Safety in road crossing of children with cerebral palsy

Aim: Children with cerebral palsy (CP) are regularly confronted with physical constraints during locomotion. Because abnormalities in motor control are often related to perceptual deficits, the aim of this study was to find out whether children with CP were able to walk across a road as safely as their non-handicapped peers. Method: Ten children with CP and 10 non-handicapped children aged 4-14 y were asked to cross a simulated road if they felt the situation was safe. Results: With respect to safety and accuracy of crossings, the behaviour of children with CP was comparable with that of non-handicapped children. However, a closer examination of children's individual crossing behaviour showed considerable differences within the CP group. In contrast to children with damage to the left hemisphere, children with damage to the right hemisphere made unsafe decisions and did not compensate for them by increasing walking speed.Conclusion: the differences in unsafe behaviour and in the ability to compensate for it within the group of children with CP might be related to damage to specific regions of the brain that are involved in the processing of spatial or temporal information.

What affective neuroscience means for science of consciousness

The field of affective neuroscience has emerged from the efforts of Jaak Panksepp in the 1990s and reinforced by the work of, among others, Joseph LeDoux in the 2000s. It is based on the ideas that affective processes are supported by brain structures that appeared earlier in the phylogenetic scale (as the periaqueductal gray area), they run in parallel with cognitive processes, and can influence behaviour independently of cognitive judgements. This kind of approach contrasts with the hegemonic concept of conscious processing in cognitive neurosciences, which is based on the identification of brain circuits responsible for the processing of (cognitive) representations. Within cognitive neurosciences, the frontal lobes are assigned the role of coordinators in maintaining affective states and their emotional expressions under cognitive control. An intermediary view is the Damasio-Bechara Somatic Marker model, which puts cognition under partial somatic-affective control. We present here our efforts to make a synthesis of these views, by proposing the existence of two interacting brain circuits; the first one in charge of cognitive processes and the second mediating feelings about cognitive contents. The coupling of the two circuits promotes an endogenous feedback that supports conscious processes. Within this framework, we present the defence that detailed study of both affective and cognitive processes, their interactions, as well of their respective brain networks, is necessary for a science of consciousness.© MSM 2013.

Injustiça na escola e gênero: representações de alunos (as) de escolas particulares e públicas de ensino fundamental e médio da cidade de Presidente Prudente-SP

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

O conceito de resistência em Benjamin e Adorno

Este trabalho pretende, com base em alguns textos de Theodor Adorno e de Walter Benjamin, discutir o significado dos conceitos de “resistência” e de “conformismo” para tais autores. Esses conceitos não são elaborados de modo explícito ou sistemático por ambos; ao contrário, são sutilmente relacionados a alguns aspectos da vida social contemporânea, como o desaparecimento da experiência, o declínio da narração, a perda do sentido da história e a conseqüente supressão da memória, e o surgimento da indústria cultural. Dessa maneira, explicitar esses conceitos, especialmente quando referidos a essas questões, ajuda-nos não só a entender a concepção de Benjamin e de Adorno, mas também seus juízos sobre a cena cultural do início do século XX - sem, todavia, pretender estabelecer um modelo do que possa ser a resistência ou o conformismo.

La formación de personalidades éticas: representaciones de sí y moral

The article presents the studies of a current investigation among 75 adolescents from 12 to 15 years old, students of private schools of Campinas city, that have as main objective to notice a possible correspondence among the moral judgements and the representation that individuals have about themselves. From the feeling of admiration the studies bring out the representations of these individuals and answer a questioning if they would have an ethics character or not and if these would correspond to their moral judgements. The results point out to a correspondence among those whose representations of themselves are characterized by more evolved ethics contents and judgements as for sensitivity to the feelings of the characters involved in the situations described. Such studies validate the intention of this article to discuss the correspondences between ethics (how the individual sees himself/herself) and moral (how he/she judges the moral of the situations).