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Few classic philosophers are as popular as Immanuel Kant. Kant's ideas seem to be used ubiquitously in contemporary aesthetics discussions. Here, we critically review the way his ideas are being applied in empirical research. We focus on the four moments presented in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (first published in 1790) and show that Kant's precise (and sometimes counter-intuitive) use of language paired with his complex transcendental framework make interpretation of his work difficult. In some cases, colliding terminological systems easily lead to misinterpretations of his ideas. Further complicating matters, Kant developed a coherent and static description of judgments on the beautiful, while modern empiricists conduct experiments to construct a dynamic explanation of aesthetic experiences. These two approaches are difficult to reconcile. We outline points of tension and also areas where his ideas relate to and might motivate productive research questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sandeep Vaishnavi [1,2] Jesse Calhoun [1] Anjan Chatterjee [1,2] Abstract * Behavioral and neurophysiological studies suggest that the brain constructs different representations of space. Among these representations are personal and [...]

Decisions can be as trivial as which coffee to order or which wine to buy, or as consequential as who to marry or which job to accept. Yet even the [...]

Importance: More than half of patients with acute ischemic stroke have minor neurologic deficits (National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale [NIHSS] score of 0-5) at presentation. Although prior major trials of alteplase included patients with low NIHSS scores, few without clearly disabling deficits were enrolled.Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of alteplase in patients with NIHSS scores of 0 to 5 whose deficits are not clearly disabling.Design, Setting, and Participants: The PRISMS trial was designed as a 948-patient, phase 3b, double-blind, double-placebo, multicenter randomized clinical trial of alteplase compared with aspirin for emergent stroke at 75 stroke hospital networks in the United States. Patients with acute ischemic stroke whose deficits were scored as 0 to 5 on the NIHSS and judged not clearly disabling and in whom study treatment could be initiated within 3 hours of onset were eligible and enrolled from May 30, 2014, to December 20, 2016, with final follow-up on March 22, 2017.Interventions: Participants were randomized to receive intravenous alteplase at the standard dose (0.9 mg/kg) with oral placebo (n = 156) or oral aspirin, 325 mg, with intravenous placebo (n = 157).Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was the difference in favorable functional outcome, defined as a modified Rankin Scale score of 0 or 1 at 90 days via Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test stratified by pretreatment NIHSS score, age, and time from onset to treatment. Because of early termination of the trial, prior to unblinding or interim analyses, the plan was revised to examine the risk difference of the primary outcome by a linear model adjusted for the same factors. The primary safety end point was symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (sICH) within 36 hours of intravenous study treatment.Results: Among 313 patients enrolled at 53 stroke networks (mean age, 62 [SD, 13] years; 144 [46%] women; median NIHSS score, 2 [interquartile range {IQR}, 1-3]; median time to treatment, 2.7 hours [IQR, 2.1-2.9]), 281 (89.8%) completed the trial. At 90 days, 122 patients (78.2%) in the alteplase group vs 128 (81.5%) in the aspirin group achieved a favorable outcome (adjusted risk difference, -1.1%; 95% CI, -9.4% to 7.3%). Five alteplase-treated patients (3.2%) vs 0 aspirin-treated patients had sICH (risk difference, 3.3%; 95% CI, 0.8%-7.4%).Conclusions and Relevance: Among patients with minor nondisabling acute ischemic stroke, treatment with alteplase vs aspirin did not increase the likelihood of favorable functional outcome at 90 days. However, the very early study termination precludes any definitive conclusions, and additional research may be warranted.Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02072226. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To the Editor: In their article 'Monitoring and Manipulating Brain Function' (HCR, May-June 2004), Martha Farah and Paul Wolpe review ways in which research in cognitive neuroscience is bearing fruit, [...]

Sir, Although the most common cause of foot, drop is a lesion of the fifth lumbar root, based upon the homuncular topography of the primary motor cortex, one would predict [...]

Data from neuropsychology do not support the idea that the primary visual cortex necessarily displays internal visual images. However, the choice of formats used in human cognition is not restricted to depictive or descriptive representations. Nestled between pictures and propositions, primitive spatial schemas with simple analog features extracted from pictorial scenes may play a subtle but wide role in cognition.

Metaphors are comparisons that link dissimilar conceptual domains. We hypothesized that the aptness of a metaphor is linked to the reader's experience of beauty, and that age and expertise influence these aesthetic judgments. We had young adults, literary experts, and elderly adults rate metaphors for beauty or aptness. Experimental materials consisted of single-sentence novel metaphors whose familiarity, figurativeness, imageability, interpretability, and overall valence ratings were known. Results suggest that beauty and aptness of metaphors are linked for elderly adults but are orthogonal for young adults and literary experts. Elderly participants seem to conflate emotional content with aptness. Young adults are most swayed by a perceived feeling of familiarity when rating for aptness, but not for beauty. Literary experts are relatively unaffected by the psycholinguistic variables, suggesting an emotionally distanced approach to these sentences. Individual differences in literary training and life experience have varying effects on the aesthetic experience of metaphor in regard to beauty and aptness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the cognitive neuroscience of metaphor has evolved, so too have the theoretical questions of greatest interest. To keep pace with these developments, in the present study we generated a large set of metaphoric and literal sentence pairs ideally suited to addressing the current methodological and conceptual needs of metaphor researchers. In particular, the need has emerged to distinguish metaphors along three dimensions: the grammatical class of their base terms, the sensorimotor features of their base terms, and the syntactic form in which the base terms appear. To meet this need, we generated nominal metaphors (and matched literal sentences) using entity nouns as the base terms, with the intention that they be used in concert with already published sets of predicate metaphors or nominal metaphors using event nouns. Using the results of three norming experiments, we provide 120 pairs of closely matched metaphoric and literal sentences that are characterized along 14 dimensions: 11 at the sentence level (length, frequency, concreteness, familiarity, naturalness, imageability, figurativeness, interpretability, ease of interpretation, valence, and valence judgment reaction time), and three related to the base term (visual, motion, and auditory imagery). These items extend previously published stimuli, filling an extant gap in metaphor research and allowing for tests of new behavioral and neural hypotheses about metaphor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]