. pp. 501-533