The impact of controlled breathing on autonomic nervous system modulation: analysis using phase-rectified signal averaging, entropy and heart rate variability.

The present study investigated how breathing stimuli affect both non-linear and linear metrics of the autonomic nervous system (ANS).The analysed dataset consisted of 70 young, healthy volunteers, in whom arterial blood pressure (ABP) was measured noninvasively during 5 min sessions of controlled breathing at three different frequencies: 6, 10 and 15 breaths min. COconcentration and respiratory rate were continuously monitored throughout the controlled breathing sessions.

Consciousness isn't "hard"-it's human psychology that makes it so!

Consciousness arguably presents a "hard problem" for scholars. An influential position asserts that the "problem" is rooted in ontology-it arises because consciousness "is" distinct from the physical. "Problem intuitions" are routinely taken as evidence for this view.

Davinci the Dualist: The Mind-Body Divide in Large Language Models and in Human Learners.

A large literature suggests that people are intuitive Dualists-they consider the mind ethereal, distinct from the body. Furthermore, Dualism emerges, in part, via learning (e.g.

How to Tell a Dualist?

People exhibit conflicting intuitions concerning the mind/body links. Here, I explore a novel explanation for these inconsistencies: Dualism is a violable constraint that interacts with Essentialism. Two experiments probe these interactions.

Linguistic Illusions Guide Eye Movement: Evidence From Doubling.

Across languages, certain phonological patterns are preferred to others (e.g., blog > lbog).

The "Hard Problem of Consciousness" Arises from Human Psychology.

Consciousness presents a "hard problem" to scholars. At stake is how the physical body gives rise to subjective experience. Why consciousness is "hard", however, is uncertain.

The neonate brain's sensitivity to repetition-based structure: Specific to speech?

Newborns are able to extract and learn repetition-based regularities from the speech input, that is, they show greater brain activation in the bilateral temporal and left inferior frontal regions to trisyllabic pseudowords of the form AAB (e.g., "babamu") than to random ABC sequences (e.

The illusion of the mind-body divide is attenuated in males.

A large literature suggests that people are intuitive Dualists-they tend to perceive the mind as ethereal, distinct from the body. Here, we ask whether Dualism emanates from within the human psyche, guided, in part, by theory of mind (ToM). Past research has shown that males are poorer mind-readers than females.

Phonetic categorization relies on motor simulation, but combinatorial phonological computations are abstract.

To identify a spoken word (e.g., dog), people must categorize the speech steam onto distinct units (e.

Speakers aren't blank slates (with respect to sign-language phonology)!

A large literature has gauged the linguistic knowledge of signers by comparing sign-processing by signers and non-signers. Underlying this approach is the assumption that non-signers are devoid of any relevant linguistic knowledge, and as such, they present appropriate non-linguistic controls-a recent paper by Meade et al. (2022) articulates this view explicitly.

Autism attenuates the perception of the mind-body divide.

People are intuitive Dualists-they tacitly consider the mind as ethereal, distinct from the body. Here we ask whether Dualism emerges naturally from the conflicting core principles that guide reasoning about objects, on the one hand, and about the minds of agents (theory of mind, ToM), on the other. To address this question, we explore Dualist reasoning in autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-a congenital disorder known to compromise ToM.

Is Phonology Embodied? Evidence from Mechanical Stimulation.

Across languages, certain syllables are systematically preferred to others (e.g., plaf > ptaf).

Can the Mind Command the Body?

People naturally intuit that an agent's ethereal thoughts can cause its body to move. Per intuitive physics; however, one body can only interact with another. Are people, then, covertly puzzled by the capacity of thoughts to command the body? Experiment 1 first confirms that thoughts (e.

Public misconceptions about dyslexia: The role of intuitive psychology.

Despite advances in its scientific understanding, dyslexia is still associated with rampant public misconceptions. Here, we trace these misconceptions to the interaction between two intuitive psychological principles: Dualism and Essentialism. We hypothesize that people essentialize dyslexia symptoms that they anchor in the body.

Infants differentially extract rules from language.

Infants readily extract linguistic rules from speech. Here, we ask whether this advantage extends to linguistic stimuli that do not rely on the spoken modality. To address this question, we first examine whether infants can differentially learn rules from linguistic signs.

Can we get human nature right?

Few questions in science are as controversial as human nature. At stake is whether our basic concepts and emotions are all learned from experience, or whether some are innate. Here, I demonstrate that reasoning about innateness is biased by the basic workings of the human mind.

The seductive allure of the brain: Dualism and lay perceptions of neuroscience.

Laypeople prefer brain explanations of behavior (Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson, & Gray, 2008). We suggest that this preference arises from 'intuitive Dualism'. For the Dualist, mentalistic causation elicits a mind-body dissonance, as it suggests that the immaterial mind affects the body.

Essentialist Biases Toward Psychiatric Disorders: Brain Disorders Are Presumed Innate.

A large campaign has sought to destigmatize psychiatric disorders by disseminating the view that they are in fact brain disorders. But when psychiatric disorders are associated with neurobiological correlates, laypeople's attitudes toward patients are harsher, and the prognoses seem poorer. Here, we ask whether these misconceptions could result from the essentialist presumption that brain disorders are innate.

On the matter of essence.

A large literature suggests that people attribute the inborn properties of living things to their essence. Here, I explore the possibility that the essence of living things must be further embodied, and that this presumption guides intuitive reasoning about all of an organism's inherited properties, physical and psychological. Accordingly, when people reason about agentive living things (animals and humans), they presume that (a) Their essence must exhibit the properties of bodily matter- it must occupy a certain location in space, and it must be comprised of some appropriate organic substance that is anchored in the body; (b) Inborn (essentialized) traits must be embodied, and conversely, embodied traits are likely innate; and (c) The identity of biological kinds and by extension, one's psychological core, are defined by the material properties of their essence.

Essentialist Biases in Reasoning About Emotions.

A large literature debates whether emotions are universal and innate. Here, we ask whether reasoning about such matters is shaped by intuitive Essentialist biases that link innateness to the material body. To gauge the perception of innateness, we asked laypeople to evaluate whether emotion categories will be recognized spontaneously by hunter-gatherers who have had no contact with Westerners.

Knowledge of Language Transfers From Speech to Sign: Evidence From Doubling.

Does knowledge of language transfer across language modalities? For example, can speakers who have had no sign language experience spontaneously project grammatical principles of English to American Sign Language (ASL) signs? To address this question, here, we explore a grammatical illusion. Using spoken language, we first show that a single word with doubling (e.g.

People's Intuitions About Innateness.

Few questions in science are as controversial as the origins of knowledge. Whether knowledge (e.g.

ANCHORING is amodal: Evidence from a signed language.

Across languages, certain linguistic forms are systematically preferred to others (e.g. bla > lba).

Is markedness a confused concept?

It is well known that, across languages, certain phonological features are more frequent than others. But whether these facts reflect abstract universal markedness constraints or functional pressures (auditory and articulatory difficulties and lexical frequency) is unknown. Romani, Galuzzi, Guariglia, and Goslin (2017) report that the putative markedness of phonological features captures their order of acquisition and their propensity to elicit errors in patients with an apraxia of speech (but not in phonological aphasia).