There is now compelling evidence that motor imagery (MI) promotes motor learning. While MI has been shown to influence the early stages of the learning process, recent data revealed that sleep also contributes to the consolidation of the memory trace. How such “online” and “offline” processes take place and how they interact to impact the neural underpinnings of movements has received little attention. The aim of the present review is twofold: i) providing an overview of recent applied and fundamental studies (...) investigating the effects of MI practice on motor learning, and ii) detangling applied and fundamental findings in support of a sleep contribution to motor consolidation after MI practice. We conclude with an integrative approach of online and offline learning resulting from intense MI practice in healthy participants, and underline research avenues in the motor learning/clinical domains. (shrink)

En este artículo discutiré algunos problemas lógicos de la omnipotencia que van más allá de las clásicas paradojas ligadas a esta noción. Presentaré una versión refinada de la paradoja de Fitch sobre la omnipotencia que tiene en cuenta la distinción entre acciones básicas y derivadas, así como la distinción entre la capacidad de hacer algo y la mera posibilidad metafísica de hacerlo. También explico cómo esta paradoja puede reformularse para obtener una versión afín a la paradoja del mentiroso que afecta (...) a la consistencia de ciertas nociones de omnipotencia. Por último, evalúo algunas posibles respuestas disponibles para el teísta y un intento de usar la paradoja de Fitch como argumento a favor de la existencia de Dios. (shrink)

Contemporary art, which explodes from the borders and identifiable genres, the dance requires to be discussed in a perspective that exceeds the narrow of the sector. It is a microcosm of the world, a privileged space for observing the displacements and tensions of the contemporary world whose stake is a new posture that redesigns the body map in the society of capital and in the era of relations mediated by the mechanisms of the network. The result is a unique field (...) of analysis to explore with the work of Michele Di Stefano, one of the most interesting figures in the advanced front of contemporary choreography. Space, time and aesthetic categories mark this path of reflection. (shrink)

La pensée du corps. Un parcours esthétique chez le dernier Merleau-PontyLe but de cette contribution est de chercher à reconstruire un parcours théorique, entre plusieurs autres possibles, en mesure de montrer comment l’art, en particulier la peinture, incarne chez le dernier Merleau-Ponty la possibilité d’un autre type de pensée. Il s’agit de la tentative de suivre une idée qui semble faire son chemin au sein de la réflexion que l’auteur consacre à la Nature et puis à l’Etre brut et sauvage, (...) ou bien aussi dans celle d’une pensée enracinée dans la corporéité, qui devient une chose qui pense et qui fait penser. Une hypothèse de sens qui ouvre à une investigation de la chair humaine, et qui aboutit au résultat visible de cette pensée qui est corps et qui trouve dans la vision de l’art moderne ses signes les plus paradigmatiques.Il s’agit d’un itinéraire exégétique qui propose, en substance, un double plan: d’une part, une lecture de l’essence du corps, dans la facticité primordiale de la Nature, dans lequel se loge une sorte d’ontologie de la cavité et, de l’autre, le résultat philosophique possible d’une corporéité qui pense et qui, à travers l’art de la peinture, fait voir une pensée non plus fondée sur la représentation, en dernière instance, une pensée post-métaphysique. Et cela n’est pas sans conséquences pour le rapport de l’homme avec le monde et avec la philosophie.The Thought of Body. An Aesthetic Path in the Final Merleau-PontyThe purpose of this contribution is to try to reconstruct a theoretical path, between several other possibilities, capable of showing how art, in particular painting, incarnates in the final Merleau-Ponty the possibility of another type of thinking. What is at issue is an attempt to follow an idea which seems to make its way within the reflection that Merleau-Ponty dedicates first to Nature, and then to brute and wild Being, or as well in that of a thought rooted in corporeity, which becomes a thing which thinks and which requires thinking. We are following a hypothesis concerning the sense which opens to an investigation of human flesh, and which leads to the visible result of this thought which is body and which finds its most paradigmatic signs in the vision of modern art.What is at issue is an exegetical itinerary which proposes, in substance, a double plan: on the one hand, a reading of the essence of body, in the primordial facticity of Nature, in which a sort of ontology on the cavity lodges itself and, on the other hand, the possible philosophical result of a corporeity which thinks and which, through the art of painting, makes see a thought no longer founded on representation, and is, at the end of the day, a post-metaphysical thought. And that is not without consequences for the relation of the human with the world and with philosophy. (shrink)

La pensée du corps. Un parcours esthétique chez le dernier Merleau-PontyLe but de cette contribution est de chercher à reconstruire un parcours théorique, entre plusieurs autres possibles, en mesure de montrer comment l’art, en particulier la peinture, incarne chez le dernier Merleau-Ponty la possibilité d’un autre type de pensée. Il s’agit de la tentative de suivre une idée qui semble faire son chemin au sein de la réflexion que l’auteur consacre à la Nature et puis à l’Etre brut et sauvage, (...) ou bien aussi dans celle d’une pensée enracinée dans la corporéité, qui devient une chose qui pense et qui fait penser. Une hypothèse de sens qui ouvre à une investigation de la chair humaine, et qui aboutit au résultat visible de cette pensée qui est corps et qui trouve dans la vision de l’art moderne ses signes les plus paradigmatiques.Il s’agit d’un itinéraire exégétique qui propose, en substance, un double plan: d’une part, une lecture de l’essence du corps, dans la facticité primordiale de la Nature, dans lequel se loge une sorte d’ontologie de la cavité et, de l’autre, le résultat philosophique possible d’une corporéité qui pense et qui, à travers l’art de la peinture, fait voir une pensée non plus fondée sur la représentation, en dernière instance, une pensée post-métaphysique. Et cela n’est pas sans conséquences pour le rapport de l’homme avec le monde et avec la philosophie.The Thought of Body. An Aesthetic Path in the Final Merleau-PontyThe purpose of this contribution is to try to reconstruct a theoretical path, between several other possibilities, capable of showing how art, in particular painting, incarnates in the final Merleau-Ponty the possibility of another type of thinking. What is at issue is an attempt to follow an idea which seems to make its way within the reflection that Merleau-Ponty dedicates first to Nature, and then to brute and wild Being, or as well in that of a thought rooted in corporeity, which becomes a thing which thinks and which requires thinking. We are following a hypothesis concerning the sense which opens to an investigation of human flesh, and which leads to the visible result of this thought which is body and which finds its most paradigmatic signs in the vision of modern art.What is at issue is an exegetical itinerary which proposes, in substance, a double plan: on the one hand, a reading of the essence of body, in the primordial facticity of Nature, in which a sort of ontology on the cavity lodges itself and, on the other hand, the possible philosophical result of a corporeity which thinks and which, through the art of painting, makes see a thought no longer founded on representation, and is, at the end of the day, a post-metaphysical thought. And that is not without consequences for the relation of the human with the world and with philosophy. (shrink)

Motor Imagery reproduces cognitive operations associated with the actual motor preparation and execution. Postural recordings during MI reflect somatic motor commands targeting peripheral effectors involved in balance control. However, how these relate to the actual motor expertise and may vary along with the MI modality remains debated. In the present experiment, two groups of expert and non-expert gymnasts underwent stabilometric assessments while performing physically and mentally a balance skill. We implemented psychometric measures of MI ability, while stabilometric variables were calculated (...) from the center of pressure oscillations. Psychometric evaluations revealed greater MI ability in experts, specifically for the visual modality. Experts exhibited reduced surface COP oscillations in the antero-posterior axis compared to non-experts during the balance skill. Experts further exhibited reduced length of COP displacement in the antero-posterior axis and as a function of the displacement area during visual and kinesthetic MI compared to the control condition. Predictive relationships were found between the stabilometric correlates of visual MI and physical practice of the balance skill, as well as between the stabilometric correlates of kinesthetic MI and the training experience in experts. Present results provide original stabilometric insights into the relationships between MI and expertise level. While data support the incomplete inhibition of postural commands during MI, whether postural responses during MI of various modalities mirror the level of motor expertise remains unclear. (shrink)

This article presents a follow-up examination of 10 iterations of a blended course on educational psychology and e-learning carried out at the University of Bari. All iterations of the course considered in this study were designed using the Constructive and Collaborative Participation (CCP) model. Our main research questions are: What are the students’ long lasting memories of this course? How do the students use the skills and the competences acquired through the course across an extended period of time? In line (...) with these research questions, the aims of this investigation can be summarized as follows: i) to understand the students’ perceptions and long lasting memories of the course and (ii) to investigate the transfer of skills and knowledge across an extended period of time, based on a self-reported survey. The analysis was carried out by administering the survey to all 196 students who took part in the course in the 2005-2015 decade. 96 participants responded to the survey. The survey is designed to collect data in two areas. First, the memories related to the course and second, the way skills and content knowledge acquired during the course have been transferred to and used in other contexts after the course ended. The data were analyzed using a mixed methods approach, which revealed trends in the responses across the decade. In general, participants remembered the teaching methodology and often recalled specific activities such as Role Taking and the creation of products through group-work. These activities and approaches seemed to provide significant learning opportunities for the students. Several students also recalled key concepts and content knowledge acquired during the course. In relation to transfer of skills, participants tended to reuse mostly transversal skills, such as communicative and organizational skills, especially in work contexts. Further, about half of the respondents reused the content knowledge of the course. This analysis is valuable because it allows us to understand the aspects of the model that are significant for the students in the long term, and to discover and interrogate the acquisition and transfer of skills useful for the students’ personal and professional lives beyond the academy. (shrink)

Jaswal & Akhtar in their target article convincingly argue that subjects with autism do not have diminished social motivation. However, they still recognize that autistic people behave socially in an unusual way. Why? Here we suggest that these behaviours are the results of a multisensory integration deficit. Viewed from this perspective, the assumption that autistic people's unusual behaviours indicate diminished social motivation has to be replaced by the one that they have diminished social prediction skills.

In this commentary on Bastin et al., we suggest that spatial context plays a critical role in the encoding and retrieval of events. Specifically, the translation process between the viewpoint-independent content of a memory and the viewpoint-dependent stimuli activating the retrieval plays a critical role in spatial memory recollection. This perspective also provides an explanatory model for pathological disturbances such as Alzheimer's disease.

Traditional Informed Consent is becoming increasingly inadequate, especially in the context of research biobanks. How much information is needed by patients for their consent to be truly informed? How does the quality of the information they receive match up to the quality of the information they ought to receive? How can information be conveyed fairly about future, non-predictable lines of research? To circumvent these difficulties, some scholars have proposed that current consent guidelines should be reassessed, with trust being used as (...) a guiding principle instead of information. Here, we analyse one of these proposals, based on a Participation Pact, which is already being offered to patients at the Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, a comprehensive cancer hospital in Milan, Italy. (shrink)

Movement perception and its role in aesthetic experience have been often studied, within empirical aesthetics, in relation to the human body. No such specificity has been defined in neuroimaging studies with respect to contents lacking a human form. The aim of this work was to explore, through functional magnetic imaging (fMRI), how perceived movement is processed during the aesthetic judgment of paintings using two types of content: human subjects and scenes of nature. Participants, untutored in the arts, were shown the (...) stimuli and asked to make aesthetic judgments. Additionally, they were instructed to observe the paintings and to rate their perceived movement in separate blocks. Observation highlighted spontaneous processes associated with aesthetic experience, whereas movement judgment outlined activations specifically related to movement processing. The ratings recorded during aesthetic judgment revealed that nature scenes received higher scored than human content paintings. The imaging data showed similar activation, relative to baseline, for all stimuli in the three tasks, including activation of occipito-temporal areas, posterior parietal and premotor cortices. Contrast analyses within aesthetic judgment task showed that human content activated, relative to nature, precuneus, fusiform gyrus and posterior temporal areas, whose activation was prominent for dynamic human paintings. In contrast, nature scenes activated, relative to human stimuli, occipital and posterior parietal cortex/precuneus, involved in visuospatial exploration and pragmatic coding of movement, as well as central insula. Static nature paintings further activated, relative to dynamic nature stimuli, central and posterior insula. Besides insular activation, which was specific for aesthetic judgment, we found a large overlap in the activation pattern characterizing each stimulus dimension (content and dynamism) across observation, aesthetic judgment and movement judgment tasks. These findings support the idea that the aesthetic evaluation of artworks depicting both human subjects and nature scenes involves a motor component, and that the associated neural processes occur quite spontaneously in the viewer. Furthermore, considering the functional roles of posterior and central insula, we suggest that nature paintings may evoke aesthetic processes requiring an additional proprioceptive and sensori-motor component implemented by “motor accessibility” to the represented scenario, which is needed to judge the aesthetic value of the observed painting. (shrink)

Objective: Mindfulness disposition is associated with various psychological factors and prevent emotional distress in chronic diseases. In the present study, we analyzed the key role of mindfulness dispositions in protecting the individual against psychological distress consequent to COVID-19 social distancing and quarantining. Methods: An online survey was launched on March 13, 2020, with 6,412 responses by April 6, 2020. Socio-demographic information, exposure to the pandemic, and quarantining were assessed together with psychological distress and mindfulness disposition. Multivariate linear regression analysis was (...) performed to study the influence of predictive factors on psychological distress and quality of life in Italian responders during the early days of lockdown. Pearson correlations were calculated to study the relations between mindfulness and psychiatric symptoms. Results: Multivariate linear regression run on socio-demographics, COVID-19-related variables, and mindfulness disposition as moderators of overall psychological distress showed that mindfulness was the best predictor of psychological distress (β = -0.504; p =.000). High negative correlations were found between mindfulness disposition and overall Global Severity Index (r = -.637; p =.000), while moderate to high associations were found between mindfulness and all SCL-90 sub-scales. Discussion: Findings showed that high dispositional mindfulness enhances well-being and helps in dealing with stressful situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Mindfulness-based mental training could represent an effective intervention to stem the post-traumatic psychopathological beginnings and preventing the onset of chronic mental disorders. (shrink)

Moving from the paradigms of “mentalization” and “reflective function”, this article develops the concept of “mentalizing” in organizations, understood as a process of construction of shared meaning in the work contexts, and whose absence or deterioration produces suffering in organizational experience, exposing individuals to significant psychosocial risks. This model converges in outlining a framework in which the absence of a reflective competence and the lack of symbolization of the experience of work fall on the perception of one's own job, and (...) on the relationship with colleagues and management, producing unsustainability of the work experience. The availability of reflective spaces that are inscribed in the ordinary dimension of work thus appears as a solution capable of promoting organizational well-being. (shrink)

Nell’estate del 1944 alcuni membri del Sonderkommando di Auschwitz, il “comando speciale” composto da prigionieri costretti al più infame dei lavori, quello nelle camere a gas e nei crematori, riescono a strappare quattro fotografie a quella terribile realtà. In due delle quattro foto si vedono i cadaveri ammassati a bruciare, in un’altra, delle donne nude correre, spinte verso le camere a gas, mentre nell’ultima distinguiamo appena dei rami. Ma c’è molto altro in queste foto, dalle quali Did...

Questo saggio, risultato del lavoro seminariale svolto presso la Fondazione Centro Studi Campostrini, avanza una proposta teoricasulla base di un’ipotesi. L’ipotesi è che quando usiamo il vocabolariodella credenza diciamo qualcosa di specifico e irriducibile adaltre nozioni. Alla ricerca del nucleo di irriducibilità e specificitàdella credenza Giuseppe Di Salvatore scarta tutte quelle forme dicredenza che dipendono in maniera più o meno diretta da unaconsiderazione in termini di conoscenza o da un’implicazione dellaverità. Se alcuni tipi di giustificazione della credenza possono essereutili (...) a individuarne l’irriducibilità, solo le credenze primitive, unacomplessa nozione di “credenza soggettiva” e un originale modellofiduciario della credenza fungono da buoni candidati per difenderela specificità della credenza. Dopo la discussione di alcune tesi diLudwig Wittgenstein e il ricorso a fonti eterogenee, da William Jamesa Henry Habberley Price fino a Niklas Luhmann, l’autore proponela nozione originale di “credenza progressiva” come il migliorcandidato che confermi l’ipotesi di partenza. In essa una precisaidea di rischio e la fiducia, al cui dibattito è dedicata un’ampiaattenzione, contribuiscono a delineare la credenza progressivainsieme ad alcuni suoi aspetti soggettivi, così profilandola comeuna postura sperimentale. Il saggio si completa con una riflessionesulla peculiarità della questione filosofica della credenza religiosa,la quale viene approcciata nella sua preliminare generalità, quindiconfrontata con la credenza progressiva. (shrink)

Se negli ultimi anni sempre di più si è posta l’emergenza per l’estetica di stabilire interazioni con altri ambiti di ricerca scientifica, è pur vero che rari sono i casi di autori capaci di sviluppare la propria indagine su terreni eterogenei. Tra questi c’è Jean Petitot che con originalità conduce il proprio lavoro incrociando le due linee sulle quali si è formato: Thom e Greimas. Proseguendo nella direzione di Morfogenesi del Senso e Fisica del Senso, Morphologie et Estbétique, che rielabo...

Il saggio approfondisce l’opera di due artisti fondamentali degli ultimi decenni, ovvero Antoni Tàpies e Bill Viola. La loro produzione artistica riesce a sfuggire alla condanna che Th. W. Adorno fa di tutti quei movimenti che rimettono in questione il concetto di arte e la nozione di opera. Questi due artisti salvano lo statuto dell’arte nella società post-industriale, vale a dire in un momento in cui le trasformazioni profonde del sistema culturale rischiano di minacciare la sopravvivenza della creazione artistica, come (...) se la razionalità estetica non potesse che abdicare davanti alla razionalità strumentale. Sono pochi i pittori che come Antoni Tàpies riescono a infondere alla materia inanimata un’irradiazione e una capacità di evocazione tanto intense, mentre per Bill Viola tutte le opere d’arte rappresentano cose invisibili e la stessa tecnologia digitale non è altro che una forma più pura per avvicinarsi a quelle realtà non fisiche e non visibili che stanno sotto alle cose visibili del mondo. La scommessa di Tàpies e Viola riguarda la sopravvivenza dell’arte nell’universo mercantile di una società sempre più amministrata e sottoposta agli imperativi economici; la loro produzione pare mirata a renderci consapevoli della nostra mortalità, offrendo immagini in grado di mettere in connessione la dimensione sensibile e quella spirituale, il visibile e l’invisibile, aprendo lo spazio a una trascendenza che sembrava completamente svanita. (shrink)