This thesis identifies, in Nancy's The Fall of Sleep, a crucial critique of phenomenology. A criticism that demarcates, or limits, phenomenology in declaring: “There is no phenomenology of sleep”. Taking-up this challenge, we consider a number of ways that phenomenologists have, and could, approach sleep. Our thesis, however, does not simply offer possible responses to the problem but also finds, in these answers, important insights into the essence of the charge itself. Sleep and phenomenology are found to be mutually de-limiting – each binds the other, whilst offering foundational insights into its counterpart. Fundamentally, we bring phenomenologies of sleep, as opposed to simply phenomenology, into dialogue with this, Nancean, critique of phenomenology and with Nancy's account of sleep itself. We describe the distinctly different slumbering interpretations of sleep present, and conspicuously absent, in the work of: Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas. Part I, after initially elaborating the challenge, presents a direct Husserlian counter, via a recent reconstituting of Husserl's late notes on sleep. The strengths and weaknesses of this phenomenological investigation sharpens the problem of sleep and leads us to pull back from consciousness-centred accounts. Part II, in contrast, develops our own hypothetical Heideggerian answer. This Part, the longest, uses Heidegger's existential and comparative analytics to ask ‘Does Dasein sleep?' This question reveals internal ambiguities of sleep – positioned between existence, life, and death. Part III withdraws from Heideggerian thinking through Levinas's incisive, and early, interpretation of sleep. This Levinasian retracting opens the possibility of returning to Nancy's challenge and corresponding description of sleep. Now this radical account is located in relation to, and in communication with, the somnological-phenomenological findings we have awakened in our thesis. The thesis ends by indicating a possible, future, return back from sleep to phenomenology – a dream, still hazy from sleep, of a somnolent phenomenology.

This thesis breaks new ground by attending to two contemporary developments in art and science. In art, computer-mediated interactive artworks comprise creative engagement between collaborating practitioners and a creatively participating audience, erasing all notions of a dividing line between them. The procedural character of this type of communicative real-time interaction replaces the concept of a finished artwork with a ‘field of artistic communication'. In science, the field of creativity research investigates creative thought as mental operations that combine and reorganise extant knowledge structures. A recent paradigm shift in cognition research acknowledges that cognition is embodied. Neither embodiment in cognition nor the ‘field of artistic communication' in interactive art have been assimilated by creativity research. This thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine the embodied cognitive processes in a ‘field of artistic communication' using a media artwork called Sim-Suite as a case study research strategy. This interactive installation, created and exhibited in an authentic real-world context, engages three people to play on wobble-boards. The thesis argues that creative processes related to Sim-Suite operate within a continuum, encompassing collaborative artistic creation and cooperative creative participation. This continuum is investigated via mixed methods, conducting studies with qualitative and quantitative analysis. These are interpreted through a theoretical lens of embodied cognition principles, the 4E approaches. The results obtained demonstrate that embodied cognitive processes in Sim-Suite's ‘field of artistic communication' function on a continuum. We give an account of the creative process continuum relating our findings to the ‘embedded-extended-enactive lens', empirical studies in embodied cognition and creativity research. Within this context a number of topics and sub-themes are identified. We discuss embodied communication, aspects of agency, forms of coordination, levels of evaluative processes and empathetic foundation. The thesis makes conceptual, empirical and methodological contributions to creativity research.

Reversal learning deficits are a feature of many neuropsychiatric disorders, most notably schizophrenia. These deficits could be due, in part, to altered ability to dissipate either or both associations of previous positive (perseverance) and negative (learned non-reward) valence. Studies reported in this thesis developed an egocentric maze task and a visuospatial operant task for separate assessments of spatial reversal learning, perseverance and learned non-reward in mice. These tasks were subsequently used to assess the cognitive causes for altered performance after manipulations to brain systems recognised to be involved in reversal learning and relevant for human psychopathology, with a specific focus on schizophrenia. NMDA receptor (NMDAr) antagonism through acute phencyclidine did not affect reversal learning in the operant task, but caused general impairments in the maze task. Orbitofrontal (OFC) lesioned mice showed perseverative impairments in the operant task. Mice treated with the 5-HT2C receptor (5-HT2CR) antagonist SB242084 and 5-HT2CR KO mice showed facilitated reversal learning and decreased learned nonreward in the operant task. In the maze task, SB242084 decreased perseverance but increased learned non-reward, while 5-HT2CR KO mice showed perseverance and discrimination learning deficits. The final experimental chapter investigated the effect of SB242084 on touch-screen visual reversal learning in the rat. SB242084 retarded learning in this task. These studies demonstrate that previously non-reinforced associations can be of considerable importance in tasks of cognitive flexibility. The studies also show that the NMDAr, the 5-HT2CR, and the OFC, are involved in reversal learning and can modulate mechanisms related to both perseverance and learned non-reward. Moreover, in reversal learning, few effects of manipulations affecting PFC-functioning, or activity at the NMDAr and 5-HT2CR, generalise across the procedures in the visuospatial, egocentric spatial, and visual domains.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--James Madison University, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references.

Fatigue is a state that, although researched for many years, is still not completely understood. Alongside this lack of a general understanding of fatigue is a lack of knowledge on the processes involved in the regulation of fatigue. The existing theories relating to regulation are focussed on mental effort regulation, suggesting that performance outcomes are co-ordinated by effort regulation that functions by making alterations to physiological processes and strategic adjustments at a cognitive level in response to cognitive demands and goals. Since fatigue is a multi-dimensional construct with psychological, physiological, and behavioural effects that respond to endogenous and exogenous variables, it follows then that fatigue assessment techniques ought to include multi-dimensional measures to acquire a holistic depiction of the fatigue symptom. This study aimed to assess whether or not a mechanism that regulated fatigue during sustained task execution could be identified and whether this mechanism resulted in regulation patterns that were distinct to a specific task. An additional aim of the study was on assessing whether the manner in which performance, psychophysical and subjective variables were modified over time followed a similar regulation pattern. The research design was aimed at inducing task-related fatigue twice on two different occasions in the same participants and evaluating the resultant changes in fatigue manifestation. This was done to assess the ability of participants to cope with fatigue as a result of previous experience. The research protocol included three tasks executed for an hour aimed at targeting and taxing the sensory, cognitive, motor resources, each task performed twice. 60 participants were recruited to participate in the current study, with 20 participants – 10 males and 10 females – randomly assigned to each of the three tasks. The cognitive resource task consisted of a memory recall task relying on working memory intended to evaluate the extent of reductions in memory and attention. The sensory resource task consisted of a reading task measuring visual scanning and perception designed to evaluate the extent of reduced vigilance. The motor resource task consisted of a modified Fitts’ stimulus response task targeted at monitoring the extent of movement timing disruption. Performance measures comprised of: response delay and the number of correctly identified digits during the cognitive resource task, the amount of correctly identified errors and reading speed during the sensory resource task, response time during the motor resource task, and responses to simple auditory reaction time tests (RTT) initiated at intervals during the task and then again at the end of each task. Physiological measures included ear temperature, eye blink frequency and duration, heart rate (HR), and heart rate variability (HRV). Subjective measures included the use of the Ratings of Perceived Exertion Category Ratio 10 scale (RPE CR 10) to measure cognitive exertion and the NASA-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) to index mental workload. Eye blink frequency and duration, HR and HRV were sensitive to the type of task executed, showing differing response patterns both over the different tasks and over the two test sessions. The subjective measures indicated increasing RPE ratings over time in all tasks while the NASA-TLX indicated that each task elicited different workloads. Differing task performance responses were measured between the 1st test session and the 2nd test session during all tasks; while performance was found to improve during the 2nd test session for the motor and sensory tasks, it declined during the cognitive task. The findings of this research indicate that there was a regulatory mechanism for fatigue that altered the manner in which performance, psychophysical and subjective variables were modified over time, initiating a unique fatigue regulation pattern for each variable and each task. This regulation mechanism is understood to be a proactive and protective mechanism that functions through reducing a person’s ability to be vigilant, attentive, to exercise discernment, and to direct their level of responsiveness, essentially impacting how the body adapts to and copes with fatigue. The noted overall findings have industry implications; industries should consider accounting for the effects of this regulatory mechanism in their fatigue management interventions, specifically when designing job rotation and work/rest schedules because each cognitive task, having elicited a unique fatigue regulation pattern, ought to also have a different management program. / Microsoft� Office Word 2007 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

Sammanfattning/Abstract Brundin Larsson, Sara (2022). Hjärntrötthet- ”Det är detta att det är osynligt”. Specialpedagogprogrammet, Institutionen för skolutveckling och ledarskap, Lärande och samhälle, Malmö universitet, 90 hp. Förväntat kunskapsbidrag Min önskan är att uppmärksamma hjärntrötthet hos barn och unga och vilka konsekvenser en sådan trötthet kan innebära för en skolelev. Hur resonerar elever och deras vårdnadshavare om skolans bemötande och vad har mötet betytt för barnet eller den unge i deras skolarbete. Studien vill därmed ge ett bidrag till vad skolpersonal, men i synnerhet specialpedagoger, bör känna till om hjärntrötthet och vilka anpassningar drabbade kan vara hjälpta av under kortare eller längre tid. Syfte och frågeställningar Syftet med studien är att, genom livsvärldsberättelser, öka kunskapen om vilka behov elever med hjärntrötthet kan ha och hur det kan påverka deras vardag i skolan, utifrån ett elev- och vårdnadshavarperspektiv. Ytterligare ett syfte är att beskriva informanternas upplevelser av samarbetet med skolan och de anpassningar som gjorts där. Vilka svårigheter och behov upplever hjärntrötta elever, och deras vårdnadshavare, att de har? Hur har elever och vårdnadshavare upplevt mötet med skolan och de anpassningar man gjort för att möta deras behov? Vad anser informanterna att pedagoger särskilt bör tänka på när de möter elever med hjärntrötthet? Teori I denna studie används livsvärldsfenomenologin som teoretiskt ramverk (Bengtsson & Berndtsson, 2015).  Anledningen till valet av ett livsvärldsfenomenologiskt perspektiv på denna studie är att genom intervjuer kunna få ta del av elevers och deras vårdnadshavares upplevelser av hur det är att leva med hjärntrötthet som ung elev, samt hur informanterna upplevt samarbetet med skolan. Ansatsen möjliggör att få ta del av deras livsvärld kring hjärntrötthet. De olika teoretiska begreppen; subjekt, sammanflätningar, regional värld, levd kropp och instrument används som en grund och ram för att förstå och tolka informanternas livsberättelser. Metod Detta är en kvalitativ studie där tre elever och deras vårdnadshavare intervjuats om sina upplevelser av mötet med skolan som hjärntrött elev. Eftersom en önskan fanns om ett öppet samtal, med mina forskningsfrågor som utgångspunkt, valdes semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultat Genom informanternas livsberättelser framkommer att det är krävande att befinna sig i miljöer med mycket ljud. Efter en tids exponering för mycket ljud får de ont i huvudet och dagar som är extra utmanande kan innebära att de måste ligga och vila resten av dagen hemma, eller flera dagar för att återfå energi. De har alla behov av att ibland kunna komma ifrån klassrummet, speciellt då det är pratigt, för att få sitta i en lugn miljö.        Avgränsning av arbetsuppgifter finns också ett stort behov av. Att få mer tid för att slutföra arbetsuppgifter, eller dela upp olika moment med pauser emellan, skulle medföra att de både mår bättre och kan prestera bättre i skolan. Informanterna uttrycker också att det är viktigt att de blir lyssnade på och att man tar deras mående på allvar.        Elever som lider av hjärntrötthet har behov som många gånger inte behöver vara så svåra för skolan att anpassa sig till men dessa elever kan bli missförstådda, då kunskap om hjärntrötthet inte är så utbredd. Känslighet för mycket ljud, mycket information och högt tempo gör dem sårbara. Då vi i skolan ska utforma lärmiljöer där alla elever ges möjlighet att prestera utifrån sina förutsättningar är det viktigt att sprida kunskap om hjärntrötthet. Nyckelord Anpassningar, barncancer, hjärnskakning, hjärntrötthet, pauser

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To increase fitness for survival, organisms not only passively react to environmental changes but also actively predict future events to prepare for potential hazards within their environment. Accumulating evidence indicates that the human brain is a remarkable predictive machine which constantly models causal relationships and predicts future events. This ‘predictive processing' framework, a prediction-based form of Bayesian inference, states that the brain continuously generates and updates predictions about incoming sensory signals. This framework has been showing notable explanatory power in understanding the mechanisms behind both human behaviour and neurophysiological data and elegantly specifies the underlying computational principles of the neural system. However, even though predictive processing has the potential to provide a unified theory of the brain (Karl Friston, 2010), we still have a limited understanding about fundamental aspects of this model, such as how it deals with different types of information, learns statistical regularities and perhaps most fundamentally of all what its relationship to conscious experience is. This thesis aims to investigate the major gaps in our current understanding of the predictive processing framework via a series of studies. Study 1 investigated the fundamental relationship between unconscious statistical inference reflected by predictive processing and conscious access. It demonstrated that predictions that are in line with sensory evidence accelerate conscious access. Study 2 investigated how low level information within the sensory hierarchy is dealt with by predictive processing and regularity learning mechanisms through “perceptual echo” in which the cross-correlation between a sequence of randomly fluctuating luminance values and occipital electrophysiological (EEG) signals exhibits a long-lasting periodic (~100ms cycle) reverberation of the input stimulus. This study identified a new form of regularity learning and the results demonstrate that the perceptual echo may reflect an iterative learning process, governed by predictive processing. Study 3 investigated how supra-modal predictive processing is capable of learning regularities of temporal duration and also temporal predictions about future events. This study revealed a supramodal temporal prediction mechanism which processes auditory and visual temporal information and integrates information from the duration and rhythmic structures of events. Together these studies provide a global picture of predictive processing and regularity learning across differing types of predictive information.

The sense of agency is the experience of being the initiator of our intentional actions and their outcomes. According to higher order thought theory, a representation becomes conscious when there is a higher order state about it. Thus conscious experience, including that of intentions, is metacognitive. The experience of involuntariness characteristic of hypnotic responding may be attributable to the formation and maintenance of inaccurate metacognitive higher order states of intending. Conversely, the practice of Buddhist mindfulness meditation may develop accurate metacognition, including higher order states of intending. Highly hypnotisable people and mindfulness meditators may therefore occupy two ends of a spectrum of metacognitive ability with regard to unconscious intentions. The presented research investigated predicted trait differences in cognitive tasks which directly or indirectly reflect metacognition of intentions: the timing of an experience of an intention to move and the compressed time interval between a voluntary action and its outcome, known as intentional binding. As an implicit measure of sense of agency, intentional binding was also employed to investigate the veridicality of reports of the experience of involuntariness in hypnotic responding. Additionally, while hypnosis presents a unique opportunity to investigate reliable changes in agentic experience, existing hypnosis screening instruments are time consuming and present a barrier to wider adoption of hypnosis as an instrument for studying consciousness. Here a revised, time-efficient hypnosis screening procedure (the SWASH) is presented. Consistent with predictions, highly hypnotisable groups reported later awareness of motor intentions than less hypnotisable groups and meditators earlier awareness than non-meditators. In an intentional binding task, high hypnotisables showed less binding of an action-outcome toward an action (outcome binding) than low hypnotisables and meditators more outcome binding than non-meditators. Outcome binding was reduced in post-hypnotic involuntary action compared to voluntary action. It is proposed that intentional binding is driven by a cue combination mechanism and that these differences reflect varying precision of motor intention related information in reported timing judgements. The SWASH was found to be a reliable hypnosis screening instrument.