A hippocampal patient is described who shows preserved item recognition and simple recognition-based recollection but impaired recall and associative recognition. These data and other evidence suggest that contrary to Aggleton & Brown's target article, Papez circuit damage impairs only complex item-item-context recollection. A patient with perirhinal cortex damage and a delayed global memory deficit, apparently inconsistent with A&B's framework, is also described.

The question of whether a Christian can be a member of his or her own church and guest member in another is itself a fruit of the ecumenical movement. In the Netherlands this question has been on the agenda of the Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference and of the so called Small Synod of the SoW-churches. What were the motives of people who asked for this double or guest membership? How did the church authorities and their advisory bodies respond to their (...) requests? And what arguments do they produce? It appears from the discussion that the terminology of guest, double or plural membership is rather clumsy. What is really at stake is the communion between the churches on the local level that is enhanced by their sharing of each other’s spiritual resources. Individual Christians who, while remaining members of their own church, contribute to the life of another church, participate in the shaping of this communion, that, though yet imperfect, is real. (shrink)

BackgroundBefore participation in medical research an informed consent must be obtained. This study investigates whether the readability of patient information and consent documents corresponds to the average educational level of participants in rheumatological studies in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway.Methods24 PICDs from studies were collected and readability was assessed independently using the Gunning’s Fog Index and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook grading.ResultsThe mean score for the FOG and SMOG grades were 14.2 and 14.2 respectively. The mean FOG and SMOG grades were (...) 12.7 and 13.3 in the Dutch studies, 15.0 and 14.9 in the Danish studies, and 14.6 and 14.3 in the Norwegian studies, respectively. Out of the 2865 participants, more than 57 % had a lower educational level than the highest readability score calculated in the individual study.ConclusionsAs the readability level of the PICDs did not match the participants’ educational level, consent may not have been valid, as the participants may have had a limited understanding of what they agreed to participate in. There should be more focus on the readability of PICDs. National guidelines for how to write clear and unambiguous PICDs in simple and easily understandable language could increase the focus on the readability of PICD. (shrink)

A framework to explain item-specific implicit and explicit memory is proposed. It explores the mutual implications of four kinds of processing mechanism that are familiar in the literature. The first kind of mechanisms are those related to memory representation which include the kind of storage processes that subserve the maintenance of different types of information in memory. It is argued that there is very little evidence to suggest that fact and event memory require the postulation of algorithmically distinct kinds of (...) storage mechanism. The second mechanism is the enhanced fluency of activation of representation triggered by the encoding of components of those representations that results from the storage changes mediating memory. It is argued that enhanced fluency underlies all item-specific implicit memory and that the same kind of fluency process is probably involved regardless of the type of memory representation fluently activated. The third type of mechanism is the kind of attribution process that is triggered by fluency and gives rise to aware memory feelings as well as specific perceptual and aesthetic feelings The final mechanism is active search, which is an often present feature of explicit memory, and involves the effortful mediation of the frontal lobes. How the interactions between these different mechanisms accounts for item-specific implicit memory, recognition and recall is discussed, as is the framework's relationship with other current views about the mechanisms underlying memory. The best available methods of measuring enhanced fluency, familiarity, and recollection are reviewed so as to indicate the ways in which the framework may be tested. (shrink)

This work brings together Philip van der Eijk's previously published essays on the close connections that existed between medicine and philosophy throughout antiquity. Medical authors such as the Hippocratic writers, Diocles, Galen, Soranus and Caelius Aurelianus elaborated on philosophical methods such as causal explanation, definition and division and applied key concepts such as the notion of nature to their understanding of the human body. Similarly, philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were highly valued for their contributions to medicine. This (...) interaction was particularly striking in the study of the human soul in its relation to the body, as illustrated by approaches to specific topics such as intellect, sleep and dreams, and diet and drugs. With a detailed introduction surveying the subject as a whole and an essay on Aristotle's treatment of sleep, this wide-ranging and accessible collection is essential reading for the student of ancient philosophy and science. (shrink)

In open heterogeneous multi-agent systems, communication is hampered by lack of common ontologies. Ontologies may differ in naming conventions, granularity and scope. In such an environment, the agents must possess the right conversational skills to effectively exchange information even when the speaker's ontology is only approximately translatable to the hearer's ontology. Furthermore, the agents must be able to autonomously establish an ontology translation by exchanging parts of their ontologies. In this paper, we propose a layered communication protocol in which the (...) agents gradually build towards a semantically integrated system by establishing minimal and effective common ontologies. We tested our system, called ANEMONE, on a number of heterogeneous news agents. We show how these agents successfully exchange information on news articles, despite initial difficulties caused by heterogeneous ontologies. (shrink)

The tobacco industry’s involvement in the electronic cigarette research that informs public health policy is controversial. On the one hand, some are concerned that their involvement presents conflicts of interest that bias research outputs and invalidate the policies that use them. On the other hand, some have argued that the tobacco industry may support valid research and contribute to the goals of public health, for instance, if the interests of the e‐cigarette industry could be part of a tobacco smoking cessation (...) policy. We approach this debate from the ethical perspective of the public interest and the public good, considering how legitimate researchers can square their expert opinion with validating tobacco industry‐funded research, given the perfidy of the tobacco industry and paucity of robust, conclusive evidence on the public health impacts of liberalizing e‐cigarette use. (shrink)

Whether its title, ύπέρ τοῦ μ γεννᾶν is authentic or not, the work transmitted as ‘Book X’ of Aristotle's History of Animals deals with a wide range of possible causes for failure to conceive and generate offspring. It sets out by saying that these causes may lie in both partners or in either of them, but in the sequel the author devotes most of his attention to problems of the female body. Thus he discusses the state of the uterus, the (...) occurrence and modalities of menstruation, the condition and position of the mouth of the uterus, the emission of fluid during sleep , physical weakness or vigour on awakening after this nocturnal emission, the occurrence of flatulence in the uterus and the ability to discharge this, moistness or dryness of the uterus, wind-pregnancy, and spasms in the uterus. Then he briefly considers the possibility that the cause of infertility lies with the male, but this is disposed of in one sentence: if you want to find out whether the man is to blame, the author says, just let him have intercourse with another woman and see whether that produces a satisfactory result . The writer also acknowledges that the problem may lie in a failure of two otherwise healthy partners to match sexually, or as he puts it, to ‘run at the same pace’ ἲσοδρομῆσαι during intercourse, but he does not go into this possibility at great length , and he proceeds to discuss further particulars on the female side. (shrink)

The value of accuracy and quantity as memory measures is assessed. It is argued that (1) accuracy does not measure correspondence (monitoring) because it ignores omissions and correct rejections, (2) quantity is confounded with monitoring in recall, and (3) in recognition, if targets and foils are unequal, both measures, even together, still ignore correct rejections.

After having defined the KARO logic for specifying intelligent agents in earlier work we now turn to the question how to realise agents specified in the KARO framework. To this end we look at agent programming languages that we have defined, and investigate how programs in these languages can be linked to the KARO logic.

This edited book provides an in-depth examination of the implications of neuroscience for the criminal justice system. It draws together experts from across law, neuroscience, medicine, psychology, criminology, and ethics, and offers an important contribution to current debates at the intersection of these fields. It examines how neuroscience might contribute to fair and more effective criminal justice systems, and how neuroscientific insights and information can be integrated into criminal law in a way that respects fundamental rights and moral values. -/- (...) The book’s first part approaches these questions from a legal perspective, followed by ethical accounts in part two. Its authors address a wide range of topics and approaches: some more theoretical, like those regarding the foundations of punishment; others are more practical, like those concerning the use of brain scans in the courtroom. Together, they illustrate the thoroughly interdisciplinary nature of the debate, in which science, law and ethics are closely intertwined. It will appeal in particular to students and scholars of law, neuroscience, criminology, socio-legal studies and philosophy. (shrink)

La route antique de Mégare à Thèbes par le défilé du Kandili, dont on a contesté à tort l'existence, correspond à un chemin encore très utilisé au xixe siècle, le Koulouriotiko monopati. Description des restes antiques de cette route et des sites antiques situés tout le long. Les témoignages des historiens antiques sur son utilisation.

This paper presents a framework for the generation of coherent elementary conversational sequences at the speech act level. We will embrace the notion of a cooperative dialogue game in which two players produce speech acts to transfer relevant information with respect to their commitments. Central to the approach is that participants try to achieve some sort of balanced cognitive state as a result of speech act generation and interpretation. Cognitive states of the participants change as a result of the interpretation (...) of speech acts and these changes provoke the production of a subsequent speech act. Describing the properties and the dynamics of the mental constructs that constitute the participants’ cognitive states, such as beliefs and commitments, in relation to the various dialogue contributions is an essential aspect of the game. Although simple in its basic form, the framework enables us to produce abstract conversations with some properties that agree strikingly with coherence structures found in, for instance, Conversation Analysis. (shrink)

Exploration of Alfred North Whitehead's influence on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's ontology of nature.

Moral case deliberation (MCD) is a specific form of clinical ethics, aiming to stimulate ethical reflection in daily practice in order to improve the quality of care. This article focuses on the implementation of MCD in nursing homes and the questions how and where to organize MCD. The purpose of this study was to evaluate one way of organizing MCD in two Dutch nursing homes. In both of these nursing homes the MCD groups had a heterogeneous composition and were organized (...) apart from existing institutional communication structures. As part of a naturalistic evaluation, systematic observations, interviews and focus groups were completed. The findings indicate that the heterogeneous composition and MCD meetings separate from existing structures have benefits. However, the participants also reported negative experiences. This gives rise to the question whether a mixed MCD group which meets separately is an effective way to embed MCD as an instrument for reflection on moral issues in daily practice. We conclude that there is no single answer to that question. In the end, the two implementation strategies (i.e. within existing communication structures and a mixed MCD group) can be complementary to each other. (shrink)

This article presents the results of an experiment that completely measures the utility function and probability weighting function for different positive and negative monetary outcomes, using a representative sample of N = 1,935 from the general public. The results confirm earlier findings in the lab, suggesting that utility is less pronounced than what is found in classical measurements where expected utility is assumed. Utility for losses is found to be convex, consistent with diminishing sensitivity, and the obtained loss-aversion coefficient of (...) 1.6 is moderate but in agreement with contemporary evidence. The estimated probability weighting functions have an inverse-S shape and they imply pessimism in both domains. These results show that probability weighting is also an important phenomenon in the general population. Women and lower educated individuals are found to be more risk averse, in agreement with common findings. In contrast to previous studies that ascribed gender differences in risk attitudes solely to differences in the degree utility curvature, however, our results show that this finding is primarily driven by loss aversion and, for women, also by a more pessimistic psychological response toward the probability of obtaining the best possible outcome. (shrink)