Search

This paper describes an exploratory study developing the Baycrest Brain-healthy Eating Approach (BBEA). Poor diet is a modifiable risk factor for many health problems including dementia. Mediterranean type diets, high in plant-based foods, rich in poly- and mono- unsaturated fatty acids with minimal consumption of saturated fat, red meat, and processed foods, are considered brain healthful. While several dementia prevention trials randomized controlled trials have included nutritional counselling in favor of these diets as one component of their interventions, the extent to which dietary change occurred is not known. Based on observations that a strategy training approach, the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) Approach, was beneficial for promoting lifestyle changes in older adults with complaints of cognitive changes, we undertook to develop the BBEA combining elements of CO-OP with didactic nutrition education. This exploratory, descriptive study assesses the feasibility and acceptability of the BBEA. Healthy community dwelling older adults (n = 5) were recruited using convenience sampling. Participants received five, 2 h, group sessions. During these sessions participants were supported in adopting dietary practices consistent with brain healthy eating. Each participant set specific dietary goals important to them. Feasibility of the intervention was demonstrated through high levels of attendance and by the findings that at each session, all participants set personally meaningful goals and received education on selected brain healthy eating topics. Acceptability was demonstrated through participants' positive reports of their experiences and perspectives obtained via semi-structured interviews. Thus, the BBEA appears to be feasible and acceptable.

Additional file 1: Supplementary Table 1. Factor loadings for dietary patterns in men. Note. Loadings (>|0.209|) represent correlation of an FFQ item with dietary pattern score.

Ordinarily when someone tells us about her psychological states, we presume that she is right. By deferring to her in this way, we treat her as a kind of authority on her own psychological life. Although a person usually has this authority, she lacks it whenever she takes a more detached, indirect, or third-personal point of view toward her psychological states. We see this, for example, when she learns about a belief or desire from a friend or therapist. For this reason an adequate account of the phenomenon of "first-person authority" must explain why we have it only for some but not all of our psychological states. Most philosophers believe first-person authority is an epistemic phenomenon, consisting in each of us being better situated to know about our own psychological states than anyone else. Against all such epistemic views, I argue that, because they base their accounts on epistemic privileges that are in principle available to anyone, they cannot capture the exclusively first-personal character of our authority.As an alternative to the traditional approach, I argue that first-person authority is derived from a person's agency with respect to her own psychological states. By relating to her psychological states in a first-personal way, a person is able to change or maintain them directly on the basis of what she takes to be good reasons for them. Since no other person can affect her psychological states in this way, her capacities as an agent guarantee her a unique kind of authority for them. A person ordinarily expresses this kind of agential authority over her psychological states in what she says about them. This is what justifies our deferring to her psychological self-ascriptions. On the view I develop in this dissertation, first-person authority is not primarily a matter of special epistemic access to psychological facts and deference is not a response to the epistemic status of what someone says. It is an acknowledgment of the special role that a person's agency plays in determining her psychological life.

This essay presents a new account of thought insertion. Prevailing views in both philosophy and cognitive science tend to characterize the experience of thought insertion as missing or lacking some element, such as a ‘sense of agency’, found in ordinary first-person awareness of one’s own thoughts. By contrast, I propose that, rather than lacking something, experiences of thought insertion have an additional feature not present in ordinary conscious experiences of one’s own thoughts. More specifically, I claim that the structure of an experience of thought insertion consists of two distinct elements: a state of ordinary first-person awareness and a sense that this state of awareness is highly unusual. In addition to modeling the experience of thought insertion, I also explain how a delusional pattern of thinking could lead someone who has this kind of experience to adopt a belief that some other entity is inserting thoughts into her mind. Finally, I briefly sketch a neurocomputational framework that could be developed to explain the sense that one’s state of first-person awareness is highly irregular.

It seems to be impossible for a person to have introspective access to thoughts that are not her own (Campbell 1999). Yet, although first-personal conscious awareness of a particular thought is normally sufficient for being its owner, some schizophrenic subjects report being conscious of thoughts that are not theirs. This suggests that, contrary to philosophical orthodoxy, thought ownership is not a necessary condition for consciously experiencing a thought. Because what schizophrenics report is thus rather difficult to reconcile with standard philosophical conceptions of conscious thought, it would be good to have a clearer picture of precisely how experiences of thought insertion differ from those of ordinary thinking. Developing such a picture is the aim of Patrizia Pedrini’s essay.

Introduction. In this paper, we argue for a novel account of one cognitive factor implicated in delusional cognition. According to the erotetic theory of delusion we present, the central cognitive factor in delusion is impaired endogenous question raising.Method. After presenting the erotetic theory, we draw on it to model three distinct patterns of reasoning exhibited by delusional and schizophrenic patients, and contrast our explanations with Bayesian alternatives.Results. We argue that the erotetic theory has considerable advantages over Bayesian models. Specifically, we show that it offers a superior explanation of three phenomena: the onset and persistence of the Capgras delusion; recent data indicating that schizophrenic subjects manifest superior reasoning with conditionals in certain contexts; and evidence that schizophrenic and delusional subjects have a tendency to “jump to conclusions”. Moreover, since the cognitive mechanisms we appeal to are independently motivated, we avoid having to posit distinct epistemic states that are intrinsically irrational in order to fit our model to the variety of data.Conclusion. In contrast to Bayesian models, the erotetic theory offers a simple, unified explanation of a range of empirical data. We therefore conclude that it offers a more plausible framework for explaining delusional cognition.