What is Consciousness? Towards a Preliminary Definition

There is little or no general agreement about what researchers should focus on when studying consciousness. The most active scientific studies often use the methods of Cognitive Neuroscience and focus mainly on vision. Other aspects and contents of consciousness, namely thoughts and emotions, are much less studied, possibly leading to a biased view of what consciousness is and how it works. In this essay we describe what we call a referential nucleus, implicit in much of consciousness research. In this context, 'consciousness' refers to (partially) reportable content experienced by living individuals. We then discuss the philosophical concept of a phenomenal world and another contemporary view that conscious experience involves, besides integration of information in the brain, participation in action-perception cycles in a natural, social and cultural environment. These views imply a need to reconceptualize 'qualia' as the conscious aspect of subjective experiences, thus stating properties of consciousness that pose serious challenges to an exclusive approach via Cognitive Neuroscience, because experimental settings oversimplify conscious experiences, narrowing them to fragments correlated with measured brain activity and behaviour In conclusion we argue that a science of consciousness requires a broad interdisciplinary range of research, including qualitative methods from the Human Sciences.

Phenomenology of OCD: Lessons from a large multicenter study and implications for ICD-11

This study aimed to investigate the phenomenology of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), addressing specific questions about the nature of obsessions and compulsions, and to contribute to the World Health Organization's (WHO) revision of OCD diagnostic guidelines. Data from 1001 patients from the Brazilian Research Consortium on Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum Disorders were used. Patients were evaluated by trained clinicians using validated instruments, including the Dimensional Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale, the University of Sao Paulo Sensory Phenomena Scale, and the Brown Assessment of Beliefs Scale. The aims were to compare the types of sensory phenomena (SP, subjective experiences that precede or accompany compulsions) in OCD patients with and without tic disorders and to determine the frequency of mental compulsions, the co-occurrence of obsessions and compulsions, and the range of insight. SP were common in the whole sample, but patients with tic disorders were more likely to have physical sensations and urges only. Mental compulsions occurred in the majority of OCD patients. It was extremely rare for OCD patients to have obsessions without compulsions. A wide range of insight into OCD beliefs was observed, with a small subset presenting no insight. The data generated from this large sample will help practicing clinicians appreciate the full range of OCD symptoms and confirm prior studies in smaller samples the degree to which insight varies. These findings also support specific revisions to the WHO's diagnostic guidelines for OCD, such as describing sensory phenomena, mental compulsions and level of insight, so that the world-wide recognition of this disabling disorder is increased. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

O corpo: entre o sofrimento e a criatividade

Bodily and gender subjective experiences challenge Psychoanalysis to reconsider its conceptual apparatus and to sustain an ethics which enables a careful and attentive listening. It puts into question the existence of a taboo in relation to the body that would prevent this listening. Bodily interventions and changes observed in transsexuals and transgender people experiences have been the subject of efforts to approximate Psychoanalysis and Queer Theory. We believe that this approximation will bring us the possibility to formulate concepts that might clear up the understanding of these experiences. In order to investigate the status of the body we separate it from gender and sexual norms by choosing three interlocutors: psychiatry - the hormone treatment of adolescent transsexuals; art and biotechnological feminism. This way of considering things allows us to take into account different aspects of deconstruction and reconstruction of the body.