A través del presente ejercicio investigativo y hermenéutico se busca proponer la beneficencia como principio articulador entre la Teología Moral de la Persona, la Bioética y las Prácticas Biomédicas, con el fin de salvaguardar al ser humano de forma integral y desde el ámbito interdisciplinar, frente a la manipulación y menoscabo de la persona en su: dignidad, status antropológico, verdad ontológica y trascendente, lo cual nos lleva a proponer alternativas, dadas las nuevas circunstancias por las que atraviesa la humanidad; y (...) es aquí donde adquiere resonancia proponer la Beneficencia como principio articulador entre estas tres ciencias, dado que ella, como principio, está en los tres saberes de forma implícita y explícita y, las cuales, por su misma esencia, tienen puntos de convergencia como son: la determinación de su carácter moral, su estatuto de servicio, la salvaguarda de la riqueza de la vida, el reconocimiento y respeto por la dignidad humana, el reconocimiento de la multidimensionalidad del ser, y el cuidado que requiere toda persona humana en su fragilidad y vulnerabilidad. Además de lo anterior se cuenta con un abordaje teórico sobre la bioética como saber interdisciplinar; los principios de la bioética y la relación de la teología moral de la persona con la bioética. El presente ejercicio investigativo fue llevado a cabo en un lapso de dos años. (shrink)

Student performance and its evaluation remain a serious challenge for education systems. Frequently, the recording and processing of students’ scores in a specific curriculum have several flaws for various reasons. In this context, the absence of data from some of the student scores undermines the efficiency of any future analysis carried out in order to reach conclusions. When this is the case, missing data imputation algorithms are needed. These algorithms are capable of substituting, with a high level of accuracy, the (...) missing data for predicted values. This research presents the hybridization of an algorithm previously proposed by the authors called adaptive assignation algorithm, with a well-known technique called multivariate imputation by chained equations. The results show how the suggested methodology outperforms both algorithms. (shrink)

The emergence of organic, metabolic, cognitive and cultural codes points us to the need for a new kind of explanatory causality, and a different kind of bio-logic— one dependent on, but different from, the deterministic logic derived from mechanical causality, and one which can account for the increase in semiotic freedom which is evident in the biological hierarchy. Building upon previous work (Bruni 2003), in this article I provide a stipulative definition of semiotic freedom and its relation to causality in (...) biological and cognitive systems. To do so, I will first discuss the close relation that triadic causality and semiotic freedom have to the notions of teleology and emergence, and how the latter two are interrelated in living systems. I pinpoint some of the reservations that these notions have encountered in the history of science (including evolutionary biology and cognitive science), but stress also their necessity in the study of any given biological and cognitive system. I draw a distinction between horizontal and vertical emergence in order to arrive at a notion of ‘second order emergence’ that affords us a more viable definition of semiotic freedom. I will then attempt to show that all of these concepts are of paramount importance when we come to study processes of sensing, perception andcognition at any level of a living system. Accordingly, these ideas are part of a framework-in-development to research the scale of thresholds of semiotic freedom, by assuming a top-down approach i.e., by starting from the highest levels of semiotic freedom and cognitive processes, and exploring how those processes disaggregate into lesser degrees of freedom. I thus hope to bridge the gap between those levels from above. (shrink)

In this introductory article to the special issue on Multi-level semiosis we attempt to stage the background for qualifying the notion of “multi-levelness” when considering communication processes and semiosis in all life forms, i.e. from the cellular to the organismic level. While structures are organized hierarchically, communication processes require a kind of processual organization that may be better described as being heterarchical. Theoretically, the challenge arises in the temporal domain, that is, in the developmental and evolutionary dimension of dynamic semiotic (...) processes. We discuss the importance of this fundamental difference in order to explain how levels, domains and orders of magnitude, on the one hand, and synchronic and diachronic processes, on the other, contribute to the overall organization of every living being. To account for such multi-level organization, semiotic freedom is assumed to be a scalar property that endows living systems at different levels and domains with the capacity to ponder selectively the overall structural coherence and functional compatibility of their heterarchical processing, which is increasingly less conditioned by the underlying molecular determinism. (shrink)

El que en el presente libro se confronten "lenguaje" e "historia" pretende indicar que una parte especial de los que hemos sido se hace presente como "lenguaje"; pero, además, según se analiza en sus páginas, la función del historiador tuvo, en principio, algo elemental y simple. La misma etimología de la palabra significa alguien a quien se le pide consejo sobre un hecho porque "él vio lo que pasó". Al decir lo que ve, lo que interpreta, el historiador compromete la (...) veracidad de su propio ser. Colección Clásicos - Dykinson (títulos publicados)?Serie estudios?? - Sobre la democracia ateniense. Luis Gil Fernández. - Derecho natural y dignidad humana. Ernst Bloch. - Alejo Carpentier. Poética del Mediterráneo Caribe. Inmaculada López Calahorro. - P. Szondi. Teoría del drama moderno. Ensayo sobre lo trágico. - El concepto poíesis en la filosofía griega. Emilio Lledó. - Lenguaje e historia. Emilio Lledó.?Serie textos? - Heródoto. Historia. Libro I. Ed. bilingüe de J. M. Floristán. - Sófocles. Electra. Ed. bilingüe de Luis Gil Fernández. - Platón. Fedro. Ed. bilingüe de Luis Gil Fernández. - Aristóteles. Poética. Ed. bilingüe de Paloma Ortiz García. - Horacio. Arte poética. Ed. bilingüe de Luis Gil Fernández. - Boileau. El arte poética y otras sátiras. Ed. bilingüe de Alberto Torrego Salcedo. - Lezama Lima. Escritos de Estética. Ed. de Pedro Aullón de Haro. - República poética. Textos programáticos de la literatura española (siglos XVIII y XIX). Ed. de Germán Garrido Miñambres. (shrink)

This article considers categorical perception (CP) as a crucial process involved in all sort of communication throughout the biological hierarchy, i.e. in all of biosemiosis. Until now, there has been consideration of CP exclusively within the functional cycle of perception–cognition–action and it has not been considered the possibility to extend this kind of phenomena to the mere physiological level. To generalise the notion of CP in this sense, I have proposed to distinguish between categorical perception (CP) and categorical sensing (CS) (...) in order to extend the CP framework to all communication processes in living systems, including intracellular, intercellular, metabolic, physiological, cognitive and ecological levels. The main idea is to provide an account that considers the heterarchical embeddedness of many instances of CP and CS. This will take me to relate the hierarchical nature of categorical sensing and perception with the equally hierarchical issues of the “binding problem”, “triadic causality”, the “emergent interpretant” and the increasing semiotic freedom observed in biological and cognitive systems. (shrink)

The emergence of organic, metabolic, cognitive and cultural codes points us to the need for a new kind of explanatory causality, and a different kind of bio-logic— one dependent on, but different from, the deterministic logic derived from mechanical causality, and one which can account for the increase in semiotic freedom which is evident in the biological hierarchy. Building upon previous work (Bruni 2003), in this article I provide a stipulative definition of semiotic freedom and its relation to causality in (...) biological and cognitive systems. To do so, I will first discuss the close relation that triadic causality and semiotic freedom have to the notions of teleology and emergence, and how the latter two are interrelated in living systems. I pinpoint some of the reservations that these notions have encountered in the history of science (including evolutionary biology and cognitive science), but stress also their necessity in the study of any given biological and cognitive system. I draw a distinction between horizontal and vertical emergence in order to arrive at a notion of ‘second order emergence’ that affords us a more viable definition of semiotic freedom. I will then attempt to show that all of these concepts are of paramount importance when we come to study processes of sensing, perception andcognition at any level of a living system. Accordingly, these ideas are part of a framework-in-development to research the scale of thresholds of semiotic freedom, by assuming a top-down approach i.e., by starting from the highest levels of semiotic freedom and cognitive processes, and exploring how those processes disaggregate into lesser degrees of freedom. I thus hope to bridge the gap between those levels from above. (shrink)

During the recent decades, a global culrural-institutional network has gradually grown lip to project, implement, and use an enormous technological web that is supposed to observe, monitor, communicate, inventory, and assess our environment and its biodiversity in order to implement sustainable management models. The majority of "knowledge tools" that have been incorporated in the mainstream of this "techno-web" are amply based on a combination of mechanistic biology, genetic reductionism, economical determinism and neo-Darwinian cultural and biological perspectives. These approaches leave aside (...) many of the qualitative and relational aspects that can only be grasped by considering the semiotic networks operative in complex ecological and cultural systems. In this paper, it is suggested that a biosemiotic approach to ecology may prove useful for the modelling process which in turn will allow the construction of meaningful monitoring systems. It is aJso advanced that it may as well serve to better integrate our understanding and monitoring of ecosystems into the cultural process of searching for (human) sustainability. (shrink)

When dealing with biological communication and information, unifying concepts are necessary in order to couple the different “codes” that are being inductively “cracked” and defined at different emergent and “deemergent” levels of the biological hierarchy. In this paper I compare the type of biological information implied by genetic information with that implied in the concept of “quorum sensing” (which refers to a prokaryotic cell-to-cell communication system) in order to explore if such integration is being achieved. I use the Lux operon (...) paradigm and the Vibrio fischeri – Euprymna scolopes symbiotic partnership to exemplify the emergence of informational contexts along the biological hierarchy (from molecules to ecologies). I suggest that the biosemiotic epistemological framework can play an integrative role to overcome the limits of dyadic mechanistic descriptions when relating the different emergent levels. I also emphasise that the realisation ofbiology as being a “science of sensing” and the new importance that is being ascribed to the “context” in experimental biology corroborate past claims ofbiosemioticians about a shift from a focus on information (as a material agent of causality) towards a focus on the world of signification. (shrink)

We argue that living systems process information such that functionality emerges in them on a continuous basis. We then provide a framework that can explain and model the normativity of biological functionality. In addition we offer an explanation of the anticipatory nature of functionality within our overall approach. We adopt a Peircean approach to Biosemiotics, and a dynamical approach to Digital-Analog relations and to the interplay between different levels of functionality in autonomous systems, taking an integrative approach. We then apply (...) the underlying biosemiotic logic to a particular biological system, giving a model of the B-Cell Receptor signaling system, in order to demonstrate how biosemiotic concepts can be used to build an account of biological information and functionality. Next we show how this framework can be used to explain and model more complex aspects of biological normativity, for example, how cross-talk between different signaling pathways can be avoided. Overall, we describe an integrated theoretical framework for the emergence of normative functions and, consequently, for the way information is transduced across several interconnected organizational levels in an autonomous system, and we demonstrate how this can be applied in real biological phenomena. Our aim is to open the way towards realistic tools for the modeling of information and normativity in autonomous biological agents. (shrink)

During the recent decades, a global culrural-institutional network has gradually grown lip to project, implement, and use an enormous technological web that is supposed to observe, monitor, communicate, inventory, and assess our environment and its biodiversity in order to implement sustainable management models. The majority of "knowledge tools" that have been incorporated in the mainstream of this "techno-web" are amply based on a combination of mechanistic biology, genetic reductionism, economical determinism and neo-Darwinian cultural and biological perspectives. These approaches leave aside (...) many of the qualitative and relational aspects that can only be grasped by considering the semiotic networks operative in complex ecological and cultural systems. In this paper, it is suggested that a biosemiotic approach to ecology may prove useful for the modelling process which in turn will allow the construction of meaningful monitoring systems. It is aJso advanced that it may as well serve to better integrate our understanding and monitoring of ecosystems into the cultural process of searching for (human) sustainability. (shrink)

This volume features essays that detail the distinctive ways authors and researchers in Spanish speaking countries express their thoughts on contemporary philosophy of technology. Written in English but fully capturing a Spanish perspective, the essays bring the views and ideas of pioneer authors and many new ones to an international readership. Coverage explores key topics in the philosophy of technology, the ontological and epistemological aspects of technology, development and innovation, and new technological frontiers like nanotechnology and cloud computing. In addition, (...) the book features case studies on philosophical queries. Readers will discover such voices as Miguel Ángel Quintanilla and Javier Echeverría, who are main references in the current landscape of philosophy of technology both in Spain and Spanish speaking countries; José Luis Luján, who is a leading Spanish author in research about technological risk; and Emilio Muñoz, former head of the Spanish National Research Council and an authority on Spanish science policy. The volume also covers thinkers in American Spanish speaking countries, such as Jorge Linares, an influential researcher in ethical issues; Judith Sutz, who has a very recognized work on social issues concerning innovation; Carlos Osorio, who focuses his work on technological determinism and the social appropriation of technology; and Diego Lawler, an important researcher in the ontological aspects of technology. (shrink)

The authors present some remarks on Al- Farabi's reception and understanding of Platonic Dialogues, especially according to "The Philosophy of Plato". In this treatise, Al- Farabi intends to show how politics were meant to be the leitmotiv of Plato's writings. He also discusses the argumentative and cognitive relations that exist between Political Science, Philosophy and Religion. As the statesman is engaged in pedagogical functions, he is urged to have some discursive abilities —besides the speculative knowledge of the first principles— for (...) him to incite the multitude to act. (shrink)

La presente investigación hace una revisión de la producción académica publicada sobre educación religiosa escolar entre los años 1991-2020 en Hispanoamérica, donde la ERE ha estado presente en los sistemas educativos en estos países a partir de la primera evangelización desde la época de la colonia, cambiando de finalidades, métodos y formatos. Entender su lugar en la escuela actual requiere identificar los cambios históricos, de contexto y finalidad, y las distintas preocupaciones de sus actores educativos. La investigación hace una revisión (...) general de las publicaciones de la región, puntualizando en el caso colombiano, argentino, mexicano y uruguayo. La metodología usa un análisis de contenido que identifica tres niveles de análisis del texto: de superficie, analítico e interpretativo. Los hallazgos se clasificaron en cinco temáticas: 1) análisis jurídicos; 2) estudios historiográficos; 3) análisis sobre las nuevas realidades sociales y educativas; 4) análisis de los currículos y la práctica pedagógica del maestro; y, 5) fundamentación epistemológica de la ERE. La revisión permite concluir que el tipo de educación religiosa escolar de cada país en Hispanoamérica está determinado por la comprensión de laicidad que cada país tenga en su ordenamiento constitucional y por las complejas trayectorias históricas de las relaciones Iglesia – Estado en su consolidación como nación. Además, los documentos dan cuenta de diversidad de enfoques y preocupaciones por la necesidad –o no- de una educación religiosa fundamentada teológica y pedagógicamente, para un contexto religioso y cultural claramente diverso y plural en el cual se encuentran jóvenes y adolescentes que asisten a la escuela, algunos en búsqueda de identidad y sentido de vida. (shrink)

The majority of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) self-assemble in the form dimeric/oligomeric complexes along the plasma membrane. Due to the molecular interactions they participate, GPCRs can potentially provide the framework for discriminating a wide variety of intercellular signals, as based on some kind of combinatorial receptor codes. GPCRs can in fact transduce signals from the external milieu by modifying the activity of such intracellular proteins as adenylyl cyclases, phospholipases and ion channels via interactions with specific G-proteins. However, in spite of (...) the number of cell functions they can actually control, both GPCRs and their associated signal transduction pathways are extremely well conserved, for only a few alleles with null or minor functional alterations have so far been found. This would seem to suggest that, beside a mechanism for DNA repairing, there must be another level of quality control that may help maintaining GPCRs rather stable throughout evolution. We propose here receptor oligomerization to be a basic molecular mechanism controlling GPCRs redundancy in many different cell types, and the plasma membrane as the first hierarchical cell structure at which selective categorical sensing may occur. Categorical sensing can be seen as the cellular capacity for identifying and ordering complex patterns of mixed signals out of a contextual matrix, i.e., the recognition of meaningful patterns out of ubiquitous signals. In this context, redundancy and degeneracy may appear as the required feature to integrate the cell system into functional units of progressively higher hierarchical levels. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the legal case involving the Court of Arbitration of Sport, the Union of European Football Associations, and the Turkish team Eskişehirspor to analyze the leg...

Como la de cualquier teórico con una propuesta singular y compleja, la obra de Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) ha sido fuente de diversas lecturas y aplicaciones, sobre todo considerando el carácter amplio de las disciplinas implicadas en sus conceptualizaciones. En este artículo se analizan los principales planteamientos de la obra de Baudrillard, así como se hace una revisión de cómo se ha leído, estudiado, analizado y criticado tal obra, con el fin de establecer una base conceptual de las dos principales lecturas, (...) tratando de señalar cómo es que todas estas lecturas son sintomáticas del proceso histórico y sociológico en que tal obra se desarrolló a lo largo del siglo XX. (shrink)

Receptor oligomerization plays a key role in maintaining genome stability and restricting protein mutagenesis. When properly folded, protein monomers assemble as oligomeric receptors and interact with environmental ligands. In a gene-centered view, the ligand specificity expressed by these receptors is assumed to be causally predetermined by the cell genome. However, this mechanism does not fully explain how differentiated cells have come to express specific receptor repertoires and which combinatorial codes have been explored to activate their associated signaling pathways. It is (...) our contention that the plasma membrane acts as the locus where several contextual cues may be integrated. As such it allows the semiotic selection of those receptor configurations that provide cells with the minimum essential requirements for agency. The occurrence of protein misfolding makes it impossible for receptor monomers to assemble along the membrane and to sustain meaningful relationships with environmental ligands. How could a cell lineage deal with these loss-of-function mutations during evolution and restrain gene redundancy accordingly? In this paper, we will be arguing that the easiest way for bacteria clones to accomplish this goal is by getting rid of cells expressing mutated receptor proteins. The mechanism sustaining this cell selection is also occurring in many somatic tissues and its function is currently believed to counteract in vivo protein mutagenesis. Our discussion will be mainly focused on the significance and semiotic nature of the interplay between membrane receptors and the epigenetic control of gene expression, as mediated by the control of mismatched repairing and protein folding mechanisms. (shrink)

Germ cells are cross-roads of development and evolution. They define the origin of every new generation and, at the same time, represent the biological end-product of any mature organism. Germ cells are endowed with the following capacities: to store a self-descriptive program, to accumulate a protein-synthesizing machinery, and to incorporate enough nourishment to sustain embryonic development. To accomplish this goal, germ cells do not simply unfold a pre-determined program or realize a sole instructive role. On the contrary, due to the (...) complexity of their cytoarchitecture and the nature of the soma-to-germ interactions, they are heavily involved in processes of sign recognition and meaningful tissue exploration. At each stage of their inward migration, germ plasma membranes act as semiotic interfaces allowing cells to interact with the surrounding extracellular milieu and experience the compatibility of selected developmental sequences. The question of which signaling pathways are activated at each developmental stage does not result from a strictly predetermined program instructing germ cell stemness. Rather, each developmental sequence is an open-ended semiotic relationship explored and gradually defined during evolution by the context-dependency of specific cell-to-cell interactions. In this way, any structural and functional novelty that has emerged in the course of germ cell interactions may be interpreted as an exaptation fixed in the species genome in response to specific environmental constraints. (shrink)

The egg behaves as a prospective cell sustaining the developmental processes of the future embryo. In biosemiotic terms, this apparent teleonomic behaviour can be accounted for without referring to the exclusive causal role played by its genetic makeup. We envision two different processes that are uniquely found in the oocyte: (1) the first involves the mechanisms by which large amounts of mRNA accumulate in the ooplasm to establish the embryo axes prior to fertilization; (2) the second involves transfer of an (...) excess of maternally supplied ribosomes to the oocyte to provide the future embryo with newly synthesized proteins. In this paper, we argue that the information required to sustain embryonic development is not due to any physical properties of the zygotic DNA and the maternal mRNAs, but to their spatially and temporally ordered relationship in the zygote’s internal space. (shrink)

Se percibe en el mundo académico de la teología y de la praxis pastoral, un giro general y englobante hacia el sujeto, la experiencia, la donación del amor, la misericordia, el mundo vivido de los hombres y la vivencia de la fe en la vida cotidiana de un mundo secularizado. Es un anhelo de salir de la simple conceptualización y de las discusiones sin fin sobre la fe, para dar paso a una vivencia y a una experiencia de lo creído (...) y a un testimonio que lo haga creíble. La revolución que ha propiciado el papa Francisco se fundamenta en una radicalidad del seguimiento de Jesús en la vida diaria, en las cosas sencillas, sin muchos malabares teológicos, y sí con una insistencia grande en el amor misericordioso de Dios. Este artículo quiere presentar algunas reflexiones que ayuden a fundamentar la donación experiencial del amor misericordioso, preguntándose por la experiencia, el lenguaje usado para expresarla y la libertad como respuesta del sujeto llamado en el momento del evento. (shrink)

El objetivo del articulo es mostrar que para Alfarabí la flexibilidad argumentativa derivada de la lógica aristotélica y vinculada con las innovaciones de la lógica estoica, puede dar lugar al "silogismo poético". Esta flexibilidad argumentativa es producto de la combinatoria de todos los silogismos, llamados "formas mixtas del silogismo", las cuales dan cabida al modo de razonar propio del silogismo poético, la analogía.

In this paper I will show some contributions from Averroes around some issues related to psychology and medicine. My intention is to establish some relations between the commentaries on De anima and the medical treatises. The itinerary is the following: a) I will show that, like Aristotle, Averroes conceives the soul as a set of biological capacities; b) De anima is a biological treatise, so there we can find some considerations that must be understood from a medical point of view, (...) specially, from the Arabic contributions on Anatomy. It is necessary, then, to point out the importance of the nerves and the brain to understand the narrow relation between the De anima and the Book of Medicine. We will find that Averroes does not understand the soul as a 'spiritual principle' but like something generated that makes possible several biological functions, from the vegetative and the sensitive to the intellectual ones. So, Averroes denies the Neoplatonic conception of the soul as something separated from the body. Averroes explains that the soul is the concretion of the biological process denominated "life". KEY WORDS – Averroes. Aristotle. De anima. Neoplatonism. Biology. Life. (shrink)

El artículo realiza un diagnóstico del arte contemporáneo y un análisis sobre el arte de la instalación a la luz de los conceptos y trabajos de Ilja Kabakow. El objetivo es mostrar que lejos de un agotamiento de la actividad artística, las nuevas técnicas y estilos abren un panorama conceptual sumamente amplio, que hacen del arte un lenguaje autónomo con infinitas alternativas de expresión.

En la presente investigación propongo el concepto de prudencia epistémica. La prudencia epistémica es la habilidad social para influir en los demás para fines socio-cognitivos. Como habilidad pragmática, la prudencia epistémica consiste no sólo en una descripción de los orígenes empíricos del error, sino en la habilidad social para evitar el error y otros males cognitivos frutos del egoísmo lógico y otros vicios epistémicos.

Any living organism interacts with and responds specifically to environmental molecules by expressing specific olfactory receptors. In this paper, this specificity will be first examined in causal terms with particular emphasis on the mechanisms controlling olfactory gene expression, cell-to-cell interactions and odor-decoding processes. However, this type of explanation does not entirely justify the role olfactory receptors have played during evolution, since they are also expressed ectopically in different organs and/or tissues. Homologous olfactory genes have in fact been found in such (...) diverse cells and/or organs as spermatozoa, testis and kidney where they are assumed to act as chemotactic sensors or renin modulators. To justify their functional diversity, homologous olfactory receptors are assumed to share the same basic role: that of conferring a self-identity to cells or tissues under varying environmental conditions. By adopting this standpoint, the functional attribution as olfactory or chemotactic sensors to these receptors should not be seen either as a cause conditioning receptor gene expression, or as a final effect resulting from genetically predetermined programs, but as a direct consequence of the environmental conditions olfactory receptor genes have explored during evolution. The association of odorant patterns with specific environmental or contextual situations makes their relationship semiotically triadic, due to the emergence of an interpretant capable of perceiving odorants as meaningful signs out of a noisy background. This perspective highlights the importance of odorant-receptor relationships as respect to the properties of the interacting partners. It is our contention that only when taken together can these different explanatory strategies provide a realistic account of how olfactory receptor genes have been structurally and functionally modified during evolution. (shrink)

The present study aims to apply a program based on Hellison’s Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility Model (TPSR), traditionally used in Physical Education, to other educational subjects and examine the assessment of the teachers who carried it out during the 2018-2019 school year. The program was applied over eight months of one academic year and during at least 60% of the weekly class hours. Initially, 586 students participated, 429 being experimental subjects with 30 teachers, of whom 16 participated in the (...) interviews carried out, all of them being Secondary Education teachers. We used qualitative methodology through content analysis carried out with ATLAS.ti 7.1.3. The instruments used to collect information were semi-structured recorded group interviews. The conclusion is that the Personal and Social Responsibility Model can be applied to all subjects in the curriculum and is adaptable to any content and type of student body. As a basis for future research, we suggest the application of the model by all teachers involved in the same school year and the participation of students’ families. (shrink)

Background: Electroconvulsive therapy is one of the most effective treatments for major depressive disorder. Recently, there has been increasing attention to evaluate the effect of ECT on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. This study aims to compare rs-fMRI of depressive disorder patients with healthy participants, investigate whether pre-ECT dynamic functional network connectivity network estimated from patients rs-fMRI is associated with an eventual ECT outcome, and explore the effect of ECT on brain network states.Method: Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were (...) collected from 119 patients with depression or depressive disorder, and 61 healthy participants, with an age mean of 52.25 years old. The pre-ECT and post-ECT Hamilton Depression Rating Scale were 25.59 ± 6.14 and 11.48 ± 9.07, respectively. Twenty-four independent components from default mode and cognitive control network were extracted, using group-independent component analysis from pre-ECT and post-ECT rs-fMRI. Then, the sliding window approach was used to estimate the pre-and post-ECT dFNC of each subject. Next, k-means clustering was separately applied to pre-ECT dFNC and post-ECT dFNC to assess three distinct states from each participant. We calculated the amount of time each subject spends in each state, which is called “occupancy rate” or OCR. Next, we compared OCR values between HC and DEP participants. We also calculated the partial correlation between pre-ECT OCRs and HDRS change while controlling for age, gender, and site. Finally, we evaluated the effectiveness of ECT by comparing pre- and post-ECT OCR of DEP and HC participants.Results: The main findings include depressive disorder patients had significantly lower OCR values than the HC group in state 2, where connectivity between cognitive control network and default mode network was relatively higher than other states, Pre-ECT OCR of state, with more negative connectivity between CCN and DMN components, is linked with the HDRS changes. This means that those DEP patients who spent less time in this state showed more HDRS change, and The post-ECT OCR analysis suggested that ECT increased the amount of time DEP patients spent in state 2.Conclusion: Our finding suggests that dynamic functional network connectivity features, estimated from CCN and DMN, show promise as a predictive biomarker of the ECT outcome of DEP patients. Also, this study identifies a possible underlying mechanism associated with the ECT effect on DEP patients. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to determine the accuracy of a brief informed consent quiz to detect consent comprehension in individuals with cognitive impairment and to explore the degree to which cognitive domains and recent substance use, independently, predict comprehension. We performed a secondary analysis of two cross-sectional studies in individuals with substance use disorders. The ICQ total score was used as the index test and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment as reference standard in receiver operating characteristic curves. Two (...) independent multiple binary logistic regression models were performed using cognitive domains and days of recent substance use as predictors of ICQ outcome. We analyzed data from 215 and 251 participants, respectively. The ICQ showed moderate accuracy for major cognitive impairment and lower accuracy for mild impairment. Optimal cutoff score was set at 10 points or less for detecting comprehension difficulty. Lower scores in Short-Term Memory, Attention, Language, and Orientation increased the probability of failing the ICQ. A procedure including both the ICQ and cognitive screening measure could improve the accuracy of consent comprehension assessments. (shrink)

The article presents a set of articles on the present and projection of the scholastic tradition. The starting point is the anthropological turn that, within scholasticism and at the beginning of the fourteenth century, privileged the study of ethics, law and politics and, consequently, the forced development of a moral theology concerned with the human coexistence. The second scholasticism, prolonging this tradition throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, could not remain oblivious to the implications of the profound changes that were (...) taking place: the Discovery of America, the Protestant Reformation, the development of a commercial proto-capitalism and the strengthening of the monarchies. As the Reformation was consolidated in a good part of the European territories, intellectual borders were raised between the various confessions. However - and this is the focus of the papers presented - these borders were porous and, despite the climate of confrontation, various indirect communication channels managed to maintain a single intellectual republic. (shrink)

In Leibniz’s New Essays stands out, within many important topics, his doctrine of innate ideas, which supposes the division between sense knowledge and innate knowledge and implies the distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact. That doctrine is particularly relevant for Leibniz’s philosophy, but implicitly entails the epistemological difference between belief, on one hand, and certainty, on the other. In this paper I outline, according to my interpretation, how Leibniz explains that humans can have certainty about innate ideas. (...) This topic is important because if Leibniz demonstrates the possibility of having certainty of those ideas, then, it is feasible to believe in its existence. However, if his explanation is unsatisfactory his metaphysical doctrine would be seriously weakened and, at the same time, both skepticism and Locke’s empiricist doctrine would be reinforced. (shrink)

This book highlights the powerful impact of some important Spanish Jesuits (Suárez, Acosta, Ribadeneira, Mariana) on some relevant English thinkers such as Locke, Bacon, and others, regarding politics, law and natural rights, an influence sometimes hidden and always controversial.

El lenguaje conceptual es la singularidad de la filosofía. En sus comienzos nos encontramos con la obra filosófica de Platón, la cual es aquí interrogada desde la experiencia del diálogo como una pedagogía del concepto, mostrando cómo la conversación platónica lleva implicada un camino hacia el concepto. Tomados algunos de sus Diálogos, mostramos cómo en ellos existe una orientación en torno a la manera como el pensador asume la tarea de una formación conceptual: de la doxa al saber, la llamada (...) Teoría de las Ideas de Platón, en sus distintos momentos, es la respuesta histórica a la necesidad del pensamiento de comprender lo sensible a la luz de lo inteligible y de encontrar en el concepto esa palabra común para el entendimiento mutuo, en el conjunto de las diversas experiencias humanas. (shrink)

The family of discounted Shapley values is analyzed for cooperative games in coalitional form. We consider the bargaining protocol of the alternating random proposer introduced in Hart and Mas-Colell. We demonstrate that the discounted Shapley values arise as the expected payoffs associated with the bargaining equilibria when a time discount factor is considered. In a second model, we replace the time cost with the probability that the game ends without agreements. This model also implements these values in transferable utility games, (...) moreover, the model implements the α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha $$\end{document}-consistent values in the nontransferable utility setting. (shrink)