Definition: Asomatognosia

Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Feminist archives: narrating embodied vulnerabilities and practices of care

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has exposed a shared condition of vulnerability on a global scale. How can we use vulnerability as an effective paradigm in order to foster collective political initiatives? This essay claims that the idea of care is key to understand the vulnerability framework as being both an epistemic and a political resource to address ethical issues. The first half of the essay recollects several arguments in Adriana Cavarero’s and Judith Butler’s most recent works, insofar as both theorists have insisted on the notion of vulnerability in order to interpret contemporary political mobilizations. The second part of the essay retraces a constellation of practices of care in the works of several Black and decolonial feminist thinkers situated in different socio-political contexts. Whereas for Christina Sharpe and Saidiya Hartman the focus is on the matter of Blackness and Black lives in their constitutive vulnerability, both Cristina Rivera Garza’s and Sayak Valencia’s works remarkably insist on the specific socio-political context of today’s Mexico. These authors urge the readers to adopt a critical posture when encountering official narratives, also because in their texts they exhibit their own vulnerability. For them, writing, their writing is an ethical demand to imagine alternatives and to foster new entanglements between bodies persisting on the margins, at the limits of the norms that regulate legibility

«Un uomo dai molti inganni» (Filottete, v. 1135). Il significato dell’apatē nel linguaggio politico tra Gorgia e Sofocle

In questo saggio si farà riferimento a quella che, rispetto al lessico filosofico-politico moderno, è un’archeologia (in senso foucaultiano) del termine ipocrisia. Nella ricostruzione storico-semantica del termine che guarda al lessico greco antico emerge la connessione, stabilizzatasi in una traslazione simbolico-metaforica, tra la dimensione pubblica della comunicazione e quella del teatro. Nella prima parte del saggio si fa riferimento ad alcuni fra i pochi frammenti di testi attribuiti a Gorgia da Lentini, dove viene messo a tema il ruolo che l’apatē (inganno) gioca nella costruzione della relazionalità e della comunicazione. La seconda parte è invece dedicata al commento al testo del Filottete di Sofocle, incentrato in particolare sul prologo (1-134), che consiste in un dialogo in parte agonistico tra Odisseo e Neottolemo, e sulla scena nota come “l’inganno del mercante” (542-627), in cui il re di Itaca mette in atto il suo raggiro nei confronti di Filottete e il giovane soldato è chiamato a interpretare la propria parte

Feminist archives: narrating embodied vulnerabilities and practices of care

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has exposed a shared condition of vulnerability on a global scale. How can we use vulnerability as an effective paradigm in order to foster collective political initiatives? This essay claims that the idea of care is key to understand the vulnerability framework as being both an epistemic and a political resource to address ethical issues. The first half of the essay recollects several arguments in Adriana Cavarero’s and Judith Butler’s most recent works, insofar as both theorists have insisted on the notion of vulnerability in order to interpret contemporary political mobilizations. The second part of the essay retraces a constellation of practices of care in the works of several Black and decolonial feminist thinkers situated in different socio-political contexts. Whereas for Christina Sharpe and Saidiya Hartman the focus is on the matter of Blackness and Black lives in their constitutive vulnerability, both Cristina Rivera Garza’s and Sayak Valencia’s works remarkably insist on the specific socio-political context of today’s Mexico. These authors urge the readers to adopt a critical posture when encountering official narratives, also because in their texts they exhibit their own vulnerability. For them, writing, their writing is an ethical demand to imagine alternatives and to foster new entanglements between bodies persisting on the margins, at the limits of the norms that regulate legibility

Voci femminili nelle tragedie sofoclee. Una critica all'idea di "discorso pubblico" nell'Atene classica

The general aim of the Dissertation is to analyse from a political perspective the language of Sophocles’ plays, using the history of concepts methodology. The research approach is interdisciplinary, since it provides an accurate philological and historical analysis of the sources. In particular, the research focuses on the discourses pronounced by the most relevant female characters in Sophocles’ dramas. I took into account the tragic language as political, referring on how the different characters’ speeches produce relationships and connections, and cause some specific acts within the institutionalised and codified structure of a political community. I focused on several speeches of the female characters of three plays: Women of Trachis, Antigone and Electra. In my research work I studied and problematized such concepts as “publicness”, “performativity”, “agency”, frequently used by many contemporary American philosophers and political theorists in order to analyse the language of the Ancient Greek tragedy. Since public spaces in 5th century Athens - such as the theater, the assembly, and the courthouse – were restricted to the men’s speeches, I focused on how the female speech was produced, with the aim to destabilize and criticize the very idea of “public speech” in classical Greece as gendered. In particular, I focused on three institutionalised forms of discourse, such as: the legal and judiciary discourse, the agon, and the lamentation. The structure of the Dissertation is the following: - A general Introduction presenting the aim of the Dissertation. - Chapter I, describing the sources and the research methodology, reviewing the bibliography and narrating the historical context. - Chapter II, on Deianeira, the female protagonist of Women of Trachis. It focuses on the institution of marriage and on the legal discourse. - Chapter III, on Antigone’s and Electra’s sororal agonism. The analysis focuses on the agons between the female protagonists and their respective sisters. - Chapter IV, on Antigone’s and Electra’s lamentations and interactions with the Chorus. - The Conclusions and final comments

Pensare l’agone: Foucault, Cassin e la storia dell’esclusione della sofistica

Sia Michel Foucault sia Barbara Cassin guardano in particolare al pensiero aristotelico e alle fonti, risalenti al V secolo a. C., attribuite al retore Gorgia per ricostruire la storia della strategica esclusione della sofistica dalla tradizione filosofica occidentale. Entrambi risalgono alla scena dell’agone retorico che Aristotele ingaggia con Gorgia e provano che il sofista ha prodotto un’analisi originale della teatralità del politico parlando di scene del logos

Reading the mind in the touch: Neurophysiological specificity in the communication of emotions by touch

Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.Touch is central to interpersonal interactions. Touch conveys specific emotions about the touch provider, but it is not clear whether this is a purely socially learned function or whether it has neurophysiological specificity. In two experiments with healthy participants (N = 76 and 61) and one neuropsychological single case study, we investigated whether a type of touch characterised by peripheral and central neurophysiological specificity, namely the C tactile (CT) system, can communicate specific emotions and mental states. We examined the specificity of emotions elicited by touch delivered at CT-optimal (3 cm/s) and CT-suboptimal (18 cm/s) velocities (Experiment 1) at different body sites which contain (forearm) vs. do not contain (palm of the hand) CT fibres (Experiment 2). Blindfolded participants were touched without any contextual cues, and were asked to identify the touch provider's emotion and intention. Overall, CT-optimal touch (slow, gentle touch on the forearm) was significantly more likely than other types of touch to convey arousal, lust or desire. Affiliative emotions such as love and related intentions such as social support were instead reliably elicited by gentle touch, irrespective of CT-optimality, suggesting that other top-down factors contribute to these aspects of tactile social communication. To explore the neural basis of this communication, we also tested this paradigm in a stroke patient with right perisylvian damage, including the posterior insular cortex, which is considered as the primary cortical target of CT afferents, but excluding temporal cortex involvement that has been linked to more affiliative aspects of CT-optimal touch. His performance suggested an impairment in ‘reading’ emotions based on CT-optimal touch. Taken together, our results suggest that the CT system can add specificity to emotional and social communication, particularly with regards to feelings of desire and arousal. On the basis of these findings, we speculate that its primary functional role may be to enhance the ‘sensual salience’ of tactile interactions.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Prefrontal cortex activation upon a demanding virtual hand-controlled task: A new frontier for neuroergonomics

open9noFunctional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a non-invasive vascular-based functional neuroimaging technology that can assess, simultaneously from multiple cortical areas, concentration changes in oxygenated-deoxygenated hemoglobin at the level of the cortical microcirculation blood vessels. fNIRS, with its high degree of ecological validity and its very limited requirement of physical constraints to subjects, could represent a valid tool for monitoring cortical responses in the research field of neuroergonomics. In virtual reality (VR) real situations can be replicated with greater control than those obtainable in the real world. Therefore, VR is the ideal setting where studies about neuroergonomics applications can be performed. The aim of the present study was to investigate, by a 20-channel fNIRS system, the dorsolateral/ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC/VLPFC) in subjects while performing a demanding VR hand-controlled task (HCT). Considering the complexity of the HCT, its execution should require the attentional resources allocation and the integration of different executive functions. The HCT simulates the interaction with a real, remotely-driven, system operating in a critical environment. The hand movements were captured by a high spatial and temporal resolution 3-dimensional (3D) hand-sensing device, the LEAP motion controller, a gesture-based control interface that could be used in VR for tele-operated applications. Fifteen University students were asked to guide, with their right hand/forearm, a virtual ball (VB) over a virtual route (VROU) reproducing a 42 m narrow road including some critical points. The subjects tried to travel as long as possible without making VB fall. The distance traveled by the guided VB was 70.2 ± 37.2 m. The less skilled subjects failed several times in guiding the VB over the VROU. Nevertheless, a bilateral VLPFC activation, in response to the HCT execution, was observed in all the subjects. No correlation was found between the distance traveled by the guided VB and the corresponding cortical activation. These results confirm the suitability of fNIRS technology to objectively evaluate cortical hemodynamic changes occurring in VR environments. Future studies could give a contribution to a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying human performance either in expert or non-expert operators during the simulation of different demanding/fatiguing activities.openCarrieri, Marika; Petracca, Andrea; Lancia, Stefania; Basso Moro, Sara; Brigadoi, Sabrina; Spezialetti, Matteo; Ferrari, Marco; Placidi, Giuseppe; Quaresima, ValentinaCarrieri, Marika; Petracca, Andrea; Lancia, Stefania; BASSO MORO, Sara; Brigadoi, Sabrina; Spezialetti, Matteo; Ferrari, Marco; Placidi, Giuseppe; Quaresima, Valentin

Massive body-brain disconnection consequent to spinal cord injuries drives profound changes in higher-order cognitive and emotional functions: A PRISMA scoping review

: Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to a massive disconnection between the brain and the body parts below the lesion level representing a unique opportunity to explore how the body influences a person's mental life. We performed a systematic scoping review of 59 studies on higher-order cognitive and emotional changes after SCI. The results suggest that fluid abilities (e.g. attention, executive functions) and emotional regulation (e.g. emotional reactivity and discrimination) are impaired in people with SCI, with progressive deterioration over time. Although not systematically explored, the factors that are directly (e.g. the severity and level of the lesion) and indirectly associated (e.g. blood pressure, sleeping disorders, medication) with the damage may play a role in these deficits. The inconsistency which was found in the results may derive from the various methods used and the heterogeneity of samples (i.e. the lesion completeness, the time interval since lesion onset). Future studies which are specifically controlled for methods, clinical and socio-cultural dimensions are needed to better understand the role of the body in cognition

The evaluation of capacity in dementia: ethical constraints and best practice. A systematic review

The progressive ageing of a population leads to an increase in the number of people suffering from cognitive deterioration. This requires particular attention in terms of the necessity to assess these people's cognitive functions and their capacity to make decisions. The present systematic review analyses the clinical and ethical aspects of any assessment of capacity, with a specific focus on the capacity of the individual to give informed consent for medical treatment and also with regard to their testamentary capacity. The results indicate that the concepts of capacity, competence and decision-making need to be better clarified, ad-hoc devised tools are required and a multidisciplinary, clinical and legal approach to assessments of capacity needs to be adopted. This is crucial to guarantee that the two ethical principles of capacity assessment are adhered to: respect for an individual's autonomy and the protection of fragile individuals