Scientometrics 115(3):1161–1183. The article pinpoints a series of serious problems in M&S’s quantitative quality assessment and analysis of the field of gender studies, pertaining to their overall conceptual framework, their general approach and their specific analysis. It is argued that the over-arching problem in M&S’s study is their lack of expert knowledge of the field of gender studies, their lack of respect for differences between qualitative and quantitative research, and their research design, which is biased towards quantitative social and natural science research. Firstly, it is demonstrated that a key concept, ‘gender perspective’, is used in an incoherent and confusing way in M&S’s analysis. Secondly, it is argued that the confusion is not an isolated definitional problem, but related to a series of slippages between M&S’s source of inspiration : Comparisons of content and scientific quality indicators across peer-reviewed journal articles with more or less gender perspective: Gender studies can do better.  Scientometrics to comment on the above mentioned article of Madison and Söderlund , is based on the assumptions: (1) that Gender Studies can be defined as a bounded object to be quality assessed through a quantitative analysis; (2) that a quality assessment of an academic field of research can be carried out without involving expertise from the field in question. In my comments, I shall discuss the consequences of M&S’s rejection of the need to reflect on these two assumptions, and, against this background, demonstrate how a series of conceptual and methodological problems undermine the validity of their analysis.Let me start noting that the diversity of the field of gender studies is acknowledged in M&S’s article introduction. But criticisms vis-à-vis gender studies are nonetheless reported by M&S, as if they addressed a bounded, consensual object, and represented a consensual line of critique. Criticisms by scholars from outside the field  defines three levels of integration: ‘gender studies’, ‘gender perspective’ and ‘gender aspects’ Ganetz : 12–14.1As mentioned, M&S claim that the taxonomy, on the basis of which they constructed SGSL as well as the sample of 36 articles (selected from SGSL) to be submitted to quality assessment—namely ‘self-identified’, ‘inferred’ and ‘neutral’—is ‘inspired by Ganetz ’ 2018: : 1391, wHowever, let me first demonstrate the problems by asking what it does to the logic of M&S’s argument, if we take their interpellation of Ganetz’ taxonomy at face value—which their use of the term ‘gender perspective’, combined with the centrally located reference to Ganetz’ work, indeed, invites their readers to do.Seen against the background of Ganetz’ definitions, M&S’s framing of their main conclusion as ‘the higher the level of gender perspective, the lower was the scientific quality’ : 1161 amThe unacknowledged incoherence, pointed out above, indicates that M&S either misunderstand Ganetz’ work, or that they, without making it clear to their readers, twist it for their own purposes. Whatever is the case, M&S replace Ganetz’ definition and taxonomy with their own, which decisively differs from Ganetz. It is, therefore, not only inconsequent, when they use Ganetz’ terminology, when framing their main conclusion; it is also scholarly inappropriate to do so without indicating the decisive differences. M&S do, indeed, postulate that the methodology, which they developed in this article in order to carry out their quality assessment, takes into account the critique raised by Lundgren et al. , which aBut what are the differences between M&S’s and Ganetz’ taxonomies, approach and definitions?M&S’s approach and use of Ganetz’ work can be summarized as follows: When they, as mentioned, claim that the taxonomy , on the basis of which they construct their sample of 36 articles to be analysed, is ‘inspired by Ganetz ’, they sIn relation to Ganetz’ definitions and methodology, a series of crucial, but unacknowledged slippages can be noted.Firstly, Ganetz’ main criteria, when evaluating the level of integration of gender studies/gender perspective/gender aspects in applications to the Swedish Research Council, is, as mentioned, whether or not the applicants demonstrate knowledge, understanding and overview of the field in terms of theories, methodologies, empirical approaches, and research traditions. In other words, Ganetz’ focus is neither a fixed set of values, nor a bounded list of subject matters. One key slippage here relates to the ways in which M&S shift Ganetz’ definition of ‘gender perspective’ from a register concerned with knowledge and understanding of the field to one concerned with values. Through an unacknowledged change of discoursive registers , it seems as if M&S, through a biased framing, prepare for the conclusion that gender studies is based on ideological values and not on scholarly knowledge, and in this sense not living up to normal scientific standards.Swedish National Encyclopedia. Though, by contrast to M&S, the Encyclopedia aligns itself with terminology commonly used in the field of gender studies, speaking, for example, of social and cultural construction of ‘gender’ instead of M&S’s subject matter category ‘sex as socially and culturally constructed’  acknowledgement of ‘an uneven power relation between men and women’, (2) considering ‘sex as socially and culturally constructed’ and/or (3) focus on ‘injustices and discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, religion and disability’ . This was an assessment which Ganetz, in line with the principles and methodologies of peer reviewing was qualified to undertake qua her expert knowledge in the field, which also was the reason why she was commissioned by the Gender Studies Committee of the Swedish Research Council to carry out the assessment.In their response to Lundgren et al. , M&S clathe scientific method’ , it would have been more appropriate to carry out a quality assessment against the background of a full peer review of all 36 articles. Given the relatively small sample of articles, the choice of quantitative analysis, cannot be defended by numbers. To qualitatively peer review 36 articles would not have been an impossible task!Having highlighted problems regarding conceptual framework, use of theoretical sources, and general approach to methodologies and differences between quantitative and qualitative research, I shall, as my final comment, zoom in on the specifics of M&S’s analysis, and focus on some of its key problems.Firstly, along the lines of the problematic use of assessment methods, discussed above, it should, more specifically, be noted that the content analysis, on which the analysis is based, is limited to statements in sections of the 36 articles under scrutiny, ‘labelled as background, discussion, introduction, and overview’, while ‘sections describing the aim, material, method, or results’ are left out . The categories, ‘people concrete’, ‘people abstract’, ‘society’, ‘sex differences’ and ‘other statements’, chosen ‘with the intention to give a broad overview of the article content’  is a problem for the validity of the analysis. Since the articles are chosen for their focus on sex and gender issues, it would be a reasonable expectation that the categories, included in the content analysis, somehow reflected this. However, the category ‘sex differences’ is evidently not doing the job well, and this means that the content analysis lacks a content category which can adequately capture potential differences or similarities regarding the core content of the articles.Thirdly, it is to be noted that the construction of the quality indicator categories regarding ‘level of support’ (categories 6–10) consciously ‘ignored’ important clusters of statements, i.e. statements related to ‘scarcity of earlier studies’ and ‘reports of own results’  that Gender Studies can be defined as a bounded object to be quality assessed through a quantitative analysis, and (2) that a quality assessment of this academic field of research can be carried out without involving expertise from the field in question. My analysis of the problems, which I have identified in the article, suggests that, in different ways, they are related to the authors’ rejection of the need to reflect on and rethink these two basic assumptions—a rejection which the authors, as documented in the introductory section of my comment, firmly and explicitly stated already in their response to earlier criticism.different—and if the quality indicators are biased towards criteria for quality in quantitative research, it is also rather predictable that this bias will be reproduced in the outcomes, so that the article group with most quantitative sex variable research will exhibit more ‘quality’ than the ones representing more qualitative research.Nevertheless, I shall encourage the authors to rethink these assumptions. There are big problems regarding the validity of the present study—problems which, as my analysis has shown, stem both from the demonstrated lack of field-specific expertise involved in the study, and from the ways in which it tries to impose criteria from quantitative research and methods for measurement on a sample of articles which, it is to be assumed, is mixed in terms of representing both quantitative and qualitative research. In addition, if we cut away M&S’s  interpretations of what counts as scientific quality, and look at the analytic outcomes with the figures and statistics alone as our lens, then I can only conclude that the results are so predictable that the analysis in principle does not bring anything new. I do, as mentioned, not have access to the list of 36 articles, so I can only guess about the ways in which they are distributed with regard to representation of quantitative and qualitative studies. However, based on my knowledge of the field of gender studies and also on sex variable research (as well as on the list of research area of the first author of the journal articles (Table 1, Madison and Söderlund


Ritualized actions are common in daily life, and prevalent across cultures. Adults have been shown, under experimental conditions, to treat objects subjected to ritualized action as special and different relative to objects subjected to non-ritualized action. Similarly, children as young as 4, are sensitive to ritualized actions–frequently reproducing such actions at high fidelity. The current cross-cultural experiment attempts to extend existing findings among two culturally distinct groups of children with regard to object-directed rituals. We predicted that children’s preference for a reward would be influenced by ritualized action . Over two trials we presented children in Australia  and Vanuatu  with two identical rewards, which was either subjected to ritualized action or non-ritualized action. Contrary to previous findings among adults, ritualized action did not influence children’s preference for a reward. We frame the current results in the context of socially relevant group rituals, and discuss the implications for both wider theory and methods. We conclude with a call for pre-registered replications. Throughout our lives we acquire a great deal of cultural knowledge, enabling us to navigate our physical and social worlds, and the objects within, often without any awareness of our reliance on this knowledge. The reader is likely effortlessly able to describe what behavior is expected of them at Christmas, at a funeral, at a wedding, or at a birthday. Moreover, this knowledge involves an understanding of certain ritualized objects, such as presents, particular clothes, and the significance of rings. While the specifics of ritual events vary between cultures, all cultures have rituals that make context specific demands ,2.objects or artefacts, despite the fact that rituals frequently require the use of, or are directed toward, them. Early research suggests that that objects—in this case, food—subjected to ritualistic action are perceived as more valuable and tastier . A non-ritualized action was a typical and ordinary cleaning action , while a ritualized action involved the same movements and motor features, but was performed at a remove from the object so as to deny any possible physical-causal link. That is, a circle was drawn in the air near to the rim of the glass, without making contact with the glass. These two kinds of actions were matched at the level of motor features, repetition, willfulness, and duration, and yet the ritualized action was causally opaque and goal demoted due to the absence of an inferrable outcome  by examining their paradigm among children in diverse cultural contexts. There is evidence that children perceive ritualized action as. , and bowl location [left/right] were randomized on the first trial and reversed on the second . After the child chose in the first presentation, the bowls were stacked and the remaining sticker removed. The process was then repeated. In both presentations, at the point of choice, the experimenter withdrew from the interaction to avoid influencing the child’s choice through gaze or gesture. After the process was complete children were then asked their age and date of birth. Only a single experimenter was involved during the testing phase among Brisbane children.In Brisbane, the experimenter approached families with children in the “Look at the man [n.b. the lead author], he’s got two stickers. He’s going to do some actions, then you can choose one of the stickers to have''. After the actions were performed the experimenter said “You can choose whichever sticker you like'', which was translated for the child. Translators were trained to never indicate to the child a specific bowl, either through gaze, gesture, or words. Instructions were back-translated into English to the lead author’s satisfaction prior to data collection.On Tanna Island, the process was identical to that employed in Brisbane, except that the speaking role was carried out by translators (while the lead author executed the actions). Additionally, village chiefs and heads of families gave collective consent, and all age appropriate children in the village participated. Translators said to the child in their native language A single point was scored if a child selected the acted-upon bowl in each trial. Age was measured in whole years and treated as a continuous variable. We did this because we had no specific non-linear developmental hypotheses, and thus, had no reason to model the data with age binned into specific categories.2(4) = 10.356, p = .035. This indicates that the ‘distance’ between outcomes ‘0’ and ‘1’, and ‘1’ and ‘2’ were not equivalent. Thus, we conducted two separate binomial logistic regressions . We specified an ordinal logistic regression model  = 7.84, p = .010. None of the predictors contributed to the model . Regarding our second trial, our model did not provide good fit, χ2(4) = 1.53, p = .821. None of the predictors contributed to the model . We specified a logistic regression model for both trials, with Condition (Hypothesis 1), Age (Hypothesis 2), and an interaction between Condition and Age (Hypothesis 3) entered as predictors. We included Nation as a predictor for completeness. Regarding the first trial, our model did not provide good fit, χkastom villages in Vanuatu, and children in a large industrialized city in Australia.Our central question was whether children would prefer to select a ritualized object over a non-ritualised alternative. Past research has shown that adults view objects subjected to ritualized action as more special and desirable than objects subjected to non-ritualized action, or to no action at all. We failed to find evidence that children were influenced by ritualized actions with regard to object choice. We expected a linear age effect, where increasing age would lead to increasing preference for acted-up upon objects, and specifically ritualized objects. We observed no effect of age for either trial. Moreover, we failed to find evidence for condition or an interaction. Thus, we failed to find support for our hypotheses. We find no effect of nation/cultural group; our data are consistent across two distinct cultural groups: Ni-Van children in Prior research (outlined in the introduction) has shown that children aged between 3 and 6 years are sensitive to ritual cues, copying at high fidelity, and doing so for what appears to be conventional and social reasons. The majority of our sample fell into this age range. Moreover, data from Israel suggest that children in this age range interpret the ritualized objects in social contexts as essentially necessary, but that this belief declines as children age beyond 6 years. This present work attempted to replicate and extend work conducted by ,34, who 41,50). Thus, if children are sensitive to group-related ritual actions, but not to to object-directed ritual action, we must entertain the idea that object-directed rituals are dissociable from other kinds of rituals that share the same features and definitional qualities.Is it possible, then, that object directed rituals are different in some way from social- or group-oriented rituals? Children, like those we tested in Brisbane, have an empirical history of being sensitive to ritualized action, where such actions increase preference for in-groups, imitation fidelity, and functional fixedness ,37,51,53in situ and in vivo testing with respect to rituals; 2) Due to the cross-cultural nature of this research, we attempted to minimise the use of language in both contexts. This decision is somewhat at odds with typical methodologies used in this field of research, which tends to use ‘conventional’ language in association with ritualised action (this point will be elaborated below); and 3) it is possible that features of the present experiment—including the status/identity of the individual performing the ritual actions, and the target-objects of the ritual—were inappropriate (to be discussed below). A fourth and final possibility is that prior work amongst adults examined the behavior in over 1,300 adults, while the present research is limited to only 203 children. We note that the [real] effect (if one exists) may be too small to be detected (while noting that 200 participants is sufficient to detect an effect associated with an OR of 1.5 with 90% confidence).A null finding, of course, is not necessarily evidence for the null, but rather a lack of evidence for the test hypotheses . This isin situ samples [“[Future research] under lab conditions employing face-to-face testing will resolve the true extent of this phenomenon.” (p. 27). It seems counterintuitive that the effect of ritual is most apparent in virtual circumstances, but absent in the ‘real world’ . During the production of this manuscript, Kapitány and Nielsen attempted to behaviorally replicate their prior findings  among adults in a behavioral context. Similar to the present study, participants were exposed to either ritual or non-ritual actions directed towards focal objects within an array of otherwise identical objects. Participants saw one presentation in which the action was either ritualized or not, and selected their preferred object. Immediately following this, participants saw the same kind of action as in the first presentation, but it was accompanied with a claim the action was a blessing or a curse. Participants then completed a battery of measures administered on a computer. Among 101 undergraduates, there was no effect of action-type on a participant’s preference for an object, nor was there an effect on self-reported specialness. That is, Kapitány & Nielsen (in press) failed to replicate, in a behavioral context, their own earlier work. These findings seem qualitatively similar to the data presented here. It is not necessarily clear whether the behavioral aspect explains this difference, or other features are at play (as described below).Research into the validity of online samples has shown that they do not vary considerably from  samples –57. Indeit has always been done this way” or “those are the rules and they must be followed”. This was done in order to “encourage interpretation of the actions as conventional rather than instrumental” (p. 4). Indeed, in the original work by Kapitány and Nielsen, cues describing the actions as belonging to social groups (2015) or serving specific magical purposes  were used. Such language was deliberately avoided here, on the premise that the actions alone would sufficiently arouse responses consistent with the ritual stance. Notably, Kapitány and Nielsen (in press) actively avoided using conventional cues when presenting adults with similarly ritualized and non-ritualized actions, and they too failed to find predicted responses. The ritual actions employed in the present study are conceptually and practically similar to ritual actions used in a wide range of studies. Thus, it is possible that group-related and conventional language cues are the most salient cues to ritualized action, and may also account for some unknown amount of explained variance.The second possibility is that ritual studies on children frequently employ conventional language  performing the actions, while the second is in regard to the subject of the ritual. In the first instance, the agent may not have been perceived as being neither a relevant model for ritual behavior, and/or incapable of bring about the ritual’s effect. . With regard to the subject, we note here that the ritual actions were performed more directly in relation to the ritualized nd Rozin 63], hav, havvessessentially require ritualized action [So what can we say about the present findings? We know that when a ritual is related to group belonging, or other explicit social conventions, children are typically quite sensitive. Not only do they tend to universally imitate ritualized action at higher rates than control actions , 64, 65,d action .learned over the course of one’s life—thus explaining the pattern of adult-data in Kapitány & Nielsen (in press). That is, the null result of Kapitány & Nielsen (in press) in their adult behavior experiment—as with the present experiment—may be explained by the fact that the ritualized actions were novel, and the participants had not learned the cultural and symbolic value of the actions. This is speculative, however, as our data do not provide evidence for this claim. We present this work to help contextualise previous findings, and to avoid ‘file-drawing’ this research to protect previous publication. To determine whether this null result present here is truly inferentially meaningful, or the product of sampling and/or chance, pre-registered replication attempts are now required. To this end, the authors have made all data available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/qtm5r/), and welcome correspondence and replication attempts.Here we fail to find evidence of a preference for objects subjected to ritualized action among two diverse populations of children. While the ritual stance is a powerful predictor of a child’s behavior with regard to group-related outcomes, it may be the case that inferring social information from object-directed ritualized action  is more difficult, or more complicated, than previously anticipated. Particularly when linguistic cues associated with group-belonging are absent—children may not have a tendency to generate such inferences about novel objects. If this is the case, it may be that the inferential potential of novel ritualized action towards objects is


With regard to philosophical anthropology, a human ecological framework for the human–environment relationship as an “ecology of the person” is outlined, which focuses on the term “relationship” and aims to be scientifically sound. It also provides theoretical orientations for multiprofessional clinical work. For this purpose, a multi-dimensional basic grid for the characterization of the individual human being is proposed. The necessity and meaningfulness of a differentiation and systematization of the terms “environment”, and above all “relationship”, are demonstrated, and practical examples and links to similar framework models are given. More than 40 years ago, George L. Engel  proposedBiomedicine has been a successful research approach in medicine. However, psychological and social factors also influence health and disease. For this reason, more than 40 years ago, George L. Engel proposed his influential view of a three-dimensional bio–psycho–social systems model that helps understand health and disease in the context of “psychosomatics” [epidemiological and clinical research, mixing variables with different ontologies without reference to a conceptual framework that deserves the name “theoretical medicine”. Concepts such as “vulnerability”, “resilience”, “risk factors”, “salutogenesis”, “protective factors”, etc., characterize these approaches and the construct-related theoretical discussions that are conducted in order to “explain” the occurrence of diseases. Even big data will not succeed in better explanations of diseases if they are not embedded in “big theories” [omatics” . At thatomatics” ,3. Sincehuman ecological conceptual framework that covers several perspectives touched on above such as the individual person as well as the population level, the natural, social, and built environment and the household of human–environment interactions [At present, the health sciences are aware of the health effects of climate change and other environmental issues and are seen in a systemic framework capturing interactions, feedback loops, etc. These frameworks represent conceptually socio-ecological systems and integrate physical and social issues, and therefore the term “ecology” is sometimes also used . Some isractions .epistemology and bridge concepts. This has been discussed lately regarding the brain–mind gap in neurosciences [constructivism offers a common view point in the social and human sciences: it is supposed that there is no strategy to determine “real reality” except through discourses. Plato has already pointed this out with his cave parable. More recently, Gregory Bateson, Paul Watzlawik, Heinz von Foerster, and Ernst von Glaserfeld have worked out this position in detail [Integrative modeling requires interdisciplinary integrative sciences . Especian detail . Neverthn detail ,18. In tn detail ,20. Subsn detail . ontology, which was probably last elaborated by Nicolai Hartmann [Closely connected with these epistemological issues is the current, sparsely developed field of the concept of different organizational levels of the world as it was discussed as Hartmann . RemarkaHartmann ,24. In tphilosophical anthropology as general anthropology, insofar as the basic characterizations of man are addressed regarding his multidimensionality as well as his essential behavioral features. For instance, Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Martin Heidegger created differentiated foundations of anthropology as a philosophical discipline relevant for the present [ethics is relevant, insofar as the question to be clarified, as to how to deal with such an integral recording of people in view of the problem of the electronic recording of everything and everyone, which has increased due in particular to digitalization, with possibilities of the abuse of such information so that patient sovereignty is secured [Reference is made here to a further, very central area of philosophy, namely  present ,26. Fina secured .However, the philosophical breadth, and above all, the necessary depth, especially with regard to the conceptual problems, would have to be worked out somewhere and somewhen separately. somatic and psychosocial medicine as well as environmental health and public health as a population perspective. With these issues in mind, we have to ask, how can the ecological perspective be integrated with environmental and public health issues? Up until now, only a few approaches have integrated public health and environmental health perspectives  or applimulti-level model that conceptually takes into account the external differentiations of the environment and internal differentiations of human beings , and ontologically (”What constitutes man?”), and last, but not least (“What makes man a man?”) as a genuinely anthropological question. In general, one differentiates the question of “the” human being into a diversified pluralization: men and women, children and old people, etc., are differentiated and the question leads to the individualization of the human being. However, regarding the work of Aristotle, in all cases, a three-dimensionality can be identified by emphasizing that the human being is an animal, but a spiritual, reflective animal (Zoon logon echon), and above all, a social animal (Zoon politicon): Man, or rather every person, is a bio–psycho–social being. Ultimately, many philosophers agree that humans must be pragmatically characterized as l beings . This alplicitly : Temporality: The time of birth, the season, the epoch in which a person is born and spends his childhood  shapes the future of life. Temporality, with the present as the interface between past and future, is increasingly experienced in individual ontogenesis as a subjective dimension of the finiteness of existence, and thus shapes experience and behavior. Ultimately, the knowledge of finiteness of human life is a specifically human knowledge that seemingly cannot be experienced in its existential dimension by learning machine algorithms either. However, with their fashions , time also shapes concrete existence. Temporality is pathologically relevant regarding the time structure of exposure to adverse agents like toxic environmental chemicals. (1) The place (or space): Not only the time, but also the place of birth and its geophysical characteristics  determine the physical living conditions of the person who was born here and not there. Physical places also bring with them certain personal and socio-cultural characteristics that affect the person and are more or less determinant. The real local reference, based on these characteristics , develops positively or negatively in sum, and in this way, it also determines the disposition for migration (push factors) if necessary. The fictional reference to another place, fantasies about it, as hopes for instance are, represent pull factors that additionally determine the inner disposition to migrate. Spatial properties of exposure to toxic agents—proximity or distality—influence health and disease.(2) Physicality : Genetic and epigenetic individuality as well as physical sex properties and other somatic characteristics, both observable and experienced  eality”; ,35), impThe mental : Already the experienced physicality, the corporeality shapes the behavior and the relationship to the environment. Cognitive competencies and emotional dispositions shape the characteristics of the individual personality, which is also shaped by socio-cultural factors. The guiding structure of behavior is sustainably psycho-socially produced and constructed affective-cognitive schemata. In this way, the basis of socio–psycho–biographical individuality emerges. It should be mentioned here, that it cannot be explained by the brain structure alone [(4) re alone ,37,38.Language ability: This covers the ability to symbolize, to receive and produce, communicate, and the language that is practiced in the social environment. This linguistic competence and the person’s performance in the end shape his or her spirituality and thus also his or her social options and limitations. Already at this point, the important construct of the “structural coupling” between consciousness and the social world should be used, in order to construct integrative conceptual frameworks [(5) ameworks .Sociality: The existential relevance of the external counterpart, the “interpersonal” as a fundamental relation to other people, which first of all concerns those persons who make up the family into which the person was born and also the relatives surrounding them, they determine from birth the social micro-world as options and frictions of childhood. Each of these people in a single human’s environment contributes to the multidimensional potential of the development of the individual child: empathy for the child or conflicts between parents and the child are known to have a strong influence on the psychological development of the person . Later, peers are the relevant reference persons, colleagues, own family, etc. This level of the microsocial is superimposed on the meso-level of the municipality and the macro-level of the institutions of society. (6) Culture: The embedding of the person in the local, regional, and national system of values, beliefs, knowledge, meaning, morals, ethics, etc.; simply saying “culture” as the content of the social, determines the basic patterns of behavior and feelings as superordinate structures. The cultural elements can be in conflict with each other, but also to the inner drives (knowledge versus faith). They can even be pathogenetically relevant, as Freud emphasized in his structural model of neuroses based on the sexual pathology of the 19th century. The cultural immanence not only limits the competence of each expert in practical therapy, but also in research logic, which can only be estimated in an intercultural comparison [(7) mparison . Economic basis: The economic level of the individual household is the basis of living comfort from birth and continues in the situation of being a child with poorer or richer parents, which has a strong influence on the options for education and achieving economic advancement . However, a very good economy of the family of origin can also influence the opposing refusal of socio-economic wellbeing. It is known that social class-specific inverse correlations of disease risks  are known, whereby educational factors are also taken into account. A philosophical deepening of this dimension seems enriching [(8) nriching .Of all these eight dimensional categories, however, only the physical, the mental, and the internalized social of the social world are directly related to the person, which is also reflected partially in the already mentioned bio–psycho–social model’ of medicine . Time, peveryday language, however, this expression is often referred to the natural environment and in the social scientific context to the social environment. The terms “surroundings”, “setting”, etc. are also often used. Highlighting environment as a process, “factors”, “dimensions”, “areas”, “levels”, etc. of the environment are differentiated. However, there is no generally accepted convention on the taxonomies of these concepts. Additionally, there are no binding interdisciplinary language regulations. The conceptual heterogeneity could only be resolved by consensus conferences. Nevertheless, it is helpful, especially with regard to the ecological perspective ultimately presented, to consider the following conceptual distinctions and to use them as a framework [The differentiating emphasis on the human being implies the concept of the “environment” as a surrounding exterior: If we talk about men, the question raises “where” and so we have to already consider the surrounding space. In ramework : Subjective versus objective environment: Depending on the epistemological position of the observer, the environment can be determined by physico-chemical variables and methods or from a subjective phenomenological perspective as the experienced environment . This difference is also reflected in the epistemic difference between the view of academic ecology, as defined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866 (“surrounding outside world”), and environmental theory, as constructed by Jakob von Uexküll: Environment (Umwelt) is an entailment of the perceptual and operational world (Merkwelt and Wirkwelt) of the individual [(1) dividual ,43. In mdividual  and the dividual ,46, havetemporal dimension can be seen in the heuristic usability of the concept of “former”, “current”, or “future environment”. (2) The space or place, which can be differentiated according to “ranges” such as macro-environment, meso-environment, and micro-environment, in each case “objectively” or subjectively conceptualized. In the context of human ecology, for example, in the sense of Uri Bronfenbrenner, the microenvironment (or micro-system) is primarily understood as the family, but also school or work, the leisure area, and other sub-areas of the individual’s living space, while the meso-environment (or meso-system) is the summary of these microenvironments. For its part, it is again embedded as a middle level in the macro-environment that is called the macro-system [(3) The next intuitively understandable basic dimension is the o-system .Entities: material-energetic or physical versus immaterial  environment and other sub-domains can be distinguished such as an inanimate natural (abiotic), animated natural (biotic), technical, personal, social, cultural, etc., environment. The everyday understanding of these terms is sufficient here, but a precise definition remains difficult, especially since there is currently no philosophical ontology (see above). (4) Areas of life: Living environment, working environment, etc., are environmental areas that are differentiated according to their functional significance for the person. They are dissociated, but partially overlapping fields of life. (5) Qualities: They can be classified as “good” or “bad” in terms of the environmental effects experienced by the person. (6) Quantities: These properties of the environment can be represented, for example, as the density of the respective environmental elements occurring in the space–time framework. (7) Effects and their directionality: impacts, effects, and interactions are corresponding categories. (8) implicitly in the most diverse texts, shows references, for example, to Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts such as “social space” or “fields”, an aspect that needs to be clarified more precisely, especially since Bordieu acknowledges an objective social reality and not only its constructedness by the subject as constructivists often see it. Thus, from a pragmatic point of view, the characterization of any individual person by their environmental relationship or life situation is easy to show.This conceptual apparatus for the epistemic object “environment”, which, as mentioned, usually occurs double perspective of the human–environment-relationship must be considered, namely that from the point of view of the external observer (third person perspective) and also that from the inner point of view of the experiencing subject (first person perspective).The categorical distinction between human and the environment also implies the term “relationship”: the separate must be related to each other again in order to ensure proximity to reality. Similar to the concept of the environment, a fundamental lifestyle, related to a certain life domain, is a relationship pattern of acceptance, appropriation, approach, distance, acceptance, rejection, etc. For example, in this abstract understanding, mobility styles are patterns of space reference and time reference, in particular being accelerated on the road, resting in yourself, etc. It is a personal environmental relationship regulated by the person; however, the perception or behavior, the impact of the environment and its effect on behavior can also be formulated quite precisely in categories of the concept of relationship. Colloquially, the term “relationship” is usually used to describe the relationship between people, , the  relationship, etc. This expression primarily denotes the experienced closeness to another person , or also its “meaning” . In this view, the shape of the person’s motor behavior toward the environment, as a pattern of lifestyle, is also a form of person–environment-relationship: the person’s motor behavior such as walking or staying, speaking or being silent, or taking, giving, or refusing something, etc., manifests the person’s (inner) relationship to his physical and/or social environment. In this view, the The term relationship, as presented here, is thus one of the most abstract concepts of all and therefore is well suited for a more comprehensive taxonomy based on the mentioned dimensions of being human: epistemology must be explicated fundamentally and a distinction made between “subjective” (experienced) relation and “objective” (observed) relation must be made. (1) The Temporality: Current relationships, past relationships, expected future relationships, etc., should be defined. (2) locality : Here it is, above all, the proximity and distance of the person to the environmental elements, also metaphorically or topologically: local relations, far-reaching relations, focal relations, internal relations, external relations, proximity relations, etc. An elementary spatial reference is the experience of (sweet) “home”. In addition, the relationship of the person to the subjects in social space and their demarcation creates identity, for example, during puberty, and is constituted by the person’s experiences of interaction. This aspect is modeled by the psychoanalytical object relationship theory as the inner representations of the self and the objects of the environment  and their relationships to each other, mainly regarding proximity and distance [(3) The distance . For psydistance ,50.The modality: Physical-material, physical, mental, etc., can be used here to differentiate modes of relations. (4) Directionality: Relationships “away from” or “toward”, self-referral relationships, etc. should be distinguished. Simplified, one can also speak of “giving” at action with an “away from” and of “taking” when actions are directed “toward” something, especially when it comes to interactions with objects. (5) Quality: A distinction can be made between “positive” or “good”, “negative” or “bad” relationships, etc., according to the effect. The topic of quality has to be discussed under the aspects of psychosocial development, for instance, the quality of relationships and its development can be investigated via micro-affective processes in terms of how they occur in the interactions , as an important component of the relationship structure or modality. The development of modalities depends in what ways the interactional behavior of the caregiver–child pairs differs. The development of the extent to which differences in the parental mentalization ability and the mental health of the children occur, and then are related to their relationship modality/behavior, the quality of relationships matures. (6) Intensity: Strong and weak relationships, etc. are useful differentiators. (7) Quantity: Attributes would be “many” or “few” relationships.(8) Frequency: This aspect may be characterized by the term “frequent” or “rare”, etc. (9) Effect: Relationships can have increasing or inhibiting effects on a system state.(10) Function: A distinction can be made between, for example, “stabilizing” or “destabilizing” relations regarding an organismic function. (11) Contexts: Depending on the person’s relation to the environment, work, family, etc. can be differentiated according to the person’s domains of life. (12) sociology as a human science, the population ecology approach of biology (“Who eats whom”?) was adopted into urban sociology as early as the 1920s in the form of “human ecology”  [psychology, Kurt Lewin, in particular, conceived the ecological perspective on the basis of his field, psychology [On the basis of this conceptual apparatus of “person”, “environment”, and “relationship”, a human ecological perspective can be developed systematically. Only a few approaches have integrated public health and environmental health perspectives  or applicology”) ,52. Relaychology , which wychology . In the ychology ,54,55,56Here, it was assumed at first that the term “household” characterizes best what this integrative meta-perspective means with a relationship structure within the framework of an “Ecology of the Person” . relationship of giving and taking, with different forms that extends over several levels. In the interpersonal field, asymmetries often arise as pathogenic socio-emotional imbalances: I give more than I get, I can’t accept offers, etc.; I feel overwhelmed by the environment, whose expectations I only suspect or which are explicitly formulated to me, etc. Offers of the environment concern spatial (housing), personnel (assistance), social (entitlements), cultural (entertainment), and economic (financing). It is at these levels that the demands of the environment  take place. Additionally, the offers of the person or their demands on the environment are of concern among other things at such levels. The term “household” is thus understood here with regard to health and illness as the “relationship of relationships” or of “interactions” . If the relationship is also conceptualized as directed from the environment, then there is a question of balance or, according to Klaus Grawe, about “congruence” [equilibrium concept with regard to the relations of relationships, then (chronic) stress can also be described differently in this way, namely as the product of persistent relationship imbalances (see below). Many examples can be found in everyday interaction, whose form shapes the state of mind of the actors, based on dynamizing imbalances  and stabilizing equilibria (compatibilities or consensus)  . visualizations: If one already considers the directionality of arrows (and other directed signs) in the relevant diagrams, then the translation into the words “give” or “bid” can be made with regard to the source of the arrows  Life situation/life areas burnout syndrome. As above-mentioned, the areas of life include work, leisure, and family. Their interrelationship is expressed among other things in the work–life balance  disturbed in context of the (2) Life objectives/life plan This virtual or visionary level is causally based on wishes and hopes that come about endogenously or exogenously. (3) Attitude to life (result)The reference of the actual to the target results in the life feeling, which can manifest itself in stressful tension in the case of persistent and/or large discrepancies. (4) Lifestyles as patterns of living (behavior)The lifestyles serve the regulation of the life situation with regard to the life feeling and/or the life plan lying behind it. Inasmuch as the life plan is ambitious, the program of the lifestyle is to be as fast and strong as possible: Coffee-to-go and every other “walking structure” is aspired to and makes it selectively considered efficient. (5) “Food”/instrumentalize, “Techniques”At this point, drugs are seen as instruments of lifestyle because they modulate the attitude toward life or seem to help to realize other goal-compatible lifestyles. Taken as a whole, this model provides a dynamic view of the ecology of the person and the pathology . Therapeintegrative framework model for the understanding of health and disease offers a perspective across the individual sciences on the basis of an interaction model of person and environment. It focuses on the individual person (“man”), but it can be transferred easily to the population level (“men”). Additionally, different model variants are possible as it was demonstrated. They serve, on the one hand, to classify the variety of conditions of disease, and on the other hand, to provide a multidimensional and inter-professional orientation for diagnosis, planning, organizing, and managing the recovery of the clients. These models make it possible to look from the person concerned to the environment and, above all, to the relationship structure, because for a health-promoting situation, the limits of the individual adaptation of the person–s lifestyle must be supplemented with changed environmental conditions. With this perspective, human ecology  have already gained wider acceptance in the health sciences in the area of public health and health promotion, especially in the USA [A human–ecological version of an  the USA ,61.digitalization of everything and everyone, which, with such integral descriptive grids, by representation of individual persons perhaps a final step into “technological totalitarianism” is done. Selections in professional life, in particular, can obtain new support in the area of grey data management, because health data are the most valuable commodity on the data market in terms of price, every company manager would like to know whether they have a “risky” person in their staff.Although the human ecological perspective might offer an integrative view, one has to consider the consequences of the current


The great number of internal migrants has become an important part of China’s urban population. Improving migrants’ well-being is emerging as a key to the state policy emphasized in China’s New-type Urbanization Plan. Previous studies on subjective well-being (SWB) have primarily focused on the impacts of objective measures of community environment and consider migrants as a homogeneous group. This study extends the literature by exploring the impacts of perceived community environment on migrants’ SWB and incorporating cohort differences in the analysis.We use the 2015 national scale data—China Household Financial Survey (CHFS) data—to analyse the different forms of community environmental satisfaction and their impacts on migrants’ subjective well-being. A total of 12,607 migrants were sampled from 29 of mainland China’s 31 provinces. Latent class analysis is applied to explore the potential forms of community environmental satisfaction; multinomial and ordinal logistic regression models are constructed to examine the sociodemographic characteristics of different forms of community environmental satisfaction and the association between community environmental satisfaction and subjective well-being among migrant cohorts in urban China.Latent class analysis defines four distinctive latent classes, which mirror four different domains of migrants’ perception of their local environments. They are called ‘unsatisfying local environment’, ‘satisfying social environment’, ‘satisfying physical environment’, and ‘satisfying social life’. Results from the multinomial logistic regression model reveals that the four forms of community environmental satisfaction are underpinned by distinct sociodemographic characteristics. Results from a series of ordinal logistic regression models show that different forms of community environmental satisfaction, in particular satisfaction with the physical environment and with social life, are positively associated with migrants’ happiness. The model results also suggest that cohort differences do exist among migrants. The positive effect of a satisfying physical environment on happiness tends to be greater in younger cohorts, while the positive effect of a satisfying social life on SWB is more observable in older cohorts.Satisfaction with community environment has a salient impact on urban Chinese migrants’ happiness. For their SWB, improving migrants’ physical living environments and social lives is relatively more important than social environment, which in a way mirrors migrants’ current status with its deficiencies in terms of a comfortable living environment and social life. Moreover, there exist cohort differences that should be considered when making policies to enhance migrants’ subjective well-being. Migrants, often regarded as a socio-economically and institutionally disadvantaged group, have limited access to stable jobs, housing and social welfare and therefore experience a lower-than-standard quality of life [The transformation of post-reform urban China is marked by the unprecedented scale of internal migration. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, there were 245 million migrants in Chinese cities as of 2016, comprising a significant proportion of the urban population. Improving migrants’ well-being is emerging as a key to state policy as emphasized in China’s New-type Urbanization Plan. Extant studies investigating city-dwelling migrants’ well-being [ of life . SWB, al of life . The ver of life , 10. Mig of life  , including but not limited to age, education, occupation, income and health , 12, 13.From the above literature review, we find that the current scholarly understanding of the effects of residential environment on SWB is principally based on objective residential environment and that little attention has been paid to subjective or perceived residential environment. Gidlöf-Gunnarsson and Öhrström, however, are an exception; they found that perceived availability to nearby green spaces positively affects residents’ SWB . As LogaAfter the reform in the end of 1970s, China gradually relaxed its migration policies, which allow people to move freely from rural to urban areas. As such, the pre-70s generation, who were young adults at that point, has become the first generation of rural to urban migrants. Entering the 21 century, migrants who were born after 1980s have become the major group; they are known as the “new generation” . The firThis article aims to fill the abovementioned knowledge gaps by using data from a large-scale national survey—the 2015 China Household Financial Survey (CHFS)—to examine the impacts of community environmental satisfaction on migrants’ SWB. In particular, this study seeks answers to two research questions: (1) What are the forms of community environmental satisfaction and how do they associate with migrants’ SWB? (2) Are there cohort differences in terms of SWB and, if so, what are their patterns?hukou were not registered in the host city, but who had resided in the city for at least six months at the time of the survey interview. Consequently, the final sample size for the empirical analysis was 12,607. CHFS data collectors provided sampling weights for selection biases, which are used in all analyses reported in this paper.We use data from the 2015 China Household Financial Survey (CHFS), which is the third wave of the panel study. CHFS is managed by Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and aims to gather evidence on a wide range of financial and socioeconomic activities in Chinese society. Covering 29 of China’s 31 mainland provinces, this national representative survey was able to draw information from 100,000 individual respondents in 40,000 households in its 2015 wave. CHFS uses a stratified three-stage probability proportion to size (PPS) random sample design. The three stages of sampling are counties, residential communities from the counties, and extracted households from the neighbourhoods and village committees. PPS was used for all three stages, which were also weighted by population size. The attention devoted to migrants in the Chinese city motivated us to restrict our study population to adult (aged 18 or above) migrant respondents in the urban sample of the CHFS. Specifically, migrants were defined as individuals whose In order to explore the cohort differences, we first classified the study population into four groups according to respondent birth cohort in order to examine the differences across generations of migrants. The classification is exhibited in Table hukou’ variable distinguishes rural-to-urban migrants from urban-to-urban migrants. Respondents’ partnership statuses are classified into three categories, namely ‘single’, ‘partnered’ (i.e. married or cohabiting), and ‘other’ . A variable indicating respondent occupation was created based on the nature of an individual’s current full-time job or last full-time job before retirement. We classify cadres, managers, professionals, administrative personnel, clerical workers, and sales and service workers as the ‘non-manual’ class. Manual workers and farmers are assigned to the ‘manual’ category. Private entrepreneurs and self-employed respondents are assigned to the ‘own account’ category. Respondents who have never had a job or did not have a full-time job at the time of the survey interview are further classified into three categories. The ‘home-based’ group includes mainly housewives and those who choose to stay at home to look after dependent children or other family members. ‘Unemployed’ individuals are active job seekers who had failed to secure a full-time job in the six months prior to the survey interview. Full-time students, those with long-term illnesses, those unable to work, and all other respondents are assigned to the ‘other’ category. The effect of income is measured by logged annual household disposable income (Chinese Yuan/Renminbi). A merit of using logged income and nominal categories for occupational attainment is that they allow us to reduce multicollinearity among variables. To confirm this, we conduct an additional test to obtain variance inflation factors (VIF) for the independent variables, especially income, education, and occupation, which are likely to be confounding in a statistical model. The results confirm that most of the predictors display VIF that are lower than 2.0, with the exception of hukou (4.2).Next, the empirical analysis takes into account a number of sociodemographic factors that have demonstrated noticeable effects on subjective well-being and public opinion on environmental issues in existing studies , 12, 15.Using a 5-point Likert scale , the CHFS asked its respondents to rate their overall health, and this is also included in our analysis. Finally, respondents’ host cities are classified into five geographical regions in line with the classification of the National Bureau of Statistics of China.hukou holders. As far as socioeconomic status is concerned, younger cohorts appear to have higher educational qualifications, which is partly due to China’s higher education expansion in 1997. While older cohorts are more likely to be manual workers, younger cohorts are more likely to have non-manual occupations. A much larger proportion of Post-70s and Post-80s respondents belong to the ‘own account’ category than members of the other two cohorts. Not surprisingly, some inherent generational characteristics are also mirrored in Table Importantly, the descriptive statistics in Table The CHFS does not include a module that systematically measure SWB using scaling strategies such as Affect Balance Scale), Positive and Negative Affect Scale and modified Differential Emotions Scale. Instead, it uses a primary scale of happiness measurement and asked the respondents the following question: ‘Overall, would you say you are happy?’ Response options used a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘not at all happy’ coded as 1) to ‘very happy’ (coded as 5). This scale is also widely used in other major social surveys in China, such as the Chinese General Social Survey. The happiness scores of the migrant cohorts are summarized in Table  to ‘veryThe empirical analysis in this paper consists of three parts and proceeds as follows. At the outset, we use latent class analysis (LCA) to explore potential forms of community environmental satisfaction in the study population. As a prominent branch of structural equation modelling, LCA addresses the complex pattern of association that appears among observations. The key logic of LCA is that the method is ‘respondent-centred’, as it allows us to classify the study population based on the proximity or distance of their scores on the variables. LCA models seek to assign individual respondents to one of a number of subgroups, i.e. classes with similar patterns. Using the classes captured in LCA as the dependent variable, we then establish a multinomial logistic regression model to examine the sociodemographic characteristics of different forms of community environmental satisfaction. The last analysis consists of a series of ordinal logistic regression models, which aim to capture the association between community environmental satisfaction and happiness among migrant cohorts in urban China.The 2015 CFHS includes a set of questions covering six aspects of respondents’ level of satisfaction with their local communities. These aspects are ‘natural environment’, ‘social life ’, ‘community safety’, ‘residential committee elections’, ‘road condition and infrastructure’, and ‘quality of local schools’. Response options include ‘very satisfied’, ‘quite satisfied’, ‘don’t know/no such item in the local community’, ‘not very satisfied’, and ‘not at all satisfied’; the options are dichotomized as ‘very satisfied’ or ‘quite satisfied’ versus other answers. Table p-value is non-significant for the four-class solution suggest that five classes are not necessary. Table Results from the LCA are displayed in Tables To examine the effects of sociodemographic factors on community environmental satisfaction, we constructed a multinomial logistic regression model that uses the four latent classes as the dependent variable. Model results are presented in Table hukou status is also significant. As compared to urban-to-urban migrants, rural-to-urban migrants appear to be less likely to be satisfied with the environment of the local community in their host cities, not least in terms of social environment and physical environment. It is largely resulted from the fact that rural-to-urban migrants are more likely to live in worse environment, such as informal rental housing, by comparing to their counterparts [In regard to the effects of cohorts, we can see that the Post-80s and Post-90s cohorts are more likely than the Post-70s cohort to be in the ‘satisfying social environment’ rather than the ‘dissatisfying environment’ category, while there is a similar contrast between the Post-70s and the Post-80s cohorts in the ‘satisfying physical environment’ column. Moreover, the effect of terparts , 31, 32.Finally, we constructed a series of ordinal logistic regression models to examine the association between different forms of community environmental satisfaction and happiness across the four migrant cohorts Table . The firTurning to the effects of other independent variables, we can see that individuals who are partnered, wealthier, and healthier tend to report a higher level of happiness. Rural-to-urban migrants also display gaps in happiness with urban-to-urban migrants in most models, with the exception of members of the Post-90s cohort. Overall, migrants in the four municipalities appear to be less happy than their counterparts in other Chinese cities; this is particularly evident among the Post-70s cohort.An extensive literature has investigated environmental satisfaction at the neighbourhood and community levels; however, little information has been produced on the implications of varying forms of community environmental satisfaction for individuals’ SWB . To exteFurther analysis shows that different forms of community environmental satisfaction tend to reflect differences in social hierarchy and demography. Income, educational qualifications and occupational attainment are all significantly and positively associated with greater levels of satisfaction with one’s physical environment and with lower levels of satisfaction with one’s social environment and social life. To a certain extent, this discovery suggests that, while affluent migrants are able to invest more economic capital to improve their physical living environments, their demands for such non-physical conditions of the local community as social environment and social life increase simultaneously. This finding is consistent with existing studies positing that individuals with higher incomes and better health often live in better physical environments , 35. RegOne of the most striking findings in our analysis is the significant contribution of community-based social environment and social life to migrants’ happiness. Importantly, this finding suggests that migrants’ happiness is largely determined by both the ‘soft’, non-physical environment and the ‘hard’, physical environment of the local community. It lends some support to Li and Liu’s recent finding that, as compared to housing conditions, neighbourhood social environment is a much stronger predictor of mental health among the migrant population in urban China . In partNevertheless, the analysis in this study also finds that cohort differences play an important role in shaping the association between community life satisfaction and happiness. Given the substantive changes that have taken place in urban China during the past four decades, there is mounting evidence of cohort and generational differences among migrants. For instance, migrants of different generations are distinctive in social identity , social In sum, the findings of this study demonstrate that different forms of community satisfaction, in particular a satisfying physical environment and social life, play important roles in explaining individuals’ happiness. As we know, the majority of migrants to Chinese cities live in marginal areas such as urban villages and dilapidated neighbourhoods . In ordeImproving migrants’ well-being has become a major concern for China’s state government. Previous studies on SWB have focused primarily on the impacts of objectively measured community environment and consider migrants as a homogeneous group. This study extends the literature by exploring the impacts of perceived community environment on migrants’ happiness and incorporating cohort differences in the analysis. Our findings suggest that improving migrants’ physical living environments and social lives is more important than social environment to their happiness, which in a way mirrors migrants’ current status, typified by uncomfortable living environments and deficient social lives. Thus, we suggest that policy reforms prioritize improvements in migrants’ physical living environments and regulate the employment market. Moreover, there exist prominent cohort differences, and these tend to reflect differences in the sources of happiness. This finding confirms that migrants in Chinese cities are no longer a homogeneous group; it is important to enhance migrants’ levels of happiness by considering the unique characteristics of different cohorts and generations. Future research should include the objective aspects of community environment and compare their impacts and mechanisms on migrants’ SWB. It would also be interesting to compare migrants with urban natives.


Introduction: Recent advances in research on stress and, respectively, on disorders of perception, learning, and behaviour speak to a promising synthesis of current insights from (i) neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience and psychology of stress and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and (ii) computational psychiatry approaches to pathophysiology (e.g. of schizophrenia and autism).Methods: Specifically, we apply this synthesis to PTSD. The framework of active inference offers an embodied and embedded lens through which to understand neuronal mechanisms, structures, and processes of cognitive function and dysfunction. In turn, this offers an explanatory model of how healthy mental functioning can go awry due to psychopathological conditions that impair inference about our environment and our bodies. In this context, auditory phenomena—known to be especially relevant to studies of PTSD and schizophrenia—and traditional models of auditory function can be viewed from an evolutionary perspective based on active inference.Results: We assess and contextualise a range of evidence on audition, stress, psychosis, and PTSD, and bring some existing partial models of PTSD into multilevel alignment.Conclusions: The novel perspective on PTSD we present aims to serve as a basis for new experimental designs and therapeutic interventions that integrate fundamentally biological, cognitive, behavioural, and environmental factors. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects a significant segment of society, including combat veterans, first responders, sufferers of childhood and domestic abuse, and many others who have endured traumatic experiences ranging from terror attacks to severe transportation and industrial accidents. PTSD lowers the quality of life of those with the condition and those around them, and can even precipitate perilous situations during acute episodes. While PTSD has gradually come to be regarded as a collection of heterogeneous conditions, with a variety of disparate causes and effects, there are also many promising syntheses of previous studies and models. Yet, such syntheses tend to be relatively monolithic in their disciplinary scope, focusing exclusively on (e.g.) neurobiology or behavioural psychology.Here, we present a novel view of PTSD that unifies reviewed work in neuroscience and psychology using the active inference framework. The (meta) theoretical contribution of this paper is just to provide a first principle account of extant formulations—so that they can be seen in light of each other. We look at neuropsychological dysfunction, both generally and in relation to PTSD. We argue that understanding the aetiology of PTSD requires the recasting of some traditional “classical paradigm” notions of healthy cognitive function—executive control, attention, contextual processing—in active inference terms . In particular, we specify the abstractions required for modelling body/environment equilibrium-maintaining behaviour via a sensorimotor nervous system.PTSD symptoms related to memory, arousal, and mood (DSM-5) have been the subject of earlier computational models . In this paper, we appeal to empirical studies to demonstrate the construct validity of an active inference account of PTSD. In subsequent work, we hope to use this account to explain electrophysiological and psychophysical responses that characterise PTSD  “default” preferences over death and anxiety (facilitating sufficient reproduction). The second is that the designation “fight or flight” suffices to pick out the conditions that require a high metabolic rate in the motor system, a focal point of the present analysis, along with a “freeze” state, with a similar neuronal footprint, but combined with motor inhibition. Generally, we acknowledge that this formulation does not capture the full range of responses to perceived threat  in the motor system, following active inference characterisations of attention and motor preparation  problem in the face of an approaching or acute threat: how should my metabolic resources be allocated to ensure my own protection? We consider how animals such as humans embody a solution  that is generally effective in health and that goes awry in PTSD, with consequences that can be linked to its known physical and psychological manifestations.Animal studies on PTSD have considered the evolutionary continuity from invertebrates to vertebrates, in relation to their adaptive responses to life-threatening psychological stressors and associated stimuli . Consider a scenario in which a human subject hears an unidentified sound from behind. In the first instance, the sound is a surprisal (in the information-theoretic sense) that indicates physical energy in the environment, beyond visual range. Since discovering the source of this energy could be vital , the surprisal must be reduced.We can describe two plausible surprisal-reducing responses: the first is through the process of active inference, that would direct biomechanical movement  in such a way that brings the stimulus source into the narrow foveal field. At this point, visually foraged sensory information may reduce the surprisal by “filling in the blanks” , and the second regards the application of the explanatory stack to auditory functioning in well-known paradigms . The illustration of what can go wrong in healthy auditory function in turn supports the argument we develop with respect to PTSD. This does not imply that the auditory system is inherently tied to PTSD; rather, that—in ecologically valid contexts—auditory sensation tends to have greater ambiguity  than visual sensation, which provides an entry point into our model.In an experimental study by Shalev et al. , PTSD suOur account underscores a continuous loop through the brain that stabilises the body in its environment a, which This overall picture is consistent with evidence showing that, for those with a tendency toward psychosis, simple ambiguous stimuli  are less likely to evoke an attribution of an “unpresented” signal in noise; in contrast, complex ambiguous stimuli elicit more false positives  song during white noise stimulus presentation . This is understood as distinct from energetic masking, in which one acoustic signal prevents a competing signal from discernible sensory surface perturbation. Informational masking amounts to what could be considered involuntary selective attention to a non-target stimulus, whereas energetic masking amounts to what could be considered the “overwriting” of a target stimulus signal. While both phenomena are typically studied in austere controlled experiments, an ecologically valid example might be failing to comprehend a conversation partner due to either (a) a quieter nearby conversation that distracts and inhibits comprehension  or (b) loud music playing, that precludes hearing speech in the first place (energetic masking).Given the above characterisation, the Feldman and Friston  approachThus, in the healthy, full loop through the environment a, the atWhile energetic masking is regarded as a separate phenomenon, we can collapse the energetic-informational dichotomy on the basis of evolutionary criteria, using the active inference framework. Namely, it is plausible to infer that an unexpected high-energy stimulus is a salient indication of something worth tracking in the environment, such as a possible existential threat; support for this is also suggested by empirical studies of auditory response in the amygdala  relevant, thereby collapsing energetic and informational masking into 1), or a “freeze” policy, which we consider below.For an alternative perspective on what has traditionally been regarded as “generalisation of conditioned fear”  for stimuli that differ to a greater degree from a conditioned fear stimulus than such designations by healthy subjects. In other words, healthy subjects typically require a stimulus that is sufficiently similar to a conditioned fear stimulus to become fearful, suggesting that dysfunction reduces disambiguation (discrimination) capacity , whereas a PTSD response to the same surprising stimuli would amount to a threat identification and concomitant (in)action (1).Based on the account thus far, the dysfunction of PTSD can be associated with two distinct but intertwined phenomena. First, a PTSD-impaired individual may exhibit a higher prior bias for explaining sensory stimuli in terms of an existential threat, as compared to a healthy individual. In other words, in health, there may be occasions in which surprising stimuli do not necessarily indicate existential threat, and have alternative epistemic affordance , a1, when)action , b1.3) is compromised in PTSD (3), such that any provisional threat identification is inevitably treated as confirmed and immutable . This amounts to saying that PTSD can be understood as a maladaptively prolonged threat-response state in the later absence of the original stressor that precipitated the condition. This offers an intuitive explanation for the combination of hyperarousal and hypocortisolaemia found in neuroendocrine studies of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis of PTSD patients  message passing in the brain. This translates into setting the right postsynaptic gain—or sensitivity to ascending prediction errors—via mechanisms that generally involve neuromodulation . We can unpack the pathophysiology of this PTSD-compromised epistemic foraging in terms of aberrant neuromodulatory (precision) control of signals  that revise beliefs about states of the world, and the policies pursued. Stress drives Ca2+–cAMP signalling in the PFC, opening potassium (K+) ion channels , which leaves cells hyperpolarised, such that synaptic efficacy and network connectivity is weakened Arnsten, , 2015. TPhysiologically, setting the right sort of synaptic efficacy or postsynaptic gain can also be reflected in fast synchronised neuronal activity, implicating (e.g.) fast-spiking inhibitory interneurons —a process which would be impaired by PTSD (3). Effective connectivity studies of PTSD patients suggest this aspect of impairment persists even in resting state, where otherwise regulatory connections are weakened  existential threat condition , but no significant amygdala activation … in the fear-relevant but non-feared condition .We can relate this to healthy function and PTSD dysfunction, by noting that, to benefit from the longer time offered to healthy participants in the above study, the stimuli must be comprehended. This in turn depends upon long-range propagation to higher cortical areas  perceived . In the PTSD reaction, potentially relevant sensory evidence would be dampened, in favour of selecting a past-trauma associated model, driving an underfitting scenario with a functional decoupling from the PFC  frequently “wins” in model competition for stimulus-evoked scene recognition. Again, this stands in contrast to a healthy probability of further scene sampling, to ascertain misrecognition. In the PTSD reaction, if (for example) approaching footsteps are heard, these may be immediately classed as the approach of an abuser, evoking associations with the traumatic experience that has previously typically  followed the sound of the abuser’s footsteps. In light of an approaching rather than currently present threat, instead of “fight or flight”, the approaching threat may plausibly lead to the selection of a “freeze” policy (mentioned above), a fearful, hypervigilant paralysis state, with simultaneous motor preparation and inhibition , establishing an associative semantic and neuronally topographic link between such stimuli and an existential threat condition. Hence, a PTSD impairment would lead to model competition for maximising evidence for a threat condition, which would result in a “fight or flight” policy selection that redirects metabolic resources to the motor system (away from sensory exploration).Given that Type 2 trauma is associated with an extended threat condition with a broader distribution of sensory stimulus intensities , it is known that, for PTSD sufferers, even low-energy stimuli, such as quiet footsteps, can evoke episodes. In this case, model selection is biased toward a model that maximises evidence for an anticipated scenario in which the footstep sounds are regarded as precursors to an abuser’s infliction of acute trauma. This would allow even quiet footsteps to become “informational masks” that “capture attention” to the exclusion of other potentially salient information that indicates safe conditions . Such model selection would also relate to the associative semantic and neuronally topographic links described above with respect to Type 1. In both cases, these links would relate to amygdala activation and PFC inhibition c.Liberzon and Abelson  offer a Similarly, we are in agreement that “dysfunction within … interconnected context processing circuitry—which involves hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, thalamus, and amygdala—may play a central role in the pathophysiology of PTSD” . These maladaptive priors are particularly pernicious because they preclude the corrective steering function normally provided by sensorimotor interaction , i.e., they inhibit the continuous testing of alternative hypotheses about states of the world that do not entail any existential threat. This leads to a biased (impoverished) sampling of the world and ultimately, a failure to revise the prior beliefs that underwrite pathological responses.Physiologically, we consider this impaired belief updating to be a malignant form of sensory attenuation, namely, a diminishing of overt epistemic foraging in the exteroceptive domain, or a covert attenuation of the precision of exteroceptive signals. Both responses intrinsically conserve metabolic energy in environmental sensing, thereby making more available to policy-specific motor attention. Further metabolic reallocation arises from stopping short of sensory propagation to higher cortical areas, which may cease to be a readily available response due to neurochemical and sub-cellular imbalances that weaken effective connectivity.In other words, in order to remain safe from existential threat, the PTSD response to surprising stimuli is all too frequently a physiological state change related to the colloquial expression “better safe than sorry”. In this state, when the question subsequently arises as to whether one can venture out to discover a possible “all clear”, any such venturing is thwarted by a secondary “better safe than sorry”, thereby remaining stuck in a self-maintaining threat preparedness state. This story appears to have predictive validity in relation to the known neurobiology, psychology, and behaviours associated with PTSD, and construct validity in relation to previous explanations for this, and related, disorders.


Recent neuroanatomic concepts and terms referring to the non-telencephalic forebrain are presented and discussed, in context with the present scenario in which the old columnar paradigm is being substituted by the prosomeric model, largely on the basis of novel molecular and experimental evidence. Theoretically, only the ETh should participate in the roof plate, but it is clear that ETh, DTh and VTh reach that longitudinal zone  have concluded decisively that both traditional limits defined above are inexact, and even causally impossible, because of regulatory antagonistic developmental mechanisms that do not allow truly diencephalic or hindbrain domains to Otx2  and Pax6 which marks early on the alar pretecto-tectal limit in all vertebrates . However, Hidalgo-Sánchez et al.  and showed some clearcut alar and basal m2 derivatives , and alar preisthmus within m2 . However, the MLC also has been said to lie close to the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPnTg), which is a well-known cholinergic and NOS positive population which lies within tegmental r1. Therefore, if the MLC is really tegmental in position, then it is incorrectly identified as “cuneiform nucleus,” a structure that is distant from the PPnTg (separated by the whole isthmus). Contrarily, if it really is alar preisthmic, then it has been wrongly identified close to the PPnTg in the r1 tegmentum. Considering the alar/basal difference and that these two sites are separated by the whole isthmus, as well as the standard imprecision of atlases on this brain region, it is possible that the identification of the original physiologic electrode recording sites as being at the “cuneiform nucleus” was inexact. The MLC thus perhaps lies instead within the isthmus, where it may well be a tegmental basal structure to be found next  to the PPnTg. Unfortunately, if it is isthmic, or belongs to r1, then it does not merit the given name “midbrain locomotion center.” I hope that present discussion of the midbrain limits helps in resolving this conundrum.Other specific points possibly merit detailed examination. For instance, the “midbrain locomotion center” (MLC) is commonly identified anatomically with the cuneiform nucleus, an alar preisthmic derivative which we identify within m2  definition of the relevant boundaries is seen as the natural one , it only remains for us to demand better atlases than we have now  and inner  paracommissural tectal nuclei , and “preisthmus” . I proposed that the “superficial cuneiform nucleus” term, whose diversified usage has led to substantial confusion in various atlases and in the literature on the midbrain locomotion center, be substituted by the neologism “subbrachial nucleus”, referring to the apparent position of the superficial preisthmus immediately under the brachium of the inferior colliculus [SubB: Pax6 expression antagonistic to the isthmic organizer-controlled midbrain molecular profile .nal area . The shanal area , 5 continal area . In the tterning , 10. Thecto. His  proposedcto. His ; it thuscto. His . It evencto. His , 5, 10. diencephalon proper,” an expression we have often used remembering the diencephalo sensu stricto of His . The latter was known in classic works as the “thalamic eminence,” because various authors did not distinguish in adults the respective ventral/dorsal thalamic derivatives and perhaps wrongly thought this eminence represented the rostral pole of the whole thalamic mass  from the telencephalon and hypothalamus , 10, 13Anames pretectum, thalamus and prethalamus are easily understood and consistently applicable with reference to all sorts of histologic material, if they are used strictly according to the respective alar domains of the p1–p3 prosomeres. Moreover, we also can apply the same easy terms to the whole segments when we loosely say “pretectal, thalamic or prethalamic segments, prosomeres or neuromeres.” In those expressions it is understood that we are adding the tegmental  portions of these units to the main alar components . In the prosomeric model, the mponents , 13A. Wetectal gray” the single rostral mesencephalic retinorecipient entity found rostral to the superior colliculus and caudal to the posterior commissure. This name and topographic ascription already existed in earlier comparative neuroanatomy of non-mammalian tetrapods , a term whose prosomeric meaning incorporates the habenular region  to the old “dorsal thalamus,” the modern view merely applies to its morphologic referent an oblique intrinsic dorsoventral dimension which is different from the columnar one , 10, 13A LG; MG; ; this is LG; MG; , 2018, a LG; MG; .ventral to the lateral geniculate primordium, as can be easily seen in nearly tangential sagittal sections through postnatal brains.The vague conceptual status of the pretectum as a caudal extension of dorsal thalamus, as well as the emphasis given by columnar authors to adult human relationships produced the now obsolete notion of the “metathalamus,” which would contain both the lateral and medial geniculate bodies in caudal proximity to (or identity with) the pretectum. Altman and Bayer  unfortunIn a review Puelles, , I exploNkx2.2 expression pattern at the av  is another Cinderella-like area in the forebrain. Its intrinsic dorsoventral dimension is even more inclined than that of the thalamus relative to the brainstem axis, because of the cephalic flexure PTh; , 10, 13Aus.” His , 1904 laus.” His , some auus.” His  ventral rea STh;  and finao of His  .Finally, as mentioned above, the hyperdorsal subregion of the prethalamus forms the prethalamic eminence  to another insertion at the stria terminalis, at the border of the entricle . This thI proposed years ago in a conference on human brain development held in Rome that consideration of the obligatory presence of prethalamic derivatives in that scene showed the lamina affixa theory to be an unnecessary myth, since the observed morphologies and relationships could be explained alternatively, without recurring to undemonstrated adherence between telencephalic and thalamic pial surfaces. prethalamic chorioidal tela, which derives from the p3 roof plate, and attaches primarily to the hyperdorsal alar PThE . The real nature of the morphogenetically stretched PThE is revealed because it correlates systematically with the linear band where the deeper prethalamic reticular nucleus maximally approaches the brain surface . The surface classically interpreted as lamina affixa covering the “thalamus” extends between the post-foraminal prethalamic taenia and the stria terminalis, next to sulcus terminalis. This surface is ventricular and represents the evaginated trans-foraminal ventricular surface of the PThE participating in the medial wall of the hemisphere, or the floor of its lateral ventricle, up to the sulcus terminalis.I basically suggest that we can distinguish three successive parts of the lar PThE , 10: (1)the PThE , 12A,A′;sphenoidal taenia sector. Here we see the chorioidal fissure tela jumping from the fimbria to an extra-diencephalic taenial attachment at the sphenoidal (infracapsular) BST and later at the posterodorsal medial amygdala . So far a complete alternative nomenclature with a consistent prosomeric terminology has not been proposed. I worked on it while writing the Puelles L. et al. . A second basic point to attend is the hypothalamo-telencephalic border. Columnar convention during the second half of the twentieth century has held that the hypothalamus includes “rostrally” the preoptic region. This was initially not so, particularly when the “hypothalamus” term was first defined by Forel  and His Once the molecular era began, it turned out that the preoptic area shows distinct similarity in gene expression patterns  with the adjoining telencephalic subpallium . In parallel, there is a sharp molecular boundary between the preoptic area and the neighboring hypothalamic paraventricular area . The sum of alar and basal hypothalamic domains of these prosomeres were newly named peduncular hypothalamus (PHy) and terminal hypothalamus (THy), respectively  unique morphological characteristics, i.e., formations not existing elsewhere in the hypothalamus and the whole brain. These bespeak of a series of singular basal and alar prechordal inductive effects, which give rise to the neurohypophysis and median eminence, the anterobasal and chiasmatic areas, the vascular organ of the lamina terminalis, and the lamina terminalis itself, ending at the anterior commissure median crossing bed itself . This territory produces (in contrast to the suprajacent paraventricular area) mainly inhibitory GABA-positive neurons, a point inexplicably not commented by recent columnar authors. There is no theory nor discussion whatsoever about how a column (as defined within the columnar model) might produce separate groups of excitatory and inhibitory neurons . However, such alternative cell type distributions occur locally at various parts of the hypothalamus see , 15, consubparaventricular area.” Luckily, this term had been already introduced precisely at this hypothalamic level, though in a more restricted sense, by the columnar authors Watts et al. . This occurs because there was an historic time when the columnar hypothalamus ended at the AH, while its supraopto-paraventricular neighbors were still preoptic . This nucleus thus was for a time the most “anterior” part of the hypothalamus according to the columnar axis. Later, when the columnar model added the preoptic area to the hypothalamus, various authors (some in major atlases) started to identify the “anterior nucleus” partly or wholly inside the preoptic area  and ventrally a mamillary/retromamillary region (M/RM), separated by an intermediate basal band, again distinct molecularly and structurally from Tu/RTu and M/RM, but previously unnamed, or very badly named, which we termed perimamillary/periretromamillary area (PM/PRM)  see .floor plate present at the pretended caudal end of a column, since it could not be explained; it was inconsistent with the model. They would have preferred a direct axial continuity of the mamillary body with the pons , though both basically contain excitatory neurons. We now have a neuromeric explanation of why this may be so. Moreover, structures of the tuberal area proper, such as infundibulum, median eminence, arcuate nucleus, and neurohypophysis, are only found within basal THy lying under the alar-basal boundary, not more ventrally or more caudally. This also happens with the largest tuberal hypothalamic nucleus, the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus; it clearly does not extend to the caudal end of the hypothalamus , it would be more precise if the name could be changed to “rostroventromedial nucleus,” because of its restriction to THy, but this results a bit clumsy. It may be useful to remember that Ramón y Cajal  is instead rather hopeless, since, being partly retrotuberal and partly tuberal, the nucleus lies “caudal” to the VM within the PHy and “ventral” to the VM within the THy. This occurs because the VM is not born where we see it in the adult; it results from a localized dorsoventral migration stream coming from the dorsalmost tuberal subregion of the THy, which specializes in glutamatergic neurons, as opposed to the underlying DM area, which is rich in GABAergic neurons (These basal longitudinal domains (all three cutting amus VM; , 13–15. amus VM; . We thusTu; RTu; , 13–15.  y Cajal  simply n neurons .Otp and Sim1 expression, also present at the alar paraventricular area (Otp and Sim1 markers, implying that this is a case of an inappropriate term, which should be discontinued.Further semantic complication emerges when we consider the conventional ventral and dorsal premamillary nuclei (VPM; DPM; lar area . This polar area . Unfortular area ; this diThere are many other details that might be discussed on hypothalamic ancient and modern nomenclature and their respective advantages or problems. I think that we have had enough “spice of life” for the present essay. The reader may have gotten a general idea of where we presently are, and knows where he/she may seek further details and explanations, if so desired.The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.