Search Results (913)

Background: Patients receiving palliative and hospice care frequently experience high symptom burden alongside altered body perception due to progressive disease and physical decline. While acupressure has demonstrated beneficial effects on symptoms such as nausea, pain, fatigue, and anxiety, its potential influence on body awareness has not been systematically investigated. Furthermore, evidence regarding the feasibility and implementation of nurse-led acupressure interventions across different palliative and hospice care settings remains limited. This study aims to explore the feasibility, acceptability, and potential effects of acupressure on symptom burden and body awareness in palliative care settings. Methods: This pilot study evaluates a nurse-led acupressure intervention aimed at improving body awareness in patients receiving palliative and hospice care across specialized inpatient and outpatient settings. This study is designed as a prospective, exploratory, mixed-methods pilot and feasibility study using a pre-post design across multiple care settings, including a palliative care unit, specialized palliative home care (SAPV), an inpatient palliative consultation service (PMD), and a hospice. A total of 60–80 adult patients with incurable illnesses will be recruited. The intervention consists of standardised acupressure administered by trained nursing staff, with at least two sessions per participant. Primary outcomes focus on feasibility and acceptability indicators, including recruitment, retention, adherence, intervention documentation, and data completeness. Exploratory clinical outcomes include symptom burden, body awareness, and use of on-demand medication. Quantitative outcomes include symptom burden (MIDOS), body awareness (State Mindfulness Scale—Body subscale), and use of on-demand medication. Qualitative data will be collected through brief patient interviews using the Body Image Assessment (BIA) and semi-structured interviews with patients and healthcare providers after the completed intervention. Data will be analysed using descriptive and exploratory inferential statistics, alongside a linguistic and thematic analysis. Quantitative and qualitative findings will be integrated using a convergent triangulation approach. Discussion: This study will provide first insights into the feasibility and acceptability of acupressure in palliative and hospice care and generate hypotheses regarding its potential effects on symptom relief and body awareness. Findings will inform the design of a future randomized controlled trial and contribute to the implementation of complementary therapies in integrative palliative care. Full article

Building on previous work to understand mental transformation of solid objects, our work aims to contribute to theory on how individuals visualize fluid transformation. Working at the intersection of discipline-based research in fluid-Earth sciences (oceanography and atmospheric science) and cognitive science, we began by characterizing students’ mental models of fluids in solid body rotation. Using a common pedagogical tool of oceanography and atmospheric science instructors—large water filled rotating tanks—we conducted semi-structured, interactive interviews in conjunction with demonstrations of solid body fluid rotation to elicit participants’ sketched predictions and explanations of their reasoning. We used emergent coding to analyze the data and found that participants confidently predicted fluid behavior; however, their predictions were highly inaccurate, much to the participants’ surprise. These results suggest that the behavior of rotating fluids is unintuitive, and that the mind adopts prior experiences with fluids to fill the gap. We suggest that a better understanding of how humans reason about fluids can inform the cognitive science of event processing and suggest that framing mental transformation using an event perspective may be a productive approach. Full article

Spiritual care is central to palliative care. It helps patients nearing the end of life to maintain a sense of meaning, hope, and dignity, while alleviating existential anxiety and emotional distress as they face death. This study analyzes spiritual care practice in palliative care in China. It explores how religion supports spiritual healing by adapting and reconfiguring localized rituals. These adaptations are particularly important where overt religious expression and formal rituals are hard to include in healthcare settings. Based on semi-structured interviews with 14 professional carers in Shanghai, this paper examines how religious resources are translated into spiritual care in the Chinese healthcare context and analyzes the mechanisms behind their therapeutic effects. Research finds, first, that spiritual care in Chinese palliative care is not usually labeled as “spirituality” but is more often called “psychological care.” Second, religion in practice has not disappeared; instead, it has moved from public ritual and belief to the private sphere. Its roles (providing meaning, reconciling relationships, and supporting the transition from life to death) are transformed into care practices such as life reviews, the “Si Dao Ren Sheng” (the “Four Themes of Life”: expressing gratitude, offering an apology, expressing love, and saying farewell), family support, body donation, and end-of-life planning. Third, these therapeutic practices are effective not because of religious dogma, sacred stories, or explanations of the afterlife, but because they reconnect the patient to the “past–present–future.” Looking to the past, life reviews help patients integrate their narratives and affirm self-worth. In the present, repairing family relationships and expressing emotions help patients feel seen, accompanied, and needed. Looking to the future, end-of-life planning and the assignment of responsibilities give patients some control and peace of mind. Based on the thematic analysis, this paper therefore inductively constructs a “past–present–future” model of meaning-making in Chinese spiritual healing. Drawing on the Chinese cases examined, it offers a theoretical contribution to the global study of spiritual care. Full article

Physical literacy has become influential across education, sport, health, and recreation. Yet the field contains multiple definitions and distinct traditions rather than a single agreed position. One especially influential strand is the Whiteheadian account, the philosophically oriented tradition associated with the British philosopher and physical educationalist Margaret Whitehead and extended through allied writers and institutional work. Whitehead did not invent the term physical literacy, which has a longer history, but she provided its most influential contemporary philosophical reconstruction and helped shape its current international meaning. The Whiteheadian account has been important because it rejects narrow mind–body separation and offers a holistic, lifespan-oriented account of movement, meaning, and human flourishing. The argument advanced here is that the Whiteheadian account is non-dualist in declaration but not always in operation. Its explicit commitment to monism and lived embodiment is not always matched by its practical grammar, in which bodily competence, bodily participation, and visible movement often carry more pedagogical and evaluative weight than minded engagement as a process of learning. Radical embodied cognitive science, especially radical enactivism, offers additional conceptual resources for developing a more explicitly relational account of learning and physical literacy because it begins with situated organism–environment engagement rather than with the later integration of bodily and mental domains. The article concludes by proposing a more relational, process-oriented, and pedagogically robust understanding of physical literacy. Full article

Referred to by Julian Huxley in his 1957 work New Bottles for New Wine, transhumanism champions the use of science and technology to transcend human biological limits and attain a “posthuman” state. While science fiction frequently familiarizes audiences with these speculative dimensions, William Gibson’s short story The Winter Market (1986) exposes the dehumanizing impacts of technological immortality and mind uploading in a cyberpunk world. Rather than presenting a seamless techno-utopian future, Gibson’s narrative centers on the concept of gomi—Japanese for trash or junk—to illustrate the literal and psychological expulsion of the human subject. Therefore, this paper argues that The Winter Market uses the material reality of gomi as its core structural and thematic focus, exposing how advanced capitalism and cybernetic technology reduce the organic body, human experience, and artistic expression to marketable, discarded commodities. Through a close reading of Gibson’s distinct language and narrative form, this study, ultimately, interrogates the trade-offs of technological transcendence, demonstrating how the pursuit of disembodied immortality culminates in alienation and the fragmentation of authentic identity. Full article

Background/Objectives: Obesity is associated with alterations in cognitive control processes that support performance monitoring and dietary self-regulation, but the neurocognitive markers most closely tied to body weight status in young adulthood remain unclear. Methods: Sixty-two young adults completed a modified Simon task while continuous electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Response-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) were quantified for error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe). The association between body mass index (BMI) and ERP amplitudes was examined under three parameterizations: BMI as a continuous variable, BMI split into three categories (normal weight, overweight, obese), and BMI split into two median-matched categories. Results: Higher BMI was associated with reduced (less negative) ERN amplitude under continuous (r = 0.30, p = 0.016, and median-split, Cohen’s d = −0.69, p = 0.009) specifications, and at the level of a trend under the three-group classification F(2, 59) = 2.80, p = 0.069, η²p = 0.09. The association was most consistent for neutral trials, where it reached significance under the continuous (r = 0.32, p = 0.010) and three-group (F = 3.31, p = 0.043) specifications and approached significance under the median-split (d = −0.51, p = 0.051). The BMI-ERN association remained significant after adjustment for age, sex, cardiorespiratory fitness, physical activity, and trait impulsivity. In contrast, Pe amplitude did not differ as a function of BMI under any specification. In exploratory analyses that did not survive correction for multiple comparisons, Pe amplitude was positively associated with mindful eating disinhibition and negatively associated with UPPS-P Positive Urgency, independent of BMI. Conclusions: These cross-sectional findings indicate that elevated adiposity in young adulthood is associated with attenuated pre-conscious conflict and error monitoring (i.e., ERN), whereas conscious error awareness (i.e., Pe) is unrelated to body weight status. The exploratory Pe–trait associations are offered as hypotheses for future confirmatory work rather than as established effects. Full article

Negation appears across diverse religious traditions and provides a fruitful point of entry for comparative theological reflection. This paper compares St. John of the Cross’s account of the dark night in Christian mysticism with Śaṅkara’s understanding of vairāgya (renunciation or dispassion) in Advaita Vedānta. Rather than classifying Advaita as a form of Christian negative theology, the study uses negation as a limited comparative heuristic for examining how practices of detachment, renunciation, and purification function within two distinct religious and philosophical frameworks. It argues that both thinkers employ disciplined forms of negation, but that these disciplines address different problems within their respective traditions. John of the Cross presents the dark night as a process of sensory and spiritual purification through which the soul is dispossessed of attachment and prepared for a loving and participatory union with God through faith, hope, and charity. Śaṅkara understands vairāgya, together with viveka, as a discipline that weakens attachment to impermanent objects and corrects the false identification of the self with the body, mind, agency, and individuality. These disciplines prepare the aspirant for liberating knowledge of the non-difference of ātman and Brahman. Although these two trajectories share a structurally comparable ascetical pattern, their goals remain fundamentally different: John’s dark night culminates in relational communion with God while preserving the Creator–creature distinction, whereas Śaṅkara’s renunciation prepares the aspirant for non-dual realization through the liberating knowledge that removes ignorance. This comparison clarifies both the structural affinities between the two disciplines and the distinct metaphysical, epistemological, and soteriological frameworks that determine their meaning. Full article

Chad Hartigan’s science fiction romantic drama Little Fish was released in 2020, soon after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the disease plaguing communities in Little Fish is not affecting people’s bodies but their minds—those who have contracted Neuroinflammatory Affliction (NIA) are losing their memories. The story centres upon the experiences of one young couple as they anxiously witness the disease take hold of their community, loved ones, and eventually one another. The film explores relationships between memory and identity, and poses questions about the ways these processes interact with those of love and loss. Who are we once we begin to lose memories of our histories and ourselves? Who do we then become to our loved ones, with whom we have shared these memories and selves? What binds us together? The paper examines the film using concepts from memory studies, in particular psychoanalysis and philosophy, to argue that after conscious memory is gone, aspects of memory and identity remain through the body, the unconscious, and love. Full article

Background: As population aging accelerates, pharmacological treatments provide limited benefits for cognitive decline. Exercise and technology-assisted exercise have thus emerged as important non-pharmacological approaches for supporting cognitive health in older adults. However, comparative evidence on the relative effectiveness of different intervention modalities across cognitive outcomes remains limited. Objective: This study used a network meta-analysis to systematically compare and rank the effects of traditional and non-traditional exercise interventions on cognitive function in older adults. Methods: This systematic review and network meta-analysis was registered on PROSPERO (CRD420261278685). PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched from inception to May 2026. Randomized controlled trials enrolling participants aged 60 years or older were included. Interventions comprised aerobic, resistance, mind–body, finger, and multicomponent exercise, as well as virtual reality-based interventions, artificial intelligence-assisted exercise, and wearable exoskeleton training. Primary outcomes included global cognition, executive function, memory, attention, and activities of daily living. A random effects network meta-analysis was applied to estimate standardized mean differences with 95 percent confidence intervals, and intervention rankings were derived using SUCRA values. Results: A total of 70 randomized controlled trials involving 5573 older adults were included. All active interventions demonstrated overall cognitive benefits compared with usual care or non-active control conditions. Mind–body exercise showed the highest probability of improving global cognitive performance. Virtual reality-based interventions were particularly effective for executive function, memory, and activities of daily living, while artificial intelligence-assisted exercise showed favorable rankings for attention outcomes. Mind–body exercise showed favorable effects on global cognition, whereas several technology-assisted interventions ranked highly for selected cognitive and functional outcomes. Conclusions: Both traditional and non non-traditional exercise interventions improve cognitive function in older adults, although their effects differ across cognitive domains. Technology-assisted approaches appear more effective for enhancing specific cognitive functions, while traditional interventions such as mind–body exercise are more advantageous for preserving overall cognitive performance. These findings highlight the potential value of stage specific and combined intervention strategies for promoting cognitive health in aging populations. Full article

Background/Objectives: Yoga practice is associated with enhanced wellbeing and reduced psychological distress; however, the conditional interrelations among yoga frequency, perceived health, wellbeing, distress, and spirituality remain insufficiently understood. This study aimed to map these associations and identify variables uniquely relevant to wellbeing among yoga practitioners. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 326 yoga practitioners (94.2% women; Mage = 39.84, SD = 14.81). A Gaussian graphical model with EBIC-graphical LASSO regularization was used to estimate conditional associations among eight variables. Hierarchical multiple regression was conducted to identify independent predictors of wellbeing. Results: The network retained 20 of 28 possible edges (sparsity = 0.286) and revealed three clusters: health wellbeing (yoga frequency, perceived health, and wellbeing), distress (anxiety and stress), and spirituality. Global experiential spirituality showed the highest strength and expected influence, whereas WHO-5 wellbeing was the most central node in terms of betweenness and closeness. Stability was acceptable to excellent (CS coefficients: strength = 0.70, closeness = 0.60, betweenness = 0.40). The association between yoga frequency and wellbeing persisted independently of distress. The regression model explained 48.1% of the variance in wellbeing (adjusted R² = 0.469, p < 0.001). Higher environmental, but not transcendent, spiritual health (β = 0.136), better perceived health (β = 0.256), and more frequent yoga practice (β = 0.104) uniquely predicted higher wellbeing, whereas depression (β = −0.362) and stress (β = −0.198) uniquely predicted lower wellbeing. The environmental spirituality association was significant in this main model but, in a supplementary model that included all four experiential spirituality domains, was attenuated and depended on model specification. Conclusions: Wellbeing among yoga practitioners is a multidimensional construct uniquely associated with lower levels of depression and distress, as well as self-rated health and environmental spirituality. Depression and stress showed negative associations with wellbeing, whereas perceived health, regular yoga practice, and environmental spirituality showed positive associations. These findings highlight potential correlates of subjective wellbeing among yoga practitioners and underscore the importance of considering both distress-related and positive health-related factors, including perceived health, regular yoga practice, and environmental spirituality (interpreted with caution given its sensitivity to model specification), in future research. Full article

4E cognition offers resources supporting an anthropology and an ontology that overcome mind/body and related dualisms that contradict the original understandings of some major world religions, including the Western monotheisms and some Asian religions. 4E cognition embraces a holism with respect to the human organism, enabling a rapprochement with the Hebrew biblical, New Testament, and Qur’anic view of the human being as a psycho-somatic unity, as well as with scriptures and traditions about human nature of some Asian religions. For 4E cognition, the human organism comes embedded or emplaced in an environment with affordances, as it enacts meaning in co-constituting its lifeworld, in terms of both general orientation and particular values. The cruciality of social relationships and nature resonate with Western scriptures and with Mahayana Buddhism, Ruism/Confucianism, and Daoism. 4E cognition extends the joint project of organism and environment to evolution, with a mutual adaptation or specification of organism and environment. The fit of organism and environment finds resonance with these world religions, insofar as they uphold the goodness of creation or of the world. Moreover, the anthropology and ontology of 4E cognition provide a springboard for the analysis and affirmation of ethical values that resonate with the world religions insofar as they affirm the goodness of life. Full article

Background: Uncertainty persists regarding the dose–response association between exercise exposure and blood pressure (BP) control in chronic kidney disease (CKD). This dose–response network meta-analysis examined whether different exercise modalities and model-estimated metabolic-equivalent exposure levels were associated with changes in systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP). Methods: Exercise dose was estimated as metabolic equivalents of task minutes per week (MET-min/week) from reported session duration, frequency, and intensity. Primary outcomes were changes in SBP and DBP, with exploratory subgroup analyses by dialysis status, baseline BP, and intervention duration. Results: The analysis included 26 randomized controlled trials (1218 participants). Aerobic exercise was associated with lower SBP, with the greatest model-estimated reduction at 880 MET-min/week (MD, −7.73 mm Hg). Resistance and mind–body exercise also showed model-estimated reductions, whereas combined aerobic-resistance training was not statistically significant. Dose–response estimates differed by dialysis status and intervention length, but several subgroup estimates were based on sparse data and wide uncertainty. Evidence certainty ranged from very low to high (CINeMA). Conclusions: Exercise interventions may be associated with BP reduction in CKD, but the identified MET-min/week ranges should be interpreted as exploratory, model-derived estimates rather than validated therapeutic thresholds. Better reported randomized trials are needed to confirm dose ranges, safety, adherence, and tolerability in dialysis and non-dialysis CKD populations. Full article

Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent form of regulated cell death characterized by iron dyshomeostasis, glutathione depletion, glutathione peroxidase 4 dysfunction, and excessive lipid peroxidation. Exercise is a safe and accessible non-pharmacological intervention with broad neuroprotective potential, but the evidentiary basis linking exercise specifically to ferroptosis is uneven. Only a limited subset of studies directly combines an exercise intervention with ferroptosis-related outcomes in neurodegenerative models; much of the proposed pathway architecture is inferred from pharmacological, cellular, observational, or acute neurological injury studies. This review therefore separates direct exercise evidence from exercise-related supporting evidence and non-exercise mechanistic evidence. The most directly relevant findings, concentrated largely in aerobic exercise models, show exercise-associated changes in brain iron handling, the cystine/glutamate antiporter–glutathione peroxidase 4 antioxidant system, and lipoxygenase-dependent lipid peroxidation. Supporting studies suggest additional peripheral-to-central mechanisms involving muscle-derived exosomes, exercise-associated changes in systemic and cerebral iron handling, and inflammatory regulation. Bone marrow hematopoiesis, adult neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity, and astrocyte-controlled iron traffic are incorporated as biologically plausible but incompletely tested links. Evidence for resistance training, high-intensity interval training, mind–body exercise, and human disease remains insufficient. The central limitation is therefore not pathway plausibility but the scarcity of exercise-specific causal experiments demonstrating that ferroptosis suppression is required for neuroprotection. Full article

Background: The alarming trend of rising depression and insomnia among the world’s population, especially in young adults, demands urgent attention from both clinical and lifestyle medicine perspectives. This study aimed to evaluate whether habitual physical activity (PA) could improve sleep quality and depressive symptoms. It explores whether sleep parameters mediate the relationship between training intensity and depression. Methods: This cross-sectional study examined the relationships between PA, sleep quality, and depression in 349 participants, predominantly young adults, aged 16–54 (Median: 21, Q1–Q3: 20–23). Depressive symptoms and sleep quality were assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). PA parameters, including training intensity and frequency, were evaluated via a study-specific self-report tool. Mediation effects were assessed utilising Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to evaluate direct, indirect, and total effects. Results: Higher training intensity and training volume were associated with lower depressive symptoms. Except for the daytime dysfunction domain, the current data did not support sleep as a mediator in the relationship between physical activity and depressive symptoms. Participants with 3–5 years of training experience exhibited lower BDI scores compared to those with less than 12 months of experience. Interestingly, the type of PA did not influence BDI or PSQI scores, suggesting that consistency and intensity are more critical than the kind of exercise itself. Conclusions: Systematic, high-intensity PA, especially for a prolonged period of time, is significantly associated with lower depressive symptoms. The exploratory nature of this study highlights training frequency and intensity as potential factors that need further research. These findings highlight the mind–body connection and demonstrate that PA might be an intervention supporting mental well-being. Full article

In this work, we present a novel framework of integrating anthropometric measurement with posture recognition using LabVIEW’s Vision Development Module specifically for yoga poses. Yoga is a practice that originated in India many years ago and is now popular globally, contributing significantly towards balancing the human body and mind. A key challenge is the accurate recognition of yoga poses in real time using contactless techniques. To achieve this, the proposed system works by digitizing yoga poses through anthropometric measurements enhanced through photoanthropometric modeling with Calibrated Bounding Boxes using YOLO version 4 for representing the poses, combined with geometric examinations to normalize bounding box dimensions and proceed for pose variations. The intermediate model developed improves the measurement accuracy, while the final stage handles posture classification in the LabVIEW ML environment for real-time yoga pose recognition. This study focuses on the Tadasana pose. A Microsoft XBOX 360 Kinect sensor was used for capturing the images, which were processed using LabVIEW 2019 Vision IMAQ. An inference model was developed for feature extraction and matching, such that precise posture identification was facilitated with bounding boxes. The experimental results illustrate that the proposed system achieves a pose recognition accuracy, with respect to anthropometric measurements, of 95.4%, thus proving its potential for rehabilitation and health monitoring. Full article