The Poetics of Meditation: Whitman's Meditative Catalog

1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chanita Goodblatt ◽  
Joseph Glicksohn
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Insight Into

Whitman uses the meditative catalog to depict and convey his subjective experiences to the reader. We argue that this type of catalog is a poetic realization of the meditative technique of mindfulness. In analyzing examples of such a catalog, using a cognitive-poetic approach, one can illuminate both the process of mindfulness and its literary depiction. Apart from being a depiction of ongoing perceptual experience, one especially involving the visual, auditory and olfactory senses, the catalog also presents instances of physiognomic perception and other syncretic phenomena. It is from the poet's detailed depiction of his own subjective experience that one can glean insight into the meditative experience.

In sickness and in health: The strains and gains of caring for a chronically ill or disabled spouse

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria L Solomi ◽  
Rachel E Casiday
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Marital Relationship ◽  
Chronically Ill ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Relational Experiences ◽  
Health Promoting ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Insight Into

Objectives To examine the subjective experiences of spousal carers, focusing on positive, negative, and relational aspects of this role. Methods Mixed-methods exploratory study involving questionnaires ( N = 40) and in-depth interviews ( N = 8) with spousal carers in the southwest of England. Results Participants used a combination of negative and positive terms to describe their experiences, with the cared-for spouse's mental acuity, behavior towards the carer, and amount of care required, impacting on carers' subjective experience. Women were more likely to report neglecting their own health because of being a carer ( p = 0.02). The marital relationship itself was highly significant, and many carers took special measures to maintain and develop their marital bonds. Carers adapted to their roles in various ways, with those finding acceptance of their situation and accessing support appearing to cope best with the demands of the role. Discussion This study, though based on a small and geographically restricted sample, offers insight into the positive, negative, and relational experiences of spousal carers. Support that encourages carers to engage in health-promoting activities, and ideally provides opportunities for both partners to be involved in such activities together, may be particularly beneficial.

scholarly journals The neural subjective frame: from bodily signals to perceptual consciousness

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1641) ◽  
pp. 20130208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyeong-Dong Park ◽  
Catherine Tallon-Baudry
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Internal State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Neural Representation ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Posterior Insula ◽  
External Stimuli ◽  
Neural Maps

The report ‘I saw the stimulus’ operationally defines visual consciousness, but where does the ‘I’ come from? To account for the subjective dimension of perceptual experience, we introduce the concept of the neural subjective frame. The neural subjective frame would be based on the constantly updated neural maps of the internal state of the body and constitute a neural referential from which first person experience can be created. We propose to root the neural subjective frame in the neural representation of visceral information which is transmitted through multiple anatomical pathways to a number of target sites, including posterior insula, ventral anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala and somatosensory cortex. We review existing experimental evidence showing that the processing of external stimuli can interact with visceral function. The neural subjective frame is a low-level building block of subjective experience which is not explicitly experienced by itself which is necessary but not sufficient for perceptual experience. It could also underlie other types of subjective experiences such as self-consciousness and emotional feelings. Because the neural subjective frame is tightly linked to homeostatic regulations involved in vigilance, it could also make a link between state and content consciousness.

Excavating Alternate Narratives in an Italian American Family: A Poetic Inquiry

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-122
Author(s):  
Michelle Reale
Keyword(s):  
Family History ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Family Member ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Ripple Effect ◽  
American Family ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Poetic Inquiry ◽  
Italian American ◽  
Insight Into

The subjective experience of each family member regarding his or her treatment by a mother or father is interesting to say the least. Each has their own story to tell, which has the power to, by turns, confirm and/or contradict one another’s experiences. This can create ripple effect among extended members of a family and influence the intergenerational impact. This article will attempt to explicate, using poetic inquiry, the subjective experiences that each member of a family has had with the father, a Sicilian immigrant, creating evidence of another side of a man for whom only once side of a story has ever been told. It is important to disrupt the prevailing (negative) narrative to show a dimensional and more fully lived experience of a man whose angry and abusive temperament is legend. Poetic Inquiry helps to explicate these narratives in ways that are both truthful and evocative, offering insight into how we evaluate ourselves against our family history and how it affects our relationships with one another and with our own families in the present.

scholarly journals Pain Detection and the Privacy of Subjective Experience

2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 433-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam J. Kolber
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Physical Pain ◽  
Medical Evidence ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Pain Symptoms ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Neuroimaging Techniques

A neurologist with abdominal pain goes to see a gastroenterologist for treatment. The gastroenterologist asks the neurologist where it hurts. The neurologist replies, “In my head, of course.” Indeed, while we can feel pain throughout much of our bodies, pain signals undergo most of their processing in the brain. Using neuroimaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (“fMRI”) and positron emission tomography (“PET”), researchers have more precisely identified brain regions that enable us to experience physical pain. Certain regions of the brain's cortex, for example, increase in activation when subjects are exposed to painful stimuli. Furthermore, the amount of activation increases with the intensity of the painful stimulus. These findings suggest that we may be able to gain insight into the amount of pain a particular person is experiencing by non-invasively imaging his brain.Such insight could be particularly valuable in the courtroom where we often have no definitive medical evidence to prove or disprove claims about the existence and extent of pain symptoms.

The bird dancer and the warrior king: Divergent lived experiences of Tourette syndrome in Bali

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 540-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Lemelson ◽  
Annie Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Tourette Syndrome ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Treatment Modalities ◽  
Visual Anthropology ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Term Outcome ◽  
Long Term Outcome

In the past two decades, ethnographic, epidemiological and interdisciplinary research has robustly established that culture is significant in determining the long-term outcomes of people with neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric and mood disorders. Yet these cultural factors are certainly not uniform across discrete individual experiences. Thus, in addition to illustrating meaningful differences for people with neuropsychiatric disorder between different cultures, ethnography should also help detail the variations within a culture. Different subjective experiences or outcomes are not solely due to biographical idiosyncrasies—rather, influential factors arising from the same culture can have different impacts on different people. When taking a holistic and intersectional perspective on lived experience, it is crucial to understand the interaction of these factors for people with neuropsychiatric disorders. This paper teases apart such interactions, utilizing comparative case studies of the disparate subjective experiences and illness trajectories of two Balinese people with Tourette syndrome who exhibit similar symptoms. Based on longitudinal person-centered ethnography integrating clinical, psychological, and visual anthropology, this intersectional approach goes beyond symptom interpretation and treatment modalities to identify gendered embodiment and marital practices as influenced by caste to be significant determinants in subjective experience and long-term outcome.

scholarly journals THE NEED FOR INFORMATION AND THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES AS FACTORS OF CRITICAL AND UNCRITICAL DISSEMINATION OF PANDEMIC NEWS

2021 ◽  
pp. 170-195
Author(s):  
Elena I. Rasskazova ◽  
Galina V. Soldatova ◽  
Yulia Y. Neyaskina ◽  
Olga S. Shiriaeva
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Sociodemographic Factors ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Digital World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

Relevance. The modern society creates the image of a successful person as actively interacting with different information flows, including an impressive stream of news content. This paper assumes that there is a personal need for tracking and spreading news that develops in the interaction between person and digital world. The individual level of this need could explain the interaction with information (its critical and uncritical dissemination) and the subjective experience of its redundancy and inaccuracy, including those experiences and actions in a pandemic situation. The aim of the study was to reveal the relationship of the subjective need for news with personal values, beliefs about technologies (“technophilia”) and the dissemination of news about the pandemic. Method. 270 people (aged 18 to 61) filled out The short (Schwartz) Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ), Beliefs about New Technologies Questionnaire, Monitoring of Information about Coronavirus Scale as well as items on the subjective need for receiving and disseminating news, readiness for critical and non-critical dissemination of news about pandemics, subjective experiences of redundancy and distrust of pandemic-related information. Results. According to the results, the Need for News Scale allows assessing the subjective importance of receiving news and discussing them with other people and is characterized by sufficient consistency and factor validity. The need for regular news is more pronounced among men, older people, people with higher education, married people, people who have children, while the need to discuss news is not related to sociodemographic factors. For people, who are more prone to technophilia, it is more important to regularly receive and discuss news information with others, which, in turn, mediates the relationship between technophilia and monitoring news about coronavirus. The need for news dissemination mediates the relationship between technophilia and readiness for critical and non-critical dissemination of information about the pandemic.

scholarly journals ADHD and Gender: subjective experiences of children in Chile

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-91
Author(s):  
Pía Uribe ◽  
Gabriel Abarca-Brown ◽  
Esteban Radiszcz ◽  
Eleonora López-Contreras
Keyword(s):  
Social Functioning ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Diagnostic Category ◽  
Diagnosis And Treatment ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Adhd Diagnosis ◽  
Gender Differentials ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
And Gender

Abstract Although research on ADHD has tended to ignore gender differentials, recent contributions produced mainly from epidemiology have revealed that this diagnostic category seems to be strongly related to gender. However, these contributions seem to limit their scope to the study of the symptoms as well as cognitive, affective and social functioning of children, leaving aside subjective aspects associated with the ADHD practices of diagnosis and treatment. Thus, this article aims to explore how the gender dimension crosses the subjective experience of children diagnosed with ADHD. Based on open interviews conducted with children between the ages of 7 and 13, we show general trends that articulate gender and characteristics associated with the ADHD diagnosis, while at the same time, with children’s experiences that dislocate such trends. The findings were grouped according to four emerging axes: (1) locations, (2) abilities, (3) approches, (4) interactions. Thus, we will show how the experience of boys and girls is multiple in relation to the diagnosis and it is not possible to be reduced to a gender binary perspective.

scholarly journals What music makes us feel: At least 13 dimensions organize subjective experiences associated with music across different cultures

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 1924-1934 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan S. Cowen ◽  
Xia Fang ◽  
Disa Sauter ◽  
Dacher Keltner
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Discrete Emotion ◽  
Chinese Music ◽  
Interactive Map ◽  
Valence And Arousal

What is the nature of the feelings evoked by music? We investigated how people represent the subjective experiences associated with Western and Chinese music and the form in which these representational processes are preserved across different cultural groups. US (n = 1,591) and Chinese (n = 1,258) participants listened to 2,168 music samples and reported on the specific feelings (e.g., “angry,” “dreamy”) or broad affective features (e.g., valence, arousal) that they made individuals feel. Using large-scale statistical tools, we uncovered 13 distinct types of subjective experience associated with music in both cultures. Specific feelings such as “triumphant” were better preserved across the 2 cultures than levels of valence and arousal, contrasting with theoretical claims that valence and arousal are building blocks of subjective experience. This held true even for music selected on the basis of its valence and arousal levels and for traditional Chinese music. Furthermore, the feelings associated with music were found to occupy continuous gradients, contradicting discrete emotion theories. Our findings, visualized within an interactive map (https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/∼acowen/music.html) reveal a complex, high-dimensional space of subjective experience associated with music in multiple cultures. These findings can inform inquiries ranging from the etiology of affective disorders to the neurological basis of emotion.

scholarly journals A Comparison of Older Adults’ Subjective Experiences With Virtual and Real Environments During Dynamic Balance Activities

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Proffitt ◽  
Belinda Lange ◽  
Christina Chen ◽  
Carolee Winstein
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Dynamic Balance ◽  
Balance Training ◽  
Semistructured Interview ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
External Focus ◽  
Similar Motor ◽  
Game Engagement

The purpose of this study was to explore the subjective experience of older adults interacting with both virtual and real environments. Thirty healthy older adults engaged with real and virtual tasks of similar motor demands: reaching to a target in standing and stepping stance. Immersive tendencies and absorption scales were administered before the session. Game engagement and experience questionnaires were completed after each task, followed by a semistructured interview at the end of the testing session. Data were analyzed respectively using paired t tests and grounded theory methodology. Participants preferred the virtual task over the real task. They also reported an increase in presence and absorption with the virtual task, describing an external focus of attention. Findings will be used to inform future development of appropriate game-based balance training applications that could be embedded in the home or community settings as part of evidence-based fall prevention programs.

scholarly journals Pulse trains to percepts: the challenge of creating a perceptually intelligible world with sight recovery technologies

2015 ◽  
Vol 370 (1677) ◽  
pp. 20140208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ione Fine ◽  
Geoffrey M. Boynton
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Small Molecule ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Cortical Plasticity ◽  
Pulse Trains ◽  
Intelligible World ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Stimulation Of

An extraordinary variety of sight recovery therapies are either about to begin clinical trials, have begun clinical trials, or are currently being implanted in patients. However, as yet we have little insight into the perceptual experience likely to be produced by these implants. This review focuses on methodologies, such as optogenetics, small molecule photoswitches and electrical prostheses, which use artificial stimulation of the retina to elicit percepts. For each of these technologies, the interplay between the stimulating technology and the underlying neurophysiology is likely to result in distortions of the perceptual experience. Here, we describe some of these potential distortions and discuss how they might be minimized either through changes in the encoding model or through cortical plasticity.

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