Textual Sensibilities: The Physicality of British Poetry, 1750-1850

My dissertation argues that key eighteenth and early nineteenth-century poets - including James Thomson and James Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton, Charlotte Smith, and Erasmus Darwin, and William Blake, John Keats, and Percy Shelley - are united by a preoccupation with the physical properties of the text, language, or both. I argue that these writers take the central period concept of sensibility, or the human capacity for sensory perception and emotion, and reconceive it as a textual category, exploring what I call textual sensibility, or the text's capacity to stimulate the senses relative to its intellectual comprehensibility. In major poems these writers foreground the visual and sonic characteristics of words, punctuation, and space, and use various poetic "units"- from one letter to the entire poem - as physical things or effects that frustrate informational reading and force a more experiential approach to the text. I argue that these techniques arise from the widespread focus on the senses in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century British culture. The dissertation's first chapter defines the salient techniques of physical poetic practice in a range of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century texts; the other chapters concentrate specifically on Blake, Keats, and Shelley as poets who pursue particularly rich, complex, and self-reflexive forms of physical poetic style. My study fills a gap in coverage in the larger field of interest in material affect, which has tended to focus on virtually every other literary period at the expense of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Jerome McGann's The Poetics of Sensibility touches upon "affective" versus "referential" language in certain late eighteenth-century poets, and scholars have addressed Blake's material uses of word and image and some aspects of Keats's sensory style. But my study supplies an in-depth account of the diverse techniques of physical poetic practice in the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century period, and of the important epistemological inquiry that underlies them: is reading, and particularly reading poetry, about gaining "information" from the text or "experiencing" it, and can these two effects be combined

Children at the Crossroads of Opportunities and Constraints: The relationship between school and family from the children’s viewpoint: their perspectives, their positions. Bertelsmann Stiftung Summary Research Report 2 August 2020.

What do primary-school students have to say about formal meetings between parents and teachers? How do they feel about more informal exchanges? What do children think of these interactions and which role do they themselves adopt? Those are the questions addressed by the second research report Children at the Crossroads of Opportunities and Constraints,1 authored by Tanja Betz of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and her team as part of a project jointly carried out with the Bertelsmann Stiftung. The report focuses on children – actors previously neglected in the academic and policy debates – by investigating their feelings about what makes a “good” educational partnership between families and schools. During group discussions and individual interviews, the researchers spoke with students in the third and fourth grades at five mainstream primary schools in the states of Hesse and Rhineland–Palatinate. Their goal was to learn more about how the family-school relationship is shaped. As the findings clearly show: Children have more than just one perspective and are not a homogenous group – the same way parents and educational professionals are not. Some want to be informed and involved when their parents interact with teachers or others at school. As they see it, they benefit from a close connection between their family and school. They are pleased when their mother or father comes to school and they themselves can have a say – for example, during parent-teacher-student conferences. The findings suggest, however, that this applies more to children from socially advantaged families. Other children, in contrast, attempt to keep the worlds of family and school as separate as possible. One child explained that in his free time he is “a different person than at school” and that this “free-time me” or “at-home me” should remain unknown at school as much as possible. Some children, however, do not succeed in controlling the flow of information between their parents and school on topics they consider “private.” Parents divulge “secrets” instead, or parents and teachers exchange photographs against the child’s will. As a result, these children try to avoid situations where their parents and teachers meet, which they perceive as unpleasant and threatening. In some cases, such meetings are even a source of fear. Other children, however, unquestioningly accept parent-teacher meetings and the role they themselves are assigned. Yet in these situations they sometimes feel incapacitated and powerless. From the perspective of many children, an educational partnership is therefore not seen as ideal, when all participants – teachers, parents, students – come together as equals, work closely together and discuss all manner of topics. The findings point to a range of ambivalent feelings instead. Children, moreover, are not the only ones who feel ambivalent, as other studies and publications have shown, including those released as part of this research project. Teachers, too, struggle to fulfill their role as school representatives – i.e. to teach, evaluate and, especially in the German context, recommend the best type of secondary school – while also interacting with parents and children as trusting, equal partners. Like children, parents exhibit considerable diversity in terms of how much they want to – or an – get involved in educational institutions. Against this background, we feel it is crucial to take a second look at the idealized concept of educational partnerships – an ideal very present in the educational and policy fields in many countries – and to consider it from a much broader viewpoint. We want to use this study to stimulate discussion about alternative forms, possibilities and goals when it comes to cooperation between parents, teachers and children. All levels – schools, educational administrators and policymakers – should develop and test a variety of cooperative methods. Moreover, they should do more to involve children in shaping the family-school relationship. To that end, student representatives should be systematically queried and included right from the start. Another key aspect is that the ambivalent feelings outlined above need to be acknowledged and considered. So, too, should the power structures and inequalities among adults and children, parents and educational professionals, and families from different social backgrounds. Ultimately, that is the only way to pinpoint and address the limits and risks of cooperation in its various forms, especially as it pertains to the educational opportunities and constraints certain children face. This is an important, challenging task which everyone involved must address. It can only be successfully undertaken if the necessary framework conditions are discussed – i.e. the time, personnel, training and settings required for effectively shaping the family-school relationship – and if adequate resources are made available

Insecure attachment as a transdiagnostic risk factor for major psychiatric conditions: A meta-analysis in bipolar disorder, depression and schizophrenia spectrum disorder

Insecure attachment has been suggested as a major risk factor for mental health problems as well as a key element for the development and trajectory of psychiatric disorders. The aim of this meta-analysis was to assess whether insecure attachment constitutes a global transdiagnostic risk factor in bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia spectrum disorders. We conducted a PRISMA-based systematic quantitative review to explore the prevalence of insecure attachment among patients of three representative psychiatric disorders - major depression, schizophrenia spectrum disorders and bipolar disorder - in comparison with healthy controls (HC) from a transdiagnostic point of view. Effect sizes on differences of anxious, avoidant and insecure prevalence were calculated based on 40 samples including a total of n = 2927 individuals. Overall, results indicated a large effect on prevalence of insecure attachment across all disorders compared to HC (k = 30, g = 0.88, I2 = 71.0%, p < 0.001). In a transdiagnostic comparison, the only difference was found in avoidant attachment, which was significantly lower (p = 0.04) compared to HC in the schizophrenia spectrum disorder subgroup (k = 10, g = 0.31, I2 = 76.60%, p < 0.0001) than the depression subgroup subgroup (k = 12, g = 0.83, I2 = 46.65%, p < 0.0001). The lack of further transdiagnostic differences between three distinct psychiatric disorders corroborates insecure attachment as a general vulnerability factor to psychopathology. Our findings warrant further investigations, which should explore the pathways from attachment insecurity towards psychopathology. Insecure attachment likely has implications on assessment, prediction and treatment of psychiatric patients

Acetate as an active metabolite of ethanol: studies of locomotion, loss of righting reflex, and anxiety in rodents

It has been postulated that a number of the central effects of ethanol are mediated via ethanol metabolites: acetaldehyde and acetate. Ethanol is known to produce a large variety of behavioral actions such anxiolysis, narcosis, and modulation of locomotion. Acetaldehyde contributes to some of those effects although the contribution of acetate is less known. In the present studies, rats and mice were used to assess the acute and chronic effects of acetate after central or peripheral administration. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were used for the comparison between central (intraventricular, ICV) and peripheral (intraperitoneal, IP) administration of acute doses of acetate on locomotion. CD1 male mice were used to study acute IP effects of acetate on locomotion, and also the effects of chronic oral consumption of acetate (0, 500, or 1000 mg/l, during 7, 15, 30, or 60 days) on ethanol- (1.0, 2.0, 4.0, or 4.5 g/kg, IP) induced locomotion, anxiolysis, and loss of righting reflex (LORR). In rats, ICV acetate (0.7–2.8 μmoles) reduced spontaneous locomotion at doses that, in the case of ethanol and acetaldehyde, had previously been shown to stimulate locomotion. Peripheral acute administration of acetate also suppressed locomotion in rats (25–100 mg/kg), but not in mice. In addition, although chronic administration of acetate during 15 days did not have an effect on spontaneous locomotion in an open field, it blocked ethanol-induced locomotion. However, ethanol-induced anxiolysis was not affected by chronic administration of acetate. Chronic consumption of acetate (up to 60 days) did not have an effect on latency to, or duration of LORR induced by ethanol, but significantly increased the number of mice that did not achieve LORR. The present work provides new evidence supporting the hypothesis that acetate should be considered a centrally-active metabolite of ethanol that contributes to some behavioral effects of this alcohol, such as motor suppression

Disfluency and Laughter Annotation in a Light-weight Dialogue Mark-up Protocol

Hough J, de Ruiter L, Betz S, Schlangen D. Disfluency and Laughter Annotation in a Light-weight Dialogue Mark-up Protocol. Presented at the The 7th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS), Edinburgh, UK

DUEL: A Multi-lingual Multimodal Dialogue Corpus for Disfluency, Exclamations and Laughter

Hough J, Tian Y, de Ruiter L, et al. DUEL: A Multi-lingual Multimodal Dialogue Corpus for Disfluency, Exclamations and Laughter. In: 10th edition of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference. 2016

Ambiguous loss and incomplete abduction narratives in Kosovo

Ten mothers of men and boys who were abducted and listed as missing during the war in Kosovo in 1998/1999 were interviewed in Kosovo in the spring of 2012. Although the missing are presumed dead by the authorities, the mothers continue to live in a state of emotional ambiguity where a presumption of death is balanced with the hope of being reunited. In the absence of absolute proof, finding the remains of their loved ones becomes a major preoccupation. Using a social phenomenological approach, this study explored the social and political complexities existing within the life-world of these women. The findings suggest that they live in a continual state of psychological distress, and even when remains are returned, the unknown elements of the narrative of their abduction and murder only add to their distress and force many into self-imposed emotional exile away from community and close family

Dopamine/adenosine interactions related to locomotion and tremor in animal models: Possible relevance to parkinsonism

Abstract Adenosine A 2A antagonists can exert antiparkinsonian effects in animal models. Recent experiments studied the ability of MSX-3 (an adenosine A 2A antagonist) to reverse the locomotor suppression and tremor produced by dopamine antagonists in rats. MSX-3 reversed haloperidolinduced suppression of locomotion, and reduced the tremulous jaw movements induced by haloperidol, pimozide, and reserpine. Infusions of MSX-3 into the nucleus accumbens core increased locomotion in haloperidol-treated rats, but there were no effects of infusions into the accumbens shell or ventrolateral neostriatum. In contrast, MSX-3 injected into the ventrolateral neostriatum reduced pimozide-induced tremulous jaw movements. Dopamine/adenosine interactions in different striatal subregions are involved in distinct aspects of motor function

Loss of TDP-43 oligomerization or RNA binding elicits distinct aggregation patterns

Aggregation of the RNA-binding protein TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43) is the key neuropathological feature of neurodegenerative diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). In physiological conditions, TDP-43 is predominantly nuclear, forms oligomers, and is contained in biomolecular condensates assembled by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). In disease, TDP-43 forms cytoplasmic or intranuclear inclusions. How TDP-43 transitions from physiological to pathological states remains poorly understood. Using a variety of cellular systems to express structure-based TDP-43 variants, including human neurons and cell lines with near-physiological expression levels, we show that oligomerization and RNA binding govern TDP-43 stability, splicing functionality, LLPS, and subcellular localization. Importantly, our data reveal that TDP-43 oligomerization is modulated by RNA binding. By mimicking the impaired proteasomal activity observed in ALS/FTLD patients, we found that monomeric TDP-43 forms inclusions in the cytoplasm, whereas its RNA binding-deficient counterpart aggregated in the nucleus. These differentially localized aggregates emerged via distinct pathways: LLPS-driven aggregation in the nucleus and aggresome-dependent inclusion formation in the cytoplasm. Therefore, our work unravels the origins of heterogeneous pathological species reminiscent of those occurring in TDP-43 proteinopathy patients

TDP-43 oligomerization and RNA binding are codependent but their loss elicits distinct pathologies

Aggregation of the RNA-binding protein TDP-43 is the main common neuropathological feature of TDP-43 proteinopathies. In physiological conditions, TDP-43 is predominantly nuclear and contained in biomolecular condensates formed via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). However, in disease, TDP-43 is depleted from these compartments and forms cytoplasmic or, sometimes, intranuclear inclusions. How TDP-43 transitions from physiological to pathological states remains poorly understood. Here, we show that self-oligomerization and RNA binding cooperatively govern TDP-43 stability, functionality, LLPS and cellular localization. Importantly, our data reveal that TDP-43 oligomerization is connected to, and conformationally modulated by, RNA binding. Mimicking the impaired proteasomal activity observed in patients, we found that TDP-43 forms nuclear aggregates via LLPS and cytoplasmic aggregates via aggresome formation. The favored aggregation pathway depended on the TDP-43 state –monomeric/oligomeric, RNA-bound/-unbound– and the subcellular environment –nucleus/cytoplasm. Our work unravels the origins of heterogeneous pathological species occurring in TDP-43 proteinopathies