Cortical thickness and resting-state cardiac function across the lifespan: a cross-sectional pooled mega analysis

Understanding the association between autonomic nervous system [ANS] function and brain morphology across the lifespan provides important insights into neurovisceral mechanisms underlying health and disease. Resting state ANS activity, indexed by measures of heart rate [HR] and its variability [HRV] has been associated with brain morphology, particularly cortical thickness [CT]. While findings have been mixed regarding the anatomical distribution and direction of the associations, these inconsistencies may be due to sex and age differences in HR/HRV and CT. Previous studies have been limited by small sample sizes, which impede the assessment of sex differences and aging effects on the association between ANS function and CT. To overcome these limitations, 20 groups worldwide contributed data collected under similar protocols of CT assessment and HR/HRV recording to be pooled in a mega-analysis (N = 1,218 (50.5% female), mean age 36.7 years (range: 12-87)). Findings suggest a decline in HRV as well as CT with increasing age. CT, particularly in the orbitofrontal cortex, explained additional variance in HRV, beyond the effects of aging. This pattern of results may suggest that the decline in HRV with increasing age is related to a decline in orbitofrontal CT. These effects were independent of sex and specific to HRV; with no significant association between CT and HR. Greater CT across the adult lifespan may be vital for the maintenance of healthy cardiac regulation via the ANS – or greater cardiac vagal activity as indirectly reflected in HRV may slow brain atrophy. Findings reveal an important association between cortical thickness and cardiac parasympathetic activity with implications for healthy aging and longevity that should be studied further in longitudinal research

Antumbral memory: a psychosomatic Ppenomenon in "Phantom Limb"

This chapter examines Phantom Limb, a short animation made by Australian director Alex Grigg, not only to show how this animation illustrates the intersection of memory and corporeality but also to discuss how it problematizes this psychosomatic phenomenon. A phantom limb refers to the sensations that an amputee feels after losing a limb, which, through the intersection of psychic and corporeal experiences, creates the feeling as if the missing limb is still attached to the body. In Grigg’s animation, however, it is not the girl who has undergone the amputation but her partner who experiences a phantom limb, as a ghostly arm that constantly haunts the animated character. In this chapter, I will first look at how Grigg’s animation lucidly exhibits the phenomenon of “proprioceptive memory,” which suggests that the brain internalizes the physical and spatial memories of a specific limb after amputation. Then, by drawing on Jacques Derrida’s conception of “specter” and Nicholas Abraham’s and Maria Torok’s formulation of “the phantom,” this chapter argues that the phantom limb is experienced not so much as “being-there of an absence,” but more as a gap “buried within the other” in this animation. Finally, by looking at the phantom limb phenomenon through the celestial metaphors of umbra, penumbra, and antumbra, this chapter proposes that the person who has not lost a limb, but nevertheless feels this loss, experiences what I call antumbral memory: a psychosomatic memory whose spectral shadow is felt in a person while its corporeal source is twice removed from that person.Modern and Contemporary Studie