Person and world: the interrelation of newness and presence

Introduction: a) Methodology In the essay which follows, three concepts occupy the central stage:- learning, the world, and the person – and in large measure the essay is an exploration of the ways in which these three are bound together. It is thus in one sense a conceptual exploration; but not one which proceeds by considering cases, and any appeal to illustration and example is more often than not absent. A full explanation of this belongs, obviously, to the body of the text: a general justification for such an approach is that it is the concern of the essay to put forward certain basic features of learning, the world and the person – features which are ontologically prime – and this concern with what is basic is inimical to any analysis which proceeds by examination of cares. Up to this point I would agree with P F Strawson (Introduction to Individuals), that philosophy is competent to handle other questions than those arising out of the consideration of examples, and that this leads it back into metaphysics. What Strawson has seen, and rightly, is that the very presuppositions made by a methodology that describes how we speak, typified by J L Austin and the bulk of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations are still logical ones and need viewing in a more general framework. But Strawson’s own approach – to generalise on these logical presuppositions and set out the kind of particularity and generality we in fact operate with, although legitimate as far as it goes, begs as many questions as it deals. Descriptive metaphysics, which is how Strawson labels his own work, goes hand in hand with the description of cases; thus Strawson properly describes the methodological presuppositions of anyone seeking understanding through the description of particular cases. Where it has seemed to me that we must leave this approach behind is when we attempt to understand what learning is, and in particular the development of a concept of particularity – the concept of an ‘object’. Strawson is aware that the concept of a person does not quite fit into the framework of ‘objects’ he first develops, and thus that particularity is strangely difficult to set out with respect to other people and to oneself. My own concern in this essay is to approach the question of particularity, both in ‘objects’ and people, from a completely different angle – that of learning, in which the question of the emergence of our concept of particularity is not handled in isolation from the fact that we are people. That is, I have sought to view the concept of an ‘object’ in continuous relation to the concept of the person who has such a grasp of objectivity, rather than treating language, even on this very general level of logic, as a reality which can be understood without reference to the very personal being of those who speak it. This I take to be the problem in metaphysics – not to say how all reality is, from the point of view omniscience, nor simply to relativise that omniscience and offer a world-view, but to say how it is in fact possible for this concept of reality to be thought through by a person at all. It is not then a consideration of the concept of reality we do in fact employ – this is descriptive metaphysics in Strawson’s sense – but rather a consideration of how people are related to reality in such a way that they can have a concept of reality at all. One very important way of tackling this question is Heidegger’s: - the approach to reality must be through the reality of the man who conceives of it in order to approach it. But my own background and training have led me to Wittgenstein, whose principal questions are not about ‘man’ as such, but about the relation between language and the world. As I have noted, Wittgenstein often appears as one of the archetypal representatives of a purely illustrative philosophy of cases – a describer of logical geography par excellence. But although I have continually born mind a remark of Peter Winch (in “Wittgenstein’s Treatment of the Will”) to the effect that a concern with some feature of language as more basic that the rest is a concern which is rather alien to Wittgenstein’s later thought, it has also seemed correct, as I take it it seems to Winch, not to take the techniques of the bulk of Philosophical Investigations as the fullness or point of this later thought; hence one of the secondary themes of this essay is the extent of the projection of earlier ideas into Wittgenstein’s later though. b) Aims My purpose in writing the essay, and focusing on the concepts of learning, person and world, has been primarily to work out a model for personhood, for being a person. This has involved a ‘sifting out’ of the concept of a person from that of the world, a gradual differentiation handled with almost exclusive reference to the concept of learning. The attention given to learning owes a great deal to Wittgenstein, largely because Wittgenstein has always seemed to me to metaphysician in the above sense, and to have found that this concern to speal about how we speak about the world required him to approach this through the way we learn. The central three chapters of this essay are concerned to work out what this approach to the world, and our conception of it, can be seen to tell us about the concept of a person. The fifth and final chapter then explores this concept more critically, with particular reference to the Jewish theologian Martin Buber. Buber’s very decisive importance in developing and popularising the ideas of personal encounter and relationship in not one I have any wish to minimise – but it does seem to me that the cost of this popularising has been that he writes on a moral level rather than the ontological level he claims to be working on, and hence that, while he constantly draws our attention to the riches and centrality of other people in our lives, he never soes justice to the ‘I’ that is to come into relationship with them. Rather than writing about I-Thou relationships, Buber writes about Thous, and thus he never quite leaves discourse about possibilities of experience rather than of a relationship which transforms the experiencing self as well as his experience of the other. At apparently the other extreme to Buber, the writings of the French thinker and mystic, Simone Weil, almost ignore the possibilities of encounter with other people. It is the self, and the possibility of transforming oneself, which is at the centre of Weil’s thought – yet for this reason she offers a valuable foil to Buber’s focus on ‘the other’. She is a writer who seeks to set out the possibilities of transformation of the self with reference to nothing other than the world of matter, while holding form to the conviction that it is God’s will that one should never for one minute look beyond this world, even to God. It is my concern to show that neither Buber nor Weil does justice to what a person is. Both writers as it were overreact – Buber by forgetting self, Weil by forgetting the other. They are still working with a concept of objectivity which assumes that a person exists in the same dimension of particularity as an object; and hence that it must in the end be possible to say that ‘I’ and ‘the other’ are two of a kind. This question of the ‘sameness’ with which we may speak of self and others is a problem Wittgenstein concentrated very heavily on, and it has led to much discussion of the ideas of ‘inner’ – as opposed to ‘outer’ or worldly – experiences, and of private knowledge of, and language about, oneself. While aware of the breadth of this discussion, I have tried to pick my own way through this rather highly-strung area, and have made references to only a few articles. Wittgenstein’s basic approach seems to me to have a great deal to say to the enthusiasm of Buber and Weil, in redressing the balance between their extremes and suggesting that what a person actually is is something a bit more mysterious than either writer has seen. This dimension of mystery is not a puzzle or a problem however, and it is the serious defect of Strawson’s approach that this is how it in fact appears: we can only record that mind and body are in fact related, though we know not how. Certainly I would agree that it is impossible to do justice to what a person is without taking account of our concept of ‘the world’- here again Buber and Weil between them point to what is needed; the question is whether we begin from the understanding we have of ‘the world’ in order to place people within it, or rather begin from this understanding in order to ask how people can understand the world at all. The thesis of this essay is that when we follow this latter approach, and only in this way, can we do justice to what a person is, because we find that one person’ understanding of the world presupposes and rests upon others who are not part of this world. That is not to say, then, that ‘a person’ as one of these others rather than oneself, or vice versa: the attempt to reduce person to one or other of these goes hand in hand with particular philosophical reductions – realism or solipsism. Wittgenstein early on recognised that these are both oversimplifications: Solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality coordinated with it. Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way. What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world’. (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 5.64 – 5.641) But at this stage, as we shall be considering in more detail, Wittgenstein, like Weil, viewed the problem as one arising between self and world, without reference to any problem surrounding the notion of other people – thus it is fair to say that there is here no distinct concept of a person at all: rather than asking whether ‘person’ can be reduced to ‘others’ in the world’, or to the self, Wittgenstein’ problem was simply whether the self can be reduced to the world, or the world to the self. There are only two elements in the reduction, not three – nonetheless the fact that he wished to avoid either reduction remained the base from which he could much later reject the corresponding reduction of what a person is. Such a reduction appears even in Strawson’s proposal that person is a two-sided concept, applying both to others and to oneself, as if we already knew the particular distinctness of self and others – that they are different kinds of entity which we simply have to hod together. What I have therefore essayed is to consider what happens when we no longer assume we know what kinds of entity people – self and others – are, but simply ask how we arrive at our concept of particularity – an object. The mystery of the person which emerges is certainly a ‘relational’ concept, in which it is not possible to isolate out individuals; but a ‘relation’ whose primary mode of description is that of an ‘object’. It is not, that is, a relation between objects (individual people, or subject and object), but itself an object. This of course means that it is an object in a somewhat specialised sense – an object of metaphysics rather than physics. But this in no sense means that it is a formal category without relation to our day-to-day view of the world’s furniture – the point is rather that we are not asking, What is the general category of object we employ? (the question from Aristotle to Kant and Strawson), but How do we dome to have any conception of an object? This is not, as it is sometimes taken to be, an empirical question rather than the former analytic one; it is not a question of genesis and of educational study. Certainly learning is the key concept here, but one we are still oblige to handle metaphysically – thus I have made sparing use of discussion in the philosophy of education, and only comment in passing on the controversy about the ‘new education’ (with reference to Illich and Freire). How do we come to have any concept of an object? is a question on a par with Why is there anything at all? and How did there come to by anything (rather than . . . . )? questions which Wittgenstein’s pupil and colleague, Rush Rhees, discusses with reference to Plato’s Parmenides in a most helpful way (“Where dies the world come from?” in Without Answers, pp 1015-9, to which I am indebted). Our own question does not lead us to generalise on the evidence of education, as if we know in advance of our observation what an object is and what a learner is required to do to show us he has understood its existence. If this latter is an intelligible inquiry – and it is certainly undertaken by many educational psychologists – it is a ‘realistic’ approach which takes no account whatsoever of the basis of experience – the movement, for the learner, from nothing to something being before him. This is not to say that it is a separate question – a matter of subjective rather than observational or objective psychology – and I have tried in what follows to bring out how this notion of experience in fact serves to point us back to problems that cannot be defined dimply in terms of either subject or object. The key to this seems to me to be the concept of presence and with it the move from nothing to a presence – the move what is new. Thus the essay begins with an introductory chapter which raises the problems surrounding the concepts of presence and newness in their most acute form – Meno’s paradox. I make no apologies for taking this paradox seriously, even though this is perhaps unfair to the thrust of the dialogue. It has been a great comfort at times when the prevalent methodology of linguistic philosophy – exhibiting cases – has seemed to indicate that we do, as Socrates argues against Meno, know everything anyway, and newness should not be a problem. It is not a problem within philosophy, perhaps – that is the basis Strawson’s notion of descriptive rather than revisionary metaphysics: to say where we are rather than go somewhere else – and Wittgenstein clearly assented to this: it is rather, of the essence of our investigation that we don not seek to learn anything new by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand. (Philosophical Investigation I 89) But it has been a terrible straight-jacket on philosophy in the West that it has, by and large, taken this to mean that there is no such thing as learning anything new – whereas Wittgenstein himself devoted much of his investigation to precisely this phenomenon. The first chapter leads on to an initial consideration of presence with respect to ‘object’ and ‘world’, and at that point develops by contact with Weil, who has set out a very powerful conception of the ‘world’. This concludes the chapter, as a flag-marker, from which the essay moves off to review what ‘the world’ means. After a lengthy discussion of ‘learning’, ‘object’ and ‘understanding’, the final chapter, as already noted, sets out more explicitly what this means for our understanding of ‘person’. This attempt to be more explicit has obliged me to wite in a more ‘religious’ atmosphere than throughout the rest of the essay – a fact which reflects the much greater interest and understanding theology, unlike philosophy, has shown the concepts both of a person and of learning. This of course raises significant questions about the relation between philosophy and theology, and I realise that the loss of even a reference to other philosophers would, for many philosophers, exclude this final chapter from consideration as philosophy, while its unwillingness to talk explicitly about God would seem also to exclude it from consideration as theology. Since my prime concern here was with what is going on in a particular kind of experience and activity, and the understanding of personal presence we can draw out of it, it is, I think, a valid question to ask whether this experience and activity is in fact intelligible to any reader who does not know something of God’s self-revelation, and has not been led to see all else from this base and relationship. But, although valid, this is not a question I feel competent to answer; it would require lengthy and thorough understanding of central theological issues ranging from general/special revelation to universalism and the operation of the Spirit. Nonetheless, I have tried to develop, out of the more philosophical understanding of person in the essay, a perspective on the nature of faith which allows us to live a little more easily on the borderland between philosophy and theology. While I write from a firm conviction of God’s complete self-disclosure in his Son Jesus Christ, and the trinitarian nature of this revelation, it does not seem at all helpful to take this as a starting point for viewing the interrelation of philosophy and theology. It is not a matter of Yes or No to “Does God exist?” etc – and it has seemed important to comment on this simply because faith is so invariably viewed as an attribute of an individual person, something to mark him out from his fellows. If the concept of a person which I have been developing, as not primarily and individual at all, is correct, then this affects our understanding of what faith itself is, since it becomes tied up with the relationships people participate in rather than the means by which they are enabled to participate. Faith, that is, is not the prerequisite for communion – neither is religion; that both nonetheless occupy a central and essential place in our fuller understanding of person and communion requires, as I readily acknowledge, further and separate discussion

Effect of major school playground reconstruction on physical activity and sedentary behaviour: Camden active spaces.

BACKGROUND: The physical school environment is a promising setting to increase children's physical activity although robust evidence is sparse. We examined the effects of major playground reconstruction on physical activity and sedentary time in primary schools using a quasi-experimental design (comparison group pre-test/post-test design). METHODS: Five experimental and two control schools from deprived areas of inner city London were recruited at baseline. Main outcome was physical activity and sedentary time measured from objective monitoring (Actigraph accelerometer) at one year follow up. Pupils' impressions of the new playground were qualitatively assessed post construction. RESULTS: A total of 347 pupils (mean age = 8 years, 55% boys; 36% Caucasian) were recruited into the study at baseline; 303 provided valid baseline Actigraph data. Of those, 231 (76%) completed follow-up (n = 169 intervention; n = 62 control) and 77.4% of the sample recorded at least 4 days of Actigraph wear. In mixed models adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, ratio activity or sedentary/wear time at baseline, wear time at follow up, and school, no differences were observed in total moderate - vigorous activity (B = -1.4, 95% CI, -7.1, 4.2 min/d), light activity (B = 4.1, 95% CI, -17.9, 26.1), or sedentary time (B = -3.8, 95% CI, -29.2, 21.6 min/d) between groups. There were significant age interactions for sedentary (p = 0.002) and light intensity physical activity (p = 0.008). We observed significant reductions in total sedentary (-28.0, 95% CI, -1.9, -54.1 min/d, p = 0.037) and increases in total light intensity activity (24.6, 95% CI, 0.3, 48.9 min/d, p = 0.047) for children aged under 9 yrs. old in the intervention. CONCLUSION: Major playground reconstruction had limited effects on physical activity, but reduced sedentary time was observed in younger children. Qualitative data suggested that the children enjoyed the new playgrounds and experienced a perceived positive change in well-being and social interactions

Eosinophilic fasciitis: an atypical presentation of a rare disease

Eosinophilic fasciitis, or Shulman's disease, is a rare disease of unknown etiology. It is characterized by peripheral eosinophilia, hypergammaglobulinemia, and high erythrocyte sedimentation rate. The diagnosis is confirmed by a deep biopsy of the skin. The first line of treatment is corticotherapy. We present a rare case of eosinophilic fasciitis in a 27-year-old woman with an atypical presentation with symmetrical peripheral edema and a Groove sign. The patient responded well to treatment with corticosteroids at high doses and, in this context, was associated with hydroxychloroquine and azathioprine. After two and a half years, peripheral eosinophilia had increased, and more of her skin had hardened. At that time, the therapy was modified to include corticoids, methotrexate, and penicillamine. It is of great importance to publicize these cases that allow us to gather experience and better treat our patients.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Simulations of Electron Acceleration at Collisionless Shocks: The Effects of Surface Fluctuations

Energetic electrons are a common feature of interplanetary shocks and planetary bow shocks, and they are invoked as a key component of models of nonthermal radio emission, such as solar radio bursts. A simulation study is carried out of electron acceleration for high Mach number, quasi-perpendicular shocks, typical of the shocks in the solar wind. Two dimensional self-consistent hybrid shock simulations provide the electric and magnetic fields in which test particle electrons are followed. A range of different shock types, shock normal angles, and injection energies are studied. When the Mach number is low, or the simulation configuration suppresses fluctuations along the magnetic field direction, the results agree with theory assuming magnetic moment conserving reflection (or Fast Fermi acceleration), with electron energy gains of a factor only 2 - 3. For high Mach number, with a realistic simulation configuration, the shock front has a dynamic rippled character. The corresponding electron energization is radically different: Energy spectra display: (1) considerably higher maximum energies than Fast Fermi acceleration; (2) a plateau, or shallow sloped region, at intermediate energies 2 - 5 times the injection energy; (3) power law fall off with increasing energy, for both upstream and downstream particles, with a slope decreasing as the shock normal angle approaches perpendicular; (4) sustained flux levels over a broader region of shock normal angle than for adiabatic reflection. All these features are in good qualitative agreement with observations, and show that dynamic structure in the shock surface at ion scales produces effective scattering and can be responsible for making high Mach number shocks effective sites for electron acceleration.Comment: 26 pages, 12 figure

The methyl binding domain 3/nucleosome remodelling and deacetylase complex regulates neural cell fate determination and terminal differentiation in the cerebral cortex.

BACKGROUND: Chromatin-modifying complexes have key roles in regulating various aspects of neural stem cell biology, including self-renewal and neurogenesis. The methyl binding domain 3/nucleosome remodelling and deacetylation (MBD3/NuRD) co-repressor complex facilitates lineage commitment of pluripotent cells in early mouse embryos and is important for stem cell homeostasis in blood and skin, but its function in neurogenesis had not been described. Here, we show for the first time that MBD3/NuRD function is essential for normal neurogenesis in mice. RESULTS: Deletion of MBD3, a structural component of the NuRD complex, in the developing mouse central nervous system resulted in reduced cortical thickness, defects in the proper specification of cortical projection neuron subtypes and neonatal lethality. These phenotypes are due to alterations in PAX6+ apical progenitor cell outputs, as well as aberrant terminal neuronal differentiation programmes of cortical plate neurons. Normal numbers of PAX6+ apical neural progenitor cells were generated in the MBD3/NuRD-mutant cortex; however, the PAX6+ apical progenitor cells generate EOMES+ basal progenitor cells in reduced numbers. Cortical progenitor cells lacking MBD3/NuRD activity generate neurons that express both deep- and upper-layer markers. Using laser capture microdissection, gene expression profiling and chromatin immunoprecipitation, we provide evidence that MBD3/NuRD functions to control gene expression patterns during neural development. CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that although MBD3/NuRD is not required for neural stem cell lineage commitment, it is required to repress inappropriate transcription in both progenitor cells and neurons to facilitate appropriate cell lineage choice and differentiation programmes.We wish to thank Nicola Reynolds for the help with figures; Aoife O’Shaughnessy for the critical reading of the manuscript; Peter Humphreys, the SCI Biofacility staff and Margaret McLeish for technical assistance; Stephanie Hall and Gerard Evan for access to the Laser Capture Microscope and Nathalie Saurat and members of the BH lab for useful discussions. This work was supported by a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowship in the Basic Biomedical Sciences awarded to BH and a bourse de formation from the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé Québec awarded to EK.This is the final published version of the article. It was originally published in Neural Development (Knock E, et al., Neural Development, 2015, 10:13, doi:10.1186/s13064-015-0040-z). The final version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13064-015-0040-

The effect of the digital printing of fabric on the morphology of passive bloodstains

Bloodstained fabrics found at crime scenes are likely to have had processing treatments, such as dyeing or printing, but the effect of the treatments on bloodstain morphology is not always considered. In order to study the effect of digital printing on bloodstain morphology, drip stains were created from five impact velocities (1.9–5.4 ms−1) on three different mass per unit areas (88–226 g/m²) of 100% cotton calico which had been digitally printed using reactive dye. Across all three printed fabrics, the bloodstains appeared visually similar, and no correlation was found between the dry bloodstain area and the impact velocity. When comparing the bloodstains on the printed fabric to those which had been created previously on the same fabric in a dyed and not-coloured state, the dry bloodstains on the printed fabric were statistically significantly larger (e.g. for the calico with the lightest mass per unit area, mean dry bloodstain area was 126.6, 64.4 and 44.3 mm² for the printed, dyed and not-coloured fabrics respectively). Examination of the larger bloodstains on the printed calico with the micro computed tomography scanner and scanning electron microscope, suggested that the printing process increased the wettability of the fabric, so the blood could spread more easily on the surface. This allowed the blood to coat the yarns, and wick into them before wicking along the intra-yarn spaces. The results presented in this paper showed that care must be taken when examining bloodstains at crime scenes. Depending on the fabric and the processing of the fabric the size of the blood stains may not increase with impact velocity as wicking may result in a larger bloodstain from a lower velocity. The bloodstain on the penetrated face of the fabric may be larger than on the impacted face and the same fabrics with different processing will produce different blood stain sizes and shapes

Faculty experiences and motivations in design thinking teaching and learning

Introduction: Design thinking (DT) is a creative, iterative approach to generating solutions that are desirable, feasible, and viable. Given its role in fostering creativity and innovation, a growing number of higher education instructors are teaching DT. Exploring how and what instructors know about DT and why they might teach it could provide critical insight into the ways in which DT is operationalized in higher education teaching and learning. Materials and methods: A convergent parallel mixed methods design was used for data collected from online surveys administered to faculty teaching DT. The survey included items about DT practices, outcomes from DT, demographic characteristics, and course characteristics. Five open-text survey items queried participants about their definition of DT, why they teach DT, and what additional outcomes they observed. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze quantitative items and thematic analysis was used to analyze qualitative items. Results: Participants (n = 49) represented various academic ranks, disciplines, types of institutions, and geographic locations. Analyses indicated clear congruence between quantitative and qualitative data. Definitions of DT aligned with well-known models of DT. Motivations for teaching DT included the promotion of personal development, DT proficiency, impact, and interpersonal skill development. Other positive student outcomes observed included increases in enthusiasm, self-awareness, empowerment, optimism, and a sense of belonging. Negative student outcomes included time constraints, teamwork conflicts, and student frustration. Conclusion: Faculty believe that DT leads to highly valuable social innovation skill sets for students. This cross-institutional, multi-disciplinary study provides critical insight into faculty experiences and motivations for teaching DT, offering various strategies for instructors and institutions interested in fostering the uptake of DT within higher education

The Equilibria of Lipid–K+ Ions in Monolayer at the Air/Water Interface

The effect of K+ ion interaction with monolayers of phosphatidylcholine (lecithin, PC) or cholesterol (Ch) was investigated at the air/water interface. We present surface tension measurements of lipid monolayers obtained using a Langmuir method as a function of K+ ion concentration. Measurements were carried out at 22°C using a Teflon trough and a Nima 9000 tensiometer. Interactions between lecithin and K+ ions or Ch and K+ ions result in significant deviations from the additivity rule. An equilibrium theory to describe the behavior of monolayer components at the air/water interface was developed in order to obtain the stability constants and area occupied by one molecule of lipid–K+ ion complex (LK+). The stability constants for lecithin–K+ ion (PCK+) complex, \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$K_{{{\text{PCK}}^{ + } }} = { 3}. 2 6\times 10^{ 2} {\text{dm}}^{ 3} \,{\text{mol}}^{ - 1}$$\end{document}, and for cholesterol–K+ ion (ChK+) complex, \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$K_{{{\text{ChK}}^{ + } }} = { 1}.00 \times 10^{ 3} {\text{dm}}^{ 3} \,{\text{mol}}^{ - 1}$$\end{document}, were calculated by inserting the experimental data. The value of area occupied by one PCK+ complex is 60 Å2 molecule−1, while the area occupied by one ChK+ complex is 40.9 Å2 molecule−1. The complex formation energy (Gibbs free energy) values for the PCK+ and ChK+ complexes are −14.18 ± 0.71 and −16.92 ± 0.85 kJ mol−1, respectively

Elevated levels of plasma homocysteine, deficiencies in dietary folic acid and uracil–DNA glycosylase impair learning in a mouse model of vascular cognitive impairment

Dietary deficiencies in folic acid result in elevated levels of plasma homocysteine, which has been associated with the development of dementia and other neurodegenerative disorders. Previously, we have shown that elevated levels of plasma homocysteine in mice deficient for a DNA repair enzyme, uracil–DNA glycosylase (UNG), result in neurodegeneration. The goal of this study was to evaluate how deficiencies in folic acid and UNG along with elevated levels of homocysteine affect vascular cognitive impairment, via chronic hypoperfusion in an animal model. Ung+/+ and Ung−/− mice were placed on either control (CD) or folic acid deficient (FADD) diets. Six weeks later, the mice either underwent implantation of microcoils around both common carotid arteries. Post-operatively, behavioral tests began at 3-weeks, angiography was measured after 5-weeks using MRI to assess vasculature and at completion of study plasma and brain tissue was collected for analysis. Learning impairments in the Morris water maze (MWM) were observed only in hypoperfused Ung−/− FADD mice and these mice had significantly higher plasma homocysteine concentrations. Interestingly, Ung+/+ FADD produced significant remodeling of the basilar artery and arterial vasculature. Increased expression of GFAP was observed in the dentate gyrus of Ung−/− hypoperfused and FADD sham mice. Chronic hypoperfusion resulted in increased cortical MMP-9 protein levels of FADD hypoperfused mice regardless of genotypes. These results suggest that elevated levels of homocysteine only, as a result of dietary folic acid deficiency, don’t lead to memory impairments and neurobiochemical changes. Rather a combination of either chronic hypoperfusion or UNG deficiency is required