Empathy, engagement, entrainment: the interaction dynamics of aesthetic experience

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer

Relative Impacts of Adult Movement, Larval Dispersal and Harvester Movement on the Effectiveness of Reserve Networks

Movement of individuals is a critical factor determining the effectiveness of reserve networks. Marine reserves have historically been used for the management of species that are sedentary as adults, and, therefore, larval dispersal has been a major focus of marine-reserve research. The push to use marine reserves for managing pelagic and demersal species poses significant questions regarding their utility for highly-mobile species. Here, a simple conceptual metapopulation model is developed to provide a rigorous comparison of the functioning of reserve networks for populations with different admixtures of larval dispersal and adult movement in a home range. We find that adult movement produces significantly lower persistence than larval dispersal, all other factors being equal. Furthermore, redistribution of harvest effort previously in reserves to remaining fished areas (‘fishery squeeze’) and fishing along reserve borders (‘fishing-the-line’) considerably reduce persistence and harvests for populations mobile as adults, while they only marginally changes results for populations with dispersing larvae. Our results also indicate that adult home-range movement and larval dispersal are not simply additive processes, but rather that populations possessing both modes of movement have lower persistence than equivalent populations having the same amount of ‘total movement’ (sum of larval and adult movement spatial scales) in either larval dispersal or adult movement alone

A Tale of Four “Carp”: Invasion Potential and Ecological Niche Modeling

. We assessed the geographic potential of four Eurasian cyprinid fishes (common carp, tench, grass carp, black carp) as invaders in North America via ecological niche modeling (ENM). These “carp” represent four stages of invasion of the continent (a long-established invader with a wide distribution, a long-established invader with a limited distribution, a spreading invader whose distribution is expanding, and a newly introduced potential invader that is not yet established), and as such illustrate the progressive reduction of distributional disequilibrium over the history of species' invasions.We used ENM to estimate the potential distributional area for each species in North America using models based on native range distribution data. Environmental data layers for native and introduced ranges were imported from state, national, and international climate and environmental databases. Models were evaluated using independent validation data on native and invaded areas. We calculated omission error for the independent validation data for each species: all native range tests were highly successful (all omission values <7%); invaded-range predictions were predictive for common and grass carp (omission values 8.8 and 19.8%, respectively). Model omission was high for introduced tench populations (54.7%), but the model correctly identified some areas where the species has been successful; distributional predictions for black carp show that large portions of eastern North America are at risk.ENMs predicted potential ranges of carp species accurately even in regions where the species have not been present until recently. ENM can forecast species' potential geographic ranges with reasonable precision and within the short screening time required by proposed U.S. invasive species legislation

Guidelines for diagnosis and management of the cobalamin-related remethylation disorders cblC, cblD, cblE, cblF, cblG, cblJ and MTHFR deficiency

BACKGROUND: Remethylation defects are rare inherited disorders in which impaired remethylation of homocysteine to methionine leads to accumulation of homocysteine and perturbation of numerous methylation reactions. OBJECTIVE: To summarise clinical and biochemical characteristics of these severe disorders and to provide guidelines on diagnosis and management. DATA SOURCES: Review, evaluation and discussion of the medical literature (Medline, Cochrane databases) by a panel of experts on these rare diseases following the GRADE approach. KEY RECOMMENDATIONS: We strongly recommend measuring plasma total homocysteine in any patient presenting with the combination of neurological and/or visual and/or haematological symptoms, subacute spinal cord degeneration, atypical haemolytic uraemic syndrome or unexplained vascular thrombosis. We strongly recommend to initiate treatment with parenteral hydroxocobalamin without delay in any suspected remethylation disorder; it significantly improves survival and incidence of severe complications. We strongly recommend betaine treatment in individuals with MTHFR deficiency; it improves the outcome and prevents disease when given early