Dynamics in the process of contextualization facilitated by a West-European researcher: contextualizing the OT notion of ‘sin’ in the cultural context of the Kongo people in Brazzaville

In order to be relevant, all theology must relate to context. This study is an example of the complexities encountered in the actual practice of contextualization. I apply and evaluate theoretical tools, and give explicit account of the practicalities and tensions arising in the process that I initiated as a cultural outsider. The research is conducted with reflexivity by which I uncover hidden assumptions that influenced the contextualization process and my interpretation of the collected data. I examine the notion of ‘sin’ in the Kongo culture and evaluate it through the lens of the OT understanding of ‘sin’. The project was undertaken with participation groups in Brazzaville and revealed that in the Kongo context, the place of the kanda (community) was a key element, while Nzambi (God) was strikingly absent from the discussion of ‘sin’. The main conclusions I draw from this practical theology research are twofold. 1) Regarding contextualization: In academic research theological and social studies are often divided into two different fields. The project reveals that the theological and the social disciplines are intrinsically connected which requires contextualization to be an interdisciplinary undertaking. Critical self-reflexivity regarding the cultural background of the researcher and the role she takes in the process is equally important as giving the cultural insiders a voice; contextualization is most fruitful when it is done by cultural insiders and outsiders together. 2) Regarding the understanding of ‘sin’: In the Kongo context, ‘sin’ is understood as any act that breaks the harmony of the community, allowing any kind of evil to enter it. This understanding needs to be transformed by the biblical view of ‘sin’ as always being committed before God, the creator of the world and the one to whom all human beings owe their life. The rich imagery for ‘sin’ in the OT cannot be captured by the one Kongo word disumu; a wider vocabulary must be developed

Case Report: SMART ANTON: Anton-Babinski Syndrome in Stroke-Like Migraine Attacks (SMART) After Radiation Therapy: Two Rare Syndromes, One Case.

Introduction We describe the case of a 57-years-old patient who presented an Anton-Babinski syndrome in the context of a stroke-like migraine attack after radiation therapy (SMART). Case Report The patient was brought to the emergency room following a sudden loss of vision in the context of a pre-existing left-sided hemianopia after excision of a right occipital astrocytoma followed by radio-chemotherapy 35 years prior to his admission in our services. At admittance, he also presented hyperthermia, hypertension, and a GCS of 7. The MRI showed a leptomeningeal enhancement in the left temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes. After exclusion of other differential diagnoses, we diagnosed a cortical blindness in the context of a SMART syndrome affecting the left hemisphere. While the symptoms improved under corticosteroid therapy, the patient successively presented an Anton-Babinski syndrome, a Riddoch syndrome and a visual associative agnosia before finally regaining his usual sight. Discussion This is, to our knowledge, the first report of an Anton-Babinski syndrome in the context of a SMART syndrome. A dual etiology is mandatory for cortical blindness in SMART syndrome since the latter affects only one hemisphere. A SMART syndrome affecting the contralateral hemisphere in respect to the radiation site seems to be uncommon, which makes this case even more exceptional

Comfort of two shoulder actuation mechanisms for arm therapy exoskeletons: a comparative study in healthy subjects

Robotic exoskeletons can be used to study and treat patients with neurological impairments. They can guide and support the human limb over a large range of motion, which requires that the movement trajectory of the exoskeleton coincide with the one of the human arm. This is straightforward to achieve for rather simple joints like the elbow, but very challenging for complex joints like the human shoulder, which is comprised by several bones and can exhibit a movement with multiple rotational and translational degrees of freedom. Thus, several research groups have developed different shoulder actuation mechanism. However, there are no experimental studies that directly compare the comfort of two different shoulder actuation mechanisms. In this study, the comfort and the naturalness of the new shoulder actuation mechanism of the ARMin III exoskeleton are compared to a ball-and-socket-type shoulder actuation. The study was conducted in 20 healthy subjects using questionnaires and 3D-motion records to assess comfort and naturalness. The results indicate that the new shoulder actuation is slightly better than a ball-and-socket-type actuation. However, the differences are small, and under the tested conditions, the comfort and the naturalness of the two tested shoulder actuations do not differ a lo

Effects of Alzheimer’s Disease on Visual Target Detection: A “Peripheral Bias”

Visual exploration is an omnipresent activity in everyday life, and might represent an important determinant of visual attention deficits in patients with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). The present study aimed at investigating visual search performance in AD patients, in particular target detection in the far periphery, in daily living scenes. Eighteen AD patients and 20 healthy controls participated in the study. They were asked to freely explore a hemispherical screen, covering ±90°, and to respond to targets presented at 10°, 30°, and 50° eccentricity, while their eye movements were recorded. Compared to healthy controls, AD patients recognized less targets appearing in the center. No difference was found in target detection in the periphery. This pattern was confirmed by the fixation distribution analysis. These results show a neglect for the central part of the visual field for AD patients and provide new insights by mean of a search task involving a larger field of view

Street crossing behavior in younger and older pedestrians: an eye- and head-tracking study

Background Crossing a street can be a very difficult task for older pedestrians. With increased age and potential cognitive decline, older people take the decision to cross a street primarily based on vehicles’ distance, and not on their speed. Furthermore, older pedestrians tend to overestimate their own walking speed, and could not adapt it according to the traffic conditions. Pedestrians’ behavior is often tested using virtual reality. Virtual reality presents the advantage of being safe, cost-effective, and allows using standardized test conditions. Methods This paper describes an observational study with older and younger adults. Street crossing behavior was investigated in 18 healthy, younger and 18 older subjects by using a virtual reality setting. The aim of the study was to measure behavioral data (such as eye and head movements) and to assess how the two age groups differ in terms of number of safe street crossings, virtual crashes, and missed street crossing opportunities. Street crossing behavior, eye and head movements, in older and younger subjects, were compared with non-parametric tests. Results The results showed that younger pedestrians behaved in a more secure manner while crossing a street, as compared to older people. The eye and head movements analysis revealed that older people looked more at the ground and less at the other side of the street to cross. Conclusions The less secure behavior in street crossing found in older pedestrians could be explained by their reduced cognitive and visual abilities, which, in turn, resulted in difficulties in the decision-making process, especially under time pressure. Decisions to cross a street are based on the distance of the oncoming cars, rather than their speed, for both groups. Older pedestrians look more at their feet, probably because of their need of more time to plan precise stepping movement and, in turn, pay less attention to the traffic. This might help to set up guidelines for improving senior pedestrians’ safety, in terms of speed limits, road design, and mixed physical-cognitive trainings

A non-spatial bias favouring fixated stimuli revealed in patients with spatial neglect

The cardinal feature of spatial neglect is severely impaired exploration of the contralesional space, a failure resulting in unawareness of many contralesional stimuli. This deficit is exacerbated by a reflexive attentional bias toward ipsilesional items. Here we show that, in addition to these spatially lateralized failures, neglect patients also exhibit a severe bias favouring stimuli presented at fixation. We tested neglect patients and matched healthy and right-hemisphere damaged patients without neglect in a task requiring saccade execution to targets in the left or right hemifield. Targets were presented alone or simultaneously with a distracter that appeared in the same hemifield, in the opposite hemifield, or at fixation. We found two fundamental biases in saccade initiation of neglect patients: irrelevant distracters presented in the preserved hemifield tended to capture gaze reflexively, resulting in a large number of saccades erroneously directed toward the distracter. Additionally, distracters presented at fixation severely disrupted saccade initiation irrespective of saccade direction, leading to disproportionately increased latencies of left and right saccades. This latency increase was specific to oculomotor responses of neglect patients and was not observed when a manual response was required. These results show that, in addition to their failure to inhibit reflexive glances toward ipsilesional items neglect patients exhibit a strong oculomotor bias favouring fixated stimuli. We conclude that impaired initiation of saccades in any direction contributes to the deficits of spatial exploration that characterize spatial neglec

Verbal instructions and top-down saccade control

Few studies have addressed the interaction between instruction content and saccadic eye movement control. To assess the impact of instructions on top-down control, we instructed 20 healthy volunteers to deliberately delay saccade triggering, to make inaccurate saccades or to redirect saccades—i.e. to glimpse towards and then immediately opposite to the target. Regular pro- and antisaccade tasks were used for comparison. Bottom-up visual input remained unchanged and was a gap paradigm for all instructions. In the inaccuracy and delay tasks, both latencies and accuracies were detrimentally impaired by either type of instruction and the variability of latency and accuracy was increased. The intersaccadic interval (ISI) required to correct erroneous antisaccades was shorter than the ISI for instructed direction changes in the redirection task. The word-by-word instruction content interferes with top-down saccade control. Top-down control is a time consuming process, which may override bottom-up processing only during a limited time period. It is questionable whether parallel processing is possible in top-down control, since the long ISI for instructed direction changes suggests sequential plannin

Effects of age and eccentricity on visual target detection

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of aging and target eccentricity on a visual search task comprising 30 images of everyday life projected into a hemisphere, realizing a ±90° visual field. The task performed binocularly allowed participants to freely move their eyes to scan images for an appearing target or distractor stimulus (presented at 10°; 30°, and 50° eccentricity). The distractor stimulus required no response, while the target stimulus required acknowledgment by pressing the response button. One hundred and seventeen healthy subjects (mean age = 49.63 years, SD = 17.40 years, age range 20–78 years) were studied. The results show that target detection performance decreases with age as well as with increasing eccentricity, especially for older subjects. Reaction time also increases with age and eccentricity, but in contrast to target detection, there is no interaction between age and eccentricity. Eye movement analysis showed that younger subjects exhibited a passive search strategy while older subjects exhibited an active search strategy probably as a compensation for their reduced peripheral detection performance