LiCl-induced sickness modulates spontaneous activity and response dynamics in rat gustatory cortex.

Gustatory Cortex (GC), a structure deeply involved in the making of consumption decisions, presumably performs this function by integrating information about taste, experiences, and internal states related to the animal’s health, such as illness. Here, we investigated this assertion, examining whether illness is represented in GC activity, and how this representation impacts taste responses and behavior. We recorded GC single-neuron activity and local field potentials (LFP) from healthy rats and (the same) rats made ill ( via LiCl injection). We show (consistent with the extant literature) that the onset of illness-related behaviors arises contemporaneously with alterations in spontaneous 7-12Hz LFP power at ~11 min following injection. This process was accompanied by reductions in single-neuron taste response magnitudes and discriminability, and with enhancements in palatability-relatedness – a result reflecting the collapse of responses toward a simple “good-bad” code arising in a specific subset of GC neurons. Overall, our data show that a state (illness) that profoundly reduces consumption changes basic properties of the sensory cortical response to tastes, in a manner that can easily explain illness’ impact on consumption.

Metaphor and the politics and poetics of youth distress in an evidence-based psychotherapy

This article explores the relationship between metaphors and emotion in the context of adolescent distress and psychotherapeutic treatment. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of Mexican American adolescents receiving outpatient treatment for a variety of emotional and behavioral problems, the article examines what I call “prescribed” metaphors deployed in mainstream, manualized child and adolescent Cognitive Behavioral Therapies commonly used in mainstream clinical contexts. I explore the models of emotion communicated to youth by one such metaphor, youth responses to this metaphor, and the potential implications for young people as they take up the underlying models and affective practices embedded in the metaphor. Specifically, I examine how youth respond to messages about emotion metacognition and emotion regulation embedded in a metaphor that equates feelings with temperatures that can be monitored and objectively measured. I find that youth are at once convinced that abstract knowledge about internal states is inherently valuable because it is linked to desired forms of personhood, but also concerned about the limits of technical metaphors to capture aspects of lived experience and the flattening and homogenization of affect that might accompany the practices such metaphors help to enact. I analyze alternative interpretations of prescribed metaphors as well as the spontaneous metaphors used by youth to talk about their emotions and experiences of distress, in an effort to think through the politics and poetics of emotion metaphors in the context of an evidence-based psychotherapy for young people.

A Review on the Cultural Characteristics of Mentalization and Relations with Psychological Symptoms

Mentalization is the ability to surmise the mental states such as thoughts, wishes, intentions, needs and feelings behind one’s own and others’ behaviors. Mentalization has been an important concept in understanding personality development and psychopathology in recent years. However, the cultural factors that affect mentalization is an understudied area, which has also not been investigated in Turkey. In this review, the development of the concept of mentalization will be explored comparing individualistic and collectivistic cultures. The specific mentalization characteristics that may emerge in Turkey are discussed. With this aim, the concept of mentalization, its development and the kinds of mentalization impairments that emerge in psychopathology are discussed. Afterwards, the effects of culture on mentalization are discussed with reference to recent empirical literature. Specifically, the effects of cultural context on the development of theory mind, affective and cognitive mentalization, self and other-focused mentalization, explicit and implicit mentalization are explored. The reviewed studies suggest that in collectivistic cultures, individuals tend to others’ mental states and socially accepted objective norms more than their own internal states and refrain from strong emotions such as anger that may disrupt the social harmony. Moreover implicit mentalization is less affected by culture. Based on the reviewed studies, culturally sensitive suggestions are provided regarding how to conduct mentalization assessments and practices. Keywords: Mentalization, culture, individualism, collectivism, psychotherapy

When self comes to a wandering mind: Brain representations and dynamics of self-generated concepts in spontaneous thought

Self-relevant concepts are major building blocks of spontaneous thought, and their dynamics in a natural stream of thought are likely to reveal one's internal states important for mental health. Here we conducted an fMRI experiment (n = 62) to examine brain representations and dynamics of self-generated concepts in the context of spontaneous thought using a newly developed free association-based thought sampling task. The dynamics of conceptual associations were predictive of individual differences in general negative affectivity, replicating across multiple datasets (n = 196). Reflecting on self-generated concepts strongly engaged brain regions linked to autobiographical memory, conceptual processes, emotion, and autonomic regulation, including the medial prefrontal and medial temporal subcortical structures. Multivariate pattern-based predictive modeling revealed that the neural representations of valence became more person-specific as the level of perceived self-relevance increased. Overall, this study provides a hint of how self-generated concepts in spontaneous thought construct inner affective states and idiosyncrasies.

Approximate decoherence free subspaces for distributed sensing

We consider the sensing of scalar valued fields with specific spatial dependence using a network of sensors, e.g. multiple atoms located at different positions within a trap. We show how to harness the spatial correlations to sense only a specific signal, and be insensitive to others at different positions or with unequal spatial dependence by constructing a decoherence-free subspace for noise sources at fixed, known positions. This can be extended to noise sources lying on certain surfaces, where we encounter a connection to mirror charges and equipotential surfaces in classical electrostatics. For general situations, we introduce the notion of an approximate decoherence-free subspace, where noise for all sources within some volume is significantly suppressed, at the cost of reducing the signal strength in a controlled way. We show that one can use this approach to maintain Heisenberg-scaling over long times and for a large number of sensors, despite the presence of multiple noise sources in large volumes. We introduce an efficient formalism to construct internal states and sensor configurations, and apply it to several examples to demonstrate the usefulness and wide applicability of our approach.

Internal state effects on behavioral shifts in freely behaving praying mantises (Tenodera sinensis)

How we interact with our environment largely depends on both the external cues presented by our surroundings and the internal state from within. Internal states are the ever-changing physiological conditions that communicate the immediate survival needs and motivate the animal to behaviorally fulfill them. Satiety level constitutes such a state, and therefore has a dynamic influence on the output behaviors of an animal. In predatory insects like the praying mantis, hunting tactics, grooming, and mating have been shown to change hierarchical organization of behaviors depending on satiety. Here, we analyze behavior sequences of freely hunting praying mantises (Tenodera sinensis) to explore potential differences in sequential patterning of behavior as a correlate of satiety. First, our data supports previous work that showed starved praying mantises were not just more often attentive to prey, but also more often attentive to further prey. This was indicated by the increased time fraction spent in attentive bouts such as prey monitoring, head turns (to track prey), translations (closing the distance to the prey), and more strike attempts. With increasing satiety, praying mantises showed reduced time in these behaviors and exhibited them primarily towards close-proximity prey. Furthermore, our data demonstrates that during states of starvation, the praying mantis exhibits a stereotyped pattern of behavior that is highly motivated by prey capture. As satiety increased, the sequenced behaviors became more variable, indicating a shift away from the necessity of prey capture to more fluid presentations of behavior assembly.

COVID-19 Limitations on Doodling as a Measure of Burnout

Pre-COVID-19, doodling was identified as a measure of burnout in researchers attending a weekly, in-person health narratives research group manifesting team mindfulness. Under the group’s supportive conditions, variations in doodling served to measure change in participants reported depression and anxiety—internal states directly associated with burnout, adversely affecting healthcare researchers, their employment, and their research. COVID-19 demanded social distancing during the group’s 2020/21 academic meetings. Conducted online, the group’s participants who chose to doodle did so alone during the pandemic. Whether the sequestering of group participants during COVID-19 altered the ability of doodling to act as a measure of depression and anxiety was investigated. Participants considered that doodling during the group’s online meetings increased their enjoyment and attention level—some expressed that it helped them to relax. However, unlike face-to-face meetings during previous non-COVID-19 years, solitary doodling during online meetings was unable to reflect researchers’ depression or anxiety. The COVID-19 limitations that necessitated doodling alone maintained the benefits group members saw in doodling but hampered the ability of doodling to act as a measure of burnout, in contrast to previous in-person doodling. This result is seen to correspond to one aspect of the group’s change in team mindfulness resulting from COVID-19 constraints.

Active neural coordination of motor behaviors with internal states

The brain continuously coordinates skeletomuscular movements with internal physiological states like arousal, but how is this coordination achieved? One possibility is that brain simply reacts to changes in external and/or internal signals. Another possibility is that it is actively coordinating both external and internal activities. We used functional ultrasound imaging to capture a large medial section of the brain, including multiple cortical and subcortical areas, in marmoset monkeys while monitoring their spontaneous movements and cardiac activity. By analyzing the causal ordering of these different time-series, we found that information flowing from the brain to movements and heart rate fluctuations were significantly greater than in the opposite direction. The brain areas involved in this external versus internal coordination were spatially distinct but also extensively interconnected. Temporally, the brain alternated between network states for this regulation. These findings suggest that the brain’s dynamics actively and efficiently coordinate motor behavior with internal physiology.

THE INTERACTIONAL ORGANISATION OF PAIN DISPLAYS IN MEDICAL CONSULTATIONS

<p>Pain is commonly understood as a private experience situated within the individual. However, pain also takes place in the social world, emerging as an interactional event between individuals. The current thesis examined pain displays in interaction and showed how they are sensitive to, and shaped by, the immediate social environment. Discursive psychology and conversation analysis were used as theoretical and methodological frameworks to investigate pain displays as social actions. The empirical data of the study were video recordings of medical consultations between general practitioners and patients. Pain displays within physical examinations were analysed as complex multimodal Gestalts following Mondada (2014b); these are locally constituted from a web of embodied and vocal resources. The first analytic chapter focused on pain displays and the organisation of turns. Participants oriented to pain displays as structural units with an onset, peak, and projectable completion place that organised when and how they built their turns-at-talk. Pain displays were also visible in the progressivity of turns-at-talk, emerging at transition relevant places, suspended and re-initiated with respect to speaker turns. The second analytic chapter showed that pain displays were sequentially organised. Pain displays were oriented to as responsive actions that progressed pain solicitations. However, they did not lead to activity closure, raising questions about the status of pain displays as conditionally relevant next actions. The thesis demonstrated the orderly ways pain displays were coordinated with, and contributed to, the diagnostic work of the ongoing medical interaction. Pain displays were found to be inextricably tied to the interactional environment, a finding supported by other research which has shown internal states like pain and emotion are produced as socially-organised practices. Finally, the thesis contributes to debates within multimodal research, providing support for the utility of talk-focused conversation analytic concepts to describe embodied action. The findings also have practical applications for people seeking medical help for pain.</p>

THE INTERACTIONAL ORGANISATION OF PAIN DISPLAYS IN MEDICAL CONSULTATIONS

<p>Pain is commonly understood as a private experience situated within the individual. However, pain also takes place in the social world, emerging as an interactional event between individuals. The current thesis examined pain displays in interaction and showed how they are sensitive to, and shaped by, the immediate social environment. Discursive psychology and conversation analysis were used as theoretical and methodological frameworks to investigate pain displays as social actions. The empirical data of the study were video recordings of medical consultations between general practitioners and patients. Pain displays within physical examinations were analysed as complex multimodal Gestalts following Mondada (2014b); these are locally constituted from a web of embodied and vocal resources. The first analytic chapter focused on pain displays and the organisation of turns. Participants oriented to pain displays as structural units with an onset, peak, and projectable completion place that organised when and how they built their turns-at-talk. Pain displays were also visible in the progressivity of turns-at-talk, emerging at transition relevant places, suspended and re-initiated with respect to speaker turns. The second analytic chapter showed that pain displays were sequentially organised. Pain displays were oriented to as responsive actions that progressed pain solicitations. However, they did not lead to activity closure, raising questions about the status of pain displays as conditionally relevant next actions. The thesis demonstrated the orderly ways pain displays were coordinated with, and contributed to, the diagnostic work of the ongoing medical interaction. Pain displays were found to be inextricably tied to the interactional environment, a finding supported by other research which has shown internal states like pain and emotion are produced as socially-organised practices. Finally, the thesis contributes to debates within multimodal research, providing support for the utility of talk-focused conversation analytic concepts to describe embodied action. The findings also have practical applications for people seeking medical help for pain.</p>