OBJECTIVES: We reviewed cellular and synaptic dysconnectivity, disturbances in micro- and macro- circuitries, and neurodevelopmentally-derived disruptions of neural connectivity in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. METHOD: We reviewed the selected articles about disturbances in neural circuits which had been proposed as a pathogenetic mechanism of schizophrenia. RESULTS: The literature review reveals that schizophrenia may be a disease related to disturbance in neurodevelopmental mechanism, shown as 'a misconnection syndrome of neural circuit or neural network'. In descriptive psychopathological view, definition of a disorder of brain connectivity has limitation to explain other aspects of schizophrenia including deterministic strictness in thought process. CONCLUSION: Schizophrenia is considered as a disorder of brain connectivity as well as a neurodevelopmental disorder related with genetic and environmental factors. We could make a suggestion that "JoHyeonByung (attunement disorder)" denotes the disturbances of psychic fine-tuning which correspond to the neural correlates of brain dysconnectivity metaphorically.
Brain* ; Metaphor ; Schizophrenia

Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Metaphor ; Terminology as Topic ; Translations

Cognition ; Language ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Meridians ; Metaphor ; Translations

BACKGROUND: Patients suffering from non-cardiac chest pain (NCCP) can interpret their chest pain wrongly despite having received a correct diagnosis. The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy of the relaxation method with metaphor therapy for reducing irrational beliefs and pain severity in patients with NCCP. METHODS: Using a randomized controlled trial, 33 participants were randomly divided into a relaxation training group (n= 13), a metaphor therapy group (n = 10), and a control group (n = 10), and were studied for 4 weeks. The two tools used in this research were the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) index for determining the degree of pain and the short version of the Jones Irrational Belief Test. Metaphor therapy and a relaxation technique based on Ost's treatment were used as the interventions. The collected data were analyzed with a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), a Chi-square test, and the Bonferroni procedure of post-hoc analysis. RESULTS: The relaxation training method was significantly more effective than both metaphor therapy and the lack of treatment in reducing the patients' beliefs of hopelessness in the face of changes and emotional irresponsibility, as well as the pain severity. Metaphor therapy was not effective on any of these factors. In fact, the results did not support the effectiveness of metaphor therapy. CONCLUSIONS: Regarding the effectiveness of the relaxation method as compared with metaphor therapy and the lack of treatment in the control group, this study suggests that relaxation should be paid greater attention as a method for improving the status of patients. In addition, more studies are needed to determine the effectiveness of metaphor therapy in this area.
Chest Pain* ; Diagnosis ; Humans ; Metaphor* ; Multivariate Analysis ; Relaxation*

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to illuminate the relation between the aesthetics and qualitative nursing research, and especially to consider the aesthetical characteristics of phenomenological nursing research which may reflect works of art. METHOD: Based on Heidegger, Merleau-ponty and Gadamer' philosophical aesthetics, this study shows how aesthetical thought can be is applied to artistic creation and aesthetical criticism in the phenomenological research of nursing. RESULT: The result of aesthetical characteristics of phenomenological nursing research were as follows: 1) Poetical thought of the client's experience as the living is revealed as poetic expressions in forms of listening gazing, reflection and metaphor. 2) Literature works, paintings, poetry and fiction used as sources of lived-experience help to awaken insight into the essence of lived-experience. 3) Aesthetical evaluation of phenomenological product as art is related to the harmony as a whole, especially to the ability to do vicarious lived-experience of the client. CONCLUSION: In order to produce creative phenomenological works in nursing research, two suggestions are made: aesthetical thought and poetic language in phenomenological reflective writing which enables researchers to transmit the essence of the lived-experience.
Esthetics ; Metaphor ; Nursing Research ; Nursing* ; Paint ; Paintings ; Thinking* ; Writing

OBJECTIVE: In this study, we explored the meaning attributed to the words "jungshinbunyeolbyung" (schizophrenia) and "jungshinbunyeol" (schizophrenic) in South Korean newspapers and news programs in the last 10 years. METHODS: We screened the websites of three national newspapers and the broadcasts of three nationwide television news programs from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2010. We classified a total of 490 articles and 257 news segments by category and quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed them. The articles and news segments were assigned to one of the following categories based on their use of the term "schizophrenia": 1) negative, 2) neutral or positive, 3) incidental, and 4) metaphorical. RESULTS: The negative viewpoint accounted for 349 incidences (46.7%), while the neutral and positive viewpoints included 225 incidences (30.1%). Incidental uses accounted for 95 incidences (12.7%), and metaphorical uses accounted for 78 incidences (10.4%). The majority of the negative uses focused on violence or dangers posed by patients (137 mentions, 37.8%), while the metaphorical uses mainly focused on the idea of splitting (51 mentions, or 65%). CONCLUSION: This study showed that the South Korean news media do not provide balanced information about schizophrenia to the public. This study also showed that no significant move has been made toward a more positive use of the term since a previous study was conducted on the subject. Although the term schizophrenia has given way to "attunement disorder," it will be difficult to establish the new term as the standard if the South Korean media continue to use the term "schizophrenic symptom." Even though the term has been changed, guidelines are necessary to encourage the mass media to provide balanced articles and reduce prejudice.
Humans ; Incidence ; Mass Media ; Metaphor ; Periodicals ; Prejudice ; Schizophrenia ; Television ; Violence

Traditional nutrition education has not been shown to consistently produce behavior change. While it has been suggested that using emotion-based messages may be a better way to influence nutrition behavior change, this has not been well tested. Producing emotion-based messages is a multi-step process that begins with exploring subconscious barriers to behavior change rather than the more obvious and typically reported barriers. The purpose of this research was to uncover the emotional reasons, sometimes referred to as emotional pulse points, for mothers' choosing or not choosing to have more family meals. This would then serve as the first step to developing emotion-based messages promoting the benefits of family meals. Five focus group interviews were conducted with 51 low-income Black (n=28) and white (n=23) mothers. Metaphorical techniques were used to determine underlying feelings toward family and family meals. Discussions were video-taped, transcribed, and manually analyzed using a content-driven, immersion/crystallization approach to qualitative data analysis. Four themes emerged around the definition of family: acceptance, sharing, chaos, and protective/loyal. Some mothers felt mealtime was merely obligatory, and described it as stressful. Some reported a preference for attending to their own needs instead of sitting down with their children, while others felt that mealtime should be used to interact with and educate children and felt guilty when they were not able to provide family meals. Three themes emerged around feelings towards having or not having family meals: unimportant, important, and guilty. When explored further, mothers indicated that using the feeling of guilt to encourage family meals might be effective. Data obtained are being used to develop innovative, emotion-based messages that will be tested for effectiveness in promoting family meals.
Child ; Focus Groups ; Guilt ; Humans ; Meals ; Metaphor ; Mothers ; Resin Cements ; Statistics as Topic ; Unconscious (Psychology)

OBJECTIVE: Several decades ago Sutich, Walsh and Wilber said, "Transpersonal psychology has taken a position of the fourth emerging force", after the first three of psychoanalytic, behavioristic and humanistic psychology. There is a basis to confirm that transpersonal psychology and transpersonal psychotherapy are the new power of psychology. Namely they pursue entire spectrums of consciousness including the spiritual domain of human consciousness which the school of psychoanalysis, behaviorism and humanistic psychology did not emphasize. Transpersonal psychology is concerned with the study of optimum psychological health and well being, including traditional areas and techniques of therapeutic concern. Added to these it an interest in facilitating growth and awareness beyond traditionally recognized levels of health and, in so doing, it emphasized the importance of modifying consciousness. In addition to optimum psychological health and well-being, these areas included subjects such as altered states of consciousness, peak experience, self-realization, transcendent of personal levels and effects of meditation and other consciousness altering techniques. The representative theory of this is the basic structures of consciousness by Wilber. His basic structures of consciousness explain the essence of human beings and contain various lines of human development. He has limited his presentation to nine of the most basic and central levels, three of which are prepersonal, personal and transpersonal realms. There are several cases with the similar standpoint of consciousness of Wilber in Zen Buddhism of the Orient. One of them is the ode to the cow seeker and the picture to the cow seeker by Zen master, Kwak-am. Kwak-am explained the process of seeking the essence of a human being with 10 pictures trying to seek lost cow which is called "ten ox herding pictures". The odes to the cow seeker are added explanation of those pictures of the cow seeker Here, this paper introduces you the metaphor of odes to the cow seeker which was compared with basic structures of consciousness and discussed with some scholar's theories of personality development. Therefore, both metaphorical meanings of odes to the cow seeker and Wilber's basic structures of consciousness are an inquiry into the nature of human beings and this inquiry also links the process of the development of transpersonal consciousness Lastly, I tried to prove that transpersonal psychology draws on the contribution of both Eastern wisdom and Western science. METHOD: In order to discuss for correlation between odes to the cow seeker and basic structures of consciousness, a method was chosen for interpreting books which are related with these subjects. Among these books, the principal books for odes to the cow seeker were "Buddhistic words seeking himself" by Sunglim, "ox herding pictures", "ten series reaching enlightenment" by Hyee-ik Lee and the manual of zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki. The three books were compared with "ontogenic development", "two fundamental patterns" and the spectrum of development by Wilber. RESULTS: The results of the discussion were as follows. The 1st stanza, ode of searching for the cow is corresponded to the sensory physical mind, the 2nd stanza, ode of finding cow's footprints is corresponded to the phantasmic emotional mind, the 3rd stanza, ode of seeing the cow is corresponded to the representational mind, the 4th stanza, ode of catching the cow is corresponded to the rule/role mind, the 5th stanza, ode of taming the cow is corresponded to the formal reflexive mind, the 6th stanza, ode of coming home on the cow's back is corresponded to the vision-logic mind, the 7th stanza, ode of cow gone(the seeker remains alone), is corresponded to the psychic and subtle mind which consciousness belongs to the transpersonal level. The 8th stanza, ode of the cow and the seeker disappeared is corresponded to the causal level, and the 9th stanza, ode of returning to the source is corresponded to the ultimate mind which is connected to the eighth ode and abided as the absolute spirit. Strictly speaking, the ultimate state is not one level among others, but the reality, condition or suchness of all levels. Then, the 10th stanza, ode of entering a house in the market with help-bestowing hands is a scene which the transpersonal deity is not staying in contemplative life state but illuminating toward market people naturally as the flower blooms on an old tree in Spring. CONCLUSION: Human psychology tends to change to transpersonal psychology in order to understand the essence of human nature like abnormal behavior is destructive while sound is constructive with nature. The 'transpersonal' combined with the term of 'trans' and 'personal' is a new psychology field which pursues the existence of spirituality. All creation with human beings has its spirituality moving immanently horizontally and it goes transcendentally vertically. Ode to the cow seeker tells the process how the consciousness of a person reachs out to be transpersonal beyond his boundary. The attitude of seeker after spirituality would be compared with the attitude of today's teacher. Therefore I would like to remark that psychotherapists and seekers of the essence of human-beings have to access the point of self-transcendence and also have to try to develop their self-introspection at the level of biopsychosocial-spiritual dimension in the base of psychodynamism. From birth to death, it is very hard to find a real Guru who guides us to find out the right ways of life. There's only ways to seek his own spirituality by relieving himself in the base of transpersonal movement and only a few seekers say that's the only way to find it. Besides this way, whether the way of life we take is repeated or comes to a deadlock.
Buddhism ; Consciousness* ; Flowers ; Hand ; Human Characteristics ; Human Development ; Humans ; Meditation ; Metaphor ; Parturition ; Personality Development ; Psychoanalysis ; Psychology ; Psychotherapy ; Reflex ; Spirituality

BACKGROUND: Diabetic nephropathy develops in 20-30% of patients with non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM). Poor glycemic control, hypertension and duration of diabetes are known as risk factors for the development of diabetic nephropathy and there is high prevalence of diabetic nephropathy in the patients who have familial history of diabetic nephropathy, so it has been assumed that genetic factor is associated with the background of its occurences. Recently it has been observed that a cytosine to thymidine substitution of the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene at nucleotide 677 (C677T) was related to diabetic nephropathy in patients with NIDDM and MTHFR gene polymorphism was also known to predispose to vascular disease. This study was performed to investigate whether MTHFR gene polymorphism is associated with the development of diabetic nephropathy and macrovascular disease in NIDDM patients. METHODS: The study population consisted of 243 NIDDM patients (duration> OR = 10 years). Nephropathy was defined by 24 hour urinary protein excretion of more than 500 mg. The MTHFR gene fragment was extracted using the polymerase chain reaction. The presence of the mutation was identified by HinfI digestion, which cuts at the mutation site, followed by 2.5% metaphore agarose electrophoresis and ethidium bromide staining. Statistical differences in genotype distribution and allele frequencies among the groups were assessed by the chi-square test. RESULTS: There was no difference in clinical characteristics except the prevalence of hypertension and diabetic retinopathy between nephropathy group and non-nephropathy group. The data do not show any difference of genotype distribution or allele frequencies between patients with or without diabetic nephropathy and macrovascular disease CONCLUSION: With the above results, it is assumed that there are no significant relationships among MTHFR gene polymorphism, diabetic nephropathy, and macrovascular disease.
Cytosine ; Diabetes Mellitus ; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2* ; Diabetic Nephropathies* ; Diabetic Retinopathy ; Digestion ; Electrophoresis ; Ethidium ; Fibrinogen ; Gene Frequency ; Genotype ; Humans ; Hypertension ; Metaphor ; Methylenetetrahydrofolate Reductase (NADPH2) ; Polymerase Chain Reaction ; Prevalence ; Risk Factors* ; Sepharose ; Thymidine ; Vascular Diseases