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PubMed2003

Visual object and face processing in mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease: from segmentation to imagination.

Little is known about the fate of higher level visual perception and visual mental imagery in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this study, we assessed these abilities in a group of mild-to-moderate AD patients using tasks selected to satisfy two main criteria. First, they have been shown to be sensitive to impairments of perception and imagery caused by other neurological conditions. Second, they test specific stages of visual perception and cognition in a reasonably selective manner. These stages were (in their normal order of occurrence during perception): the segmentation of different local points of the visual field into regions belonging to distinct objects; the representation of the shapes of these segmented regions in the image; the construction of more abstract shape representations that possess constancy over changes in size, location, orientation or illumination (assessed separately for faces and objects); the use of these perceived shape representations to access stored shape representations; and the access of lexical semantic representations from these high-level visual representations. Additional tasks tested the top-down activation of earlier visual representations from the semantic level in visual mental imagery. Our findings indicate small, but in most cases reliable, impairments in visual perception, which are independent of degree of cognitive decline. Deficits in basic shape processing influenced performance on some higher level visual tasks, but did not contribute to poor performance on face processing, or to the profound deficit on object naming. The latter of these is related to semantic-lexical impairment.

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Imagination.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

History, 18th Century↗
PubMed2000

Changes in autonomic and EEG patterns induced by hypnotic imagination of aversive stimuli in man.

Autonomic and electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to aversive stimuli presented by means of hypnotic suggestion have been studied in man.Healthy volunteers with simple phobia were screened for susceptibility to hypnosis. The experimental paradigm included periods of rest during which the hypnotized subjects were asked to produce an emotionally neutral mental image and periods of emotional activation in which they were asked to image a phobic object. Heart rate (HR), respiratory frequency (RF) and EEG were processed to obtain the HR-related indexes of sympatho-vagal balance and the EEG spectral components. The results showed a significant increase in HR and RF with a shift of the sympatho-vagal indexes towards a sympathetic predominance during the hypnotic emotional activation. EEG activity showed a significant increase in the gamma band with a left fronto-central prevalence. There was also a less pronounced increase in the beta band. In conclusion, by means of hypnosis, autonomic and behavioral responses to fear-like stimuli can be induced in man in a reproducible and controlled manner. Such a paradigm could be applied in human neuroimaging studies to identify central nervous structures that modulate stress and fear-related reactions.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

The products of the imagination: psychoanalytic theory and postmodern literary criticism.

This article considers some of the affinities between postmodern literary theory and the psychoanalytic theories concerned with intersubjective phenomena. Postmodern literary theory is described briefly, and it is argued that one of its major concerns is the nature of, and the political and cultural influences on, subjectivity and identity. Despite that, postmodernism generally, and literary postmodernism in particular, can be said to lack a theory of the psychological and interpersonal dimensions of the experience of self. This article contends that the more relational schools of psychoanalytic theory can provide an example of the construction of selfhood that is of importance to contemporary and postmodern literary criticism. The academy has, to a considerable extent identified 'psychoanalysis' with the work of Jacques Lacan, but since the 1980s the work of such theorists as Jane Flax and Jessica Benjamin, building on the work of Nancy Chodorow, have increasingly opened up the possibilities of relational and object relations theory for literary studies. The relational psychoanalytic theories operate in the same epistemological universe as postmodern literary criticism, congruent with the postmodern idea of 'truth' as constructed and relational, and selfhood as shifting, contingent, and always-in-process. Particular attention is paid to the work of Wilfred Bion, whose understanding of self provides an account both of the failure of meaning, and of the development of mind. Some examples of a relational approach to literary analysis are provided.

Humans↗
PubMed2004

Imaging bodies, imagining relations: narratives of queer women and "assisted conception".

This article is based on ethnographic research conducted between 1998 and 2000 in British Columbia, Canada. In this article Luce brings together the narratives of queer women she interviewed about their experiences of trying to become parents with her own stories about doing the research. Both sets of stories explore the ways in which relationships between people are reproduced and represented through images of sexuality, reproduction, queerness, parents, and families. Shifting between telling about the tensions she experienced while doing ethnographic fieldwork and retelling women's stories about how their relationships to partners, fetuses, babies, and donors were perceived, the article draws attention to both political and methodological questions.

Attitude↗
PubMed1998

Harnessing the imagination. Mental simulation, self-regulation, and coping.

Mental simulation provides a window on the future by enabling people to envision possibilities and develop plans for bringing those possibilities about. In moving oneself from a current situation toward an envisioned future one, the anticipation and management of emotions and the initiation and maintenance of problem-solving activities are fundamental tasks. In the program of research described in this article, mental simulation of the process for reaching a goal or of the dynamics of an unfolding stressful event produced progress in achieving those goals or resolving those events. Envisioning successful completion of a goal or resolution of a stressor--recommendations derived from the self-help literature--did not. Discussion centers on the characteristics of effective and ineffective mental simulations and their relation to self-regulatory processes.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1999

Imaginative suggestibility and hypnotizability: an empirical analysis.

Hypnotic and nonhypnotic suggestibility were investigated in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, nonhypnotic suggestibility was suppressed when measured after hypnotic suggestibility, whereas hypnotic suggestibility was not affected by the order of assessment. Experiment 2 confirmed a small but significant effect of hypnosis on suggestibility when nonhypnotic suggestibility was measured first. Nonhypnotic suggestibility was correlated with absorption, fantasy proneness, motivation, and response expectancy, but only expectancy predicted suggestibility when the other variables were controlled. Behavioral response to hypnosis was predicted by nonhypnotic suggestibility, motivation, and expectancy in a model accounting for 53% of the variance. Experiential response to hypnotic suggestion was predicted only by nonhypnotic suggestibility. Unexpectedly, hypnosis was found to decrease suggestibility for a substantial minority of participants.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Imagining stereotypes away: the moderation of implicit stereotypes through mental imagery.

Research on implicit stereotypes has raised important questions about an individual's ability to moderate and control stereotypic responses. With few strategies shown to be effective in moderating implicit effects, the present research investigates a new strategy based on focused mental imagery. Across 5 experiments, participants who engaged in counterstereotypic mental imagery produced substantially weaker implicit stereotypes compared with participants who engaged in neutral, stereotypic, or no mental imagery. This reduction was demonstrated with a variety of measures, eliminating explanations based on response suppression or shifts in response criterion. Instead, the results suggest that implicit stereotypes are malleable, and that controlled processes, such as mental imagery, may influence the stereotyping process at its early as well as later stages.

Female↗
PubMed2001

The impact of imagining personalized versus standardized urge scenarios on cigarette craving and autonomic reactivity.

A cue-reactivity paradigm was used to investigate the effects of personalizing imagery materials on smokers' reactivity to smoking cues. Cigarette smokers (n = 60) described situations used to create 4 personalized imagery scripts: positive mood/urge, positive mood/no urge, neutral mood/urge, and neutral mood/no urge. Their reactivity to these scripts as well as 4 standardized imagery scripts and 4 personalized scripts of another smoker was assessed. Personalization led to greater vividness, positive mood, and relevance ratings compared with the other 2 script types. Personalization of urge material did not enhance craving beyond that generated by the other 2 script types but did suppress craving under no-urge conditions. Findings stand in contrast to current conceptualizations of craving regarding the proposed impact of personalization on craving and suggest alternative mechanisms by which imagery cues influence craving generation.

Adult↗