STEPHAN BENDER, MD ^{1, 2}, JOHANNES SCHRÖDER, MD ³, FRANZ RESCH, MD ¹, MATTHIAS WEISBROD, MD ^{2, 4}

¹ Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Centre of Psychosocial Medicine of the University of Heidelberg, Germany
² Department of General Psychiatry, Centre of Psychosocial Medicine of the University of Heidelberg, Germany
³ Section of Geriatric Psychiatry, Centre of Psychosocial Medicine of the University of Heidelberg, Germany
⁴ Section of Experimental Psychopathology, Centre of Psychosocial Medicine of the University of Heidelberg, Germany

Schizophrenia-specific deficit in focal motor activation during the movement stages related to the conscious perception of the intention to move

Introduction: The neuronal mechanisms behind schizophrenia-specific firstrank symptoms are not fully understood. However, focal motor system activation during advanced movement programming and execution is supposed to be crucial for the subjective intention to move and the feeling-ofagency. Deficits in this respect could result in a vulnerability for schizophreniaspecific symptoms related to a disturbed 'self', manifesting themselves on the other hand as neurological soft signs.
Methods: We analyzed multi-channel lateralized movement-related potentials during choice reaction movements in 16 schizophrenic/schizoaffective patients with predominant negative symptoms, 18 patients with a non-psychotic major depression (clinical control group) and two healthy control groups agematched to the patients (20/23 subjects). We compared cortical motor activation to the activation by reafferent sensory feedback: A reduction of frontal action-related activation could lead to relative over-activation by sensory feedback in schizophrenia, a pattern known from passive movements.
Results: A significant reduction of lateralized (pre-)motor and superior parietal activation immediately preceding movement execution was found only in schizophrenic patients but not major depression. In contrast, dipole source analysis indicated rather unimpaired sensorimotor cortex activation by reafferent feedback.
Conclusions: Reduced focused action-related motor system activation was associated with reduced parietal pre-movement activation but preserved activation to reafferent sensory feedback, creating an imbalance between 'efference copy' and sensory input specifically in schizophrenic/schizoaffective patients. It could reflect a trait linking negative symptoms and executive control deficits with a vulnerability for psychotic symptoms (more easily disturbed feeling-of-agency leading to first-rank symptoms). Depressive symptoms could be distinguished on a neurophysiological level from schizophrenic negative symptoms.

M.E.F. BÜHRING, F. LETHER
Eikenboom, Center for Psychosomatic Medicine, Altrecht; Zeist, The Netherlands.

Dialectic Mentalization Based Therapy for severe Somatoform disorders (D-MBT-S)

Eikenboom, Center for Psychosomatic Medicine in Zeist, The Netherlands, is a tertiary referral clinic. Our patients have a long history of unsuccessful treatment, both medical and psychiatrical. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, what is mostly used for patients with Somatically Unexplained Physical Symptoms (SUPS) is often not sufficiently effective in these very complex patients.
This poster presents a transdiagnostic multifactorial explanational model, called Dialectic Mentalization Based Therapy for severe Somatoform disorders (D-MBT-S).
Impaired mentalization of primary representations of the body (bodymentalization) plays a central role, together with the following factors: 1) problematic attention and perception; 2) low acceptation of symptoms and the restrictions they imply; and 3) negative systemic influences. A bodymentalization- based treatment is described. In Dutch we call this model MAMS
(Mentalization, Acceptation, Modulation, Systemic Work) Research has shown that this integrative approach significantly improves the quality of live diminishes psychopathology and cuts down medical costs.

FRED CUMMINS
School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College, Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

A dynamical view of the emergence of self, and its application to understanding psychosis

Psychotic manifestations challenge the notion of a singular unified autonomous self. It is possible to recast the basic ontology of person-hood by identifying two layers of organisation that are related as constituent and emergent levels, respectively. The phenomenal world of subjective experience (the 'P-world') constitutes the first layer. P-worlds are the autonomous dynamical systems that function as basic constituents. In keeping with the interpretation of immediate experience provided in various Eastern philosophical traditions and recent constructivist theories of cognition, immediate experience is not separable into an experiencer and an experience. P-worlds interact however, and the result of their interaction is the joint creation of a shared world, generating emergent organization at a higher level, typically associated with shared belief and culture. The notion of self then appears as a carefully maintained state of equilibrium between the two levels. Looked at in this light, many psychotic symptoms may be characterized as a disturbed relation between the endogenous dynamic of the P-world and the exogenous influences arising from the emergent social environment of that Pworld. Intersubjectivity, in this view, is the generation of dynamical structure between P-worlds, while the endogenous dynamic of the P-world is best considered from a biological point of view. Although in its infancy, this approach suggests that the concepts and tools of dynamical systems theory may be fruitfully brought to bear in our understanding, and pershaps treatment, of psychosis. This, it is to be hoped, might provide an alternative to purely somatic accounts of psychosis.

ATHENA DEMERTZI, QUENTIN NOIRHOMME, MELANIE BOLY, AUDREY VANHAUDENHUYSE, SERGE BRÉDART, STEVEN LAUREYS
Coma Science Group, Cyclotron Research Centre, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium

Behavioral Quantification of the resting state

Background: Despite neuroimaging evidence that awareness of environment (external) and of self (internal) are anticorrelated, switching their activation at an average rate of 0.06 Hz (Boly et al., 2008, Soddu unpublished data), little is known about the behavioural quantification of the resting state. The present study provides behavioural data on the relationship between external and internal awareness.
Methods: 31 healthy volunteers were in a resting condition (i.e. sitting with eyes closed), avoiding structural thinking (e.g. counting). 66 auditory beeps were presented at random intervals via headphones. The participants? task was to rate on a keyboard their external and internal awareness state as it was before the presentation of the stimulus on a 4-point scale (0 = absent; 1 = mild; 2 = moderate 3 = maximal). The content of awareness was indentified via thought sampling.
Results: At the individual level, 24/31 subjects showed significant anticorrelation between internal and external awareness (1/31 positive correlation, 6/31 no significant correlation, p< .05). At the population level, Spearman's r was calculated at -.44, (p< 0.02 two-tailed). On average, the switching from internal to external occurred at 0.05Hz (range: 0.01-0.1Hz). Self-reports for external awareness included auditory (100% subjects), somesthetic (90%), olfactory (20%), visual (10%) and experiment-related (10%) content (p<0.000).
Self-reports for internal awareness included experiment-related thoughts (80% subjects), autobiographical (65%), somesthetic (25%), inner speech (20%) and mental imagery (10%) (p<0.001).
Discussion: Our results confirm the predicted anticorrelation between internal and external awareness. The temporal dynamics of external to internal switch is in line with previous neuroimaging data. Our study bridges the cognitive and physiological characteristics of the brain 'default' resting state activity.

References
Boly, M., Phillips, C., Tshibanda, L., Vanhaudenhuyse, A., Schabus, M., Dang- Vu, T. T., et al. (2008). Intrinsic brain activity in altered states of consciousness. How conscious is the default mode of brain function? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1129, 119-129.

SANNEKE DE HAAN, MAX LUDWIG
Department of General Psychiatry, Centre of Psychosocial Medicine, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Schizophrenic disembodiment: the ghost in the machine

Within contemporary debates on how to best understand schizophrenia, its symptoms and their coherence, we can roughly discern three different strands. On the one hand, Frith et.al. regard schizophrenia as primarily a metarepresentational deficit, whereas Huber & Klosterkötter et.al. on the other hand refer to an accumulation of basic neurological defects. In between the meta and the basic level we can find the phenomenological perspective, whose proponents (Fuchs, Parnas, Sass, Zahavi) argue that we can best understand schizophrenia as a disturbance of the basic, or minimal, embodied self. Our aim is to make a case for the phenomenological viewpoint by elaborating on how embodiment is affected in schizophrenia.
Interviews with young schizophrenic patients show how their natural intentionality in perceiving, acting, feeling, and thinking is disturbed. The body is no longer the tacit background mediator, the lived body or Leib, but instead turns into an object or Körper. Normally our body and its body memory enable a natural flow in our doings, as the incarnation of what we learn increases our familiarity with others and our surroundings. In schizophrenia, however, the body becomes an object: the more or less steerable appendix of the mind. The body does not provide a natural access to the world any longer, and familiarity and common sense give way to alienation of the self, others, and the world.
In reaction, the patients try to compensate this loss by retreating in automatisms (the body functions on its own, as a machine), or in hyperreflectivity (the mind detachedly observes and constructs). A middle way, a flexible switching from doing to deliberating and vice versa is strikingly absent. This lack of modulation fundamentally alters the phenomenology of the respective experiences. Schizophrenic automatisms are not the same as our habits, in the same way that hyper-reflectivity differs from attentive deliberation. Our flexibility in everyday actions depends precisely on the embodiment of the self - as is shown by schizophrenic experiences in which the self functions more like a Rylian 'ghost in a machine'.

HELENE HAKER, JENNY SCHIMANSKY,WULF RÖSSLER
Department of General and Social Psychiatry, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Empathy in schizophrenia: Impaired resonance?

Background: Resonance is the phenomenon of one person unconsciously mirroring the motor actions of another person. This shared representation serves as a basis for sharing physiological and emotional states of others and is an important component of empathy. Contagious laughing and contagious yawning are examples of resonance. In the interpersonal contact with individuals with schizophrenia we can often experience impaired empathic resonance. The aim of our study is to determine differences in empathic resonance - in terms of contagion by yawning and laughing - in individuals with schizophrenia and healthy controls.
Methods: We presented video sequences of yawning, laughing or neutral faces to 43 schizophrenia outpatients and 45 healthy controls. Participants were video-taped during the stimulation and rated regarding contagion by yawning and laughing. In addition, we assessed self-rated empathic abilities (Interpersonal Reactivity Index), psychopathology (PANSS), social dysfunction (Social Dysfunction Index) and executive functions (Stroop, Fluency).
Results: Individuals with schizophrenia showed lower contagion rates for yawning and laughing. Self-rated empathic concern showed no group difference and did not correlate with contagion. Low rate of contagion by laughing correlated with the schizophrenia negative syndrome and with social dysfunction.
Conclusion/future perspectives: We conclude that impaired resonance is a handicap for individuals with schizophrenia in social life. Blunted observable resonance does not necessarily reflect reduced subjective empathic concern. As next step, we plan to add a measure of deficits in self-other distinction (Alien-hand experiment, Tickling) as a possible mediator between resonance input, personal stress and (maybe subsequently) blunted output.

EDWARD HARCOURT
Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University & Keble College, Oxford, UK

Self-Knowledge, Knowledge of Others, and 'the thing called love'

Wittgenstein argued that the capacity to ascribe mental states to oneself cannot on its own explain how we possess mental state concepts that apply both to ourselves and others. Wittgenstein's solution is that primitive selfascriptions of mental states are expressive, i.e. verbal extensions of e.g. painbehaviour. But this doesn't solve the problem, since the only mental states we can express are our own: concepts which Wittgenstein rightly insists are univocal across first- and third-person applications threaten to disintegrate into pairs of concepts, one applicable in the third person (based on behavioural criteria), the other applicable in the first person (based on nothing).

I draw on recent work on child-caregiver interaction to fill the gaps in Wittgenstein's account. We do express some mental states before acquiring any mental concepts. But to acquire mental concepts, others must be available to recognize our expressions for what they are, and to reflect our mental states back to us in a form that we can recognize as representations of them rather than as simultaneous instantiations of those same states by another. As shown by Fonagy, Hobson and others, the capacity to think of oneself in mental state terms develops further in children whose caregivers are attuned, i.e. can recognize the child's expressions for what they are, and can tolerate them, and so do not merely 'catch' the child's mental states themselves. Since both attunement and tolerance manifest 'the thing called love' (Winnicott), loving nurture is crucial in developing the capacity for self-knowledge. Psychoanalytically inspired work in child development thus amplifies and corrects Wittgenstein's treatment of the other minds problem: in order to explain how the capacity for self-knowledge develops via others' knowledge of us, the other must be thought of as a loving other.

KORNILIA HATZINIKOLAOU
Department of Health and Social Welfare, Institute of Child Health, Athens, Greece

Temporal and expressive patterns of infant empathy

Young infants have been found able to perceive and respond appropriately to emotional changes in 'significant others' during face-to-face interactions. Considering that perceiving another's emotional experience and responding appropriately to the perceived emotional change in the other determines the observer's capacity for empathy, the present study attempted to describe the temporal and expressive patterns of 8 and 18-week infants' empathy. Twentyone mother-infant pairs participated in the study. A five-minute face-to-face interaction was videotaped for each pair at 8 and 18 weeks. Infant empathic episodes occurring during these face-to-face mother-infant interactions were first identified. These infant empathic episodes were, then, micro-analyzed by use of the software Observer 4.0. It was found that infant empathic episodes were more often than not initiated by the concurrent occurrence of three infant behaviors: facial expression of concern/apprehension, emotional attention and widened eye pupils ('bright eyes'). The occurrence of these three behaviors was more likely to be observed either simultaneously or up to a second after the emotional change in the mother. This temporal and expressive pattern of infant empathy was more likely to be observed after a negative, than after a positive, emotional change in the mother.

D. HIRJAK, T. FUCHS
Department of General Psychiatry, Centre of Psychosocial Medicine, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

The schizophrenic influencing machine as an expression of the disordered structure of the 'minimal self'.

Background: Many schizophrenic patients experience Schneiderian first-rank symptoms such as delusions of alien control. The schizophrenic influencing machine demonstrates a particular form of this kind of delusions. In the history of psychiatry several cases have been published which describe schizophrenics who presented this interesting psychopathological phenomenon. Recent psychiatric research also analyzed patients who felt manipulated and impaired by contemporary technologies. Many present-day authors consider schizophrenia to be a psychiatric disorder that is based on the disturbance of the pre-reflective self-awareness or 'minimal self'. This disturbance is reflected in the phenomenon of the schizophrenic influencing machine.
Methods: The method applied for the study of schizophrenic influencing machines and their origin rooted in the disorders of the 'minimal self' consists in the phenomenological analysis of two clinical vignettes.
Results: The historical and modern literature we analyzed shows significant increase of interest towards the phenomenological description and analysis of self-disorders. Both patients we presented here exemplify the delusions of technical alien control. In addition these cases illustrate the disordered aspects of the 'minimal self' such as loss of the feeling of mineness and the resulting 'inversion of the intentionality'.
Conclusion: The main goal of this contribution is to explore some issues of the 'minimal self' in the context of a phenomenological description and analysis of two clinical cases. We postulate that the schizophrenic delusions of alien control may be in general interpreted as being based on the disorders of the 'minimal self'. We argue that the disturbed feeling of mineness, especially loss of the sense of agency and ownership, and the resulting 'inversion of the intentionality' give rise to the schizophrenic influencing machine.

AMRA HODZIC^1,2,3, AMANDA KAAS^1,2,4, LARS MUCKLI ^1,2,5 , AGLAJA STIRN ^1,6 AND WOLF SINGER^1,2
1. Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
^2. Brain Imaging Center Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
^3. Graduate School of Neural and Behavioural Sciences, IMPRS, Tübingen, Germany.
^4. Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
^5. Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging CCNi, 58 Hillhead Street, University of Glasgow, Glasgow,UK.
^6. Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main,Germany.

Distinct cortical networks for the detection and identification of human body

In the human brain information about bodies and faces is processed in specialized cortical regions named EBA and FBA (extrastriate and fusiform body area) and OFA and FFA (occipital and fusiform face area), respectively. Here we investigate with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) the cortical networks responsible for the identification of individual bodies and the distinction between 'self' and 'others'. To this end we presented subjects with images of unfamiliar and familiar bodies and their own body. We identified separate networks for body-detection (processing body related information), body-identification (processing of information relating to individual bodies) and self-identification (distinction of self from others). Body detection involves the EBA in both hemispheres, and in the right hemisphere: the FBA and areas in the IPL (inferior parietal lobe). Body identification involves areas in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) of both hemispheres and in the right hemisphere areas in the medial frontal gyrus (MFG), in the cingulate gyrus (CG), in the central (CS) and the post-central sulcus (PCS), in the inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and the FBA. When the recognition of one's own body is contrasted to the identification of familiar bodies, differential activation is observed in areas of the inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and inferior parietal sulcus (IPS) of the right hemisphere, and in the posterior orbital gyrus (pOrbG) and in the lateral occipital gyrus (LOG) of the left hemisphere. Thus, identification of individual bodies and selfother distinction involve in addition to the classical occipito-parietal network a parieto-frontal network. Interestingly, the EBA shows no differential activation for distinctions between familiar or unfamiliar bodies or recognition of one's own body.

ANNE MARTHA KALHOVDE
Psychiatric Center for Tromsø and Region, University Hospital of Northern Norway Åsgård, Tromsø.
Section of Nursing and Health Sciences, Institute of Clinical Medicine,
University of Tromsø, Tromsø. Norway

Living with voices and sounds unheard by others

Background: Experiences of voices and sounds (V/S) unheard by others have traditionally been seen as symptoms of a disordered self; an important diagnostic criterion and factor in the evaluation of the psychotic patients' clinical status and treatment. Little attention has therefore been directed towards how the V/S can be experienced by the patients themselves. Recent reports assert that V/S are meaningful experiences and that one should assist patients troubled by V/S in modifying their beliefs about the V/S they hear, in order to enhance their coping skills.
Aim: Gain insight into the meaning of living with experiences of hearing V/S in persons with a psychotic disorder (A), and their next of kin (B).
Method: A phenomenological - hermeneutical approach to audio taped and transcribed narrative interviews.
Pilot study: 1-2 interviews with four persons in group A (2 of each sex, ages 30-45, with an average of approximately 11 years experience of hearing V/S).
Preliminary results/reflections: During the encounters with the interviewees and through the analysis of the narratives, living with V/S came forth as a lonesome struggle; a struggle regarding both the efforts of relating to the puzzling albeit meaningful experiences of V/S, and resisting the preconceived notions of others. In the process of sharing their personal experiences, the interviewees sketched a landscape of coherence that does not resonate with the notion of a disordered self. Would perceiving the V/S as embodied experiences enhance greater understanding and improved interventions?

BJÖRN H. KATZUR, CHRISTIAN KAERNBACH
Department of Psychology, University of Kiel

Whose Feelings Are These Anyway?
Emotions and the Body

Bodily reactions are a main component of emotional responses. However, there is an old, still not fully resolved debate concerning the timing and causality of these reactions. According to the James-Lange theory, bodily reactions, like an increased heartbeat, cause and are followed by the mental appraisal of an emotion. The Cannon-Bard theory, on the other hand, postulates that mental appraisal causes relatively unspecific physiological reactions.

Our research focuses on piloerection, or goosebumps, a relatively rare physiological component of very strong emotions. But do strong emotions cause goosebumps, or does the experience of goosebumps magnify the perceived intensity of an emotion? 

In order to answer this question, we perform a study on ten participants. Each participant is presented with twenty emotional auditory stimuli under two different temperature conditions, 17 °C and 20 °C respectively. The occurrence of goosebumps is measured and, additionally, participants give feedback on the intensity of the emotions experienced. We expect goosebumps to occur more frequently under the colder condition. Additionally, according to the James-Lange theory we would expect a stimulus accompanied by goosebumps in the colder, but not the warmer, condition to lead to a more intensely perceived emotion. This result would suggest that physiological reactions play a very important role in the perceived intensity of emotions. So, ?higher? emotion processes of the mind and ?lower? bodily reactions combine into an inseparable unit. 

LORNA LEES
Klinikum Rechts der Isar, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany

Self-Disorders and Theoretical Concepts of Disease

Health and disease are value-laden terms that reflect the existence or nonexistence of medical conditions that may be valued or disvalued. Their usage in the absence of further information about the state of the mind is insufficient, because it can only tell us how the person feels about their state of mind. Further information is required in a therapeutic setting, however, because an accurate judgement of whether or not the patient has a disvalued condition requires a rational agent to make the judgement, and in the case of selfdisorder rationality is not guaranteed. There is also the possibility of disagreement between therapist and patient: in terms of self-disorders, the normative experience of the patient is as important as the state description. Health and disease are statements of fact about the value placed upon a condition. They do not inform us of anything inherent in the condition, and in a medical context they should not be treated as though they do. It is necessary to include a concomitant state description of the state of the mind. The state description here is a statement or set of statements of objective fact about physical or mental states. What is important in most cases is the subjective experience of the patient: if a person feels that there is a problem, then the medical staff involved must determine what that problem is. The statement of health or otherwise, along with detailed state descriptions, is useful in determining what, if any, condition is present.

ALEX LÓPEZ-ROLÓN, MARTIN SACK, PETER HENNINGSEN
Dept. of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Munich, Germany

Induction of Acute Dissociative Symptoms by Videostimulation in Multisomatoform Disorder Patients: Preliminary Behavioral and Psychophysiological Results

Dissociation is a temporary, partial or complete split 'between memories of the past, awareness of identity and immediate sensations, and control of bodily movements' (ICD 10, version 2007). We examined a method for inducing acute dissociative symptoms in the laboratory with 13 patients currently suffering from 3 or more medically unexplained physical symptoms (Kroenke et el. 1997), and 21 healthy subjects. Participants filled out a standardized questionnaire assessing acute psychological and somatic dissociative symptoms before and after being presented a 2-minute long video of a minor facial cosmetic surgery. Psychophysiological data was recorded before and during stimulation. In comparison to healthy subjects, patients tended to report significantly more somatic symptoms post-stimulation, and had a significantly stronger psychophysiological response. Results suggest that the presented stimulus could potentially be used as an instrument not only to deepen our understanding of basic mechanisms underlying dissociation (e.g. individual differences, cognitive and emotional reactions, etc), but also in related clinical work.

SIBYLLE METZLER, KARSTEN HEEKEREN, ANASTASIA THEODORIDOU
Research Group Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology, Department of Social and General Psychiatry ZH West, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

EEG time course and activation during pre-reflective and reflective selfreference in schizophrenia

The wide range of ego-pathology symptoms in schizophrenic patients has been associated with dysfunctional activation in frontal and parietal cortices. Here we investigated whether the time course and localisation of the activation occurring during a self-referential processing task is different in schizophrenic patients with present psychotic symptoms compared to a matched healthy control group. While a continuous 32-channel EEG was recorded subjects read personal pronouns (pre-reflective self condition) and evaluated trait adjectives in reference to the self or a close friend (reflective self condition). Low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) was used for statistical brain imaging. Ego-pathology was assessed using the Examination of Anomalous Self Experience (EASE), a battery of neuropsychological and psychopathological tests and scales provided information about their cognitive and psychopathological function level. Our hypothesis is that patients suffering impairment on different subscales of the EASE show a different time course and activation in brain regions shown to be involved in the representation of pre-reflective and reflective aspects of the self like ventral and dorsal parts of the medial prefrontal cortex prefrontal cortex, insula and right inferior parietal lobe. We would like to present preliminary results and compare them with an earlier study on the spatiotemporal EEG-analysis of the pre-reflective and reflective self (Esslen et al., 2008).

JOSÉ IGNACIO MURILLO¹, LUIS ECHARTE^2
1 Department of Philosophy, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
² Department of Biomedical Humanities, University of Navarra, Pamplona,Spain

The concept of the self and the utility of methodical reductionism in neuroscience and psychiatry

It is frequent in contemporary neuroscience to assume that the self and its activity ? often reduced to 'affective' experiences ? can be understood as events that result from the activity of the brain or can be identified with them. In some cases, this monistic reduction is proposed as a necessary condition to advance in scientific research. In this poster we aim to show that such statement a) has a weak foundation, b) is not necessary to legitimate neuroscientific research, c) is a problematic guide for research and clinical practice. On the one hand, this monistic hypothesis presents the self either as an illusion or as a product and, because of that, it presupposes and leads to conceiving it in a 'terminal' way, as if it were an inert thing. This approach neglects its more typical features, among which are its active character and its intrinsic openness. On the other hand, it provokes that any affirmation of the reality of the self appears as dualistic. So the psychophysical unity to which the self seems make reference is broken, and furthermore, the mind-brain problem becomes insoluble. In our conclusions, we argue that the alternative between dualism and monism as a solution of the body-mind problem is rooted in an inadequate approach to living organisms. Besides, we defend the necessity of a right method to study psychic acts appropriate to accept its essential duality without renouncing to the affirmation of the unity of the living person.

Nina F.E. Regenberg¹, Gün R. Semin^2
1 VU University Amsterdam, Department of Social Psychology, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
² Utrecht University, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS Utrecht, the Netherlands.

When picking sides becomes physical:
How affordances drive preferences ? if we pay attention to our body

Every situation has an affordance structure, which allows for particular actions in that situation (Gibson, 1979). More specifically, the physical features of a situation make some actions more likely than others. In two experiments, we tested whether participants would use the physical affordance structure of a situation to choose between two alternatives, even if the structural features of the situation were not actually relevant to the alternatives themselves. Participants imagined that they were about to start a table-tennis match and were asked to pick a side of the table-tennis table. We manipulated the physical affordance structure by telling participants to imagine themselves at a certain position in the scene (in front of the table-tennis table, behind it or without instruction) and which hand they were to play with (right vs. left). We hypothesized - and found - that the situations differentially afford choosing one side over the other. For example, when facing the center of the tabletennis table and playing with one's right hand, going to the right is afforded over going to the left, whereas when playing with one's left hand, going to the left is more afforded. A novel finding for embodied cognition research was that the probability of choosing the afforded side depended on the extent to which participants generally ascribe relevance to bodily cues. Thus, the affordance structure of a situation emerges as an interaction between environment and actor and the extent to which such embodiment effects arise can depend on dispositional factors.

H. Graf von Reventlow
LWL-Universitätsklinik Bochum der Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

Being self ? empowering whoever in how it is to be whatever

Be it an innate feature or a relevant by-product of late Western Life Sciences, others are given a growing right to decide on often so-called natural properties of minds of subjects. Well, soul has almost lost significance in industrialized modern discourse, so mind may be the obvious next target? In Psychiatry, in addition, authorized groups even seem to have a professional obligation to overrule individuals in deciding about what their minds are exactly, how they behave, and what meaning may be behind all this fuss while being happy or sad, sane or mad, good or bad, unborn, alive or dead. Honestly, who knows exactly?
Of course, this has often been criticized under various aspects by some patients, human rights activists or even members of relevant scientific castes. Be it as it is, the return of the ?ghost in the machine? is evident in current Psychiatric thinking, while the human rights perspective is reduced to patients being allowed to behave irrationally if not willing to fit to these premises. But if mind is being made more and more irrelevant, and ones own lively experience doesn?t really count anymore even in Psychiatry, who or what exactly will be taking over the fragile realm stretching around the border between sanity and madness? Another Cargo cult?
However, a closer view on this topic may lead back to the primacy of the individual's authority about what it is to be regardless what others may say. Besides empowering whoever in how it is to be whatever, there really seems no good alternative if one would like to know about the mind-embodied self and its inexhaustible affairs.

J. RONEL¹, H. SATTEL¹, N. OVERSOHL¹, H. BLAETTLER¹, A. BAUER³, S., SCHNEIDER³, J. MEHILLI³, K. MEIßNER^2
1 Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Technische Universität München
² Institute of Medical Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
³ Department of Cardiology, German Heart Centre Munich

Suggestive Effects on the Diameter of Coronary Arteries: Conceptual
Issues and Methodological Report

It is well known that the modality how a medical intervention is presented and explained to a patient can be of high relevance for the expected outcome: inducing a positive expectancy to the patient is associated with a better outcome. These effects appear to be stronger in the case of invasive interventions as, e.g., surgery. Two main mechanisms are discussed to account for the beneficial effects of placebo interventions: conscious expectation, and unconscious conditioning (Enck P et al 2008).
There is increasing evidence from the literature that placebo treatments can also alleviate symptoms of angina pectoris. This may be due to placeboinduced changes in central pain processing. However, it has been shown that placebo interventions can affect peripheral organ systems as well. Therefore, the question arises whether placebo effects in angina pectoris may at least partly be due to a cognitively-induced dilatation of cardiac vessels with subsequent increases in cardiac perfusion, and thus pain relief.
An elegant paradigm to demonstrate placebo effects in clinical settings is to compare drugs that are administered either open or hidden, i.e., with and without the knowledge of the patient (Benedetti et al., 2003). At the German Heart Centre of the Technical University Munich 78 patients with a cardiological indication for a coronary angiography were randomized into 4 groups. Patients with myocardial events or stenosis requiring treatment were excluded. Half of the patients were administered 5ml of isotonic saline solution (NaCl 0,9%), the other half a very low-dose and practically ineffective solution of nitroglycerine, both intracoronary applied. Half of each group received treatment 'open' with an additional verbal suggestive instruction targeting the expected effect of the treatment, whilst the remainders received treatment in the 'hidden' mode. Primary outcome was the coronary diameter of a reference vessel, assessed by quantitative coronary angiography. As secondary outcomes blood pressure, heart rate, actual distress and chest pain were assessed.Our study aims to describe how mental processes influence bodily manifestations thus leading to an improved embodied self coherence (salutogenesis in sensu Antonowski). A better knowledge of these mechanisms might contribute to the appropriate application of medical treatments as well as to an improvement of their effectiveness and efficacy.

Recommended reading:
Benedetti F, Maggi G, Lopiano L. Open versus hidden medical treatments: the patient's knowledge about a therapy affects the therapy outcome. Prevention and Treatment 2003; 6
Enck P, Benedetti F, Schedlowski M. New insights into the placebo and nocebo responses. Neuron. 2008; 59 (2): 195-206

L. SCHILBACH, S. EICKHOFF, M.WILMS, A. MOJZISCH, G. BENTE, G.R. FINK, K. VOGELEY
Department of Psychiatry, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

The neurobiological correlates of situated, social cognition

Termed an 'embodied' or 'enactive' approach, it has recently been suggested that human cognition might not only depend upon human beings' mental faculties, but that these might be rooted in perceptual processes drawing upon the individual's interaction with the environment. Based on the assumption that this might be even more relevant with respect to social cognition, a series of studies was conducted in which we investigated the neurobiological correlates of the perception of socially relevant facial expressions (e.g. smiling) depending upon whether oneself is personally addressed as well as the neural correlates of gaze-based joint attention resulting from an engagement in online, social interaction.
Results of our first study show that perception of socially relevant facial expressions correlates with increased activity in zygomaticus major muscle of the human observer regardless of personal involvement constituting a form of facial mimicry. Analyses of the neuroimaging data concordingly demonstrate increased neural activity in classical motor regions (i.e. face motor area), but also show activity in posterior cingulate cortex known to be involved in social cognition. Similarly, results of our second study demonstrate that responding to someone else's gaze behavior recruits motor regions of the brain while simultaneously activating medial parietal cortex.
We suggest that differential activity in these brain regions may subserve the integration of action-related processes as part of a pre-reflective, embodied reaction to the perception of socially relevant cues as well as a reflective representation of self and other as another necessary constituent of social interaction.

ALENA STRELTSOVA, CINZIA DI DIO, VITTORIO GALLESE, GIACOMO RIZZOLATTI
Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Italy

Eesthetic Experience during the observation of Artistic Body Representations

The question that encourages our research is to what extent aesthetic perception is an idiosyncratic experience. A neuroimaging study proposed a common basic mechanism that characterizes the aesthetic sense in a normative fashion, at the core of which are emotion-processing centers (Di Dio et al., 2007). Another interesting proposal is the role of the body and embodiment in aesthetic experiences and the activation of resonance mechanisms during the observation of an artwork (Freedberg & Gallese, 2007).
The aim of the present study was to reveal the specificity of aesthetic response to artistic representations of the body. Twenty-eight original Sculptural images and 28 original Real Body images were used. Proportion between body parts was manipulated to create a less beautiful set of images, otherwise identical to the original ones on every other facet. The stimuli were presented in three experimental conditions - observation, aesthetic judgment, proportion judgment.
Preliminary results are based on aesthetic ratings ascribed to the different types of stimuli. GLM analyses revealed that original images were evaluated significantly higher than the modified ones and that the original sculptures were rated higher than real body images. Paired sample t-tests comparing the scores for 'static' and 'dynamic' images further revealed a significant preference for dynamic body postures.
These data support the finding that differences in body proportion have a strong influence on aesthetic judgment for both sculptural representations and real-body images. Additionally, results suggest that aesthetic experience involved in the appraisal of sculptural and real-body images is qualitatively different, the latter being possibly affected by social and/or biological constrains. Finally, the aesthetic preference for dynamic body postures enlightens the involvement of motor system in the aesthetic response.

OLGA SYSOEVA
Laboratory of Human Higher Nervous Activity, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

Genetic determinants of time perception

Perception of time is the essential characteristic of our self-awareness. It is disturbed in some self-disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, BPDs as well as in Parkinson's disease, dyslexia, ADHD. Pharmacological and neurological data suggest that encoding of minutes and hours are related to the serotonin (5-HT) while perception of durations in a second-range - to the dopamine (DA). Inter-individual differences in time perception, related to temperament, are also known.
In our studies the association between the characteristics of subjective duration encoding and polymorphism of some genes, regulating the activity of 5-HT and DA were studied (athlete and student groups). Carries of less active genotype of COMT Val158Met gene, influencing dopamine destruction (therefore more DA in frontal cortex), significantly overreproduced 1-2 seconds intervals (but not the longer ones of 3-12 seconds!) compared to the carriers of Val/Val and Val/Met polymorphisms. 5-HT2a and MAOA genes, regulating activity of serotonin, influence the subjective time flow in a minutes range (Jasper's test and subjective minute estimation). Supplement EEG study revealed the relationship between DAT gene polymorphisms, individual alphafrequency and reproduction of 1 second duration.
Therefore, our studies showed that perception of time is partially genetically determined and confirm that different brain mediators take part in this process depending on the time ranges.
Further studies of brain mechanisms of time perception may afford us to stretch subjectively our lifetime and more effectively treat self-disorders.

Rivka Tuval-Mashiach
Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Ruptured Selves: Narrative (re)construction of self following a traumatic event

Narrative psychology perceives trauma as a break in the person's self and life story, after which meaning schemes and self- concepts are shaken, and a new adaptation is required. The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate the processes of self reconstruction in the aftermath of trauma.
Method: Written trauma narratives were collected from 200 survivors of traumatic events, arriving at an emergency room of a central hospital in Israel. Participants were followed at 4 time points, through a period of four months.
At each time, participants completed a semi-structured narrative questionnaire, in which each was asked to describe the traumatic event, and the impact the event has on his beliefs, feelings, and future plans. Each narrative was quantitatively scored by two independent raters on three themes: Coherence of the trauma narrative, ability to find meaning, and perception of the self. For each Participant, data was also collected on PTSD symptoms and diagnosis, using the Clinician administered PTSD scale. This longitudinal design enabled us to follow changes in the trauma narratives through time for each participant, and furthermore, to compare between survivors who later developed PTSD and those who recovered.
Results: Narratives changed through time in all survivors. Low levels of narrative coherence, negative self-perception, and attachment of pervasive meanings to the trauma were predictive of and positively related to PTSD diagnosis.
Discussion: The process of self reconstruction following trauma (and challenges in this process) will be discussed, as well as implications of these findings to the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD.

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