Affective Touch Enhances Self-Face Recognition During Multisensory Integration

Multisensory integration is a powerful mechanism for constructing body awareness and key for the sense of selfhood. Recent evidence has shown that the specialised C tactile modality that gives rise to feelings of pleasant, affective touch, can enhance the experience of body ownership during multisensory integration. Nevertheless, no study has examined whether affective touch can also modulate psychological identification with our face, the hallmark of our identity. The current study used the enfacement illusion paradigm to investigate the role of affective touch in the modulation of self-face recognition during multisensory integration. In the first experiment (N = 30), healthy participants were stroked on the cheek while they were looking at another face being stroked on the cheek in synchrony or asynchrony with affective (slow; CT-optimal) vs. neutral (fast; CT-suboptimal) touch. In the second experiment (N = 38) spatial incongruence of touch (cheek vs. forehead) was used as a control condition instead of temporal asynchrony. Overall, our data suggest that CT-optimal, affective touch enhances subjective (but not behavioural) self-face recognition during synchronous and spatially congruent integration of different sensations and possibly reduces deafference during asynchronous multisensory integration. We discuss the role of affective touch in shaping the more social aspects of our self

Το θέμα της ὕβρεως στις ευριπίδειες τραγωδίες «Ἱππόλυτος» και «Βάκχες» – Σχέσεις θεών και ανθρώπων

Η παρούσα διπλωματική εστιάζει στο θέμα της θρησκευτικής ύβρεως, της επιδείξασας δηλαδή αλαζονείας των ανθρώπων απέναντι στους θεούς, όπως επίσης και στις σχέσεις θεών και ανθρώπων στις ευριπίδειες τραγωδίες «Ἱππόλυτος» και «Βάκχες». Το μοτίβο αυτό της ύβρεως συνδέεται με την ασέβεια των ανθρώπων, του Ιππόλυτου και του Πενθέα αντίστοιχα, εξαιτίας της έλλειψης απόδοσης τιμών στους θεούς, στον θεό Διόνυσο και στη θεά Αφροδίτη, διαταράσσοντας έτσι τις μεταξύ τους σχέσεις. Πρόκειται για μια διαταραγμένη σχέση, τα αίτια της οποίας ανάγονται στην ιδιαίτερη ψυχοσύνθεση των δυο ηρώων, όπως θα αποδειχθεί, του Ιππόλυτου και του Πενθέα. Εκτός, όμως, από το μοτίβο της ύβρεως, αλλά και τις σχέσεις θεών και ανθρώπων, ιδιαίτερη μνεία γίνεται και στις τελετουργίες, στον Διονυσιασμό, στον Ορφισμό και στις τελετουργίες διάβασης. Τέλος, στο καταληκτικό μέρος της εργασίας πραγματοποιείται μια σύγκριση ανάμεσα στα δυο έργα, εντοπίζοντας ομοιότητες και διαφορές αναφορικά με το μοτίβο της ύβρεως.This diplomatic focuses on the issue of religious insults, that is, the display of arrogance of men towards the gods, as well as the relations between gods and humans in Euripides' tragedies, «Hippolytus» and «Bacchae». This motif is associated with the disrespect of people, Hippolytus and Pentheus respectively, due to the lack of respect for the gods, Dionysus and Aphrodite, disrupting their relations with them. This relationship disorder is due to the special psychosynthesis of the heroes, as it turns out, Hippolytus and Pentheus. However, apart from the motif of hybris and the relations between gods and humans, special reference is made to the rituals, to Dionysianism, to Orphism, but also to the rituals of passage. In the final part, a comparison is made between the two Euripidean dramas, identifying similarities and differences, regarding the motif of hybris

Dissociable sources of erogeneity in social touch: Imagining and perceiving C-Tactile optimal touch in erogenous zones

Previous research points to two major hypotheses regarding the mechanisms by which touch can be experienced as erotogenic. The first concerns the body part to which touch is applied (erogenous zones) and the second the modality of touch (sensual touch optimal in activating C Tactile afferents). In this study, we explored for the first time the relation between those two mechanisms in actual and imagined social touch. In a first experiment, we randomly assigned "Giver" and "Receiver" roles within 19 romantic couples (20 females, 18 males, age 32.34 +/- 8.71SD years) and asked the Giver" to apply CT-optimal (3 cm/s) vs. CT-suboptimal (18 cm/s) touch on an erogenous (neck) vs. non-erogenous zone (forehead) of their partner. We then obtained ratings of pleasantness and sexual arousal from both "Receivers" and Givers". In a second experiment, 32 healthy females (age 25.16 +/- 5.91SD years) were asked to imagine CT-optimal vs. CT-suboptimal stimulation (stroking vs. patting) and velocity (3 cm/s vs. 18 cm/s) on different erogenous vs. non-erogenous zones and rate pleasantness. While both erogenous body part and CT-optimal, sensual touch were found to increase pleasant and erotic sensations, the results showed a lack of an interaction. Furthermore, pleasantness was induced by mere imagination of touch without any tactile stimulation, and touch that was sexually arousing for the receiver was rated as more sexually arousing for the giver as well, pointing to top-down, learned expectations of sensory pleasure and erogeneity. Taken together, these studies provide the first direct evidence that while both the body location to which touch is applied and the mode of touch contribute to pleasant and erotic sensations, these two factors appear to mediate subjective pleasantness and erogeneity by, at least partly, independent mechanisms

ECRIN – CESSDA strategies for cross metadata mappings in selected areas between life sciences and social sciences and humanities

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“Be Sustainable”: EOSC-Life Recommendations for Implementation of FAIR Principles in Life Science Data Handling

The main goals and challenges for the life science communities in the Open Science framework are to increase reuse and sustainability of data resources, software tools, and workflows, especially in large-scale data-driven research and computational analyses. Here, we present key findings, procedures, effective measures and recommendations for generating and establishing sustainable life science resources based on the collaborative, cross-disciplinary work done within the EOSC-Life (European Open Science Cloud for Life Sciences) consortium. Bringing together 13 European life science research infrastructures, it has laid the foundation for an open, digital space to support biological and medical research. Using lessons learned from 27 selected projects, we describe the organisational, technical, financial and legal/ethical challenges that represent the main barriers to sustainability in the life sciences. We show how EOSC-Life provides a model for sustainable data management according to FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) principles, including solutions for sensitive- and industry-related resources, by means of cross-disciplinary training and best practices sharing. Finally, we illustrate how data harmonisation and collaborative work facilitate interoperability of tools, data, solutions and lead to a better understanding of concepts, semantics and functionalities in the life sciences

Culture-level dimensions of social axioms and their correlates across 41 cultures

Leung and colleagues have revealed a five-dimensional structure of social axioms across individuals from five cultural groups. The present research was designed to reveal the culture level factor structure of social axioms and its correlates across 41 nations. An ecological factor analysis on the 60 items of the Social Axioms Survey extracted two factors: Dynamic Externality correlates with value measures tapping collectivism, hierarchy, and conservatism and with national indices indicative of lower social development. Societal Cynicism is less strongly and broadly correlated with previous values measures or other national indices and seems to define a novel cultural syndrome. Its national correlates suggest that it taps the cognitive component of a cultural constellation labeled maleficence, a cultural syndrome associated with a general mistrust of social systems and other people. Discussion focused on the meaning of these national level factors of beliefs and on their relationships with individual level factors of belief derived from the same data set.(undefined

Perceptions of the appropriate response to norm violation in 57 societies

An Author Correction to this article: DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22955-x.Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriateness of various responses to a violation of a cooperative norm and to atypical social behaviors. Our findings highlight both cultural universals and cultural variation. We find a universal negative relation between appropriateness ratings of norm violations and appropriateness ratings of responses in the form of confrontation, social ostracism and gossip. Moreover, we find the country variation in the appropriateness of sanctions to be consistent across different norm violations but not across different sanctions. Specifically, in those countries where use of physical confrontation and social ostracism is rated as less appropriate, gossip is rated as more appropriate.Peer reviewe