If Almodóvar’s brilliant compatriot of an earlier generation, luis Buñuel, dissolves any inkling of melodrama into the field of irony, Almodóvar does the reverse: he transforms the mundane everyday into melodramatic moments with both grace and playfulness, and demonstrates that reality and melodrama are not antithetical but com-plementary genres. Reality, according to Almodóvar, does not necessarily lack the emotional contents of melodrama and could not be reduced to chaotic irony. Similarly, melodrama does not need to be at a far remove from the awkward, inadequate, and often comedic textures of reality. Almodóvar’s work has shown us that melodrama can appropriate the essence of irony, comedy, or laughter, without destroying the possibility of melodramatic meaning that mere irony intends to undertake. His work has also shown us that reality is neither an effect of melodrama, nor the irredeemable chaos of irony; it is the source for the possible melodramatic moments or moments of meaning

The curious ambiguity of the maternal melodrama in High Heels and of Almodóvar films in general then results from the clash between the two modes of reception: between ironic and melodramatic spectatorship. The film perceives these modes as both antithetical to and firmly intertwined within each other, but it ultimately does not leave the scene to irony and resolutely refuses a spectatorship in which the drama on the screen is equated with pure, inauthentic performance.

The scene is indeed revelatory in the way it inverts a common assumption regarding melodrama, one that is also evident in Brooks’ understanding of the genre: it is not that melodrama supports reality with fantasy; to the contrary, reality supports melodrama with life.

listening to her daughter’s confession of the murder, the suddenly mundane Becky tells her daughter to find another way to settle her problems with men, and Rebeca, like a good daughter, agrees. Becky articulates her advice in a most matter-of-fact way as if the moment did not have any melodramatic significance whatsoever. The melodramatic moment in this instance reverts to a most common, almost banal everyday occurrence: a mother gives her daughter a real piece of advice

The tonal ambi-guity between melodramatic and ironic modes of representation is most perceivable in the scene of the daughter’s confession to her mother and the mother’s repentance. The now ailing mother is redeemed by her heroic act of self-sacrifice: she declares herself to be the murderer of Rebeca’s husband and saves her daughter’s life. The daughter accepts the moth-er’s act of self-sacrifice as a melodramatic gift that authenticates the mother’s true affection for her. The film, however, does not try to obscure the absurdness of the situation: after

Yet, Almodóvar’s melodramatic moment does not necessarily forsake the seriousness of the content; the comic, ironic, awkward, hyperbolic elements that may be chanced upon on the way to such moments do not always take away from the emotional import of these moments. Almodóvar embraces melodrama dialectically; he makes the spectator go through the path of irony, only to discover, as if by miracle, the melodramatic momen

While the ironic perception makes us ignore the contents and laugh at the excesses of the performer, the melodramatic perception makes us take such contents seriously and empathize with the performer. T

The sight of the face forces the spectator to forget the public stage, which inevitably lessens the effect of reality and magnifies the moment’s theatricality; instead, we are made to ponder upon and take seriously the elaborately forged reality of a mother who is suffering because of her daughter’s incarceration.

“Almodóvar claims not to know if Becky’s act ‘is sincere or if it is an imitation of life’ [... He] states that there is no simple distinction between theatricality and ‘genuine emotion’ and that any gesture performed on stage ‘becomes spectacle’” (Smith 1994, 129). If Becky’s transfer of her own private drama to the national stage appears to lack authenticity, it is not because Becky’s performance cannot be authentic, but because the melodramatic audience has not yet been cued with the authentic contents of Becky’s emotional life in the preceding scenes. unlike Rebeca’s confessional performance, Becky’s performance initially seems to be lacking any substance in that we, as spectators, are not yet convinced that the mother is transferring an authentic emotion to the stage. If Rebeca’s confession, however ridiculous and surreal it may seem, strikes the melodramatic audience as more authentic than Becky’s, it is because her confession directly impacts her life and causes her incarceration

The ironical stance insists that reality cannot live up to the articulation of reality. The melodramatic stance, on the other hand, insists that reality becomes all the more real with the stylistic articulation. Rebeca’s performance, accord-ing to the melodramatic perception, is not a distortion of reality; it is a moment in which reality and performance become one and the same

Rebeca’s transgression is similar to the everyday transgressions of the many talk (or reality) show guests that we have come to see very often on TV, and there is certainly a strong ele-ment of the scandalous and the lurid in the way Rebeca comfortably reveals the details of her private life to the public. Although we, the spectators of Almodóvar’s film, are made to identify with Rebeca from the outset of the film, we wonder how the implied audience within the film, to whom Rebeca makes her confession on TV, could possibly believe and identify with her, or even take her seriously. It is true that Rebeca turns her own reality into a theatrical stage, which lessens the impression of reality and creates a strong sense of irony. The scene, however, remains indecisive between irony and melodrama: while we may wish to read the scene as pure performance, we may not simply dismiss the possibility of its reality or authen-ticity.

Characteristically, the scene invokes ambiguous reactions; it is not clear whether the spectator should believe Rebeca’s confession, whether the scene is intended to be serious or ironic. The scene that precedes the confession shows Rebeca crying as she is driving to the TV studio, hinting that Rebeca’s suffering for the loss of her husband is not affected. The spectator’s confused reaction to the confession scene results not from the suspicion that Rebeca may just be acting and may not be sincerely reflecting her own dramatic situation, but from Rebeca’s transgression of the rigid boundaries of the news medium, which does not normally allow for the expression of emotions. The incompatibility between the news medium and the melodramatic medium, then, constitutes the first level of irony. The second level of irony results from Rebeca’s too perfect, too comfortable performance, giving the impression that the confession must have been previously rehearsed. The scene may be interpreted as Rebeca’s stylistic revenge on the mother who was previously not at all impressed by the daughter’s performance. Rebeca’s murderous act is in fact a pretext for her to create a melodramatic stage, in order to prove that she has moved beyond the realm of awkward performers and has become a sublime performer just like her mother

ebeca chances upon a particular picture, which she wants to show the audience fully; this is the picture of “the armchair where [Manuel] sat and watched me on TV.” This moment self-reflexively may be thought to refer to melodramatic spectatorship: it points to the spectator who is now sitting and watching Rebeca perform, just like Manuel used to.

High Heels is unquestionably an upper-class melodrama, where all manufactured objects seem to carry a brand name, and the scene may be pointing to the grim reality of capitalism where consumer objects substitute human beings and their memories. But the scene balances such a worn-out critique with an irresistible melodramatic appeal that displays the enormous powers of identification masterfully manipulated by Rebeca. It is all too understandable to remember a lost one through the remnants of intimate life, and the scene may be as much a melodramatic commentary on the structure of remem-bering as an ironic note on consumerism.

The cut forces us to see and hear Rebeca as if her confession were being made privately and intimately to us and not to a nationwide TV audience. The representational device of the cut indicates that the melodramatic scene is “done”: the question whether it is a false perfor-mance or the actual reality is unanswerable

Rebeca’s crowning melodramatic achievement consists in her artful transformation of the news-medium into a melodramatic medium. It is important to note that during the first half of the scene, we see Rebeca and the sign interpreter through the cameras of the TV studio as if we were watching Rebeca on TV. By staging the confession through the TV screen, Almodóvar doubles our spectatorship: we are simultaneously the implied TV audience and the spectators of High Heels. If we identify with the implied TV audience, we feel somewhat baffled by the performative quality of Rebeca’s confession: we are swayed towards thinking that Rebeca’s lines, which possess an overly dramatic and hyperbolic quality, must be pre-tended and not meant. But as the spectators of Almodóvar’s film, we also suspect that there might be some reality in Rebeca’s performance: the scene might just be a “magnificent lurid document” that exquisitely stages reality

After Rebeca’s impregnation, the husband gets killed, and the love triangle between the daughter, the husband, and the mother becomes reduced to what it really is: the love story between a mother and daughter. Rebeca, who is the actual murderer, seizes upon the pos-sibility of using the act of confession to create a potent melodramatic moment and, instead of going to the police, she chooses to make her confession during her news program on TV in front of a national audience.

Interestingly, the film initially hints at the sublime quality of the mother’s performances through the performance of her transvestite impersonator, femme letal, who lip-synchs one of the mother’s renowned songs in honor of the diva. It is not a coincidence that Rebeca’s best friend is femme letal: the drag queen, for Rebeca, has functioned as a substitute for her mother during their long separation. femme letal’s performance may be seen as the enactment of the mother’s femininity without any content drawn from the private life of the mother and the daughter; the performance is the pure actualization of the melodramatic style. In femme letal’s performance, Rebeca reads the transformative power of the melo-dramatic medium to implant every little gesture with a fantastic meanin

The mother’s melodrama – the melodrama of the sublime performer – is that of content: she has to repent her own negligence of the daughter, “stop acting,” and begin to take responsibility for the dramatic situations that she has brought about. In accordance with the melodramatic format, her repentance must turn into a performative act, but the act must be supported or authenticated by the contents of her life. Conversely, the daughter’s mel-odrama – the melodrama of the awkward performer – is that of style: Rebeca must overcome her awkwardness and learn how to articulate a melodramatic moment. It is not enough to declare one’s love to the self-centered mother and expect a sign of love from her; she must strive to become as accomplished a performer as her mother. The overwhelming challenge that Rebeca faces consists in the sublime performance skills of her mother who is a nationally renowned symbol of femininity. Indeed, part of Rebeca’s resentment against her mother may be thought to originate from her mother’s negligence to instruct her in the performance of femininity.

he scenes illustrate the various stages in the dramatic evolvement of the interactions between the conflicting parties, which may be understood in a variety of permutations: mother and daughter, melodrama and reality, performance and reality, melodrama and irony

e may state that the melodramatic structure in Almodóvar’s High Heels“moves from presentation of reality-as-lacking-in-style to the introduction of sublime but empty performances, which places reality in a situation of extreme awkwardness.” In High Heels, this corresponds to the melodrama of Rebeca, an awkward performer, who appears stylistically crude and deficient at articulating her own dramatic realities. Conversely, the melodrama of the sublime performer “moves from presentation of performance-as-inau-thentic to the introduction of a real dramatic situation, which places performance in a situ-ation of extreme emptiness.” This is the melodrama of Rebeca’s mother, Becky, who, as an accomplished performer, is capable of stylistic articulations of sublime emotions but is nev-ertheless confronted with the emptiness of her own performance as a mother vis-à-vis the exigencies of her daughter’s dramatic situation

Reality and performance may then be said to constitute the spectrum of melodrama, as opposed to confronting each other as antithetical, binary poles. Reality necessitates perfor-mance to spectacularize itself, while performance needs reality to authenticate itself through the artifice of the melodramatic moment. Admitting that melodramatic moment is not a purely performative moment, but a moment of reality is to cease seeing reality as antithetical to melodrama. The struggle between reality and performance is then not an absolute antag-onism but a dialectical confrontation.

he situation, in itself, may not be sufficient in bringing about the particular appeal that characterizes melodramatic truth and intensifies its artifice of truthfulness; it requires performances that eloquently cast the sig-nificance of the situation into a highly stylized language. Melodramatic performances demand that the “right” words be uttered for the “right” situations, that the “right” facial expressions and gestures, commensurate with the essence of the situation, be made visible

ames’ observations suggest that truth and performance become synonymous in the melodramatic moment. Melodramatic spectatorship is implicated in the belief that there exist or might exist certain privileged moments in life, i.e. those melodramatic moments that are supported by the contents of reality and stylized as in a staged performance. Interestingly, Brooks attributes these moments to the transcendent: “the melodramatists refuse to allow that the world has been completely drained of transcendence” (

the difference between the real and the melodramatic is a stylistic and not an ontological one

insightful terminology, it is “done.” The contents of melodrama cannot be immediately ascribed to reality or fantasy: “we must give up looking for difference.”

Critics tend to see the melodramatic moment as a plastic moment, characterized by stylistic excess while ordinary spectators, long trained in melodramatic spectatorship, are inclined to see it as what it really is: a moment of authen-ticity, a real moment brought magically, that is through melodramatic art and artifice, to the level of meaning.

Almodóvar’s work problematizes this conception of melodrama and exposes the onto-logical distinctions made between melodrama and reality as arbitrary. Melodrama, in Almodóvar’s alternative conception, is not a literary or cinematic genre characterized by its inauthenticity, fantasy, or excess; it is a way of being that is implicated in our very reality. Conversely, Almodóvar’s melodrama treats reality not as the banal and raw authenticity of life that refuses the fantastic or the extraordinary; it shows reality to dwell in the same fic-tional plane with melodrama. In other words, Almodóvar exposes melodrama as a way of life and reality as a particular genre. The disorderliness of raw reality in Almodóvar’s films is not compatible with the excessiveness of melodrama. The difference between reality and melodrama is hence revealed to be not a rigid ontological difference but a stylistic one between two genres of being.

onsequently, melodrama becomes attributed to an elaborately fabricated dream world; as such, it becomes the stage of elevated, numinous desire. The melodramatic affect is then thought to be contingent upon the oblivion of reality, which connotes the banality and even the stupidity of everyday life. The admirers of melodrama appreciate melodrama because they consider it to belong to a mythical world of idealizations. Its critics, on the other hand, condemn it for the same reason: they claim that melodramatic fantasy obscures reality and propagates falsity. The ontological distinction between melodrama and reality seems to create a dichotomy that could hardly be resolved.

My essay is precisely an effort to locate both the emotionality and the irony of Almodóvar’s melodrama in the intricate relationship between the notion of reality and the genre of mel-odrama in order to show how the ironic and the melodramatic modes supplement and rein-force each other despite their apparent opposition. While my essay will not directly address questions of gender or sexuality,10 it will inevitably express some of the latent critical concerns of previous criticism such as Almodóvar’s intermingling of the ironic with the melodramatic mode or his particular use of the notion of performance. More specifically, I will use Peter Brooks’ and Henry James’ observations on nineteenth-century melodrama as a launching pad for a discussion of the ways in which Almodóvar revises the genre of melodrama at the junc-tion between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The second half of the essay is dedi-cated to an analysis of High Heels, which illustrates the ambivalent relationships between reality and performance and between ironic and melodramatic spectatorship

n an essay that will attempt to analyze the relationship between reality and melodrama as represented in Almodóvar’s films in general and in his masterful melodrama High Heels(Tacones lejanos 1991) in particular, my focus will be far from offering an elucidation of the notion of reality. I will not deny, however, that my deployment of “reality” is irrevocably tied to and dependent upon the imagination of my reader, who, I must and do trust, will make sense of it; indeed, any recourse to “reality” must necessitate such trust. Ironically both reality and melodrama, two notions that will be at the center of my approach to Almodóvar’s films, continue being ascribed to lower registers connected with the domains of folksy thought, popular taste, and mass culture, which are purportedly less deserving of critical attention.2In challenging the distinctions between low and high art, Almodóvar’s films revive our critical interest in the oft-ignored relationship between reality and melodrama

he tabacalera scene is the climax of Carmen, who is played by Laura Del Sol in the film, and Cristina's quarrel. The quarrel stems from the fact that Cristina, who is the rehearsal director of the company and who is played by Cristina Hoyos, is convinced that she is a better dancer than Carmen and therefore more suitable for the role. Antonio even calls Cristina to his office, situated behind the large mirror in the studio, to convince her that he needs a younger dancer to perform Carmen. Interestingly, in Gades's theatrical version, Cristina Hoyos interpreted the role of Carmen. According to Mandelli, the choice of Laura Del Sol for Carmen was dictated by marketing reasons,65 but even though her dancing and acting are quite good, she does not communicate a sufficient incisiveness. She lacks the quality of duende distinctive to flamenco, in other words the 'soul' which is intrinsic to any 'truly' inspired dancer. This quality is however deeply rooted in Cristina Hoyos's dancing and it also intensifies much of the female dancing in the film.

The outputs from the amygdala are extensive as well, andinclude almost all of the structures highlighted as impor-tant in emotional reactions, including direct connectionsto the hypothalamus, the central gray, the brain stem, thestriatum, and cortical structures including the cingulategyrus, frontal lobe, visual cortex, and more. The amyg-dala’s central nucleus sends prominent projections to thelateral hypothalamus–akey center activating the sympa-thetic branch of the autonomic nervous system in emotion(LeDoux,1987). In addition, direct projections from thelateral extended amygdala go to the dorsal motor nucleusof the vagus, the nucleus of the solitary tract, and the ven-trolateral medulla. These brainstem nuclei are known toregulate heart rate and blood pressure (Schwaber et al.,1982), and may thus modulate cardiovascular responsesin emotion

aken together, the heart rate patterns obtained duringpicture perception and imagination are consistent withLacey’s (1967)early observation that deceleration is asso-ciated with sensory intake (perception), whereas acceler-ation is associated with mentation. On the other hand,Lacey’s interpretation of heart rate acceleration duringimagery as reflecting sensory rejection, has been refined:Rather than focusing on sensory processing (e.g., rejec-tion of perceptual information), a number of theories (seeCuthbert, Vrana, & Bradley,1991,for a review) hypoth-esize that cardiac acceleration during imagery reflectsaction engagement prompted by the imagery scene

ful sentence produced more heart rate acceleration thaneither hearing the sentence, or seeing a slide depicting thesame material as the sentence

Lacey hypothesized that cardiacdeceleration was an index of perceptual processing, reflect-ing sensory intake, whereas cardiac acceleration was anindex of mental processing, reflecting sensory rejection

Most organs are innervated by nerves from both theparasympathetic and sympathetic divisions, which tend toexert opposite effects. The reciprocal effects of these twosystems on different organs are mediated by the releaseof different neurotransmitters at the neuro-effector junc-tion, with acetycholine released by parasympathetic fibers(cholinergic) and noradrenaline released by sympatheticfibers (adrenergic). Their subsequent action (e.g., increaseor decrease in heart rate) is also temporally differentiatedby the fact that noradrenaline dissipates slowly, whereasacetycholine dissipates more rapidly. Thus, parasympa-thetic control will tend to activate specific organs withrapid, phasic effects, whereas sympathetic control is notonly more diffuse, but also somewhat longer lasting

Gale and Baker (1981)noted that experimenter-participant interactions are particularly important inpsychophysiology because the procedures may involvetouching, partial removal of clothing, skin abrasion, andthe application and removal of sensors. This somewhatunique and extended interaction may result in participantsbecoming anxious, distracted, or aware of the experi-menter’s expectations and significant laboratory artifactsmay be introduced

The expression of emotion, for instance,can be magnified, attenuated, or masked because of thepresence of others and comprehensive psychophysiolog-ical theories must accommodate such moderating influ-ences

Asmall portion of the changing electromagnetic fieldconfederated with these processes passes through theextracellular fluids to the skin and it is these voltage fluc-tuations that constitute the major portion of the surfaceEMG signal. The voltage changes that are detected in sur-face EMG recording do not emanate from a single MAPbut rather from MAPs traveling across many muscle fiberswithin a motor unit (i.e., motor unit action potential, orMUAP) and, more typically, from MAPs traveling acrossnumerous motor fibers due to the activation of multiplemotor units. Thus, the EMG does not provide a direct mea-sure of tension, muscular contraction, or movement butrather the electrical activity associated with these events.More specifically, the surface EMG signal represents theensemble electromagnetic field detectable at the surfaceof the skin at a given moment in time.

The results ofthese studies and others (e.g., Davis,1938)demonstratedthat EMG responses were evoked by psychologically rel-evant tasks (e.g., recall a poem), were minute and highlylocalized, and often occurred in the part of the body thatone would use had the task called for an overt response

Gradually, the spectator comes to sense that the fic-tional world portrayed within the film is divided into on-stage and off-stage spaces, the latter being suppressed spaces constituting the source ofmeanings for all the "staged" scenes

One of the assembled group, Antonio's daughter (Julia Pena), chides hergrandfather for his cruel treatment of her father. "Don't you understand,"he responds, "symbols are everything." His words, of course, transcend thecontext in which they are uttered, establishing the first of a series of linksthat will lead the spectator of Garden to recognize the actions of the elderCano as synonymous with the process of ideological coercion of the Span-iard by state cultural apparatuse

n each of the three films, Saura attempts to address a collective Spanishaudience by putting into question the Francoist ideal of the unified, passivenation. In approaching each of the three films he implicitly utilizes thetradition of nationalist films dating back to Saenz de Heredia's Raza, inwhich the ideal of the family is exploited as the emblematic expression ofthe nation. But that ideal family, already stereotyped by the right, is nowstood on its head as Saura equates the family with the ideological apparatusof the state.

Saura observed: "Censorship obliges one to find aroundabout way of narrating things. This necessity of avoiding the factswithout losing sight of them forces one to explore types of narration andplots which, little by little, shape the personality of the director and of hisway of making films

"I have always been interested more in the individual than in socie

Although highly self-reflexive like Elisa, Vida Mia, Blindfolded Eyes is more direct in expressing Saura's anger over political events. "Perhaps in Blindfolded Eyes this anger that I feel is made more clear than in any other of my movies due to the subject I have chosen for the film. But beyond the reality of torture, unfortunately proved in most of those countries that call themselves civilized, what I would have liked to make clear in Blindfolded Eyes is the fact that, almost with- out realizing it, we live in a world dominated by a violence which is at times visible and at times hidden, and which is restricting our freed

al. Elisa, Vida Mia tells the story of Luis (Fernando Rey), a 60-year-old writer living in seclusion, who is visited by his daughter Elisa (Geraldine Chaplin) whom he hasn't seen for 20 years. He incorporates their conversations into his writings until the boundaries between fiction and reality are blu

Saura has observed: "I have never believed in the child's paradise. On the contrary, I think that childhood is a stage where nocturnal terror, fear of the unknown, loneliness, are present with at least the same intensity as the joy of living and that curiosity of which peda- gogues talk so much."3 The intensity of Ana's passions is made so credible that, without any melodrama, we can accept a nine-year-old con- templating suicide and poisoning one of her family elders. Her interior fantasy life is so vivid that when she awakens from a nightmare and discovers her mother's phantom has fled, without any sentimentality, we can identify with her panic and terror and her desperate longing for her mother. The child's perception of adult realities (e.g., her father's sexual adventures, which lead to his fatal heart attack, and his mistreatment of her mother, which is partly responsible for her death) is so convincing because, without fully comprehending all of the events, she intuits the emotional reality. Through her eyes, we are able to see the adults with a double perspective that may also partially reflect the adult Ana's con- sciousnes

"The last image in Cousin Angelica-the mother combing the daughter's hair-is the opening of Cria Cuervos." (S) The first Saura film to be based on a script he wrote entirely alone, Cria Cuervos-its creation, its narrative structure, and its center of consciousness-grow out of this opening germinal image: the hair of the nine- year-old Ana (brilliantly played by Ana Torrent) is lovingly groomed by her mother (Geraldine Chaplin). We do not yet realize that Ana's mother is dead and that this ordinary domestic ritual is actually an obsessive fantasy of the child, whose emotional life has been shaped by the loss of her mother. When we discover that Geraldine Chap- lin also plays the adult Ana, who in 1995 is look- ing back on her childhood (set in Madrid in 1975), we realize that the image may reflect the reworked memory of the woman rather than the girl

Saura suggests that not only is our present de- termined by our past, but our past is reshaped by the present. The mediator is the individual consciousness

Saura does not feel compelled to represent the events of his life as they actually occurred. "I don't like autobiographies that are like diaries. What interests me is the imagination working on one's own life-naturally, this offers a wide lee- way for creation." (I) This is precisely the focus of the film-Luis's imaginative recreation of child- hood memories

One of the assumptions that these artists share in common and that is powerfully demonstrated in Saura's Garden of Delights is that by fully probing the fantasies of individuals, it is possible to perceive an entire culture and to demystify political dynamics. Antonio Cano, the rich pro- tagonist in The Garden of Delights (brilliantly played by Jose Luis Lopez Vazquez) is crippled in an auto accident, which confines him to a wheel chair and forces him to return to the role of a helpless child. Suffering massive brain dam- age, he is partially paralyzed, his speech is seri- ously impaired, and his memory half gone. By choosing such a character to control the film's point of view, Saura makes the gap between inner life and outward behavior essential to the plot and dramatizes quite literally the crippling influ- ence of Spanish society on an individual con- sciousness. The film suggests that this destructive influence has been operating, not just in the accident, but all of Antonio's life. The accident merely confirms what was already true-his emo- tional, mental, and spiritual deteriorati

But for a film director, or at least for me, a movie starts when I begin working on it and ends when I quit. During this long process, there are ideas that I have at home that change substantially once I try to shoot them. It's more exciting doing it this way-for the director, the actors, and the crew- because the film is truly born through the collab- oration and this evolution is parallel for the actors, the crew, and myself. It is very exciting to watch the transformation in the psychology of the actors, the lighting, the montage, and in all of the elements that go into the shooting of the movie

Despite the fact that all of his films since Peppermint Frappe (1967) have complex non- linear structures, Saura has chosen the uncon- ventional technique of shooting every film in the sequence it appears on the scr

ents. After making Elisa, Vida Mia, Saura observed in an interview: "My belief is that those who pretend that art can solve social problems make the mistake of forgetting that normally the artist is a victim of society. I find it absurd when I see those who claim a political aim in the arts rebuking artists for not fulfilling their duties as good citizens. Of course, the first thing should be to agree on what is a truly political attitude; for me a labor dispute is no more political than the difficulties two people face to go on living tog

In contrast to these operatic films with their dramatic sweep of violent deeds and historical events, Saura's later works are more interior and subtle

Saura is proud to be called an auteur. "Making movies is part of my life-it's not merely a pro- fession or work. I write my own scripts and have never adapted a novel or play. I consider myself an auteur." (I) It does not disturb him that his personal films might not reach a mass audience. "I think it's dangerous to set out to make a film for the masses. It seems to me more interesting to do what you want to do. I think the most wonderful thing is to have receptive people in the audience interpret what you have done. At the moment, it may only be one person, but later it might be 50,000, and some day millions. When a film has a large audience, there is a better chance of reaching more receptive individuals and that's always very satisfying. But I think the most important thing is to do what you must do and that's the only way it's possible to find this kind of communication

we couldn't use a linear structure or the ideas would be too clear. It often forced me to exercise my imagination

"It is my personal opinion that the New Spanish Cinema does not exist. What does exist is a number of individuals who make films. I don't know what this label refers to-is it Bufiuel?, is it me and Chavarri? Of course, there are several magnificent directors who are working now in Spain, but I think it's wrong to generalize. For me, the individual works come first, then the cult

given article later; you won’t remember, and you might alsoaccidentally commit plagiarism. Instead, be sure to highlight important sections and take notes in the margins for each article you read. Once you’ve read and highlighted an article, open a file on your computer and type up notes on the article, including its complete reference in APA style (which you’ll need for the reference section anyway); bullet points that summarize the purpose, method, results, and conclusion; and why you think this article is important for your paper and where it will fit

n fact, The Devil 's Backbone owes a certain thematic debt to Spanish di- rectors Víctor Erice and Carlos Saura, whose internationally acclaimed films, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) and Raise Ravens (1975) respectively, set a benchmark for the presentation of fascism through the eyes of children. How- ever, unlike these films of the early 1 970s, made during Franco's fascist dicta- torship, in del Toro's 2001 film, the children's reaction to torment and repression is decidedly different, evidencing the ideological distance created by a quarter century of Spanish democracy. In Saura's and Erice's films the monstrous and supernatural come not from some external threat, but as mani- festations of the child protagonists' anguish over feelings of guilt, rebellion and complicity as they are torn between the opposing forces- very real trau- mas faced by several generations of Spanish children. Ana, the protagonist in both films, feels nothing like the confidence in their own actions and the Tight- ness of their cause that allow the boys to unite, pursue, and defeat the evil threatening them. The children of films made during the dictatorship carry the painful burdens of the Republican defeat and the inescapable oppression of Francoisi societyhi - storical events, again, entirely absent from the literal or symbolic levels of The Devil 's Backbone. Instead, we witness a clear liber- ation as the boys leave the school behind and walk confidently into the warm Spanish sun; there is no suggestion of the historical reality that these "children of reds being raised by reds" are walking into a world now controlled by the fascists.5 Finally, then, in the context of Spanish history, the war story, once the 'real' side of the film, turns into fantasy as the boys' triumphant execution of the fascist menace represents what one might wish had happened, but is no longe

here had been major international events along the way, particu-larly in the mid 1950s, that had weakened the PCE's potential grip in Spain. The regime's welcome of an influx of North American dollars and culture-Hollywood, grilled cheese sandwiches, tourism, and so forth-had given Franco a positive spin internationally. On the other hand, Nikita Khrushchev's 1955 attack on Stalin's cult of personality and uses of brutal repression had shaken the party to its core. To make matters worse, Spain was also voted into the United Nations in 1955, with the approval of the Soviet Union. How could the Soviet Union, the active supporters of the Spanish republic during the Civil War, and the current PCE backers, vote Franco's Spain into the UN? The PCE leaders and comrades felt deeply betrayed. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 would also be divisive and cause many comrades and fellow travelers worldwide to distance themselves from their respective par-ties. In Hungary the revolts were led by students, who were brutally crushed by Soviet forces. In 1960, Jorge traveled to Moscow and was disappointed by his meeting with Mikhail Souslov, the chiefideologue of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. During their conver-sation, Jorge realized that Spain was of no interest to Moscow, except insofar as the PCE could be manipulated to bolster Soviet politics and self-image.268 Given these developments, how could Communism still be held up as an appealing alternative to Francoism?

Many of the factions looking for new members shared the con-servative politics and Catholic values of Franco's regime, but they had been disenfranchised by his monolithic approach to government.

t snowed all over Spain yesterday .... Yet 'the atmosphere is warm and welcoming. More than ever. All my friends are showering me with invitations, and I'm going non-stop. I am very pleased about this, and plan on having a wonderful time this season.

I think the essential point is to foster the birth of a reflec- tion. As is the case with novels, I don't think you can actually change society with films. You do it with social and therefore prac- tical political action. A film can provoke this action only indirectly. Films can try to help awaken a spectator's consciousness. They can give information and provoke a reflection that might eventually play a part in producing an ac

Just before this expulsion, Jorge Semprun had declared that we cannot refuse our past - "We can only deny it in the prese

In general, for any interoceptive stimu-lation method there are always several issues, which needto be considered; these are:1.What is the effective natural stimulus for the targetreceptors?2.Where are the target receptors located?3.What non-target receptors could be affected?4.What differences in modal sensitivity exist betweenthe target and non-target receptors?

So, Agustin surrenders to that paralysis of the spirit which in the film's symbolic idiom is a sickness common to the family of Spain. His failings are cowardice and acquiescence in the values of a system he fails to confront and understand. The implicit message of El Sur is that the health of the nation is at risk as long as those ideological values remain uncontested

All three of the quoted literary texts are, moreover, crucially centred on the notion of the supernatural: we know that Romeo and Juliet will meet in heaven, though their mortal lives flicker out in the tombs of Verona, that Cathy's ghost haunts Heathcliff, and that Tess, lying towards the end of the novel on the altar at Stonehenge and confessing to enjoying the solemnity and solitude of the countryside, will drift into nature itself once she has been hanged, like some spirit seeking her place in the airy cycles and rhythms of life

hese and other intriguing coincidences embedded in the tissue of the film suggest that Estrella projects her fantasies, her guilt, her whole psychological drama on to the figure of Irene Rios. As a possessive eight-year-old she had been jealous of a rival who had captured more than her father's imagination; now a worldly young woman, she consciously or unconsciously identifies herself with Irene because her father's former mistress provides her with an imaginary outlet for her mature fantasies. Irene, of course, is another 'estrella' (a film star), and a vehicle through which the mature but disorientated Estrella may recover the spiritual essence of a man she could in no other way possess. Estrella's choice of Irene as an alter ego is motivated by psychological needs which Erice examines with exemplary penetration. But, as he does not fail to make clear, her identification with Irene is also ideologically conditioned. For Irene is a femme fatale from the world of the screen, a stereotype fabricated by a culture unconsciously committed to alienation.

Erice elucidates some of the causes of Agustin's suicide with the aid of a small number of silent visual clues. Agustin shoots himself on the river bank, having ridden there not on his motorcycle but on Estrella's red two-wheeler which is ominously reported as missing from the house in the film's opening sequence. The film's syntax invites one to connect the suicide with the severed ropes of Estrella's swing, on which she had sat looking up at Agustin's bedroom window after his first disappearance from the house. An extension of the Lorca image of the 'madeja roja', the severed ropes symbolize the broken thread of life which had tied Agustin to Estrella. The imagery of the sequence thus implicates Estrella in her father's suicide. A subtle change of tone in Estrella's voice-over commentary at this point betrays a hint of guilt in the mature girl's mind. Her characteristically neutral tone and customary reticence are transformed into a mild admission that she could have been more sensitive to his needs during their final encounter at the Gran Hotel.

Her father's uncharacteristic action of taking to the hills with a rifle on such a morning is an appropriately violent expression of his feelings of anger and frustration at seeing the process of her ideological colonization begin

There could be no clearer illustration of post-Oedipal attraction to the father as described ~ Freud in the essay on 'Femininity' in the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. In Estrella's 'family romance' Agustin is both 'the noblest and strongest of men' and a hero who has dedicated his life to her.

One has always to be careful in responding to a character's narration not to overlook what Wayne Booth has called the implied author's deliberate, selective and perhaps distorted provision of the incidents recounted.5 Such care might not only lead us here to question the validity of some details of Estrella's narration, but also, crucially, to appreciate the designs of the implied author who has in mind to refer to contexts wider than the purely psychological one in which the film is inevitably located. The events in Estrella's life are given a strategic order designed by Erice to make the viewer progress beyond the narrator's limited field of interests to the contexts of history and ideology

As Estrella, in maturity, scrutinizes her childhood in order to understand the woman she has become, one senses that Erice finds in a female first person narrator the best possible vehicle for a whole nation's quest for its own past. What better way of investigating that nation's stolen patrimonio than through the eyes of someone whose very status as a woman is in some ways linked with dispossession?

sado" (416). With the heightened sensitivity to the image which the long take brings about, this shot becomes a "temporal collage." We witness not only the human time of the twentieth century, when the valley witnessed the Civil War, and left its trace in the form of bunkers (as Zunzunegui points out [416]) but also geological time, when the rock developed into its present formation, and a river, now no more than a stagnant pool, carved out the vall

ir's films, the landscape takes on a hypnotic, static quality, which points to the timelessness of the physical environment, whose monumentality, compared to man's ephemerality, seems overw

It is a nice detail of context that in the early 1960s Franco himself began to depend on a daily nap (Preston 700). The siesta sequence of La caza therefore debunks, succinctly and effectively, the rhetoric of virile masculinity which reaches its climax in Saura's portrayal of the snapshot of the hunter/warriors with their spoils. In a Western cultural context in which the reclining, sleeping or dead human form is overwhelmingly figured as female, as Elisabeth Bronfen has demonstrated in Over Her Dead Body, the focus on these dozing old men, like grotesque "sleeping beauties," is particularly startling. Saura draws our attention to preceding tradi- tions of the gendering of the passive human form by juxtaposing his slow pan over the two men's bodies from left to right in the siesta sequence, with a point of view shot of Enrique's fetishizing gaze drifting, this time from right to left, across the similarly reclining body of a blonde model in one of his girlie mags.19 Thus Saura parodies his ex-soldier-hunters not only by depicting them in a period of inactivity-which is remarkable in itself in a film about ex-soldiers on a rabbit hunt-but also by portraying them using the fetishizing conventions of pornography. The passive, sleeping bodies of Paco and Jose reveal their weakness and ageing, and the stillness of their forms looks forward to their ultimate inertia, at the end of the film, in death

Through its focus on the extremes of age, La caza circles around a void, which becomes an absence which is always present: manhood in its prime. Significantly, this was Saura's time of life: he shot the film in 1965 when he was thirty-three. This is a state for which the older men are nostalgic and which the younger man cannot reach. This absence points to the void at the heart of Franco's patriarchy. If the ageing and fear of ageing of the three war comrades signal the decrepitude of a regime in its twenty-sixth year and a dictator in his seventy-fourth, the infantilizing treatment of youth indicates a new generation ill- equipped to bring about change and assume adult resp

Cinematic form is used so that the whole film may be likened to an unflattering photograph of ageing men. Critics have previously noted the way camera-work, lighting and over-exposure of the film stock depict the oppressive environment of the old Civil War battlefields, but those cinematic resources are also harnessed in order to cruelly expose the ageing and suffering of

een. In voice-over we learn of his fascist intolerance of the physical imperfections of the weak an

t was alsoseen that there was no significant correlation between male students’ test anxiety and points of UEE

The research methodology applied in this study is quantitativedesign (Creswell, 2012). In this research with the aim of specifying the correlation among high school senior students’ test anxiety, academic performance and points of UEE, descriptive method was used.

1. What is the correlation among high school senior students’ test anxiety, academic performance (GPA) and points of university entrance exam (UEE)?2. Are there any significant differences in terms of gender among high school senior students’ test anxiety, academic performance (GPA) and points of university entrance exam (UEE)?

Among high school and college students, test anxiety is a common and potentially serious problem. Debilitating test anxiety affects 10-30% of all students, with a disproportionately higher prevalence in learning-disabled and minority students (Nicaise, 1995; Strumph andFodor, 1993). Twenty-percent of test-anxious students quit school before graduating because of repeated academic failure (Tobias, 1979). High test anxiety is also associated with low self esteem, poor reading and math achievement, failing grades, disruptive classroom be-havior, negative attitudes toward school, and unpleasant feelings of nervousness and dread that stem from an intense fear of failure

Liebert and Morris (1967) operationally defined worry as “cognitive concerns about the consequences of failure” and emotionality as the “physiological reactions of the autonomic nervous system to stress”. However, they can be distinguished since thecomponent “Worry” is more correlated with academic performance than the component “Emo-tionality” (Liebert andMorris, 1967).

In this sense,Los olvidadosis, quite literally, an “amoral” tale: like Buñuel’s Las Hurdes,it is emotionally detached from its subject(s)

Octavio Paz’s “description” of Mexican identity, “supposes theFreudian model of neurosis: a reality which manifests a conflict whosesymptoms point out another reality, distinct and latent, of which the patientis unconscious.”19Luis Buñuel’s original surrealist movies,Un chienandalou, L’Age d’Or,and even Las Hurdesare deeply grounded in the sortof orthodox Freudian exercises about dreams and the unconscious in whichthe surrealists were interested in the 1920s.

Sometimes seen as a foreigner’s distanced view,Los olvidadosalsorelates directly to cultural, political, and economic concerns among contem-porary Mexican intellectuals and artists. Furthermore,Los olvidados gainsimportance to Mexican issues in light of its close formal and historical rela-tionship to Octavio Paz’s 1950 cultural essay,The Labyrinth of Solitude,itself a turning point in Mexican literary and culture studies. Grounding Losolvidadosin its Mexican context helps us to better understand Luis Buñuel’simpact on the tradition of Mexican cinema and the contribution of his earlyyears in Mexico to the entirety of his subsequent career

unuel planned carefully to give the shoot ing of Los olvidados the hit-or-miss quality of news coverage. In many sequences, the estab lishing shot comes late, or not at all. The com position seems haphazard. In one scene, the boys' legs are cut off at the knees. In another, one of the boys walks straight into the camera, momentarily darkening the screen. In the scene when the gang attacks the Blindman, the cam era apparently has a hard time following the action, which is off-center or even off-scree

However, as we have seen, Bunuel actually referred only to Las Hurdes and Los olvidados as documentaries

Adeno-associated virus serotype 2/5 (rAAV2/5) containing a recombinant human L-opsin (RHLOPS) gene under the control of the recombinant human L/M-opsin enhancer and promoter pR2.1 (Wang et al. 1992) was delivered to the photoreceptor layer by subretinal injection (Mancuso et al. 2009). Transcriptional regulatory elements contained in pR2.1 direct gene expression in M cones, but not S cones, rods, or any other retinal cell type (Li et al. 2007). These control elements include the locus control region, which is an enhancer that is required for transcription of the opsin genes on the X chromosome (Nathans et al. 1989; Wang et al. 1992; Wang et al. 1999), and the proximal promoter for the L-opsin gene. To provide the receptor basis for trichromacy, animals received three 100-µL injections in each eye. This transduced roughly one-third of the M cones such that they coexpressed the transgenic L opsin along with the endogenous M opsin, whereas the untransduced M cones expressed only the endogenous M opsin. The transduced- and wild-type cones were randomly intermixed in a relatively smooth mosaic

trichromacy does not require an early developmental process

These data suggest that while some processing differences may be very significant they are not global, and they do not always involvea heightening of perceptual processing.

“Yes, for these two potential tetrachromat participants, exposure to art training at an early age and across the lifespan is a factor that differentiates observers’ performance in our MMisoluminance tas

Figure S1 provides electropherogram images of genetic sequence excerpts for these potential tetrachromat participants, demonstrating that CA and JK have two different genetic sequences providing a basis for human tetrachromacy

or additional detail see the research articles and information available at The Human Tetrachromacy Research Collaborative website (www.tenthousandthings.info

Note, however, that we have not medically confirmed the expression, or the size of the expressed population of this extra photoreceptor type in her retinas. This kind of verification is not yet medically possible, but may be in the near future with advances in technology. A

ecause the measure considered here is one of overall luminance (rather than a hue measure), limitations encountered when evaluating a potential tetrachromat color difference while using a 3-primary (RGB) display color space are avoided

However, if we suppose that the human ability to perceive color in the world is not merely a fanciful accoutrement, and it has an important purpose, then we are forced to ask what that purpose might be.

What’s more,this and other research, suggest that color awareness, or expertise, can be tuned-upthrough exposure and training that provides a refined neural signal, which, at a minimum, gives rise to measureable differences in detectable color, and at a maximum may make available a dimension of perceptual hue that cannot be experienced by “normal” observers

While Figure 10 is only a simulated approximation of CA’s scene processing, it strongly suggests that color in visual scenes, for this potential tetrachromat, is substantially different from that experienced by normal trichromat control AW, even if these two observers were seated side-by-side viewing the same amazing sunset

Original oil painting “Coastal Caves.”

These results suggest that potential tetrachromat CA:•Has color perception that is both non-deficient and non-normative.•Establishes minimum motion for some color stimuli at luminance levels that are outside the range of isoluminant settings found for normal trichromat controls to which she has been compared. •Exhibits settings for isoluminant, or equally bright, stimuli that show her greatest deviations from normal include stimuli with substantial mid-to long-wavelength, or “reddish”, spectral components –a result consistent with the idea that she expresses a fourth cone class which is the basis for her setting differences compared to those of trichromatic controls.•Exhibits enriched color experience in dim light conditions (low daylight, or low photopic, vision) such as inshadows and for low ambient levels (also seen in CA’s artwork: Figures 6-9. Supplement Section 4discusses consequences for CA’s art)

Chromatic contrast bears on our discussion of color veridicality for two reasons. First, if color-processing differences exist across normal trichromats and potential tetrachromats, then such variation evolved while evaluating color in contextually-rich viewing circumstances (presumably to correctly identify desireable color targets embedded in environmental context). Second, compared to de-contextualized singleton stimuli often used in experiments, color in context is dimensionally more complex. Together these imply that, at the very least, experiments need to use some form of viewing context to optimize discovery of differences between tetrachromat and trichromat processing

Behavioral studies rely on the participation of volunteers, but the recruitment strategy may create biases that can influence inferences from the study’s outcome. For example, if one recruits mothers who have color-deficient sons [3], the sons tend to be more severely affected as they are more aware of their deficiency. Necessarily, one misses the minimal anomalous trichromats [20] who are likely to have the largest spectral separation between their X-linked cone photopigments and this might partly explain the low number of potential tetrachromats found

CA’s sister’s (LA) artwork also uses color to a great effect

A triplet of three successive lights was presented. One light was a red–green mixture (546 + 670 nm) that could vary in the proportion of red, and the other two were a monochromatic yellow (590 nm). Observers had to identify the red–green mixture. Since all normal trichromats can make a dichromatic color match in this reduced spectral range, they were expected to fail to discriminate for some red–green mixture and some intensity of the monochromatic yellow. In contrast, a strong tetrachromat was predicted to always detect the mixture. Only one (cDa29) out of 18 cDa and none of 7 cPa participants performed according to the prediction. All control subjects failed to discriminate. Since cDa29 could not make a match with only two primaries available in the Rayleigh region, she was classified as a strong tetrachromat

No ordinary RGB color display is suitable for such a test. Jordan and Mollon [3] used a specifically designed colorimeter to test whether obligate carriers make unique color matches in the 546–690 nm spectral range compared to control participants when given an additional primary in a ratio-matching task. Only one (cDa1) out of 14 obligate carriers for simple anomalous trichromacy made such unique matches

Knowledge of an individual’s receptor types, either through molecular genetic techniques or through classifying a carrier’s first-degree relative(s), is not sufficient to indicate the dimensionality of her color vision

Anomalous trichromats vary widely in their ability to discriminate in the red–green spectral range [7•]: Some are nearly as limited as dichromats, while a tiny minority – the ‘Minimalanomale Trichromaten’ of Vierling [20] – perform normally on standard tests for color deficiency and have matching ranges close to zero on the anomaloscope. Our hypothesis is that it is the daughters of the latter men who are most likely to become tetrachromati

would increase relative to the number discriminated by a dichromat who had only L and S cones [17]; but performance would be poorer than that of a normal trichromat—or that of an anomalous trichromat with more widely separated photopigments

One reason that tetrachromacy is of interest lies in its implications for plasticity within the visual system: It is implausible that an additional chromatic pathway has evolved to benefit a small minority of our conspecifics who are heterozygous for X-linked cone photopigments. But how then do the retina and the cortex take advantage of an additional, independent cone signal? Even with four types of cones, vision might remain trichromatic in the sense that only three variables are needed in a color-matching experiment [2]. We have called this ‘weak tetrachromacy’ [3]. The more interesting case is ‘strong tetrachromacy’, where a woman requires four independent stimuli in matching colors, and it is this possibility we discuss below

h focal lesions restricted to the frontal lobe are not impaired on such batteries

hen questioned afterward about their approach to the task, patients with frontal lesions were less likely than other subjects to report that they had used a particular strategy. When they had, the strategy often appeared both ill-defined and inconsistently used. The deficit is unlikely to be one of simple memory be-cause temporal-lobe patients, who would be expected to have memory defects, performed this task at normal proficiency

his latter finding is curious: it seems analogous to blindsight in that people who fail to recognize items can identify which was observed most recently. Might this suggest a memory location system separate from a memory recognition system?

aken together, these five experiments point to an unequivocal role for the frontal cortex in short-term-memory processes and to the fact that different prefrontal regions control the storage of different types of information

hey recalled components correctly but in the wrong order. To be sure, these patients made other sorts of errors as well, especially errors of memory in which items were not recalled. Reproducing movement sequences requires temporal memory, and our impression is that the largest deficits come from dorsolateral lesions.

Yet the frontal lobe can perform such functions only if pro-vided with all relevant and available sensory and mnemonic (that is, memory) information

Thus, increasing the number of cone types without appropriate cone-type-specific processing would not improve color vision. 

Experience plays a role in the development of visual processing, such as orientation selectivity (Blakemore & Cooper, 1970). It is quite feasible that learning processes, which could affect connectivity in the retina (Calkins, Schein, Tsukamoto, & Sterling, 1994; Martin et al., 2001) and at later stages of the visual system, may also be important in the development of color vision (Brenner, Schelvis, & Nuboer, 1985). Our results with slightly increased image blur indicate that learning of color selectivity would be facilitated in infants, where spatial vision is not yet fully developed

These results suggest that an explanation for the lack of tetrachromatic perception in female humans may be that, given the human retinal structure and cone pigments, the information in the cone signals may not be sufficient for learning of cone specificity with respect to the fourth cone typ

In the human population, there is a relatively high number of potentially tetrachromatic heterozygous carriers of X-linked color deficiencies, but so far, no clear cases of perceptual (gstrongh) tetrachromacy have been found

Thus, with reduced spatial information in the images, more components became available for representation of chromatic information, confirming that the low number of L–M-specific units is a consequence of the specific properties of our methods. 

This indicates that the receptive field structure was not independent of cone type, but that the distinction between cone types had been learned based on the cone response

For example, a perfectly L–M-selective receptive field, where all L-cone weights have the same sign and all M-cone weights have the opposite sign, will yield an index value of 1. 

Receptive fields corresponding to the cone weight pattern imposed on the original mosaic (leftmost receptive field plot, “learned”) and on four mosaic patches where the type of each L and M cone had been reassigned randomly with the same probabilities as in the original mo

The results greatly support the possibility that color selectivity in the visual system is the result of a learning process.

at the display and made remarks like, “Icannot see the middle number. It’s fuzzybut it looks red, so I guess it must be a 5.”

Because both colors and numbers areprocessed initially in the fusiform gyrusand subsequently near the angular gyrus,we suspected that number-color synesthe-sia might be caused by cross wiring be-tween V4 and the number-appearancearea (both within the fusiform) or be-tween the higher color area and the num-ber-concept area (both in the TPO). Oth-er, more exotic forms of the conditionmight result from similar cross wiring ofdifferent sensory-processing regions. Thatthe hearing center in the temporal lobesis also close to the higher brain area thatreceives color signals from V4 could ex-plain sound-color synesthesia. Similarly,Matthew Blakeslee’s tasting of touchmight occur because of cross wiring be

Our experiments lead us to favorthe idea that synesthetes are experiencingthe result of some kind of cross wiring inthe brain.

This result proves that the inducedcolors are genuinely sensory and thatsynesthetes are not just making things up

Another prevalent idea is that synesthetes are merely beingmetaphorical when they describe the note C flat as “red” or saythat chicken tastes “pointy”—just as you and I might speak ofa “loud” shirt or “sharp” cheddar cheese.

The three pigment hypothesis suggests that humans are normally trichromatic because there are three cone photopigments in the retina [18]. Female carriers of anomalous trichromacy have long been believed to express genes for four different cone pigments. They, thus, have been thought to have unique potential for tetrachromacy. Normal, noncarrier, women have served as controls in experiments to look for tetrachromacy in female carriers, and the normal controls have not been reported to exhibit tetrachromacy 19, 20. This suggests that trichromacy is not imposed by the limitation of the number of spectrally distinct cone pigments to three

n the left of another event increases the prob-ability of neglect, even when both events are in the righthemispace or hemi¢eld

Furthermore,a patient with left hemineglect who was shown line-drawings of two houses, one of which had £ames comingout of the left side, judged the two drawings to bevisually identical but chose the one without £ames whenasked to select the house she would prefer to live in

Thus,the impaired evocation of left-sided details in the ¢rstpart of the experiment was not due to an obliteration ofthe information but to an inability to activate the part ofthe representation which fell to the left of the imaginaryperspectiv

de, a concept mtroduced m Section Source, Based on data presented by McFie and Zangwill, 1960. 11 _5, in which we note that many problems can be solved by using either a verbal cognitive mode or a spatial, nonverbal _cognitive mode. Genetic, maturational, and environmental factors may predispose people to use different cognitive mode

Butarrestofspeech,likevocalization,seemstohavenofixedpositionwithinthissequenceexceptthatitlieswithinthezonedevotedtothelips,tongueandmouth

owever,inthedominanthemisphere,speechcouldalsobearrestedfromotherareas,aswillbeexplainedpresently.

tmaybepointedoutthatwhenlocalizationoflipmovementswasdeterminedaswellasthatofvocalization,theformerwasbelowandthelatterabovein9cases,whereasin18casestherelationwasreversed.Whenlocalizationoftonguemovementswasdeterminedindependently,thezoneofvocalizationwasfoundtobebelowitin11casesandaboveitin10cases

At the simplest level of analysis, the dorsal language pathways are proposed to transform sound information into motor representation-to convert phono-logical information into articulation. The ventral language paths are proposed to transform sound information into meaning-to convert phonological infor-mation into semantic information

Certain tiger moths even jam the bat sonar with clicks of their own.

Montealegre-Z and his colleagues showed that sound travels this inner, back route more slowly—so each sound hits the eardrum twice, but at slightly different times, dramatically improving the insect’s ability to locate the source

“One of the things you get really good at when demonstrating this device is talking without saying much,” Franck said, then chatted away. I used a smartphone app to raise and lower background sound levels. I could also focus specifically on Franck’s voice or widen the range to include, first, the tables on either side of ours, then some chefs and waiters moving around in the kitchen, behind me. If my cell phone had rung, directional microphones inside the earpieces would have aimed themselves toward my mouth when I answered it. Once I’d found a sound level I liked, I used a slider in the app to fine-tune the pitch. I was able to play music in the background as we conversed—with far better fidelity than is possible with even the most expensive hearing aids—and I could raise and lower its volume independently from everything else

He was on his way to New York, and had made a detour to show me a new Bose product, still in limited release, called Hearphones—high-fidelity headphones designed, in part, to help people cope with conversations in places like noisy restaurants

In these studies of memory for objects and contexts, animals with selective hippocampal removal displayed no impaim1ents on the object-recognition tests but were impaired when the test included context. In contrast, animals with rhinal lesions displayed severe anterograde and retrograde impairments on the object-recognition tests. The conclusion: object recognition (fac-tual, or semantic, knowledge) depends on the rhinal cortices, whereas con-textual knowledge (autobiographic, or episodic, knowledge) depends on the hippocampus.

resuma y, y accessing different memory subpath th h th h' · ways roug e 1ppo-campus we can access and recount either abbreviated l b d • l. r . or e a orate vers10ns of our 11e expenences

One function of autobiographical memory is providing us with a sense of continu-ity. Ende! Tulving (2002) terms this autonoetic awareness, or self-knowledge, which allows us to bind together the awareness of our self as a continuous entity through time. Autonoetic awareness further allows us to travel in subjective time, either into the past or into the future. Patients with hippocampal and frontal cortical injury often lose self-knowledge and have real difficulty in daily living resulting from a deficit of behavioral self-regulation and the ability to profit from past expe-rience in making future decision

emporal-Lobe Anatomy

On formal tests of memory, Mr. B. had special difficulty in recalling short stories read to him a few minutes earlier. In one test, he was read the following story from the Wechsler Memory Scale and was asked to repeat it as exactly as possible: "Anna Thompson of South Boston, employed as a scrub woman in an office building, was held up on State Street the night before and robbed of $15. She had four little children, the rent was due and they had not eaten for two days. The officers, touched by the woman's story, made up a purse for her

Asked to lear~ a list of wor~s such ~s "dog, car, bus, apple, rat, lemon, ca~, truck, ora_nge, most o~ us will o~ga~ze the words into three categories-ani-mals, vehicles, and frmt.

n contrast to auditory hallucinations, Oertel and col-leagues (2007) report that visual hallucinations do not activate primary visual cortex but rather activate higher visual areas corresponding to the hallucination content (faces, bodies, scenes) and also the hippocampus

Nine principal symptoms are associated with disease of the temporal lobes: ( 1) dis-turbance of auditory sensation and perception, (2) disorders of music perception, (3) disorders of visual perception, (4) disturbance in the selection of visual and auditory input, (5) impaired organization and categorization of sensory input, (6) inability to use contextual information, (7) impaired long-term memory, (8) al-tered personality and affective behavior, and (9) altered sexual behavior.

This result confirms that the temporal lobe's role in visual processing is not determined genetically but is subject to experience, even in adults

Finally, it cannot be assumed that magnetoreception relies on a single receptor, or indeed a single mechanism.

Fourthly, the field has not focused on a single "model" system that can be genetically modified with ease, permitting investigators to interrogate whether a particular molecule or cell type is involved in the magnetic sense

Persistent motion blindness could occur from unilateralhemispheric lesions.▸The previous reported patients presented with two differenttypes of difficulties in seeing moving objects: (1) not seeingobjects when they are moving, (2) seeing objects as‘frozenframes’(cinematographic vision).▸Since our patient experienced only thefirst symptom but notthe second one, these two symptoms might occur fromdifferent mechanisms

PerspectivewaswellknowntoartistsbythetimeoftheRenais-sanceandisapowerfulindicatorofdepth.Converginglinesorgradientsoftextureareautomaticallyinterpretedbythevisualsystemasindicatingincreasingdistancefromtheobserver;thustheimageinFig.8(47)lookslikeacorridorrecedingintothedistancedespitetheconflictinginformationfromotherdepthcues,theabsenceofstereopsisorrelativemotion,whichtellsuswearelookingataflatsurface

Another type of color association task consists of asking the patient to colorblack and white line drawings of common objects. The patient must select the cor-rect pencil out of an array of colored pencils and proceed with coloring. Patientswith a color-naming defect may or may not fail such a task. A study we performedsome years ago persuaded us that when they do fail, the failure often results froman intriguing mechanism, which consists of (1) making the correct verbal choice ofwhich color pencil to use (i.e., "This is a banana; a banana is yellow; I'll color ityellow"), but then (2) choosing the wrong pencil because the correct choice dependson a verbal-visual match (yellow name to yellow pencil)

Any lesion capable of disconnecting both visual association cortices from thedominant, language-related, temporoparietal cortices will cause pure alexia

Oliver Sacks (2010) estimated that up to 10% of normal persons have weak face recognition, oftenoccurring on a familial basis. In this it is similar to established distributions of other biologically relatedcognitive skills

Alternative medical treatments are being evaluated, including statins (NCT01764451, NCT02603328), antiangiogenic drugs, and Vitamin D3, but none of them has proven beneficial [14,15,16,17].

For CCM presenting with epilepsy, utility after conservative management and after intervention for CCM are the most important for explaining uncertainty of incremental QALYs gained with neurosurgical or radiosurgical intervention compared to conservative management. The utility after CCM intervention is most important for explaining uncertainty of incremental QALYs gained between radiosurgical and neurosurgical intervention

This finding suggests that children with SMD, are performing below their peers in adaptive behavior skills but may fall above the cut point that qualifies them for services. Hence, children with SMD may not keep pace with their TYP peers in communication and daily living areas, but these may go unrecognized and untreated.

Our data suggests that, similar to Miller (2006) , there are subgroups of SMD and that these may demonstrate different underlying physiology. However, in contrast to Miller’s proposed typology (Miller et al., 2007 ), our data suggests that the most useful sub grouping strategy is to group by severity of symptoms, rather than by type of symptoms

Figure 1. (A) Performance in the auditory alone condition does not differ between sensory processing disorder (SPD) and typically developing (TD) children. (B) Performance in the audiovisual condition shows a numerical decrease in performance for the SPD children, but this does not reach significance. (C) Considering the difference between audiovisual performance and auditory alone performance (i.e., how much multisensory gain is achieved), a clear difference between groups emerges with SPD children showing significantly less gain than is seen in TD children. (D) This panel shows the average performance across the three noise levels showing the greatest difference between groups (−9, −6, and −3 dB). The average gain across these three SNR levels is 24.7% in the TD group, compared to 12.6% in the SPD cohort. (E) The performance of both TD and SPD children is poor in the visual-alone condition (i.e., lip-reading). There is no significant difference between groups. Note that in all panels estimated marginal means are illustrated, indicating the adjustment in the model for the age covariate

The double dissociation we found in JW’s per-son recognition performance suggests that self-recognition maybe functionally dissociable from general face processing, a find-ing that has important implications for contemporary modelsof social cognition

Both hemispheres were capable of face recognition, butthe left hemisphere showed a recognition bias for self and theright hemisphere a bias for familiar others. These findings sug-gest a possible dissociation between self-recognition and moregeneralized face processing within the human brain

In sharp contrast to hissuccessful logical memory performance, his imme-diate recall of a 12-item word list was very deficient

vVe are thus faced with the interesting question of why the right hemisphere at an early age and stage of development possesses substantial language capacity whereas at a more adult stage it possesses a rather poor ca­pacity.

shake his head and then say, "Oh no, I meant red." What was happening wa.s that the right hemisphere saw the red light and heard the left hemisphere make the guess "green." Knowing that the answer was wrong, the right hemisphere precipitated a frown and a shake of the head, which in turn cued in the left hemisphere to the fact that the answer was wrong and that it had better correct itself! We have learned that this cross­cuing mechanism can become extremely refined. The realization that the neuro­logical patient has various strategies at his command emphasizes how difficult it is to obtain a clear neurological descrip­tion of a human being with brain dam­age.

Oddly enough, however, even after their correct re­sponse, and while they were holding the spoon or the ashtray in their left hand, they were unable to name or describe the object or the picture. Evidently the left hemisphere was completely di­vorced, in perception and knowledge, from the right

For example, it could be seen that in moving about and re­sponding to sensory stimuli the patients favored the right side of the body, which is controlled by the dominant left half of the brain

From the beginning one of the most striking observations was that the opera­tion produced no noticeable change in the patients' temperament, personality or general intelligence

Saltcantasteeither“good”or“bad”tousandbeattractiveorrepulsivetomice,depend-ingbothontheconcentrationofsodiumandonthephysi-ologicalneedsofthetaste

n summary, the question What is lateralized? has n~ simple o~ genera_lly accepted answer

rt rrnance. Fina Y, Investigators susp1c1ons abouq tof may affect test pe tho n

hey found that right-handed people tend to geStllre with their right hands when talking but are equally likely to scratch themselves, rub th · . . 'th 'th h d Kimura interpreted the eir noses or touch the1r bodies w1 e1 er an · b ' · kin h · here as ? s~rved gesturing with the limb contralateral to the spea. . ~ errusp indicating a relation between speech and certain manual act1V1t1eh

udies of neurological paue;nis heres, particularly m anguage control, ·/ -c f lesions in the two h P clear however, because many prob! he 1ects o re not so ' . . e1n for these differences a ical brain functionmg from clini I ·•1s re~sonfrs king inferences about typ ca te. anse om ma . Suits of dysfunctioning

The oldest research on hemispheric specialization infers function from behav-ioral deficits that arise as a result of strokes or surgery

The experimenters argue that this finding provides little support for Spear-man's g

f these higher centers or their descending pathways are dam-aged, the stretch reflex may become hyperactiveor hypoactive. Thus, by test-ing the stretch reflex on neurologic exam, one obtains information aboutmultiple pathways, including sensory neurons and motor neurons in thePNS and descending modulatory pathways in the CNS.

Hippocrates, who observed that patients with head injuries haddeficits affecting the side of the body opposite to the side of the injury

Axons are often insulated by specialized glial cells that form a lipidmyelin sheath, thereby speeding the rate of action potential conduction (seeFigure 2.6B).

Above the midbrain:Anterior = rostralPosterior = caudalSuperior = dorsalInferior = ventral• Below the midbrain: Anterior = ventralPosterior = dorsalSuperior = rostralInferior = cauda

Although each of the clinical cases in this book fo-cuses on a particular neuroanatomical system, lesions almostinvariably affect neighboring regions as well. These neighbor-hood effectsare often critical in localizing neuroanatomical le-sions.

He pioneered direct electrical stim-ulation of the brain during surgery by systematic mappingof the brain as a technique for finding damaged areas ofthe brain.

This second condition is called double dissociation (Teu-ber, 1950) and requires that “symptom A appear in lesionsin one structure but not with those in another, and thatsymptom B appear with lesions of the other but not of theone” (Teuber, 1959, p. 187).

Erro-neously, phrenologists (largely white individuals) sug-gested that the skulls of white people were superior, indi-cating great intellectual power and strong moralsentiment. The skulls from “less advanced races” did notfare as well, because those virtues were thought to be al-most invariably small in “savage” and “barbarous tribes”

We still say “good humor”or “bad humor” to describe someone’s mental disposition.Terms such as melancholic(having frequent spells of sad-ness) and choleric(having a low threshold for angry out-bursts) also remain in our vocabulary (Figure 1.8)

He therefore based much of his clinicalknowledge on his experience as a surgeon appointed totreat gladiators; he remarked that war and gladiator gameswere the greatest school of surgery.

modern neurosurgeons still use man-ual drills, which allow them more control during theoperation. The second surgical procedure drains internalbleeding after a blow to the head. With a special drill bit,the surgeon makes a hole over the site of the bleed. Thenthe surgeon screws a precisely machined bolt into the skull,allowing excessive blood to drain from within the cranium.This procedure reduces the intracranial pressure that is amajor cause of death after a head injury

Like many other sciences, neuropsy-chology has evolved from related fields, most notably psychology, neurology, neuroscience, biology, andphilosophy.