Postmodern/Post-mortem Human Body-Parts: Grotesque Subjects in The Melancholy of Anatomy

This paper critiques the literary representation of the human body as a “clean” slate, an organically wholesome subject by delving into the postmodern body-writing of Shelley Jackson’s short story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy (2002). Building upon the idea of “metabody” or grotesque body-part as subjects, the flesh-characters, namely Egg, Sperm, Foetus, Cancer, Nerve, Phlegm, Blood, Milk and Fat, breaks apart from their marginality, and evolves in a rhizomatic structure, pressing their possibilities of manifold existence in a fantastical world. Through the lens of body studies critics (Mikhail Bakhtin and Elisabeth Grosz) and recent postmodern scholarship, the paper studies the performance of flesh-characters, creating a post-mortem pathology in literature. Jackson’s deviant approach re-maps the anatomy of the human body and engages in psychophysiological parodies, thereby disclosing social phobias pertaining to the repulsive sides of the human and feminine body. Metabodies are self-reflexive, postmodern grotesque, with micro-narratives; and their innovative representations give agency and consciousness to the usually discarded body-parts and fluids, thereby making the human body a non-normative and discursive text and context.

GENETICS OF PHOBIC DISORDERS

At present time, on the basis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), several authors found linkage of phobic disorders with certain regions of chromosomes – 3q26 (agoraphobia), 14q13 (specific phobias), 16q21 (social phobias), 16q22 (social phobias) and 4q31-q34 (phobic disorders). We propose 19 genes that are localized in these regions and are expressed in the brain: PRKCI, CLDN11, EIF5A2, TNIK, CLCN3, CPE, GLRB, GRIA2, NEK1, NPY2R, NPY5R, RAPGEF2, TRIM2, SMAD1, ADGRG1, BEAN1, CDH8, DOK4 and KATNB1. Therefore, these genes may be investigated as candidate genes of phobic disorders. Various sources propose 26 potential candidate genes of phobic disorders. Finnish geneticist J. Donner carries out a meta-analysis to study the 8 most probable among them and corroborates statistical validity only for 4 genes: ALAD, CDH2, EPB41L4A and GAD1. First three genes are involved in the social phobias, and fourth is involved in whole phobic disorders. Phobias are heterogeneous and multifactorial diseases. To understand the biological mechanisms of such disorders, to create effective methods for their prevention and treatment, there are needed further intensive molecular genetic studies of these disorders on sufficiently large samples and corroborating these results by other authors.

Influence of Realistic Virtual Environments and Humanlike Avatars on Patients With Social Phobia

The practice of treating phobias with Virtual Reality-based therapies is a well-established field. Understanding the level of realism required by the therapy to be most effective is an essential matter of study. This research aims to explore the effects of visual realism on the emotional response in subjects with social phobia when exposed to VR-based applications. Social phobias are triggered by the presence of other people, which translated into virtual environments, refers to avatars. Our hypothesis is that patients with social phobia experience different emotional response to humanlike avatars compared to people without social phobia. To try the hypothesis, a prototype-based survey is conducted. Three types of avatars are implemented with different levels of human likeness: low, medium, and high. The analysis of the collected data suggests that for people with social phobias the anxiety is lowest for avatars with high levels of human likeness. This result is in direct contrast with the uncanny valley effect theory. The research explores how we should design virtual environments to make them more effective in the treatment of phobias. Moreover, the research produces new knowledge about the perception of humanlike avatars in virtual reality.

Compliance of the Baltic States with the Principle of Tolerance as Condition for the Development of the United Europe

The article studies the compliance of democracy of the Baltic States with the principle of tolerance. The study demonstrated specific social phobias (xenophobia, migrant phobia, homophobia, islamophobia, romaphobia, etc.), hate speech and other destructive trends in the Baltic countries that contradict values of liberal democracy. The authors argue that Baltic States face similar challenges of strengthening the principle of tolerance as well as how they differ in intolerance manifestations and mechanisms of their prevention and counteraction. In the Baltic States, issues related to promotion of tolerance are claimed to be common at two levels: at the institutional level (countries do not fulfil some of the EU guidelines aimed at enhancing the principle of tolerance); at the value level (population does not accept completely liberal-democratic values that the EU advocates).

Predicting Mental Health Problems with Automatic Identification of Metaphors

Mental health problems are prevalent and an important issue in medicine. However, clinical diagnosis of mental health problems is costly, time-consuming, and often significantly delayed, which highlights the need for novel methods to identify them. Previous psycholinguistic and psychiatry research has suggested that the use of metaphors in texts is linked to the mental health status of the authors. In this paper, we propose a method for automatically detecting metaphors in texts to predict various mental health problems, specifically anxiety, depression, inferiority, sensitivity, social phobias, and obsession. We perform experiments on a composition dataset collected from second-language students and on the eRisk2017 dataset collected from Social Media. The experimental results show that our approach can help predict mental health problems in authors of written texts, and our algorithm performs better than other state-of-the-art methods. In addition, we report that the use of metaphors even in nonnative languages can be indicative of various mental health problems.

Paroxetine—Overview of the Molecular Mechanisms of Action

In the 21st century and especially during a pandemic, the diagnosis and treatment of depression is an essential part of the daily practice of many family doctors. It mainly affects patients in the age category 15–44 years, regardless of gender. Anxiety disorders are often diagnosed in children and adolescents. Social phobias can account for up to 13% of these diagnoses. Social anxiety manifests itself in fear of negative social assessment and humiliation, which disrupts the quality of social functioning. Treatment of the above-mentioned disorders is based on psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy. Serious side effects or mortality from antidepressant drug overdose are currently rare. Recent studies indicate that paroxetine (ATC code: N06AB), belonging to the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, has promising therapeutic effects and is used off-label in children and adolescents. The purpose of this review is to describe the interaction of paroxetine with several molecular targets in various points of view including the basic chemical and pharmaceutical properties. The central point of the review is focused on the pharmacodynamic analysis based on the molecular mechanism of binding paroxetine to various therapeutic targets.

Arctic Phobias, Social Fears of Russians, Russophobia

The purpose of this paper is to study the concepts and content of phobias in societies, to understand the differences between them, and to classify people’s fears. In their study, the authors use methods of the Humanities: philosophy, conflictology, historicism; data from sociological surveys of the population. The formation of fears in the life of any society occurs both under the influence of traditional views of people inherent in antiquity, and under the influence of the societal pattern as a whole — culture, civilization, as well as modern transformations related to ecology, climate, development of natural resources, security, Russophobia, fears of coronavirus, racism. The paper considers historical phobias in the Arctic as well. The problems of social phobias in the scientific literature have not yet received such a wide and deep study as in social phobia, Agora phobia, and specific phobias.