Bilateral neural interactions, excitatory & inhibitory, are present across the motor network during unimanual movements; an increase in task difficulty requires more efficient communication between hemispheres

Are unimanual movements bilateral? Sabrina Chettouf et al. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Volume 113, June 2020, Pages 39-50, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.03.002

Highlights
• Bilateral neural interactions, excitatory and inhibitory, are present across the motor network during unimanual movements.
• An increase in task difficulty requires more efficient communication between hemispheres.
• Anatomical properties of transcallosal fiber tracts enable essential interhemispheric information exchange.
• Left (pre)motor areas play a key role in complex motor tasks.

Abstract: Motor control is a fundamental challenge for the central nervous system. In this review, we show that unimanual movements involve bi-hemispheric activation patterns that resemble the bilateral neural activation typically observed for bimanual movements. For unimanual movements, the activation patterns in the ipsilateral hemisphere arguably entail processes that serve to suppress interhemispheric cross-talk through transcallosal tracts. Improper suppression may cause involuntary muscle co-activation and as such it comes as no surprise that these processes depend on the motor task. Identifying the detailed contributions of local and global excitatory and inhibitory cortical processes to this suppression calls for integrating findings from various behavioral paradigms and imaging modalities. Doing so systematically highlights that lateralized activity in left (pre)motor cortex modulates with task complexity, independently of the type of task and the end-effector involved. Despite this lateralization, however, our review supports the idea of bi-hemispheric cortical activation being a fundamental mode of upper extremity motor control.

Keywords: UnimanualInterhemisphericMotor cortexMotor coordinationCorpus callosumBilateral activationElectroencephalography (EEG)Magnetoencephalography (MEG)Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)Structural MRI

4. Discussion

The question whether unimanual movements have a bilateral neural representation comes with quite some history. For many years it has been considered textbook knowledge that movement execution with one hand is characterized by largely – if not entirely – contralateral activation in the brain. This idea dates back to the nineteenth century and is based on early studies on animal brains and/or human pathology using invasive electrical stimulation (Jackson et al., 1870; Schiff, 1859). Gustav Fritsch together with Eduard Hitzig (1870) and, independently, David Ferrier (1873) stimulated the cortex surface of different (anesthetized) mammals and evoked movements in different parts of the contralateral side of the body. These studies allowed researchers to identify ordered motor maps within this contralateral hemisphere, in particular by Clinton Woolsey and Wilder Penfield in non-human mammals and in humans, respectively (Penfield and Boldrey, 1937; Woolsey and Fairman, 1946). In fact, Penfield and Boldrey (1937) identified the human motor homunculus just anterior to central sulcus (M1), i.e. the representation of body parts in brain areas containing an ensemble of neurons that, when activated, result in motor output. Especially in finely controlled limb muscles (fingers, hands, arms, legs), but also in the tongue, are these areas relatively large. These seminal studies were followed by studies on the SMA, where muscle activation on the contralateral side of the body could be evoked through electrical stimulation, much like stimulation of M1 (Woolsey, 1952).

4.1. Crossed and uncrossed fibers

By now, pyramidal tracts are the best-studied efferent pathways of the cortical motor system (Davidoff, 1990; Nyberg‐Hansen and Rinvik, 1963; Woolsey et al., 1972). Most of these tracts are bilaterally symmetrical and the bulk of fibers cross over to the opposite side at the pyramidal decussation – figures vary between about 70%–90% that undergo this crossing but the majority of studies tend towards higher percentages though this depends on the end-effector under study. For example, primates’ hand and finger muscles seem to have more uncrossed fibers (Al Masri, 2011; Hong et al., 2010; Nathan et al., 1990)). The remaining fibers (∼10-30 %) do not cross before they reach the spinal cord (Carson, 2005). The presence of these non-crossing fibers underlies the appealing idea that the ipsilateral hemisphere is involved in movements not only at the contralateral side of the body, but also at the ipsilateral side as extensively outlined here. An example for a possible model including ipsilateral control, i.e. an alternative to the combination of interhemispheric excitation and intrahemispheric inhibition, is shown in Fig. 1, panel A. Interestingly, in a very recent paper Bundy and Leuthardt (2019) discussed the functional role of the ipsilateral hemisphere in motor control. They argued that the descending pathways primarily elicit movements and speculated about how the interaction through the CC may facilitate unimanual movements. And, they concluded that a balance between the excitatory and inhibitory function of interhemispheric interactions is mandatory for proper motor function. Our systematic review confirms these suggestions but also highlights that the story is not that simple. Our reading of the literature has identified three key findings that seem to underlie the hypothesized excitatory and inhibitory bilateral neural interactions, namely (a) the increase in task complexity of the unimanual task under investigation requires more efficient communication between hemispheres, (b) the anatomical properties of transcallosal fiber tracts enable this interhemispheric information exchange, and (c) the left (pre)motor areas play a key role when performing more complex motor tasks, irrespective of whether the left or right hand is being used.

In Fig. 1, we also depict another alternative, namely possible inhibitory cortico-cortical projections from S1 to M1 within a hemisphere (panel C). We added this model because of culminating evidence for synchronized or fine-tuned interactions between the periphery and S1 via feedback afferent pathways (see, e.g., Baker (2007) and references therein). Discussing this and other related animal studies in more detail is, however, beyond the scope of the current review.

4.2. Bilateral interaction

When executing a unimanual movement the human motor network shows consistent bilateral activation. This finding has been confirmed with all neuroimaging modalities reviewed here. It hence seems likely that inhibitory and faciliatory processes are needed to suppress the outflow of activity in the ipsilateral hemisphere to avoid bimanual motor (co-) activation.

TMS studies have revealed both an increase and a decrease in IHI. These conflicting IHI patterns might be explained by differences in experimental settings, especially the type of conditioning stimuli. The intensity of the stimuli could be adjusted to compensate for the increased MEP amplitude induced at the stimulus side because of the unimanual movements (Nelson et al., 2009; Sattler et al., 2012) and may hence yield a reduced IHI. By contrast, when conditioning stimuli are not adjusted to compensate for the stimulus-induced increase in MEP amplitude, IHI may increase (Hinder et al., 2010a, b; Liang et al., 2014; Uehara et al., 2014; Vercauteren et al., 2008). According to Brocke et al. (2008) these inhibitory processes are accompanied by measurable changes in the local neurovascular signal. As we summarized, unimanual movements are associated with BOLD activation in the contralateral and deactivation in the ipsilateral sensorimotor cortices. It has been suggested that this deactivation in the ipsilateral hemisphere could be caused by transcallosal inhibition involving GABAergic interneurons (Matsumura et al., 1992), an idea that might deserve future exploration.

BOLD changes of bilateral premotor areas seem strongly correlated with each other, as well as with the changes in M1 contralateral to the moving hand. This agrees with EEG and MEG assessments that revealed a decrease in both alpha and beta power, and an increase in coherence between bilateral premotor and sensorimotor cortices when performing unimanual movements. This bilateral coupling becomes more pronounced with increasing task complexity. There, symmetry appears broken in that left PM is especially active during both left- and right-hand complex movements. This is particularly interesting in view of the so-called ‘motor dominance theory’ that suggests that the left hemisphere is more capable than the right one to support motor activity; it hence might always be involved in motor execution, be that with the right or the left hand (Callaert et al., 2011; Ziemann and Hallett, 2001).

4.3. Task dependency

The direction and location of both inhibition and facilitation appears to depend on the motor task that is performed. Overall, an experimentally induced increase in task complexity, in particularly an increase in motor timing requirements, seems to be accompanied with more (efficient) communication between hemispheres. For unimanual movements we envision the following scenario when task complexity increases: Inhibition of the ipsilateral hemisphere likely increases, while inhibition of the contralateral hemisphere likely reverses into facilitation when the motor task becomes more challenging. Several research groups forwarded the idea that activation patterns of complex motor control operate at a ‘high level’ (Donoghue and Sanes, 1994; Gerloff et al., 1998a; Hummel et al., 2003; Manganotti et al., 1998; Sadato et al., 1996), but this level remains ill defined. Hummel et al. (2003) suggested that a task-complexity related increase in ipsilateral activation is not caused by motor memory load but by processing increasingly difficult transitions between movements. Interestingly, however, task-dependent activations, both excitatory and inhibitory, are not restricted to bilateral M1s, but are also present in other parts of the motor network, in particular in SMA and PM (Andres and Gerloff, 1999). The role of SMA in the preparation and performance of sequential movements has been demonstrated by, e.g., Gerloff et al. (1997), where stimulation with rTMS over SMA induced errors in motor performance in the more complex sequences. And, the role of left PM has been discussed above.

4.4. Outlook

4.4.1. Multimodal approaches

As highlighted in the Introduction, the CC is the main gateway for interhemispheric communication. A positive correlation was reported between the callosal thickness of the CC and the hand performance of the (right) dominant hand, but not of the (left) non-dominant hand (Kurth et al., 2013; Sehm et al., 2016). According to the aforementioned motor dominance theory one might speculate that this pattern of results will also be observed with left-handed participants. One could then assume that the left hemisphere is more involved in the support of motor activity and that the thickness of the CC is mainly related to the passage from left to right M1.

Stronger structural connectivity (higher FA) is associated with the reduction of unwanted mirror movements. Likewise, age-related atrophy implies weaker structural connectivity yielding stronger functional connectivity and poorer performance (Fling et al., 2012; Langan et al., 2010; Sullivan et al., 2010).

Earlier work investigated whether the CC exerts an inhibitory or excitatory role in the interhemispheric communication and concluded that there is evidence in the literature for both outcomes, although most studies support the excitatory function of the CC in interhemispheric communication (Bloom and Hynd, 2005; Carson, 2005; van der Knaap and van der Ham, 2011). As likewise hypothesized in the introduction, if transcallosal pathways are primarily excitatory and if the motor network shows (almost) symmetric, bilateral activation patterns while moving unimanually, then this indicates some type of intrahemispheric inhibition mediated through intrahemispheric pathways probably involving the premotor areas (Daffertshofer et al., 2005; Stinear and Byblow, 2002).

Combining the findings of multimodal approaches to study unimanual movements may help indeed to better understand how the brain enables the fine-tuned motor coordination that we are capable of. Still, several questions concerning the control of unilateral hand movements remain unanswered. Based on this review, we suggest that future research should investigate the role of the left hemisphere in greater detail, in particular the left PM. There is some evidence that this area plays a key role in the control of unimanual movements, but more research is needed, specifically with both left- and right-handed participants, to confirm this.

Only a few studies linked structural and functional connectivity in one experiment while performing unimanual movements (cf. Supplementary Material S2, Table 5). This is unfortunate because – as we outlined here – unimanual movements are likely to rely on the interhemispheric cross-talk through transcallosal tracts. We do suggest to intensify the research that combines different modalities as this may be key to unravel all the factors involved in unimanual motor control.

4.4.2. Integrating other populations

Our main aim was to specify the determinants and functional role of the often reported, bilateral activation patterns in the cortex during normal unimanual motor control in healthy humans. For this review we only included non-invasive studies, since invasive approaches may alter the normally functioning brain and, by this, the normal control of unimanual behavior. Yet, there is much to learn by combining our finding with the plenitude of studies in non-human primates, let alone studies on impaired motor control as observed in, e.g., stroke patients. For instance, Grefkes and Ward (2014) identified that lesions in M1 can lead to proportional changes in ventral PM activity. In fact, they argued that inactivation of either ipsi- or contralateral M1 or contralateral ventral PM deteriorates hand function recovery post stroke (there experimentally induced macaque monkeys). Interestingly, studies on partly hemiparetic stroke patients revealed unimanual movement of the affected (contralesional) side to display clearly bilateral neural activity. While this may indicate the ‘emergence’ of ipsilateral control to compensate motor impairment post stroke, one has to realize that motor learning of the non-affected side can limit the recovery of the affected one (Boddington and Reynolds, 2017; Dodd et al., 2017), which arguably speaks for a (dis-)balance of interhemispheric excitation versus intrahemispheric inhibition (Grefkes and Ward, 2014; Koch et al., 2016), as advocated here.

Biochemichemistry & behavioral decision-making in flies: When consensus of neurons in a network is reached, the network is pushed chemically, transforming deliberation into an all-or-nothing output

Biochemical computation underlying behavioral decision-making. Stephen C Thornquist, Maximilian J Pitsch, Charlotte S Auth, Michael A. Crickmore. bioRxiv Mar 15 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.14.992057

Abstract: Computations in the brain are broadly assumed to emerge from patterns of fast electrical activity. Challenging this view, we show that a male fly's decision to persist in mating, even through a potentially lethal threat, hinges on biochemical computations that enable processing over minutes to hours. Each neuron in a recurrent network measuring time into mating contains slightly different internal molecular estimates of elapsed time. Protein Kinase A (PKA) activity contrasts this internal measurement with input from the other neurons to represent evidence that the network's goal has been achieved. When consensus is reached, PKA pushes the network toward a large-scale and synchronized burst of calcium influx, which we call an eruption. The eruption functions like an action potential at the level of the network, transforming deliberation within the network into an all-or-nothing output, after which the male will no longer sacrifice his life to continue mating. We detail the continuous transformation between interwoven molecular and electrical information over long timescales in this system, showing how biochemical activity, invisible to most large scale recording techniques, is the key computational currency directing a life-or-death decision.

Predictions drive neural representations of visual events ahead of incoming sensory information

Predictions drive neural representations of visual events ahead of incoming sensory information. Tessel Blom, Daniel Feuerriegel, Philippa Johnson, Stefan Bode, and Hinze Hogendoorn. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 16, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1917777117

Significance: Visual information takes time to travel from the retina and through the visual system, such that the sensory information available to the brain lags behind events in the present moment. Prediction has long been considered a fundamental principle in neuroscience. Using time-resolved EEG decoding, we show that predictive mechanisms are sufficient to activate sensory-like neural representations of anticipated future events, and that these representations are activated before the arrival of afferent sensory information. This reveals that predictive neural mechanisms might allow the visual system to overcome its neural processing delays and interact with our environment in real time.

Abstract: The transmission of sensory information through the visual system takes time. As a result of these delays, the visual information available to the brain always lags behind the timing of events in the present moment. Compensating for these delays is crucial for functioning within dynamic environments, since interacting with a moving object (e.g., catching a ball) requires real-time localization of the object. One way the brain might achieve this is via prediction of anticipated events. Using time-resolved decoding of electroencephalographic (EEG) data, we demonstrate that the visual system represents the anticipated future position of a moving object, showing that predictive mechanisms activate the same neural representations as afferent sensory input. Importantly, this activation is evident before sensory input corresponding to the stimulus position is able to arrive. Finally, we demonstrate that, when predicted events do not eventuate, sensory information arrives too late to prevent the visual system from representing what was expected but never presented. Taken together, we demonstrate how the visual system can implement predictive mechanisms to preactivate sensory representations, and argue that this might allow it to compensate for its own temporal constraints, allowing us to interact with dynamic visual environments in real time.

Keywords: predictionneural delaystime-resolved decodingvisual system

Per capita meat consumption in Switzerland has been rather consistent for decades, although the percentage of vegetarians has risen to 14 per cent according to a recent survey

Mann, S. and Necula, R. (2020), "Are vegetarianism and veganism just half the story? Empirical insights from Switzerland", British Food Journal, Mar 2020. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-07-2019-0499

Abstract
Purpose: Per capita meat consumption in Switzerland has been rather consistent for decades, although the percentage of vegetarians has risen to 14 per cent according to a recent survey. This study tries to resolve this apparent contradiction

Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on household consumption data from Switzerland and focuses on the distribution of consumption rather than on average amounts, using descriptive statistics and a mixed-effects model which explains the coefficient of variation between single consumer consumption amounts.

Findings: Vegetarianism and veganism are not only overestimated through surveys but also associated with a segment of the population that is consuming increasing amounts of meat. This dual development leads to a stable per capita meat consumption.

Originality/value: Our results indicate that greater scientific attention should be paid to this segment of heavy meat eaters.

Is there anything more affected, aggressive, & relentlessly concrete than a Parisian intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe.

Is there anything more affected, aggressive, & relentlessly concrete than a Parisian intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe. Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, 1990.

[...] Furthermore, arguments by the French about the rationalist limitations of their own culture have been illegitimately transferred to England and America, with poor results. The English language was created by poets, a five-hundred-year enterprise of emotion and metaphor, the richest internal dialogue in world literature. French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisian intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe. Behind every book is a certain person with a certain history. I can never know too much about that person and that history. Personality is western reality. It is a visible condensation of sex and psyche outside the realm of word. We know it by Apollonian vision, the pagan cinema of western perception. Let us not steal from the eye to give to the ear.

Word-worship has made it difficult for scholarship to deal with the radical cultural change of our era of mass media. Academics are constantly fighting a rearguard action. Traditional genre-criticism is moribund. The humanities must abandon their insular fiefdoms and begin thinking in terms of imagination, a power that crosses the genres and unites high with popular art, the noble with the sleazy. There is neither decline nor disaster in the triumph of mass media, only a shift from word to image—in other words, a return to western culture’s pre-Gutenberg, pre-Protestant pagan pictorialism.

That popular culture reclaims what high culture shuts out is clear in the case of pornography. Pornography is pure pagan imagism. Just as a poem is ritually limited verbal expression, so is pornography ritually limited visual expression of the daemonism of sex and nature. Every shot, every angle in pornography, no matter how silly, twisted, or pasty, is yet another attempt to get the whole picture of the enormity of chthonian nature. Is pornography art? Yes. Art is contemplation and conceptualization, the ritual exhibitionism of primal mysteries. Art makes order of nature’s cyclonic brutality. Art, I said, is full of crimes. The ugliness and violence in pornography reflect the ugliness and violence in nature.

Pornography’s male-born explicitness renders visible what is invisible, woman’s chthonian internality. It tries to shed Apollonian light on woman’s anxiety-provoking darkness. The vulgar contortionism of pornography is the serpentine tangle of Medusan nature. Pornography is
human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature. The banning of pornography, rightly sought by Judeo-Christianity, would be a victory over the west’s stubborn paganism. But pornography cannot be banned, only driven underground, where its illicit charge will be enhanced. Pornography’s amoral pictorialism will live forever as a rebuke to the humanistic cult of the redemptive word. Words cannot save the cruel flux of pagan nature.

The western eye makes things, idols of Apollonian objectification. Pornography makes many well-meaning people uncomfortable because it isolates the voyeuristic element present in all art, and especially cinema. All the personae of art are sex objects. The emotional response of spectator or reader is inseparable from erotic response. As I said, our lives as physical beings are a Dionysian continuum of pleasure-pain. At every moment we are steeped in the sensory, even in sleep. Emotional arousal is sensual arousal; sensual arousal is sexual arousal. The idea that emotion can be separated from sex is a Christian illusion, one of the most ingenious but finally unworkable strategies in Christianity’s ancient campaign against pagan nature. Agape, spiritual love, belongs to eros but has run away from home.

We are voyeurs at the perimeters of art, and there is a sadomasochistic sensuality in our responses to it. Art is a scandal, literally a “stumbling block,” to all moralism, whether on the Christian right or Rousseauist left. Pornography and art are inseparable, because there is  voyeurism and voracity in all our sensations as seeing, feeling beings.  The fullest exploration of these ideas is Edmund Spenser’s Renaissance epic, The Faerie Queene. In this poem, which prefigures cinema by its radiant Apollonian projections, the voyeuristic and sadomasochistic latency in art and sex is copiously documented. Western perception is a daemonic theater of ritual surprise. We may not like what we see when we look into the dark mirror of art.

"Society is woman’s protection against rape, not, as some feminists absurdly maintain, the cause of rape"; the rapist is a man with too little socialization rather than too much

"Society is woman’s protection against rape, not, as some feminists absurdly maintain, the cause of rape"; the rapist is a man with too little socialization rather than too much. Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, 1990.

[...] Every woman’s body contains a cell of archaic night, where all knowing must stop. This is the profound meaning behind striptease, a sacred dance of pagan origins which, like prostitution, Christianity has never been able to stamp out.  Erotic dancing by males cannot be comparable, for a nude woman carries off the stage a final concealment, that chthonian darkness from which we come.

Woman’s body is a secret, sacred space. It is a temenos or ritual precinct, a Greek word I adopt for the discussion of art. In the marked- off space of woman’s body, nature operates at its darkest and most mechanical. Every woman is a priestess guarding the temenos of daemonic mysteries. Virginity is categorically different for the sexes. A boy becoming a man quests for experience. The penis is like eye or hand, an extension of self reaching outward. But a girl is a sealed vessel that must be broken into by force. The female body is the prototype of all sacred spaces from cave shrine to temple and church. The womb is the veiled Holy of Holies, a great problem, as we shall see, for sexual polemicists like William Blake who seek to abolish guilt and covertness in sex. The taboo on woman’s body is the taboo that always hovers over the place of magic. Woman is literally the occult, which means “the hidden.” These uncanny meanings cannot be changed, only suppressed, until they break into cultural consciousness again. Political equality will succeed only in political terms. It is helpless against the archetypal. Kill the imagination, lobotomize the brain, castrate and operate: then the sexes will be the same. Until then, we must live and dream in the daemonic turbulence of nature.

Everything sacred and inviolable provokes profanation and violation.  Every crime that can be committed will be. Rape is a mode of natural aggression that can be controlled only by the social contract. Modem ferninism’s most naive formulation is its assertion that rape is a crime of violence but not of sex, that it is merely power masquerading as sex. But sex is power, and all power is inherently aggressive. Rape is male power fighting female power. It is no more to be excused than is murder or any other assault on another’s civil rights. Society is woman’s protection against rape, not, as some feminists absurdly maintain, the cause of rape. Rape is the sexual expression of the will-to-power, which nature plants in all of us and which civilization rose to contain. Therefore the rapist is a man with too little socialization rather than too much. World-wide evidence is overwhelming that whenever social controls are weakened, as in war or mob rule, even civilized men behave in uncivilized ways, among which is the barbarity of rape.

Androphilic women’s vaginal, vulvar & clitoral responses tend to be gender-nonspecific, meaning that their genital responses to male and female sexual stimuli are relatively similar

Assessing gender-specificity of clitoral responses. Kelly Suschinsky, Samantha Dawson, Meredith Chivers. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, e20190061, March 11, 2020. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjhs.2019-0061

Abstract: Androphilic (i.e., sexually attracted to men) women’s vaginal and vulvar responses tend to be gender-nonspecific, meaning that their genital responses to male and female sexual stimuli are relatively similar. Men’s genital responses are gender-specific, in that penile responses are greater to preferred sexual stimuli than nonpreferred sexual stimuli. To date, however, no research has been conducted on the specificity of clitoral responses (i.e., the organ homologous to the penis). The purpose of the current study was to assess gender-specificity of self-reported sexual arousal, vaginal, and clitoral responses in androphilic women. We expected women’s self-reported and vaginal responses to be gender-nonspecific and their clitoral responses to be gender-specific. Forty androphilic women were presented with 90 sec sexual (female masturbation and male masturbation) and neutral (nature scene) audio-visual stimuli. Responses were recorded continuously throughout the stimuli using a keypad and combination vaginal and clitoral photoplethysmograph. Consistent with our predictions, self-reported sexual arousal and vaginal responses were gender-nonspecific, such that androphilic women responded similarly to the male and female masturbation stimuli. Counter to our prediction, clitoral responses were also gender-nonspecific. Given that this is the first study to use clitoral photoplethysmography to assess gender-specificity, we discuss the results in the larger context of sexual psychophysiological research, including the importance of contextual features in stimuli, and offer directions for future research.

KEY WORDS: Clitoral photoplethysmography, gender-specificity, sexual arousal, vaginal photoplethysmography

Trends in Time Spent Alone in Finland: Between 1987 & 2010 the time spent alone increased by 124 min per day, due mostly to structural factors, such as aging and an increase in the number of single households

Disconnected Lives: Trends in Time Spent Alone in Finland. Timo Anttila, Kirsikka Selander & Tomi Oinas. Social Indicators Research, Mar 14 2020. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-020-02304-z

Abstract: Discussions about social isolation have been extensive over the past few decades. A less sociable nature of social ties has been identified in Western societies. The phenomenon has been associated with demographic changes such as aging and living alone as well as changes in the use of new technologies. In this study we employ representative Finnish Time Use Surveys from three decades, 1987–1988 (n = 1887), 1999–2000 (n = 2673) and 2009–2010 (n = 1887) to examine the trends in social isolation, measured as time spent alone. Our results showed that between 1987 and 2010 the time spent alone increased by 124 min per day. The increase was linear and occurred in nearly all population groups. Structural factors, such as aging and an increase in the number of single households, are strongly associated with increased time spent alone. Time spent alone has increased, especially during leisure activities. Specifically, time spent watching television and using computers is associated with the decreasing tendency for face-to-face interaction.

Discussion

Many international studies have examined the change in social interaction and its less sociable nature in recent decades. This phenomenon has been identified largely in Western societies, and has been associated with societal changes such as demographic changes (aging), cultural changes (individualization) and changes in the use of new technologies. And indeed, several researchers have raised their concern over how the new information technologies reduce our time with face-to-face interaction. Also, economic development has generated wealth and modern welfare states provide social security, both of which have enabled people to live alone.

Our approach focuses on structural factors of social isolation and uses an objective indicator measuring time spent with face-to-face interaction. The detailed information from ‘with-whom’ coding in time use surveys and a nationally representative data set from three decades are clear strengths of the study. Time use surveys are underutilized in studying changes in social connections. Our study significantly contributes to the scarce literature on trends in time spent alone. Although time use surveys have included columns for participants to report time spent alone for decades (Fisher 2015), to our knowledge, the literature is restricted to only few descriptive studies (Turcotte 2007; Clark 2002).

The strength of time use diary data in assessing objective face-to-face social interaction is evident. Compared to retrospective survey questions on the time devoted to social interaction, time use diary data provides detailed information about time spent together with someone or alone and, in addition, connects this time to specific activities (Kingston and Nock 1987; Michelson 2005; Glorieux et al. 2011). At the same time, we emphasize that time spent alone cannot be judged as a purely good or bad phenomenon. People may seek solitude as it enables them to be free of social commitments and thus to just relax. Solitude, as one deliberately seeking to spend time alone, can be a constructive stimulus, e.g. for psychological well-being and creativity.

This study identified a number of factors associated with a decrease in face-to-face interaction. Our results showed that structural factors, such as aging and an increase of single households, are strongly associated with increased time spent alone. We expected that rapid urbanization would also effect social context of time use. However, the living area did not have an effect in time spent alone after controlling for other factors. The increase in time spent alone has been faster for men than for women. There are also important gender differences between weekdays and weekends. Men report more time alone on weekdays than women. On weekends, however, differences between genders do not exist and the situation has been stable over the study period.

With regard to weekly variation in time spent alone, our results showed that differences between weekdays and weekends have stayed rather steady. Time spent alone has increased on both weekdays and weekends, but on average, weekends still provide more shared time. Public debate on changing societal rhythms and the thesis of 24/7 society implicitly predicts that the special nature of weekdays is disappearing and that the special nature of weekdays and weekends is increasingly less determined by collectively shared rhythms of work, consumption or leisure time. An earlier Finnish time use study (Anttila and Oinas 2018) showed, however, that despite the deregulation of working hours and opening hours, the time structure of weekends has not begun to resemble weekdays to any significant degree. Weekend time is still spent resting, free of work, and socialising.

With regard to social connections, new technologies may be considered disruptive, because they reduce the time potential for face-to-face activities (Stern 2008). Our analysis showed that time spent alone increased in particular during leisure activities. The most remarkable increase was found in activities that can be classified as passive leisure. Television and computers seem to be technologies that are associated with the decreasing tendency for face-to-face interaction. The findings are in line with previous studies showing a connection between digital media use and time spent alone (Thulin and Vilhelmson 2019).

At the same time, we acknowledge, that activities in social media are possibly associated with several beneficial social networks, including discussion networks that are more likely to contain and connect people from different backgrounds (Vriens and van Ingen 2018). In addition, new social media is efficient in regard to network maintenance in quantitative terms, as it decreases the average amount of time devoted per connection and therefore potentially increases the number of friends and acquaintances.

Further Research

During the study period the technologies found in homes have changed, and along with new technology new activities have occurred. The density of televisions in households was in association with leisure time spent alone as family members watch television from their own TV screens. Thus, our results suggest that the increase in time spent alone not only reflects a growing proportion of the Finnish people living alone but also that more people who live in family homes are spending time apart from each other in front of separate screens when at home. This ‘alone together’ is interesting finding, which calls for future research. We observe the increasingly common phenomenon of groups of people in the same space, but paying more attention to content on digital devices than to the people with whom they are in close proximity. Being alone with other people is a very relevant concept. We propose further research with more sophisticated research design to address this issue. For example, time use surveys with household sample allow for construction of shared time episodes, which estimate how many household members were at home, but perhaps reporting being alone.

It is evident that family routines and cultural traditions differ between countries. For example, an earlier comparative study on children’s time use (Gracia et al. 2019) shows that Finnish children do have a markedly different organization of their daily lives than British children, and especially compared to Spanish children, because of cultural differences in their daily structure of time. The study showed that after controlling for multiple demographic and socioeconomic factors, Finnish children spent 127 min per day with parents compared with 235 min in the United Kingdom and 280 daily minutes in Spain. By contrast, Finnish children spent a large proportion of their time alone (235 daily minutes), representing more than 1 h per day, compared to Spain and the UK. We propose that researchers take advantage of rich harmonized time-diary data from different countries to study between-country differences in the social context of time use.

Limitations

The objective nature of our indicator is a limitation in our study. The data here cannot address the subjective qualities or meanings that a person attaches to time spent alone. For instance, not all people who spend time alone are isolated or feel lonely which heightens the need to have a better understanding of peoples’ views on time alone. More in-depth information about the qualities in time spent alone cannot be accessed with diary data and qualitative approaches are needed. Other possible limitations relate to comparability across surveys from three decades. However, we found linear increase in the time spent alone, which occurred in nearly all population groups. In the more detailed analysis on daily timing of time spent alone, the results remained stable over the years. We also conducted further analysis separately for weekdays and weekends and the results indicated only minor differences. Another possible limitation is the restriction of the analyses to September–November as in 1987–1988 data there was no ‘with-whom’ information available for other months. For years 1999–2000 and 2009–2010, we find that time spend alone varied significantly depending on time of year. However, the autumn season (September to November) did not differ significantly from the rest of the year. Thus, the seasonal restriction should not bias our analyses i.e. underestimate or overestimate the amount of time spend alone.

Recommendations

This study attempts to contribute one more piece to the puzzle of how social connections are changing in the information age. Our contribution to public discussion is to provide important views on societal processes that create both hindrances to, and opportunities for, face-to-face social interaction, which is critical for the well-being of individuals and communities.

The knowledge on societal processes producing social isolation can give useful input to policy programmes and interventions that can improve social connectedness and social capital. The topic is important in many respects. For example, social interaction is central to human well-being and is critically involved in the maintenance of health. Social isolation has been compared to obesity and smoking in terms of potential association with negative health effects (Holt-Lunstad et al. 2015). Roeters et al. (2014) found that for both women and men, spending a high proportion of leisure time alone is associated with negative mental health consequences. Young adults and older people are identified as risk groups for social isolation. Children’s time spent alone can strengthen their individual autonomy or self-reflection, but, on the other hand, when children spend excessive amount time alone, the risks of suffering from well-being problems increase. Our results showed that in the youngest age group (10–20 years old) the amount of time spent alone increased by 75 min over the study period. In the oldest age group people spent almost 10 h per day without face-to-face interaction. This amount of alone time may raise health concerns. Researchers have found that older people with fewer human contacts are more likely to die—even if their perceived loneliness is controlled—than are people with richer social connections (Steptoe et al. 2013). Thus, identifying the risk groups of social isolation can help target those factors that are the most crucial to preventing welfare inequalities and promoting equal prospects for well-being.

We men are different, able to separate sex & emotion, gladly going to temptation, promiscuity, & disease, able to seek "ecstasy in the squalor of public toilets, for women perhaps the least erotic place on earth."

We men are different, able to separate sex & emotion, gladly going to temptation, promiscuity, & disease, able to seek "ecstasy in the squalor of public toilets, for women perhaps the least erotic place on earth." Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, 1990.

Ms Paglia didn't know that not only gay males seek sordid abandoned buildings, dirty industrial environments to have sex; heterosexual porn also use such stage to represent more authenthic, more savage, more thrilling sex. See a paper about the prevalence of paraphilic interests & how the high prevalence of some paraphilic patterns might render their pathologization problematic:

The Prevalence of Paraphilic Interests in the Czech Population: Preference, Arousal, the Use of Pornography, Fantasy, and Behavior. Klára Bártová et al. The Journal of Sex Research, Jan 9 2020. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/01/the-prevalence-of-paraphilic-interests.html

That said, let me add what she says in her book about the distance betwwen feminist women ideals and masculinity & related ideas...

The male genital metaphor is concentration and projection. Nature gives concentration to man to help him overcome his fear. Man approaches woman in bursts of spasmodic concentration. This gives him the delusion of temporary control of the archetypal mysteries that brought him forth. It gives him the courage to return. Sex is metaphysical for men, as it is not for women. Women have no problem to solve by sex. Physically and psychologically, they are serenely self-contained.  They may choose to achieve, but they do not need it. They are not thrust into the beyond by their own fractious bodies. But men are out of balance. They must quest, pursue, court, or seize. Pigeons on the grass, alas: in such parkside rituals we may savor the comic pathos of sex. How often one spots a male pigeon making desperate, self-inflating sallies toward the female, as again and again she turns her back on him and nonchalantly marches away. But by concentration and insistence he may carry the day. Nature has blessed him with obliviousness to his own absurdity. His purposiveness is both a gift and a burden. In human beings, sexual concentration is the male’s instrument for gathering together and forcibly fixing the dangerous chthonian superflux of emotion and energy that I identify with woman and nature. In sex, man is driven into the very abyss which he flees. He makes a voyage to nonbeing and back.

Through concentration to projection into the beyond. The male projection of erection and ejaculation is the paradigm for all cultural projection and conceptualization—from art and philosophy to fantasy, hallucination, and obsession. Women have conceptualized less in history not because men have kept them from doing so but because women do not need to conceptualize in order to exist. I leave open the question of brain differences. Conceptualization and sexual mania may issue from the same part of the male brain. Fetishism, for instance, a practice which like most of the sex perversions is confined to men, is clearly a conceptualizing or symbol-making activity. Man’s vastly greater com¬ mercial patronage of pornography is analogous.

An erection is a thought and the orgasm an act of imagination. The male has to will his sexual authority before the woman who is a shadow of his mother and of all women. Failure and humiliation constantly wait in the wings. No woman has to prove herself a woman in the grim way a man has to prove himself a man. He must perform, or the show does not go on. Social convention is irrelevant. A flop is a flop. Ironically, sexual success always ends in sagging fortunes anyhow. Eveiy male projection is transient and must be anxiously, endlessly renewed. Men enter in triumph but withdraw in decrepitude. The sex act cruelly mimics history’s decline and fall. Male bonding is a self-preservation society, collegial reaffirmation through larger, fabricated frames of reference.  Culture is man’s iron reinforcement of his ever-imperiled private projections.

Concentration and projection are remarkably demonstrated by urination, one of male anatomy’s most efficient compartmentalizations.  Freud thinks primitive man preened himself on his ability to put out a fire with a stream of urine. A strange thing to be proud of but certainly beyond the scope of woman, who would scorch her hams in the process.  Male urination really is a kind of accomplishment, an arc of transcendance. A woman merely waters the ground she stands on. Male urination is a form of commentary. It can be friendly when shared but is often aggressive, as in the defacement of public monuments by Sixties rock stars. To piss on is to criticize. John Wayne urinated on the shoes of a grouchy director in full view of cast and crew. This is one genre of self- expression women will never master. A male dog marking every bush on the block is a graffiti artist, leaving his rude signature with each lift of the leg. Women, like female dogs, are earthbound squatters. There is no projection beyond the boundaries of the self. Space is claimed by being sat on, squatter’s rights.

The cumbersome, solipsistic character of female physiology is tediously evident at sports events and rock concerts, where fifty women wait in line for admission to the sequestered cells of the toilet. Meanwhile, their male friends zip in and out (in every sense) and stand around looking at their watches and rolling their eyes. Freud’s notion of penis envy proves too true when the pubcrawling male cheerily relieves himself in midnight alleyways, to the vexation of his bursting female companions. This compartmentalization or isolation of male genitality has its dark side, however. It can lead to a dissociation of sex and emotion, to temptation, promiscuity, and disease. The modem male homosexual, for example, has sought ecstasy in the squalor of public toilets, for women perhaps the least erotic place on earth.

Man’s metaphors of concentration and projection are echoes of both body and mind. Without them, he would be helpless before woman’s power. Without them, woman would long ago have absorbed all of creation into herself. There would be no culture, no system, no pyramiding of one hierarchy upon another. Earth-cult must lose to sky-cult, if mind is ever to break free from matter. Ironically, the more modem woman thinks with Apollonian clarity, the more she participates in the historical negation of her sex. Political equality for women, desirable and necessary as it is, is not going to remedy the radical disjunction between the sexes that begins and ends in the body. The sexes will always be jolted by violent shocks of attraction and repulsion.

Androgyny, which some feminists promote as a pacifist blueprint for sexual utopia, belongs to the contemplative rather than active life. It is the ancient prerogative of priests, shamans, and artists. Feminists have politicized it as a weapon against the masculine principle. Redefined, it now means men must be like women and women can be whatever they like. Androgyny is a cancellation of male concentration and projection.  Prescriptions for the future by bourgeois academics and writers carry their own bias. The reform of a college English department cuts no ice down at the corner garage. Male concentration and projection are visible everywhere in the aggressive energy of the streets. Fortunately, male homosexuals of every social class have preserved the cult of the masculine, which will therefore never lose its aesthetic legitimacy. Major peaks of western culture have been accompanied by a high incidence of male homosexuality—in classical Athens and Renaissance Florence and London. Male concentration and projection are self-enhancing, leading to supreme achievements of Apollonian conceptualization.

People comfortable with closeness who were single or sexually or relationally dissatisfied reported greater sexual nostalgia (fantasies with past partners); chronic sexual nostalgia detracted from satisfaction

Sexual Nostalgia as a Response to Unmet Sexual and Relational Needs: The Role of Attachment Avoidance. Amy Muise et al. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, March 14, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220907468

Abstract: Romantic relationships help people meet needs for connection and emotional and sexual fulfillment. In the current research, we investigate an unexplored response to feeling sexually and relationally unfulfilled: reflecting on positive sexual experiences with past partners (or sexual nostalgia). Across three studies, people low in attachment avoidance (i.e., comfortable with closeness) who were (a) single or (b) sexually or relationally dissatisfied reported greater sexual nostalgia, whereas people high in attachment avoidance (i.e., value autonomy) did not calibrate their feelings of sexual nostalgia based on their current relationship status or satisfaction. Sexual fantasies about past partners (i.e., sexual nostalgia) were distinct from other types of sexual fantasies (Study 1) and the effects could not be attributed to general nostalgia (Study 2) or sexual desire (Study 3). Chronic sexual nostalgia detracted from satisfaction over time. The findings have implications for theories of nostalgia and attachment and for managing unfulfilled needs in relationships.

Keywords: nostalgia, attachment, satisfaction, sexuality, relationships


Discussion

Given that romantic relationships are difficult to maintain
and that couples often report declines in their desire and satisfaction over time (e.g., McNulty et al., 2016), it is likely
that most people will encounter times in their lives when
they feel they have unfulfilled sexual and relational needs. In
the current research, we explored whether reflecting on or
reminiscing about past sexual partners (which we termed
sexual nostalgia) is one response to having unfulfilled sexual
or relational needs. Study 1 revealed that sexual nostalgia
involves sexual memories or sexual fantasies about a past
partner and provided evidence that fantasies about past partners are distinct from other types of sexual fantasies. In participants’ descriptions of past partner sexual fantasies, the
most commonly reported theme was that people tend to draw
on these fantasies when feeling lonely or dissatisfied in a
current relationship. The data across all three studies converged with this theme from the qualitative data and indicated that when people are single or feeling dissatisfied with
their sex life or relationship, they reported more sexual nostalgia (however, in Study 3, the effects were driven by men).
Also, consistent with past research on general nostalgia and
attachment theory (e.g., Wildschut et al., 2010), people low
in attachment avoidance—those who are comfortable with
closeness—calibrated their feelings of sexual nostalgia based
on their current feelings of fulfillment, whereas those high in
avoidance did not. That is, people low in avoidance reported
greater sexual nostalgia when they were single, or feeling
unfulfilled in their current relationship, but for people high in
avoidance, their feelings of sexual nostalgia did not differ
based on their current fulfillment.


Extending Nostalgia to the Sexual Domain

Previous research has found that nostalgia is often triggered
by negative feelings, such as loneliness and disconnection,
and drawn on as a way to restore positive self-regard and
social connection (Wildschut et al., 2006). We extended past
work on nostalgia to sexuality to test whether sexual nostalgia is heightened in response to low sexual and relational
fulfillment. The current findings do not simply mirror past
work on nostalgia in the sexual domain but indicate that reminiscing about past sexual experiences is a unique way that
people might cope with feeling dissatisfied in their current
relationship or situation. In Study 2, we demonstrated that
sexual nostalgia is distinct from general nostalgia and that
people do not draw on general nostalgia in response to a lack
of fulfillment in their relationship or sex life. The associations with sexual nostalgia for a past partner also seem to be
distinct from reminiscing about an earlier time in the current
relationship—the function, if any, of reflecting on nostalgic
sexual experiences with a current partner is an interesting
avenue for future research.

One reason why nostalgic memories are thought to be powerful for restoring social connection when threatened or lonely is because they affirm that a person is loved and accepted and momentarily make a valuable past experience part of one’s present (Sedikides et al., 2008). Our findings from Study 1 that fantasies about past partners are distinct from other types of sexual fantasies suggest that fantasizing about a past partner might provide something unique when feeling dissatisfied that other sexual fantasies cannot provide. Sexual fantasies in general can serve a compensatory function (e.g., Birnbaum, 2007); women in longer (compared with shorter) marriages are more likely to fantasize about a person other than their spouse (Pelletier & Herold, 1988), which may compensate for lower relationship satisfaction or sexual boredom (Trudel, 2002). Given that fantasies about past partners are based on real experiences, these types of fantasies might have the unique ability to validate one’s sense of their sexual self and their desirability. Past research on general nostalgia has shown that feelings of nostalgia can lead people to connect with their authentic self (Baldwin et al., 2015), and in this sense, sexual nostalgia might lead people to feel sexually authentic. In addition, feelings of disconnection from a specific close other can be tempered by substituting another connection (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and in the context of romantic and sexual relationships, past partners might be the most appropriate substitute on which to reflect.

Although there is evidence that reflecting on nostalgic
experiences leads to positive self-regard, feelings of love and
protection (Wildschut et al., 2006), and feeling that one’s life
is meaningful (Routledge et al., 2008), nostalgic memories
also give rise to negative emotions. When people wrote
about a nostalgic event (compared with an ordinary event),
the narratives included themes of both happiness and sadness
(Wildschut et al., 2008), although in past experimental studies, evoked nostalgic memories tended to be more positivelyvalanced (Wildschut et al., 2006). Recent work has found
that nostalgic memories that occur naturally in daily life are
associated with mixed emotions but may be more imbued
with negative as opposed to positive feelings (Newman et al.,
2019). People who were more chronically nostalgic reported
lower well-being (Newman et al., 2019). These findings converge with the current findings on sexual nostalgia. In Study
3, people who reported more sexual nostalgia over the course
of the 28-day diary study felt less satisfied with their sex
lives and relationships 3 months later. It is possible that brief
reflection on positive past sexual experiences may help people manage a current lack of fulfillment, but chronically
reflecting on past sexual experiences may detract from their
current relationship. More research is needed to consider the
costs and benefits of sexual nostalgia for feelings of satisfaction and overall well-being Attachment Avoidance and Sexual Nostalgia
The current findings that people low in attachment avoidance calibrate their sexual nostalgia based on their current
feelings of fulfillment or satisfaction, but people high in
avoidance do not, are consistent with past research.
Avoidant people do not tend to seek support from others
when distressed or rejected (e.g., Mikulincer & Shaver,
2008) and often view their partners as unresponsive.
Therefore, avoidant people may not see past partners as
sources of connection and comfort. It was not the case,
however, that avoidant people did not draw on sexual nostalgia. In Studies 1 and 3, people higher (compared with
lower) in avoidance reported higher overall levels of sexual
nostalgia. Avoidant people seem to draw on sexual nostalgia even when they are satisfied in a current relationship,
possibly suggesting a more chronic need to distance themselves from closeness and intimacy in relationship. In fact,
people low in avoidance who were satisfied in their relationship are the people who did not draw on sexually nostalgia, possibly as a cognitive strategy to avoid reflecting
on alternatives to their current relationship.
The attachment system and the sexual system are inextricably linked as romantic partners serve as both attachment figures and sexual partners (Birnbaum, 2010).
Therefore, memories of past sexual partners might provide
both feelings of connection and sexual desirability, especially for people who are low in attachment avoidance.
Securely attached individuals view sex as a way to express
intimacy, feel confident, and fulfill needs for connection
(e.g., Birnbaum, 2016), and as such, memories of past sexual experiences might provide a powerful source to boost
feelings of connection and restore sexual confidence when
feeling unfulfilled. People high in attachment avoidance,
however, do not use sex to achieve emotional intimacy in
relationships and tend to distance themselves from romantic or emotional motives for sex (Birnbaum, 2016). Given
that sexual fantasies can represent attachment-related
wishes, such as avoidant people seeing themselves as less
helpless and intimate in their fantasies (Birnbaum et al.,
2011), people may use fantasies or memories of past partners to meet their attachment-related needs. The current
findings suggest just that when people low in attachment
avoidance feel that their sexual or relational needs are
unmet, they are more likely to reflect on past sexual relationships, possibly to temporarily meet those needs.


Limitations and Future Directions

The current research provides novel insight into one strategy
people use when their sexual and relational needs are unfulfilled, but many questions remain. Although we have evidence across three studies that people low in attachment
avoidance draw on sexual nostalgia when single or dissatisfied, we do not yet know what feelings of sexual nostalgia
provide in the moment. Given that the daily effects in Study 3
were driven by men, it is possible that men might draw on
past experiences in response to daily changes in satisfaction,
whereas women might draw on sexual nostalgia only when
feeling chronically unfulfilled. Related to this, we do not
know the function of sexual nostalgia for people high in
attachment avoidance, who, overall reported higher levels of
sexual nostalgia, and draw on sexual nostalgia even when satisfied. It is also likely that it is healthy for people to be able to
fulfill some emotional and social needs outside of their
romantic relationship (i.e., there might be some limitations to
how we assessed emotional need fulfillment in Study 2), and
if needs are being met in other close relationships, unmet
needs in a current romantic relationship might not trigger nostalgia or might not detract from satisfaction. Future work
might consider when and for whom sexual nostalgia is functional for helping people manage unfulfilled needs and when
sexual nostalgia is harmful for relationships.
Our theoretical predictions suggest that sexual nostalgia
occurs in response to unmet sexual or relational needs, but it
is also possible that sexual nostalgia might lead to feeling
dissatisfied or unfulfilled. When people described sexual
fantasies about past partners in Study 1, one theme that
emerged was that those fantasies could be triggered by visiting a certain place, smelling a type of perfume or cologne, or
hearing a certain song (much like general nostalgic memories). If sexual nostalgia is triggered externally, reflecting on
a past sexual experience might lead to feeling less satisfied in
a current relationship. In Study 3, we have evidence that
chronic sexual nostalgia in a relationship can detract from
satisfaction over time. Past research on general thoughts
about an ex-partner found that declines in satisfaction over
time were linked to longing for an ex-partner but also that
longing for an ex-partner detracted from satisfaction in a current relationship (Spielmann et al., 2012). Therefore, it is
possible that feelings of dissatisfaction might lead to greater
sexual nostalgia, but that more chronic nostalgia also detracts
from satisfaction. Future work might consider the trajectory
of sexual nostalgia and relationship and sexual satisfaction
over time to tease this apart.

Few Greek tragedies fully conform to the humanist commentary on them; modem criticism has projected a Victorian & Protestant high seriousness upon pagan culture that still blankets teaching of the humanities

Few Greek tragedies fully conform to the humanist commentary on them; modem criticism has projected a Victorian and, I feel, Protestant high seriousness upon pagan culture that still blankets teaching of the humanities. Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, 1990.

Few Greek tragedies fully conform to the humanist commentary on them. Their barbaric residue will not come unglued. Even in the fifth century, as we shall see, a satiric response to Apollonianized theater came in Euripides’ decadent plays. Problems in accurate assessment of Greek tragedy include not only the loss of three-quarters of the original body of work but the lack of survival of any complete satyr-play. This was the finale to the classic trilogy, an obscene comic burlesque. In Greek tragedy, comedy always had the last word. Modem criticism has projected a Victorian and, I feel, Protestant high seriousness upon pagan culture that still blankets teaching of the humanities. Paradoxically, assent to savage chthonian realities leads not to gloom but to humor. Hence Sade’s strange laughter, his wit amid the most fantastic cruelties. For life is not a tragedy but a comedy. Comedy is bom of the clash between Apollo and Dionysus. Nature is always pulling the rug out from under our pompous ideals.

Both the Apollonian and Judeo-Christian traditions are transcendental. That is, they seek to surmount or transcend nature. Despite Greek culture’s contrary Dionysian element, which I will discuss, high classicism was an Apollonian achievement. Judaism, Christianity’s parent sect, is the most powerful of protests against nature. The Old Testament asserts that a father god made nature and that differentiation into objects and gender was after the fact of his maleness. Judeo-Christianity, like Greek worship of the Olympian gods, is a sky-cult. It is an advanced stage in the history of religion, which everywhere began as earth-cult, veneration of fruitful nature.

The evolution from earth-cult to sky-cult shifts woman into the nether realm. Her mysterious procreative powers and the resemblance of her rounded breasts, belly, and hips to earth’s contours put her at the center of early symbolism. She was the model for the Great Mother figures who crowded the birth of religion worldwide. But the mother cults did not mean social freedom for women. On the contrary [...] cult-objects are prisoners of their own symbolic inflation. [...]

Woman was an idol of belly-magic. She seemed to swell and give birth by her own law. From the beginning of time, woman has seemed an uncanny being. Man honored but feared her. She was the black maw that had spat him forth and would devour him anew. Men, bonding together, invented culture as a defense against female nature. Sky-cult was the most sophisticated step in this process, for its switch of the creative locus from earth to sky is a shift from belly-magic to head-magic. And from this defensive head-magic has come the spectacular glory of male civilization, which has lifted woman with it. The very language and logic modem woman uses to assail patriarchal culture were the invention of men.

Hence the sexes are caught in a comedy of historical indebtedness. Man, repelled by his debt to a physical mother, created an alternate reality, a heterocosm to give him the illusion of freedom. Woman, at first content to accept man’s protections but now inflamed with desire for her own illusory freedom, invades man’s systems and suppresses her indebtedness to him as she steals them. By head-magic she will deny there ever was a problem of sex and nature. She has inherited the anxiety of influence.

Sex therapies believe guiltless, no-fault sex is possible, but sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges

Behaviorist sex therapies believe guiltless, no-fault sex is possible, but sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges. Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, 1990.

[...] Behaviorist sex therapies believe guiltless, no-fault sex is possible. But sex has always been girt round with taboo, irrespective of culture. Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges. [...] Eroticism is a realm stalked by ghosts. It is the place beyond the pale, both cursed and enchanted.

[...] much in culture goes against our best wishes. Integration of man's body and mind is a profound problem that is not about to be solved by recreational sex or an expansion of women's civil rights. Incarnation, the limitation of mind by matter, is an outrage to imagination. Equally outrations is gender, which we have not chosen but which nature has imposed upon us. Our physicality is torment [...].

The ghost-ridden character of sex is implicit in Freud’s brilliant theory of “family romance.” We each have an incestuous constellation of sexual personae that we carry from childhood to the grave and that determines whom and how we love or hate. Every encounter with friend or foe, every clash with or submission to authority bears the perverse traces of family romance. Love is a crowded theater, for as Harold Bloom remarks, “We can never embrace (sexually or otherwise) a single person, but embrace the whole of her or his family romance.” 1 We still [this was written in 1990] know next to nothing of the mystery of cathexis, the investment of libido in certain people or things. The element of free will in sex and emotion is slight. As poets know, falling in love is irrational.

Like art, sex is fraught with symbols. Family romance means that adult sex is always representation, ritualistic acting out of vanished realities. A perfectly humane eroticism may be impossible. Somewhere in every family romance is hostility and aggression, the homicidal wishes of the unconscious. Children are monsters of unbridled egotism and will, for they spring directly from nature, hostile intimations of immorality. We carry that daemonic will within us forever. Most people conceal it with acquired ethical precepts and meet it only in their dreams, which they hastily forget upon waking. The will-to-power is innate, but the sexual scripts of family romance are learned. Human beings are the only creatures in whom consciousness is so entangled with animal instinct. In western culture, there can never be a purely physical or anxiety-free sexual encounter. Every attraction, every pattern of touch, every orgasm is shaped by psychic shadows.

Lonely, Poor, and Ugly? How Cultural Practices and Forms of Capital Relate to Physical Unattractiveness

Lonely, Poor, and Ugly? How Cultural Practices and Forms of Capital Relate to Physical Unattractiveness. Christian Schneickert, Leonie C. Steckermeier, Lisa-Marie Brand. Cultural Sociology, March 10, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975520905417

Abstract: Physical attractiveness is increasingly framed as a meritocratic good that involves individual benefits, such as higher wages or success in the partner market. Investing in one’s physical appearance is thereby seen as a means to increase one’s human capital. While the positive effects are well documented, its counterpart, the dark side of physical appearance, has received much less attention from social science research. This article sheds light on the negative effects of physical appearance using a theoretical framework based on the cultural sociology of Bourdieu, integrating both structure and agency perspectives. Using data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) from 2014, we demonstrate that unattractiveness is socially stratified by economic, cultural, and social capital. The article highlights the relevance of cultural factors (e.g. forms of cultural capital and cultural practices) for the analysis of the interplay between physical appearance and stratification as well as the relevance of physical appearance for cultural sociology.

Keywords Attractiveness, habitus, cultural capital, cultural practices, economic capital, social capital

Check also Unattractive people are unaware of their (un)attractiveness. Tobias Greitemeyer. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, March 11 2020. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/03/unattractive-people-are-unaware-of.html

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Conclusions

This article has investigated the relations between forms of capital, cultural practices and the perception of physical appearance. From a critical discussion of some recent approaches in this area of research, we developed a theoretical framework for the analysis of unattractiveness based on the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Three aspects stand out from this perspective:

• (1) We focus on the “dark side of physical appearance” by analysing the possible social penalties of unattractiveness.
• (2) The majority of the research in this area focused on the effects of physical appearance on stratification. Recently, studies have focused on agency and the effects of stratification on physical appearance as well. We integrate both perspectives within our theoretical framework and investigate both directions empirically.
• (3) Finally, we highlight the role of cultural factors, especially cultural capital and cultural practices, in the analysis of physical appearance.

Our study shows that physical appearance is linked to social stratification. Regarding unattractiveness as a dependent variable, all forms of capital (but especially institutionalised and objectified cultural capital) significantly decrease unattractiveness. The cultural practices of highbrow cultural participation (reading, theater, opera), physical activities, and (surprisingly) drinking alcohol decrease unattractiveness, while smoking has negative effects on one’s physical appearance. These effects are stable even when controlling for many socio-demographic variables and other forms of capital. Beyond these effects, being single or separated is associated with being less attractive.

Regarding the forms of capital as dependent variables, unattractiveness decreases the accumulation of all forms of capital. The effects are stable and significant independently of socio-demographic characteristics and cultural practices. Taken together, we find clear associations between physical appearance and forms of capital (and vice versa). While previous studies have largely focused on the effects of attractiveness on economic capital (“not being poor”), social capital or the partner market (“not being lonely”), the relation between cultural factors and physical appearance has received less attention. Our study shows that forms of cultural capital and cultural practices should be included in the analysis of physical appearance and that physical appearance should receive more attention in cultural sociology.

It seems that the evaluation of one’s physical appearance must be conceptualised within a broader system of cultural classifications. Therefore, cultural sociology should further elaborate on the role of physical appearance in cultural spheres, especially focusing on cross-cultural differences in the nexus of unattractiveness, cultural capital and stratification.

A large number of observers were completely unaware of drastic color manipulations (hue rotation, desaturation) of the images shown to them; much of our experience of a colorful world seems to be a confabulation

Cohen, Michael, and Jordan Rubenstein. 2019. “How Much Color Do We See in the Blink of an Eye?.” PsyArXiv. July 28. doi:10.31234/osf.io/enywt

Abstract: Visual experience is painted in color. A change in hue or saturation can dramatically alter our understanding of a scene and how we feel about it. Subjectively, color does not feel like an optional dimension to be extracted only when necessary, but an automatically represented property of our entire visual field. Here, we ask whether that subjective impression is true. Using a variant of an inattentional blindness paradigm, we showed observers snapshots of colorful scenes when unbeknownst to them, an image was presented that was either desaturated or hue rotated across an overwhelming majority of the images. Although observers fixated on these images long enough to identify and describe them, a large number of observers were completely unaware of these drastic color manipulations. These findings suggest that much of our experience of a colorful world may be a confabulation.

Women's use of intimate apparel as subtle sexual signals in committed, het. relationships: Women report wearing sexier underwear the day taking the survey if they anticipate sexual activity that same day

Women's use of intimate apparel as subtle sexual signals in committed, heterosexual relationships. Lyndsey K. Craig ,Peter B. Gray. March 13, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230112

Abstract: Current literature on women’s sexual signaling focuses on modes of attracting potential, new sexual partners, but says little about women’s subtle sexual signals in committed, romantic relationships. Subtle sexual signals are inherently private and are only visible to the intended audience; a woman might use these signals to elicit or accept a sexual response from her partner or to increase her overall attractiveness, or attractivity. In this study, we sought to identify women’s use of intimate apparel as a proceptive or receptive behavior as well as the effects of relative mate value, relationship commitment, relationship satisfaction, and sexual functioning. A total of N = 353 women in the United States aged 25–45 who were in committed, heterosexual relationships completed the survey; 88.7%
 of the sample indicated wearing or having worn sexy underwear. Results indicate that women report wearing sexier underwear the day taking the survey if they anticipate sexual activity that same day. However, during the most recent sexual activity, women did not report wearing sexier underwear if they initiated (proceptive) that activity. While relative mate value was not directly related to sexiness of intimate apparel, women who report higher mate value tend to wear sexier underwear. Women’s use of intimate apparel might be viewed as a method of increasing attractivity and underlying receptivity to aid relationship maintenance, though caveats regarding measures and alternative interpretations are also discussed. Findings suggest that these women use intimate apparel to feel sexy, desired, aroused, and to prepare for sex with their partners. This study is the first to examine intimate apparel in relationships and as a subtle sexual signal of proceptivity and receptivity.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to identify women’s use of intimate apparel as a subtle sexual signal of proceptivity and receptivity in heterosexual romantic relationships; however, our findings suggest intimate apparel might serve another purpose for the women in this study. We predicted that women would wear sexier underwear when they expected to be sexually active and when initiating sexual activity. Women in this study did indeed report wearing sexier underwear when intending to be sexually active later that day, but women’s use of intimate apparel did not significantly contribute to sexual initiation. We also predicted that if a woman’s perceived mate value was relatively lower than her partner’s, she would be more likely to use intimate apparel to signal her proceptivity and receptivity. Conversely, we found that when a woman’s relative mate value was similar to or higher than–but not less than–her partner’s mate value, she reported wearing sexier underwear across all three contexts.

Further analyses into MVD found that women in relationships with men of higher mate value than themselves, and relatively high independent mate values, felt more overall satisfied and committed to the relationship; but her partner’s relative mate value did not influence her sexual experiences. Additionally, a woman’s independent mate value predicted the sexiness of her underwear despite her commitment, satisfaction, and perception of her partner’s mate value. Based on relative mate value, women might use intimate apparel when they feel more confident about themselves and their sexuality rather than as a signal of proceptivity and receptivity to their partner. So, why do women use intimate apparel if not for sexual signaling?

The number one reason women in this study reported wearing sexy underwear was “to feel sexy,” which is consistent with other findings on intimate apparel [42, 43]. Use of intimate apparel might also act as a form of self-arousal: a thorough review of women’s sexual desire by Meana [55] suggests that women want to feel sexually desired. Although a main factor in the decline of sexual desire and overall functioning for women is the presence of children and increased roles and responsibilities [56–58], the current study found that women’s parental status, employment status, income, and age were not predictors for the use of intimate apparel. We found the best predictors for women’s use of intimate apparel during their most sexual encounter to be relative mate value, relationship commitment, and relationship satisfaction. Other reasons reported for wearing intimate apparel were as a gift for their partner (M = 5.24, SD = 1.71) or on special occasions (M = 5.41, SD = 1.39). Furthermore, Pearson correlation analysis showed women who wore sexier underwear reported greater sexual desire (r = .218, p < .001) within the last four weeks and greater sexual desire (r = .271, p < .001), arousal (r = .291, p < .001), and satisfaction (r = .204, p < .001) during their most recent sexual encounter. Because there is a decline in sexual desire with relationship duration [57, 59], these women might be using intimate apparel to increase their own sexual desire, thus enhancing sexual encounters with their romantic partner [60] and maintaining the relationship they are committed to. Taken together, these results suggest women might use intimate apparel to increase their attractivity, which reflects a background signal of availability to romantic partners.

Limitations and future research

This study is subject to limitations. These data worked under the assumption that the respondents had only one romantic partner; extra pair partners could potentially influence how women use intimate apparel in their daily lives as well as within their committed relationships. Results were also not adjusted for time-of-day or cycle phase. A methodological limitation to this study is that participants were not asked the duration of their relationship, so use of intimate apparel across time could not be measured. Schmiedeberg and Shroder [61] found that sexual satisfaction peaks in the second half of the first year of a relationship and then declines over time. As the relationship progresses, the couple becomes more acquainted with one another and experience mutual life stressors; the couple transitions into the companionate phase, characterized by a state of comfort and commonality [62]. However, Frederick, Lever, Gillespie and Garcia [60] found that passion in romantic relationships can be maintained by enhancing the quality of the sexual encounters with sensual touch and “I love you” statements, so use of intimate apparel might also serve to maintain passion.

Another methodological limitation was the measure for initiation (mentioned in the Results), which was one item asking, “Did you or your partner initiate your most recent sexual encounter?” without a clear definition of initiate. A more specific measure of MVD beyond self and partner desirability would provide greater insight into individuals’ perceptions of themselves and their partners. Because this study focused on heterosexual women, future studies should examine how lesbian women use intimate apparel in their short- and long-term romantic relationships. Finally, this study does not provide support for intimate apparel as a form of proceptivity; future research might ask more probing question about sexual activities, specifically in open-ended interviews.

These findings might also have clinical significance in that women’s use of intimate apparel could reflect women’s body image. In a comprehensive review on women’s body image and sexual functioning, Woetman and ban den Brink [58] found a positive relationship between body image and sexual desire overall. They also found that women’s sexual arousal and satisfaction can be negatively affected by self-inspection and -evaluation during sexual activity. Another study on body image and romantic relationships found that body appreciation was positively associated with relationship quality as well as sexual satisfaction [63]. Because women in this study who reported higher mate value were more likely to wear sexier underwear, body image might play a role in women’s choice of intimate apparel and overall impact relationship and sexual satisfaction. Women who have lower body image might not have the confidence to wear sexier underwear, which could itself negatively affect her sexual desire and arousal. Future research into effects of body image should incorporate women’s use of intimate apparel as well as mate value to better understand these associations.