Feminist pedagogy and university directing

This thesis employs reflective practitioner research to describe and analyze the use of feminist pedagogy in an undergraduate rehearsal room to engage actors as agentic artists. As a director of a Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) play with university actors, I make choices for rehearsal and production that are based in various feminist theories and practices. I analyze my daily reflections and notes alongside qualitative journal responses and interviews from the actors in the production. In this document I weave personal stories from my process as a director with actor reflections in order to better understand and illustrate how critically engaged artistry can support undergraduate students as artists and makers whose choices are based in critical thought, research, and dialogue with one another. This document invites further discussion with theatre makers, actors, and university directors on the melding of theory and practice in university rehearsal rooms. I hope this study offers pathways towards critically engaged theatre-making that invites artists’ lived experiences to inform the production process and product. As my research findings show, through feminist practices, when actors are invited to bring more of their lived experiences to the rehearsal room, more culturally engaged choices can enrich and deepen a theatre-making experience and production.Theatre and Danc

Deontological morality can be experimentally enhanced by increasing disgust. A transcranial direct current stimulation study

Previous studies empirically support the existence of a distinctive association between deontological (but not altruistic) guilt and both disgust and obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms. Given that the neural substrate underlying deontological guilt comprises brain regions strictly implicated in the emotion of disgust (i.e. the insula), the present study aimed to test the hypothesis that indirect stimulation of the insula via transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) would enhance disgust and morality in the deontological domain. A randomized, sham-controlled, within-subject design was used. Thirty-seven healthy individuals (25 women) underwent 15-min anodal and sham tDCS over T3 in two different days, while their heart rate (HR) was recorded to derive measures of parasympathetic nervous system activity (HR variability; HRV). After the first 10-min of sham or active tDCS stimulation, participants were asked to 1) complete a series of 6-item words that could be completed with either a disgust-related word (cleaning/dirtiness) or neutral alternatives; 2) rate how much a series of vignettes, each depicting a behavior that violated a specific moral foundation, were morally wrong. Levels of trait anxiety, depression, disgust sensitivity, scrupulosity, and altruism as well as pre- and post- stimulation momentary emotional states were assessed. Compared to the sham condition, after active stimulation of T3 a) HRV significantly increased and participants b) completed more words in terms of cleaning/dirtiness and c) reported greater subjective levels of disgust, all suggesting the elicitation of the emotion of disgust. Although the results are only marginally significant, they point to the absence of difference between the two experimental conditions for moral vignettes in the altruistic domain (i.e., animal care, emotional and physical human care), but not in the deontological domain (i.e., authority, fairness, liberty, and sacrality), where vignettes were judged as more morally wrong in the active compared to the sham condition. Moreover, scores on the OCI-R correlated with how much vignettes were evaluated as morally wrong in the deontological domain only. Results preliminarily support the association between disgust and morality in the deontological domain, with important implications for OC disorder (OCD). Future studies should explore the possibility of decreasing both disgust and morality in patients with OCD by the use of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques

Breast screening atypia and subsequent development of cancer: protocol for an observational analysis of the Sloane database in England (Sloane atypia cohort study).

INTRODUCTION: The National Health Service (NHS) Breast Screening Programme aims to detect cancer earlier when treatment is more effective but can harm women by over diagnosing and overtreating cancers which would never have become symptomatic. As well as breast cancer, a spectrum of atypical epithelial proliferations (atypia) can also be detected as part of screening. This spectrum of changes, while not cancer, may mean that a woman is more likely to develop breast cancer in the future. Follow-up of atypia is not evidence based. We currently do not know which atypia should be detected to avoid future cancer. This study will explore how atypia develops into breast cancer in terms of number of women, time of cancer development, cancer type and severity, and whether this varies for different types of atypia. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The Sloane cohort study began in April 2003 with ongoing data collection including atypia diagnosed through screening at screening units in the UK. The database for England has 3645 cases (24 September 2020) of epithelial atypia, with follow-up from 1 to 15 years. The outcomes include subsequent invasive breast cancer and the nature of subsequent cancer. Descriptive statistics will be produced. The observed rates of breast cancer at 1, 3 and 6 years for types of atypia will be reported with CIs, to enable comparison to women in the general population. Time to event methods will be used to describe the time to breast cancer diagnosis for the types of atypia, including flexible parametric modelling if appropriate. Patient representatives from Independent Cancer Patients' Voice are included at every stage of the research. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study has received research ethics approval from the University of Warwick Biomedical and Scientific Research Ethics Committee (BSREC 10/20-21, 8 October 2020), Public Health England office for data release approvals (ODR1718_313) and approval from the English Breast Research Advisory Committee (BSPRAC_031). The findings will be disseminated to breast screening clinicians (via journal publication and conference presentation), to the NHS Breast Screening Programme to update their guidelines on how women with atypia should be followed up, and to the general public

Efficacy of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) To Decrease Disgust and Moral Rigidity. Implications For the Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

EFFICACY OF TRANSCRANIAL DIRECT CURRENT STIMULATION (TDCS) TO DECREASE DISGUST AND MORAL RIGIDITY. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE TREATMENT OF OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER (OCD). Introduction: Several studies indicate that the deontological guilt is related to disgust, and it has been suggested to play a pivotal role in the genesis of obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms. At a brain level, deontological guilt has been demonstrated to selectively activate the insula, a region responsible for disgust-processing and consistently hyperactivated in persons with OCD. The present study aimed to test the hypothesis that indirect inhibition of the insula via cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) would decrease disgust and moral rigidity. Methods: By a randomized, sham-controlled, within-subject design, thirty-six healthy individuals underwent 15-min anodal, cathodal, and sham tDCS over the temporal lobe (T3). Trait levels of anxiety, depression, disgust sensitivity, OC tendencies, scrupulosity, and altruistic conduct, as well as pre- and post-stimulation momentary emotional states were assessed. Measures of parasympathetic nervous system activity (Heart Rate Variability, HRV) was derived during the entire experimental protocol. After the first 10 min of stimulation, participants were asked to complete a computerized moral task and a word-stem completion task with either disgust-related words or neutral alternatives. Results: Compared to sham condition, anodal and cathodal stimulation of T3 respectively enhanced and decreased self-reported disgust, severity of moral judgements in the deontological domain, and HRV. Significant and positive associations emerged in the anodal condition between self-reported deontological guilt and the Fear-of-Sin (FoS) subscale of the Pennsylvania Inventory of Scrupulosity, and between self-reported deontological guilt and the washing and obsessing subscales of the ObsessiveCompulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R); in the cathodal condition, disgust was inversely correlated with the washing, obsessing (OCI-R), and FoS subscales. Discussion: Results suggest a decrease in self-reported and physiological disgust following cathodal tDCS on T3, with stronger effects in individuals with higher levels of OC traits, with potential implications for the treatment of OCD

Filthiness of Immorality: Manipulating Disgust and Moral Rigidity Through Noninvasive Brain Stimulation as a Promising Therapeutic Tool for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

The study was designed to test the hypothesis that indirect inhibition of the insula via cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) would decrease disgust and moral rigidity in 36 healthy individuals undergoing 15 min of tDCS over the temporal lobe. To obtain a comprehensive assessment of disgust, we used subjective (affect rating), physiological (heart rate variability [HRV]), and implicit measures (word-fragment completion), and moral judgment was assessed by asking participants to rate the deontological and altruistic moral wrongness of a revised version of the moral foundations vignettes. We found anodal and cathodal stimulations to, respectively, enhance and decrease self-reported disgust, deontological morality, and HRV. Note that these effects were stronger in individuals with higher levels of obsessive compulsive (OC) traits. Because disgust and sensitivity to deontological guilt are among the most impairing features in OC disorder, it is auspicious that cathodal tDCS could be implemented to reduce such symptoms

The presentation, management and outcome of patients with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) with microinvasion (invasion ≤1 mm in size)-results from the UK Sloane Project.

BACKGROUND: The diagnosis, management and prognosis of microinvasive breast carcinoma remain controversial. METHODS: We analysed the outcomes of patients with DCIS with and without microinvasion diagnosed between 2003 and 2012 within the Sloane project. RESULTS: Microinvasion was recorded in 521 of 11,285 patients (4.6%), with considerable variation in reported incidence among screening units (0-25%). Microinvasion was associated with high-grade DCIS, larger DCIS size, comedo necrosis and solid, cribriform architecture (all P < 0.001). Microinvasion was more frequent in patients who underwent mastectomy compared with breast-conserving surgery (BCS) (6.9% vs 3.6%, P <  0.001), and in those undergoing axillary nodal surgery (60.4% vs 30.3%, P <  0.001) including the subset undergoing BCS (43.4% vs 8.5%, P < 0.001). Nodal metastasis rate was low and not statistically significant difference from the DCIS only group (P = 0.68). Following median follow-up of 110 months, 3% of patients had recurrent ipsilateral high-grade DCIS, and 4.2% developed invasive carcinoma. The subsequent ipsilateral invasion was of Grade 3 in 71.4% of patients with microinvasion vs 30.4% in DCIS without microinvasion (P = 0.02). Distant metastasis and breast cancer mortality were higher with microinvasion compared with DCIS only (1.2% vs 0.3%, P = 0.01 and 2.1% vs 0.8%; P = 0.005). CONCLUSIONS: The higher breast cancer mortality with microinvasion indicates a more aggressive disease