SUBTLE AND DANGEROUS: THE CROSSBOW TRIGGER METAPHOR IN EARLY CHINA

The crossbow trigger was a powerful device in early Chinese warfare that had a profound impact on military tactics. Against such a background, the word for “trigger,” namely ji, became a pregnant metaphor in ancient texts from the Warring States onwards. It refers to the correlation between a “subtle” initial state and a “dangerous” and far-reaching consequence, because the small movement of pulling the trigger may kill a person at a great distance. Borrowing insights from Hans Blumenberg's metaphorology, I offer a new theory of the original meaning of ji and argue that the trigger mechanism inspires a complex metaphorical scheme that consists of three levels of ambiguities and a web of associated images. It provides a linguistic and cognitive pattern for organizing a wide range of heterogeneous life-world situations, from the moral precariousness of human speech to the vulnerability of an outnumbered army in battle.

Heterogeneity and Factorial Structure in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Cognitive Perspective

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients show heterogeneous cognitive profiles which suggest the existence of cognitive subgroups. A deeper comprehension of this heterogeneity could contribute to move toward a precision medicine perspective. Objective: In this study, we aimed 1) to investigate AD cognitive heterogeneity as a product of the combination of within- (factors) and between-patients (sub-phenotypes) components, and 2) to promote its assessment in clinical practice by defining a small set of critical tests for this purpose. Methods: We performed factor mixture analysis (FMA) on neurocognitive assessment results of N = 230 patients with a clinical diagnosis of AD. This technique allowed to investigate the structure of cognitive heterogeneity in this sample and to characterize the core features of cognitive sub-phenotypes. Subsequently, we performed a tests selection based on logistic regression to highlight the best tests to detect AD patients in our sample. Finally, the accuracy of the same tests in the discrimination of sub-phenotypes was evaluated. Results: FMA revealed a structure characterized by five latent factors and four groups, which were identifiable by means of a few cognitive tests and were mainly characterized by memory deficits with visuospatial difficulties (“Visuospatial AD”), typical AD cognitive pattern (“Typical AD”), less impaired memory (“Mild AD”), and language/praxis deficits with relatively spared memory (“Nonamnestic AD”). Conclusion: The structure of cognitive heterogeneity in our sample of AD patients, as studied by FMA, could be summarized by four sub-phenotypes with distinct cognitive characteristics easily identifiable in clinical practice. Clinical implications under the precision medicine framework are discussed.

The IntelliCage System: A Review of Its Utility as a Novel Behavioral Platform for a Rodent Model of Substance Use Disorder

The use of animal models for substance use disorder (SUD) has made an important contribution in the investigation of the behavioral and molecular mechanisms underlying substance abuse and addiction. Here, we review a novel and comprehensive behavioral platform to characterize addiction-like traits in rodents using a fully automated learning system, the IntelliCage. This system simultaneously captures the basic behavioral navigation, reward preference, and aversion, as well as the multi-dimensional complex behaviors and cognitive functions of group-housed rodents. It can reliably capture and track locomotor and cognitive pattern alterations associated with the development of substance addiction. Thus, the IntelliCage learning system offers a potentially efficient, flexible, and sensitive tool for the high-throughput screening of the rodent SUD model.

ASSOCIATION BETWEEN MUSIC, SOCIO-CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT AND COGNITIVE PATTERN AMONG SCHOOL GOING CHILDREN

The current study aimed to determine the association between music (interest/no interest) and socio-cultural environment (urban/rural location) and field-dependent/independent cognitive style. A total of 200 junior secondary school children drawn from rural and urban communities in Enugu State participated in the study. The Latent test developed by Withkin et al. (1976) and a self-develop scale measuring music interest were used for data collection. An independent t-test was conducted on the data, and the result showed no significant difference between music and field-dependent/independent cognitive style. However, a statistically significant difference was found between the socio-cultural environment and field-dependent/independent cognitive style. Discussion and conclusion are discussed.

The Role of Cognitive Patterns in Modelling Reality by Means of Natural Language (The Case Study of the English Cognitive Pattern “Cleanness / Dirtiness”)

In the field of cognitive linguistics it is accepted that, before developing its capacity for abstract and theoretical thought, the human mind went through the stage of reflecting reality through concrete images and thus has inherited old cognitive patterns. Even abstract notions of the modern civilization are based on traditional concrete images, and it is all fixed in natural language units. By way of illustration, the author analyzes the cognitive pattern “сleanness / dirtiness” as a constituent part of the English linguoculture, looking at the whole range of its verbal realization and demonstrating its influence on language-based thinking and modeling of reality. Comparing meanings of language units with their inner forms enabled the author to establish the connection between abstract notions and concrete images within cognitive patterns. Using the method of internal comparison and applying the results of etymological reconstruction of language units’ inner form made it possible to see how the world is viewed by representatives of the English linguoculture. Apparently, in the English linguoculture images of cleanness / dirtiness symbolize mainly two thematic areas: that of morality and that of renewal. Since every ethnic group has its own axiological dominants (key values) that determine the expressiveness of verbal invectives, one can draw the conclusion that people perceive and comprehend world fragments through the prism of mental stereo-types fixed in the inner form of language units. Sometimes, in relation to specific language units, a conflict arises between the inner form which retains traditional thinking and a meaning that reflects modern reality. Still, linguoculture is a constantly evolving entity, and its de-velopment entails breaking established stereotypes and creating new ones. Linguistically, the victory of the new over the old is manifested in the “dying out” of the verbal support for pre-vious cognitive patterns, which leads to “reprogramming” (“recoding”) of linguoculture rep-resentatives’ mentality.

The Feminine Paradigm of Culture in Alice Voinescu’s Conception

"The Feminine Paradigm of Culture in Alice Voinescu’s Conception. Alice Voinescu, the first Romanian woman to obtain a PhD in Philosophy, proposed a female cultural paradigm in the conferences she held between 1933-1943, in the context of the women’s emancipation movement of the interwar period. In her view, the male model of knowledge, based on abstract thinking, must be permanently conjoined with the female one, based on intuition and affect, in a totalizing, modern perspective. The salvation of the “eternal human” through the “eternal feminine”, characterized by respect for tradition and continuity both in culture and in society, represents an alternative for materialistic civilization, which is the outcome of the male cognitive pattern. Keywords: Alice Voinescu, femininity, feminism, spirituality, masculine, culture, generation, new man "

Applications of Science of Learning Principles to support Teaching and Learning of Cognitive Pattern Recognition

This paper addresses the applications of the science of learning principles to support the teaching and learning of cognitive pattern recognition. The paper first provides a brief introduction to the science of learning and cognitive pattern recognition. Six science of learning principles have been identified to be relevant to the teaching and learning of cognitive pattern recognition and are discussed individually. The paper also offers suggestions on how to integrate the various science of learning principles for teachers to teach cognitive pattern recognition in the classroom. A teaching process model for cognitive pattern recognition is proposed and developed, which incorporates the various science of learning principles to optimize learning and minimize redundancies. Finally, this paper highlights the implications and provides several recommendations for educators to consider when they decided to incorporate the science of learning principles into their curriculum to teach cognitive pattern recognition.

THE COGNITIVE PATTERN ‘MENTAL PHENOMENA’ IN THE ENGLISH LINGUOCULTURE

The article contains the results of research on historical continuity and parallelism between concrete eidetic verbal thinking and abstract conceptual verbal thinking. We demonstrate how sensory images acquire a symbolic function, expressing abstract ideas, and how events of the inner (mental) world are modeled by using images of events of the outer (material) world. In the course of historical evolution, on its way to becoming abstract, human thinking inherited patterns developed at previous stages; new ideas concerning the world are based on old ones, used as a foundation. The cognitive basis of abstract thinking consists of sensory images. By way of illustration, we study the cognitive pattern ‘Mental Phenomena’ belonging to the English linguoculture, in which images of events occurring in the objective (material) world serve as models of events occurring in the subjective (mental) world. The results of this process are embodied in the meanings, the inner form, and the combinability of units of the English language. The examples given in the article show that the sensory substrate has deeply and organically grown into abstract thinking and latently influences it. Even scientific abstract thinking is not free from sensory visualization; the latter acts as its cognitive substrate. This visualization, which makes it possible to model objects by analogy, plays a useful role in scientific thinking. In many units of the English language having an abstract meaning and included into the semantic field ‘Mental Phenomena’, a concrete meaning may be found at some point of their semantic evolution. This is a manifestation of historical continuity and structural parallelism between concrete and abstract thinking.