Phenomenology of Visuo-spatial Working Memory Task Performance

In experimental cognitive psychology, objects of inquiry have typically been operationalized with psychological tasks. If we are interested in measuring the target phenomena, we must inquire into the validity of the task; that is, to what extent does the task elicit the phenomenon in question. If we subscribe to the second view, evaluating the validity and the interpretation of the gathered data can be supplemented by understanding the experience of solving psychological tasks. The aim of the present article is to investigate how individuals experience performing a psychological task, specifically, a visuo-spatial working memory task. We present ethnographic descriptions of different ways individuals can experience the same task. We focus on aspects of experience that comprise the overall sense of experience (e.g., bodily feelings, emotional atmosphere, mood). We discuss the methodological implications of our findings and the possibility of conducting a neurophenomenology of visuo-spatial working memory.

Bodies moving with sound: Effects of pitch and musical sounds on body-representations

The effects of music on bodily movement and feelings, such as when people are dancing or engaged in physical activity, are well-documented - people may move in response to the sound cues, feel powerful, less tired. How sounds and bodily movements relate to create such effects? Here we deconstruct the problem and investigate how different auditory features affect people’s body-representation and feelings even when paired with the same movement. In three experiments, participants executed a simple arm raise synchronised with changing pitch in simple tones (Experiment 1), rich musical sounds (Experiment 2) and different absolute frequency ranges (Experiment 3), while we recorded indirect and direct measures on their movement, body-representations and feelings. Changes in pitch influenced people’s general emotional state as well as the various bodily dimensions investigated – movement, proprioceptive awareness and feelings about one’s body and movement. Adding harmonic content amplified the differences between ascending and descending sounds, while shifting the absolute frequency range had a general effect on movement amplitude, bodily feelings and emotional state. These results provide new insights in the role of auditory and musical features in dance and exercise, and have implications for the design of sound-based applications supporting movement expression, physical activity, or rehabilitation.

Em direção à compreensão das emoções na pandemia: a solidão e seu significado epistêmico

Emotions elicited by the threat of the coronavirus and social distancing measures are usually characterized in a negative way in the literature about the pandemic. This paper argues that this is not true for all emotions. Based on philosophical and empirical studies of loneliness, I contend that transient feelings of loneliness felt during the pandemic contribute to epistemically recognize what is significant or important to us in terms of social connection and fulfillment. Part of my argument depends on conceiving loneliness not only as an episodic “inner” emotion but rather as a pervasive emotion that involves psychic and bodily feelings, especially those related to how we apprehend the spatiality of the world. Finally, I also claim that the structure and content of loneliness help to explain why the pandemic should be seen as an epistemic transformative experience.

Bodily Feelings and Aesthetic Experience of Art

Humans all around the world are drawn to creating and consuming art due to its capability to evoke emotions, but the mechanisms underlying art-evoked emotions remain poorly characterized. Here we show how embodiement contributes to emotions evoked by a large database of visual art pieces. In four experiments, we mapped the subjective feeling space of art-evoked emotions (n = 244), quantified “bodily fingerprints” of these emotions (n = 615), and recorded the subjects’ interest annotations (n = 306) and eye movements (n = 21) while viewing the art. We show that art evokes a wide spectrum of emotional feelings, and that the bodily fingerprints triggered by art are central to these feelings, especially in artworks where human figures are the subjectively most salient Altogether these results support the model that bodily sensations are central to the aesthetic emotional experience.

Relationships between alexisomia and the presence of latent trigger points in the upper trapezius of healthy volunteers

BACKGROUND: Alexisomia is characterized by difficulties in the awareness and expression of somatic feelings. Trigger points are classified into two types, active and latent, according to the presence or absence of identifying spontaneous pain. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to examine the association between alexisomia and the presence of latent trigger points (LTrPs) in the upper trapezius of healthy volunteers. METHODS: This study was designed as a cross-sectional survey. A correlation analysis between the Shitsu-Taikan-Sho Scale (STSS) and LTrPs was performed on 154 healthy volunteers. The LTrP odds ratio for healthy volunteers with alexisomia was selected as the primary endpoint. RESULTS: LTrPs were seen in the upper trapezius of 82 healthy volunteers (53.2%). There was no significant difference between the LTrP and non-LTrP groups in STSS total score (p= 0.11). However, there was a significant difference between them in STSS difficulty of identifying bodily feelings (DIB) score (p= 0.03). In the alexisomic versus non-alexisomic groups, the LTrP odds ratio for STSS total score was 2.30 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.03–5.10) and for STSS DIB score, 2.08 (95% CI 1.05–4.11). CONCLUSIONS: In STSS DIB in particular, alexisomia was associated with the presence of LTrP in the upper trapezius of healthy volunteers.

A New Way to Assess Chronic Pain: Application of Machine Learning on Emotional Body Maps

Recent studies proposed that understanding the connection between emotional states, pain and bodily sensations might help in the understanding of chronic pain conditions. In the targeted article, the authors developed a mobile platform dedicated to chronic back pain patients in order to measure pain, emotions and associated bodily feelings in their daily life conditions. Applying machine learning, they developed two predictive models of future pain.

Shitsu-taikan-sho (alexisomia): a historical review and its clinical importance

“Shitsu-taikan-sho” is a clinical concept that refers to characteristics of having difficulty in the awareness and expression of somatic feelings or sensations. This concept was first proposed in 1979 by Dr. Yujiro Ikemi, the founder of psychosomatic medicine in Japan, as a characteristic observed in patients with psychosomatic diseases, i.e. physical diseases in which psychosocial factors are closely involved in their onset and progress. Soon after Dr. Ikemi introduced to Japan the concept of alexithymia, coined by P. E. Sifneos in 1973, he noticed that patients with psychosomatic diseases have difficulty in describing not only their emotions, but also somatic feelings and sensations. Dr. Ikemi proposed naming the concept of the trait of lacking somatic awareness “shitsu-taikan-sho” in Japanese (“alexisomia” in English), meaning “shitsu” a lack, “taikan” bodily feelings/sensations, and “sho” condition/symptoms. Dr. Ikemi observed characteristics of both alexithymia and alexisomia in patients with psychosomatic diseases, but considered alexisomia to have a more fundamental pathophysiological role in the understanding of psychosomatic diseases. He also emphasized the importance of treating alexisomia when treating psychosomatic diseases. Recently, alexisomia has again come into focus for various reasons. One is the availability of the Shitsu-taikan-sho Scale (STSS), a self-rating questionnaire to evaluate alexisomic tendency. Another is recent advances in basic research on interoception. The former will facilitate clinical studies on alexisomia, and the latter will enable a deeper understanding of alexisomia. This article is an overview of the historical development of the concept of alexisomia which was conceptualized by Dr. Ikemi, introduces the STSS, and discusses the current understanding and clinical importance of alexisomia in psychosomatic medicine.

Feminist affect and children's embodied trauma

Feminist new materialisms account for the agency of the body and the ways it is entangled with, in and through its environment. Similarly, affect scholars have putwords to the bodily feelings and attunements that we can’t describe. In this paper, we provide a brief survey of feminist thought that established the scholarly landscape and appetite for the turn to affect and offer this as a theoretical tool for thinking through the child body. Feminist affect is used here as a resource for understanding embodied change in children who are living with intergenerational trauma. Through analysing data from the Interfaith Childhoods project, we explore art as a way to affectively rework trauma in three case studies with refugee children from our Australian fieldwork sites. Our new materialist arts based approaches map embodied changes in children that speak to how bodies inherit and are affected by things that often can’tbe described. Specifically, in relation to their religious, cultural and refugee histories (Van der Kolk 2014, Menakem 2017), we offer the analysis in this paper as a routetowards understanding children’s bodily experience and expression, in ways that havebeen made possible by affective lines of inquiry pioneered by feminist scholarship.