This paper concentrates on the basic properties of ''consciousness'' that temporal coding is postulated to relate to. A description of phenomenal consciousness based on what introspection tells us about its contents is offered. This includes a consideration of the effect of various brain lesions that result in cortical blindness, apperceptive and associative agnosia, and blindsight, together with an account of the manner in which sight is regained after cortical injuries. I then discuss two therories of perception-Direct Realism and the Representative (...) Theory. This includes a discussion of the concept of the body-image, phantom limbs, the alleged projection of sensations, the ontological status of phenomenal space, the homunculus argument, the validity of topographic coding, the difference between the stimulus field and the visual field, and two theories of brain-mind relationship-the Identity Theory and the Bohr-Heisenberg theory of brain-mind complementarity. Finally I suggest that the binocular rivalry obtained in the case of the stroboscopic patterns that result from intermittent photic stimulation of one eye, when used in animal expeiments with unit recording, offers a good experimental method of investigating the binding problem. (shrink)

The potential benefits of priming intermittent theta burst stimulation with continuous theta burst stimulation have not been examined in regard to sensorimotor oscillatory activities recorded in electroencephalography. The objective of this study was to investigate the modulatory effect of priming iTBS delivered to the motor cortex on movement-related and mirror visual feedback -induced sensorimotor event-related desynchronization, compared with iTBS alone, on healthy adults. Twenty participants were randomly allocated into Group 1: priming iTBS—cTBS followed by iTBS, and Group (...) 2: non-priming iTBS—sham cTBS followed by iTBS. The stimulation was delivered to the right primary motor cortex daily for 4 consecutive days. EEG was measured before and after 4 sessions of stimulation. Movement-related ERD was evaluated during left-index finger tapping and MVF-induced sensorimotor ERD was evaluated by comparing the difference between right-index finger tapping with and without MVF. After stimulation, both protocols increased movement-related ERD and MVF-induced sensorimotor ERD in high mu and low beta bands, indicated by significant time effects. A significant interaction effect favoring Group 1 in enhancing movement-related ERD was observed in the high mu band [F = 4.47, p = 0.049], compared with Group 2. Our experiment suggests that among healthy adults priming iTBS with cTBS delivered to the motor cortex yields similar effects with iTBS alone on enhancing ERD induced by MVF-based observation, while movement-related ERD was more enhanced in the priming iTBS condition, specifically in the high mu band. (shrink)

Noninvasive brain stimulation provides a promising approach for the treatment of neuropsychiatric conditions. Despite the increasing research on the facilitatory effects of this kind of stimulation on the cognitive processes, the majority of the studies have used the standard stimulation approaches such as the transcranial direct current stimulation and the conventional repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation which seem to be limited in robustness and the duration of the transient effects. However, a recent specialized type of rTMS, (...) theta-burst stimulation, patterned to mimic the natural cross-frequency coupling of the human brain, may induce robust and longer-lasting effects on cortical activity. Here, we aimed to investigate the effects of the intermittent TBS, a facilitatory form of TBS, over the right DLPFC, a brain area implicated in higher-order cognitive processes, on visuospatial working memory performance. Therefore, iTBS was applied over either the rDLPFC or the vertex of 24 healthy participants, in two separate sessions. We assessed VSWM performance using 2-back and 4-back visuospatial tasks before iTBS, and after the iTBS. Our results indicate that the iTBS over the rDLPFC significantly enhanced VSWM performance in the 2-back task, as measured by the discriminability index and the reaction time. However, the 4-back task performance was not significantly modulated by iTBS. These findings demonstrate that the rDLPFC plays a critical role in VSWM and that iTBS is a safe and effective approach for investigating the causal role of the specific brain areas. (shrink)

GraphicalThirty healthy participants received 60 trials of intermittent SO tACS at an intensity of 2 mA. Motor cortical excitability was assessed using TMS-induced MEPs acquired across different oscillatory phases during and outlasting tACS, as well as at the start and end of the stimulation session. Mean MEP amplitude increased by ∼41% from pre- to post-tACS ; however, MEP amplitudes were not modulated with respect to the tACS phase.Converging evidence suggests that transcranial alternating current stimulation may entrain endogenous (...) neural oscillations to match the frequency and phase of the exogenously applied current and this entrainment may outlast the stimulation. However, observing entrainment in the electroencephalograph during stimulation is extremely difficult due to the presence of complex tACS artifacts. The present study assessed entrainment to slow oscillatory tACS by measuring motor cortical excitability across different oscillatory phases during and outlasting stimulation. 30 healthy participants received 60 trials of intermittent SO tACS at an intensity of 2 mA peak-to-peak. Motor cortical excitability was assessed using transcranial magnetic stimulation of the hand region of the primary motor cortex to induce motor evoked potentials in the contralateral thumb. MEPs were acquired at four time-points within each trial – early online, late online, early offline, and late offline – as well as at the start and end of the overall stimulation period. A significant increase in MEP amplitude was observed from pre- to post-tACS and from the first to the last tACS block. However, no phase-dependent modulation of excitability was observed. Therefore, although SO tACS had a facilitatory effect on motor cortical excitability that outlasted stimulation, there was no evidence supporting entrainment of endogenous oscillations as the underlying mechanism. (shrink)

Human behavior depends on the ability to effectively introspect about our performance. For simple perceptual decisions, this introspective or metacognitive ability varies substantially across individuals and is correlated with the structure of focal areas in prefrontal cortex. This raises the possibility that the ability to introspect about different perceptual decisions might be mediated by a common cognitive process. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether inter-individual differences in metacognitive ability were correlated across two different perceptual tasks where individuals made judgments (...) about different and unrelated visual stimulus properties. We found that inter-individual differences were strongly correlated between the two tasks for metacognitive ability but not objective performance. Such stability of an individual’s metacognitive ability across different perceptual tasks indicates a general mechanism supporting metacognition independent of the specific task. (shrink)

Prominent models of attentional control assert a dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up control, with the former determined by current selection goals and the latter determined by physical salience. This theoretical dichotomy, however, fails to explain a growing number of cases in which neither current goals nor physical salience can account for strong selection biases. For example, equally salient stimuli associated with reward can capture attention, even when this contradicts current selection goals. Thus, although 'top-down' sources of bias are sometimes defined (...) as those that are not due to physical salience, this conception conflates distinct - and sometimes contradictory - sources of selection bias. We describe an alternative framework, in which past selection history is integrated with current goals and physical salience to shape an integrated priority map. (shrink)

The sense of agency is the experience of being the origin of a sensory consequence. This study investigates whether contextual beliefs modulate low-level sensorimotor processes which contribute to the emergence of the sense of agency. We looked at the influence of causal beliefs on ‘intentional binding’, a phenomenon which accompanies self-agency. Participants judged the onset-time of either an action or a sound which followed the action. They were induced to believe that the tone was either triggered by themselves or by (...) somebody else, although, in reality, the sound was always triggered by the participants. We found that intentional binding was stronger when participants believed that they triggered the tone, compared to when they believed that another person triggered the tone. These results suggest that high-level contextual information influences sensorimotor processes responsible for generating intentional binding. (shrink)

We argue that the rapid eye movement dream experiences owe their structure and meaning to inherent self-organizing properties of the brain itself. Thus, we offer a common meeting ground for brain based studies of dreaming and traditional psychological dream theory. Our view is that the dreaming brain is a self-organizing system highly sensitive to internally generated influences. Several lines of evidence support a process view of the brain as a system near the edge of chaos, one that is highly sensitive (...) to internal influences. Such sensitivity is due to several factors. First, the dreaming brain normally gates out external input and thus operates without the stabilizing influences of external feedback. Second, the pre-frontal cortex is only minimally activated during REM sleep, and hence the brain operates with weakened volition, reduced logic, and diminished self-reflection. Third, because the neuromodulatory inhibition mechanism is turned off during REM, the brain responds spontaneously to the least provocation. In addition, the dreaming brain is also subject to powerful intermittent cholinergic stimulation which may stimulate creative patterns of dream activity. (shrink)

In a recent study, Becker and Elliott [Becker, C., & Elliott, M. A. . Flicker induced color and form: Interdependencies and relation to stimulation frequency and phase. Consciousness & Cognition, 15, 175–196] described the appearance of subjective experiences of color and form induced by stimulation with intermittent light. While there have been electroencephalographic studies of similar hallucinatory forms, brain activity accompanying the appearance of hallucinatory colors was never measured. Using a priming procedure where observers were required to (...) indicate the presence of one of eight target colors we compared electrophysiological correlates of hallucinatory color with brain states associated with other visual phenomena. Different target colors were accompanied by different patterns of EEG activation. However, in general, we found that the appearance of hallucinatory colors is preceded by a power decrease in the lower alpha band alongside an increase in gamma band frequencies. We argue that decreasing activity in the lower alpha band acts as a gating mechanism, inducing a switch in perception between different colors. The increasing gamma activation may correlate with the formation of a coherent conscious percept. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the lexicon. The demand for a fuller and more adequate understanding of lexical meaning required by developments in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science has stimulated a refocused interest in linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. Different disciplines have studied lexical structure from their own vantage points, and because scholars have only intermittently communicated across disciplines, there has been little recognition that there is a common subject matter. The conference on which this (...) volume is based brought together interested thinkers across the disciplines of linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and computer science to exchange ideas, discuss a range of questions and approaches to the topic, consider alternative research strategies and methodologies, and formulate interdisciplinary hypotheses concerning lexical organization. The essay subjects discussed include: * alternative and complementary conceptions of the structure of the lexicon, * the nature of semantic relations and of polysemy, * the relation between meanings, concepts, and lexical organization, * critiques of truth-semantics and referential theories of meaning, * computational accounts of lexical information and structure, and * the advantages of thinking of the lexicon as ordered. (shrink)

Background: Short latency afferent inhibition provides a method to investigate mechanisms of sensorimotor integration. Cholinergic involvement in the SAI phenomena suggests that SAI may provide a marker of cognitive influence over implicit sensorimotor processes. Consistent with this hypothesis, we previously demonstrated that visual attention load suppresses SAI circuits preferentially recruited by anterior-to-posterior -, but not posterior-to-anterior -current induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation. However, cerebellar modulation can also modulate these same AP-sensitive SAI circuits. Yet, the consequences of concurrent cognitive and (...) implicit cerebellar influences over these AP circuits are unknown.Objective: We used cerebellar intermittent theta-burst stimulation to determine whether the cerebellar modulation of sensory to motor projections interacts with the attentional modulation of sensory to motor circuits probed by SAI.Methods: We assessed AP-SAI and PA-SAI during a concurrent visual detection task of varying attention load before and after cerebellar iTBS.Results: Before cerebellar iTBS, a higher visual attention load suppressed AP-SAI, but not PA-SAI, compared to a lower visual attention load. Post-cerebellar iTBS, the pattern of AP-SAI in response to visual attention load, was reversed; a higher visual attention load enhanced AP-SAI compared to a lower visual attention load. Cerebellar iTBS did not affect PA-SAI regardless of visual attention load.Conclusion: These findings suggest that attention and cerebellar networks converge on overlapping AP-sensitive circuitry to influence motor output by controlling the strength of the afferent projections to the motor cortex. This interaction has important implications for understanding the mechanisms of motor performance and learning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When Is Enough, Enough?Megan HomsyThis was a case that stuck with many members of our transplant team for a long time. The patient was a 44-year-old Caucasian male evaluated for a liver transplant with a diagnosis of hepatitis C virus (HCV), originally diagnosed 11 years before the transplant evaluation. The patient met the criteria for the following substance use diagnoses: alcohol use disorder moderate in sustained remission, in a (...) controlled environment, opioid use disorder, severe, in sustained remission, on maintenance therapy, in a controlled environment, stimulant use disorder, amphetamine-type, severe, in early remission, in a controlled environment and stimulant use disorder, cocaine-type, severe in early remission, in a controlled environment.The patient had been living in a sober living housing program for approximately ten months prior to his transplant evaluation with me, his social worker. He had also been diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder. He had been intermittently linked with mental health services and had participated in numerous detox and substance abuse programs over the last ten years, with varying degrees of success. He was in dual diagnosis treatment (i.e., treatment for co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders) through his Suboxone clinic and was completing toxicology screenings on a biweekly basis.After concluding the minimum three months of drug and alcohol treatment set forth by the state's Organ Transplantation Consortium, the patient graduated from his sober living program, moved in with his sister, and was listed for a liver transplant.The patient was transplanted five months after his clinic evaluation. At the time of the surgery, the patient's Suboxone was abruptly discontinued and replaced with IV Dilaudid. Within days of his transplant, the patient frequently expressed concerns about his pain. Several medical services attempted to manage the pain medications, resulting in his pain management plan being changed repeatedly and much confusion over his current medication regimen. During his liver transplant hospitalization, the RN found the patient with a needle in his arm, and after a search of the patient's hospital room, the hospital police found drug paraphernalia and illicit substances. The patient was eventually discharged to an inpatient substance abuse program, which he left before completing the program and against medical advice.During his first year post-transplant, I attempted to arrange other various treatment programs for him (most of which he did not follow through with) and to find housing for him (as he had been forced to leave his sister's home after his relapse). Eventually, the patient was incarcerated on drug-related charges. Numerous times, the patient missed completing his labs and his post-transplant appointments. He did not refill his immunosuppressant medications, and for lengthy periods of time, he was unreachable by the transplant care team, which resulted in my team members and I calling the patient's family, other providers, and the police for safety checks.In the aftermath of these issues, my colleagues and I had to reckon with the realization that we had failed the patient. As a team, our transplant center created a task force to review this case and what to do in the future to prevent such breakdowns in patient care. We created protocols for managing patients who, at the time of their transplant, are on Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) such as Suboxone and methadone. Staff across the multidisciplinary team attended trainings regarding addiction, pain management, and best practices for MAT services. Additionally, our transplant center collaborated with our hospital's addiction treatment program for a streamlined referral process for transplant patients to addiction services.This patient's case and its sensational nature resulted in many conversations, both professional and unprofessional. Members of the social worker department became aware that personnel within transplant, though not involved in patient care, were inappropriately discussing this patient's case and engaging in unprofessional behavior. Said actions led to the termination of a member of the transplant team. I was placed in the unenviable [End Page E3] position of having to report this behavior to hospital management and legal teams to protect a vulnerable patient.The ethical challenge behind this case really stems from the transplant team attempting to balance two... (shrink)

This paper investigates the leaderless and leader-follower time-varying formation design and analysis problems for a group of networked agents subject to discontinuous communications. Firstly, a leaderless time-varying formation control protocol is proposed via the intermittent control strategy, where the control input of each agent is constructed by the distributed local state information and formation instructions in the communication time unit, but it is zero in the noncommunication time unit. Then, an explicit formulation of the formation center function is determined (...) to describe the formation movement trajectory of the whole networked agents. Leaderless time-varying formation design and analysis with discontinuous communications are given in the form of linear matrix inequalities. Moreover, the main results of the leaderless cases are extended to the leader-follower cases. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the theoretical results of leaderless and leader-follower cases, respectively. (shrink)

I aim to show that there are cases in which an ordinary material object exists intermittently. Afterwards there are a few words about the consequences of acknowledging such cases, but what is of more interest is the route by which the conclusion is reached. When deciding among competing descriptions of the cases considered, I have tried to reduce to a minimum the role of intuitive judgment, and I have based several arguments on "metaphysical principles," two of which I have defended.

Time-varying formation-containment problems for a second-order multiagent system are studied via pulse-modulated intermittent control in this paper. A distributed control framework utilizing the neighbors’ positions and velocities is designed so that leaders in the multiagent system form a formation, and followers move to the convex hull formed by each leader. Different from the traditional formation-containment problems, this paper applies the PMIC framework, which is more common and more in line with the actual control scenarios. Based on the knowledge of (...) matrix theory, algebraic graph theory, and stability theory, some sufficient conditions are given for the time-varying formation-containment problem of the second-order multiagent system. Some numerical simulations are proposed to verify the effectiveness of the results presented in this paper. (shrink)

Résumé La subjectivation néolibérale, travailliste et conservatrice, qui promeut le risque et le « courage d’entreprendre », produit partout le sentiment d’insécurité et d’abandon, favorise toutes sortes de replis chez ceux qui ne bénéficient pas de protection au préalable. On trouve dans les cours que M. Foucault a consacrés au néolibéralisme une articulation de la sécurité matérielle et de l’autonomie éthique, des pistes pour de nouveaux rapports aux institutions sanitaires et sociales qui trouvent aujourd’hui des échos dans le conflit des (...) intermittents. (shrink)

The forms of subjectivity imposed by neo-liberalism, by promoting risk and private entrepreneurship, generate insecurity, dereliction, and withdrawal among those who feel exposed. In his courses devoted to neo-liberalism, Foucault linked material security with ethical autonomy, paving the way for the understanding of new relationships between health and social services, relationship which are emerge now explicitly in the movement of the “intermittents”.

Standing institutions have a continuous existence: examples include the United Nations, the British Parliament, the US presidency, the standing committees of the US Congress, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Intermittent institutions have a discontinuous existence: examples include the Roman dictatorship, the Estates-General of France, constitutional conventions, citizens' assemblies, the Electoral College, grand and petit juries, special prosecutors, various types of temporary courts and military tribunals, ad hoc congressional committees, and ad hoc panels such as the 9/11 Commission and base-closing (...) commissions. Within the class of intermittent institutions, one may distinguish periodic from episodic institutions. The former come into being on a schedule set down in advance, while the latter come into being at unpredictable intervals. The Electoral College is a periodic institution, while the Roman dictatorship is an episodic one. This article attempts to identify the benefits and costs of intermittent institutions, both as a class and in their periodic and episodic varieties. The largest goals are to state some general conditions under which intermittent institutions prove superior or inferior to standing institutions, and to illuminate the temporal dimension of institutional design. (shrink)

Explores the concept of historical intermittency in 5 recent French philosophers. Andrew Gibson engages with five recent and contemporary French philosophers, Badiou, Jambet, Lardreau, Francoise Proust and Ranciere, who each produce a post-Hegelian philosophy of history founded on an assertion of the intermittency of historical value. Gibson explores this `anti-schematics of historical reason' and its implication for politics, ethics and aesthetics in a wide range of modern intellectual contexts, finding its necessary complement and most powerful expression in a wealth of (...) modern art, chiefly modern literature. The result is a sustained reflection on the possible character of a contemporary philosophy of history and an important contribution to our knowledge of contemporary French philosophy. (shrink)

We investigate cluster-delay synchronization of a directed network possessing cluster structures by designing an intermittent control protocol. Based on Lyapunov stability theory, we proved that synchronization can be realized for oscillators in the same cluster and cluster-delay synchronization can be realized for the whole network. By simplifying the obtained sufficient conditions, we carry out a succinct and utilitarian corollary. In addition, comparative researches are carried out to show the differences and the usefulness of the obtained results with respect to (...) other similar controllers from the recent literature. Finally we provide two numerical examples to show the effectiveness of the control schemes. (shrink)

The scholarly and scientific professions are undergoing changes like any other profession, also due to the ongoing mutations of the labor market. Intermittent scholars and researchers in a situation of economic uncertainty are increasingly numerous. These individuals are not just « deprived of status » as civil servants, but are also independent «free agents », with a different point view stemming partly from the necessity of remaining mobile, of leaving the familiar path in order to progress intellectually. Their independence (...) in relation to the academic environment and the professional status of professors or researchers, can be the result of a voluntary decision, which puts them into the forefront of the transversality which does not yet fully exist between the disciplines, objects and professions of scholarship, science and research. Yet the violence of this economically precarious situation is not something one chooses; it forces us to ask new questions, which must be approached from a social and political standpoint. Tie following article tells the tale of an independent cognitive laborer: an ecosystemic mistake in the eyes of some, an obvious symptom of ongoing mutations for others. (shrink)

The main topic of my paper concerns the theological-philosophical nexus between the intensive and qualitative spatiality of the Monad and the Origenian idea of Apokatastasis as a nexus that can clarify Benjamin's latest idea of the Messianic World. The first step will be, therefore, to explain Benjamin's use of the Origenian notion of Apokatastasis in his Essay on Leskov and in the Passagenwerk. Secondly, I will discuss how and to what extent such use is relevant for Benjamin's idea of Messianism. (...) Thirdly, I will propose the thesis that, for Benjamin, a messianic idea of time implies a monadological idea of space. In this regard, the relationship between continuity and discontinuity, which is crucial to understand the late Benjamin's idea of history, must be understood precisely as a dialectical relationship that involves not only time but also space. The figure of intermittence – as we shall see – expresses in the most suitable way the intertwining of space and time as dialectically and messianicaly oriented. This sequence of logical steps and critical considerations will shed light on the true nature of Benjamin's idea of dialectics and on its relationship to the idea of the totality. The real term of confrontation of Benjamin's late philosophy does not concern, therefore, Heidegger, but Hegel. In the light of this confrontation, Heidegger's Being and Time is already in pieces. It is as it were – we can say – behind Benjamin's movement of thought. (shrink)