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Moving On: An Overview Of Approaching Trauma Through Dance/Movement Therapy, Eliza Barber

Student Works

Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT), an approach meant to facilitate holistic integration, has been historically associated with treating symptoms of trauma. Because it is a relatively new field, many questions still remain regarding appropriate interventions. In this extensive review of existing literature on the topic, I explored how DMT is applied in relation to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, culture-specific trauma and oppression, multigenerational trauma, and developmental trauma. Additionally, I delved into interventions with specific populations including refugees and young people. To identify the 26 items of literature referenced in this review, I conducted searches with appropriate terms on two scientific databases and filtered …

Motor Milestone Acquisition And Sleep-Related Learning And Development In Infancy, Aaron Demasi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this dissertation is to summarize and extend work in the field of infant sleep and motor development. Chapter 1 summarizes what is currently known about typical infant sleep development and the way that sleep impacts learning throughout infancy. Chapter 2 describes two experiments showing the importance of napping and night sleep in the consolidation of gross motor learning. Given that sleep is beneficial for learning throughout human infancy, the remainder of the dissertation investigates how learning (in this case, motor development) impacts sleep. Chapter 3 establishes the possible role of sleep-dependent movement in sleep disruption resulting from …

Enhancing The Quality Of Life For Senior Citizens: A Facilitator’S Guidebook For Mindful Music And Movement, Shannon Sexton

Mindfulness Studies Theses

Music appreciation and enjoyment enhance well-being throughout the lifespan. The challenges and constraints that people experience as they age can lead to lack of access to music, decreased physical activity, and fewer avenues for creative expression. Group music and movement interventions created for older populations offer opportunities for social connection and improved quality of life. Mindful practices add further benefit when combined with these interventions. Current available programs are scarce and most often do not encompass mixed modalities. In addition, the benefits of these programs do not show long-term sustainability. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the effects …

Out Of The Body, Onto The Page: Awakening The Role Of The Body In Writing And Practical Applications Of Embodied Composition, Jasmine Jackson

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Academic writing courses privilege a style of learning that often excludes the awareness of the body. In this thesis, I propose an exploration of the role of the body as an active agent in the writing process. This thesis collates and queries research on embodiment to provide what a sample of embodiment theory and writing activities that facilitate embodiment in the classroom might look like by bringing in interdisciplinary studies to help fill the gap of research on embodied composition in the field.

In doing so this thesis argues in favor of an embodied approach to composition and is supported …

The Limits Of Healthy Habits: Exploring The Relationship Between Disordered Eating, Body Image, Mindfulness, Social Media, And Dysfunctional Exercise, Taylor A. Dinkel

Master's Theses

In recent decades, there has been an increase not only in full syndrome eating disorders, but also in subclinical presentations of disordered eating, many of which include dysfunctional relationships with exercise. Although not full diagnosable syndromes, disordered relationships with food and exercise, as well as a preoccupation with body image, can cause severe physical and psychological stress for individuals who present with these dysfunctional patterns. With the growth of fitness-related social media accounts, the increase in social media usage during the pandemic, and the increase in subclinical disordered eating presentations and dysfunctional relationships with exercise, it is important be aware …

Exploring The Relation Between Musical And Dance Sophistication And Musical Groove Perception, Samantha R. O'Connell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Listening to groovy music is an enjoyable experience and a ubiquitous human behavior in some cultures. Specifically, many listeners agree that high-groove songs are enjoyable, familiar, and likable compared to low-groove songs. While the pleasurable and dance-inducing effects of musical groove listening seem omnipresent, what is less known is how subjective feelings towards music, individual musical or dance experiences, or more objective musical perception abilities are correlated with the way we hear music with groove. Therefore, the present online study aimed to evaluate how musical and dance sophistication relates to musical groove perception. One-hundred and twenty-four participants completed an online …

How Choreometrics Reflects Self-Identity And Self-Concept Through Cultural Dance: A Developing Method, Naowarat Buddee

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Abstract

This arts-based autoethnography research aims to analyze the researcher’s personal reflections of cultural embodied experiences through the connection of Thai cultural dance movements, cultural patterns, and expressive behaviors in Thai cultural contexts. These also reflected the researcher’s personal-identity and self-concept. As cultural dance has impacts on social structures and human behaviors both physically and psychologically in social interactions throughout the developmental lifespan, the researcher was inspired by the concept of Choreometrics to look closely at personal dance experiences in relation to Thai culture. This autoethnography is a case study of the researcher who identifies as Thai and reflects her …

Inclusion In Religion And Spirituality For Children With Special Needs, Mackinzie C. Weiss

Student Capstone Papers

The proposed vision of this capstone project will focus on using occupational therapy interventions to help a local church be more inclusive to children and families with special needs. This capstone project will partner with a pre-existing special needs program to develop evidence based volunteer training, implement a parent respite program, and introduce a movement based program.

Addressing Content, Convergent And Predictive Validity Of Implicit Pain-Related Fear In Chronic Low Back Pain, Eric S. Kruger

Psychology ETDs

Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a common condition that can lead to emotional distress and physical disability. Fear of pain, a phobic-like response to pain, can contribute to significant avoidance behavior and is associated with disrupted physical and emotional functioning. While questionnaires remain the standard for measurement of pain-related fear, recent work has explored the use of implicit methods. This study aimed to use an implicit measure, the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), to assess convergent and predictive validity of implicit pain-related fear in relation to explicit self-report measures. Seventy-four participants with CLBP were recruited and completed the pain-related …

Influences On Early Creativity: Examining The Role Of Affect, Movement And Autonomy During Play On Divergent Thinking Skills Of Preschool Children, Taylor S. Boyd

Undergraduate Honours Theses

Play provides children an opportunity to practice cognitive and affective processes which are important in creativity. Studies have found that during play, children who display positive emotions, are physically active and play by themselves tend to demonstrate higher creativity. In the present study, the researcher observed fifteen preschool children to record their independence, affect and physical movement during free play. In addition, one adult from each classroom rated of each child’s general affect. Next, participants completed two versions of an Alternate Uses Task assessing divergent thinking skills: one standard version in which participants verbally indicated multiple uses for an object …

"I Assumed Chicago Would Be In The Forefront": Comments On The Movement To End Prostitution With Survivor-Leader Brenda Myers-Powell, Jody Raphael

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

For many years in the 2000’s, researcher Jody Raphael, teamed with prostitution-survivor Brenda Myers-Powell, undertook a myriad of speaking engagements in the Chicago metropolitan area, intended to raise awareness of the violence and coercion in the sex trade industry. Ten years ago, they were asked to make a video of their presentation. Recently, Dignity editors came across the video and asked for an update on the conversation. This piece is the result.

"Sometimes You Have To Be The Leader": A Minnesota Oral History On Fighting Sexual Exploitation, Trudee Able-Peterson

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Prostitution survivor Trudee Able-Peterson used oral histories to research and document the efforts of women and men to respond to the sexual exploitation of women and children in Minnesota. Her findings illustrate the leadership needed to overcome centuries of commercial sexual exploitation to obtain a beginning societal response. Respondents indicated the importance of their interaction with pioneer leaders in other locales. Their comments also illustrate the many issues and challenges still facing the community.

Review Of A Politically Incorrect Feminist By Phyllis Chesler, Robert Brannon

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Phyllis Chesler’s new memoir, A Politically Incorrect Feminist (St. Martin's Press, 2018), spans almost fifty years of second-wave feminism. She names 100s of women, both famous and virtually unknown today who took part in the awakening and growing women’s movement, marching, sitting-in, writing and organizing since the 1960’s. It is the personal life story of one of the earliest feminist authors and political activists of the second-wave, the author of Women and Madness and 17 other books. Chelser discusses major issues of the time and provides an insider’s view of many of the feminism’s most significant public events. This big …

Structurally Rich Movement: Measuring Movement For Empirical Psychology And Examining The Dynamic Complexity Of Affect Regulation In Behavior, Michael Timothy Finn

Doctoral Dissertations

Movement not only permeates human life, but structures dimensions of experience. Phenomenological theory points to the dynamic congruency of movement and emotion, via the body schema, as shaping affectivity. For psychology, this calls for an understanding of behavior beyond being discrete events, but also manifesting kinetic melodies. Yet there is a gap in existing methodology for empirically studying the three-dimensional characteristics of human movement continuously across segments of the body. A potential line of research in this area, implicit affect regulation capacities, was described to inform the selection of instrumentation, measurement, and calculations of dynamic structure that would, theoretically, best …

Human Neuroimaging Reveals The Subcomponents Of Grasping, Reaching And Pointing Actions., Cristiana Cavina-Pratesi, Jason D Connolly, Simona Monaco, Teresa D Figley, A David Milner, Thomas Schenk, Jody C Culham

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Although the neural underpinnings of visually guided grasping and reaching have been well delineated within lateral and medial fronto-parietal networks (respectively), the contributions of subcomponents of visuomotor actions have not been explored in detail. Using careful subtraction logic, here we investigated which aspects of grasping, reaching, and pointing movements drive activation across key areas within visuomotor networks implicated in hand actions. For grasping tasks, we find activation differences based on the precision required (fine > coarse grip: anterior intraparietal sulcus, aIPS), the requirement to lift the object (grip + lift > grip: aIPS; dorsal premotor cortex, PMd; and supplementary motor area, SMA), …

Book Reviews: Recent Books On Pornography: From Discussions Of Harm To Normalization, Robert Brannon

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Nine books addressing the specific harms linked to adults’ viewing of heterosexual pornography are examined. All were published since 2010, and range from some that are opposed to all pornography, to others that approve of pornography. The books differ considerably in scope, quality, and scientific rigor. Several include discussions of the feminist anti-pornography movement, in the U.S. and worldwide, from 1975 to the present. These accounts range from criticism of the anti-pornography movement to praise and appreciation. This collection of books provides a useful view of the remarkable diversity of thought about all issues connected with pornography’s effects on adult …

A Nirs Study Of Violinists And Pianists Employing Motor And Music Imageries To Assess Neural Differences In Music Perception, Sonja Prychitko

All NMU Master's Theses

Do musicians imagine movements differently? Are instrument-specific movements represented differently in the brain? The current study explores the perceptual differences in imagining music and movements. While attached to a near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) device, violinists and pianists of diverse experience levels viewed a series of performance videos (piano, violin) and performed associated imagery tasks. It was hypothesized that musicians will show diverse levels of brain activity in the motor areas during imagery tasks, depending on their primary instrument and the movements within their repertoire. Results revealed that violinists and pianists significantly differ in imagining movements and music of their non-primary …

Ultrasonography In Acupuncture: Uses In Education And Research, Mabel Qi He Leow, Shu Li Cui, Mohammad Taufik Bin Mohamed Shah, Taige Cao, Shian Chao Tay, Peter Kay Chai Tay, Chin Chin Ooi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study aims to explore the potential use of ultrasound in locating the second posterior sacral foramen acupuncture point, quantifying depth of insertion and describing surrounding anatomical structures. We performed acupuncture needle insertion on a study team member. There were four steps in our experiment. First, the acupuncturist located the acupuncture point by palpation. Second, we used an ultrasound machine to visualize the structures surrounding the location of the acupuncture point and measure the depth required for needle insertion. Third, the acupuncturist inserted the acupuncture needle into the acupuncture point at an angle of 30°. Fourth, we performed another ultrasound …

Unpacking The Ontogeny Of Gesture Understanding: How Movement Becomes Meaningful Across Development, Elizabeth M. Wakefield, Miriam A. Novack, Susan Goldin-Meadow

Psychology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Gestures, hand movements that accompany speech, affect children's learning, memory, and thinking (e.g., Goldin‐Meadow, 2003). However, it remains unknown how children distinguish gestures from other kinds of actions. In this study, 4‐ to 9‐year‐olds (n = 339) and adults (n = 50) described one of three scenes: (a) an actor moving objects, (b) an actor moving her hands in the presence of objects (but not touching them), or (c) an actor moving her hands in the absence of objects. Participants across all ages were equally able to identify actions on objects as goal directed, but the ability to …

Exploring Neural Entrainment And Beat Perception Through Movement, Sarah M. Schwanz

Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

The way humans move to music has a large impact on how music is synchronized to, interpreted, and enjoyed. It is understood that movements to music aid in beat perception, and neural oscillations have the ability to entrain to musical rhythms. This study attempted to link these two well-established phenomena by exploring the use of movement to simple and complex musical rhythms to enhance neural entrainment. Ten undergraduate students engaged in 60 simple and complex musical rhythms, either tapping along to the beat or listening without movement, while undergoing EEG recording. Although the differences in brain response amplitude were not …

The [E]Motionless Body No Longer: Tracing The Historical Intersections Of Mental Illness And Movement In The American Asylum, Holly Adele Herzfeld

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard College.

A Trial-By-Trial Window Into Sensorimotor Transformations In The Human Motor Periphery., Chao Gu, Daniel K Wood, Paul L Gribble, Brian D Corneil

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

UNLABELLED: The appearance of a novel visual stimulus generates a rapid stimulus-locked response (SLR) in the motor periphery within 100 ms of stimulus onset. Here, we recorded SLRs from an upper limb muscle while humans reached toward (pro-reach) or away (anti-reach) from a visual stimulus. The SLR on anti-reaches encoded the location of the visual stimulus rather than the movement goal. Further, SLR magnitude was attenuated when subjects reached away from rather than toward the visual stimulus. Remarkably, SLR magnitudes also correlated with reaction times on both pro-reaches and anti-reaches, but did so in opposite ways: larger SLRs preceded shorter …

Meditative Movement As A Treatment For Pulmonary Dysfunction In Flight Attendants Exposed To Second-Hand Cigarette Smoke: Study Protocol For A Randomized Trial, Peter Payne, David Zava, Steven Fiering, Mardi Crane-Godreau

Dartmouth Scholarship

A study protocol is presented for the investigation of meditative movement (MM) as a treatment for pulmonary dysfunction in ight attendants (FA) who were exposed to second-hand cigarette smoke while ying before the smoking ban. The study will have three parts, some of which will run concurrently. The rst is a data gathering and screen- ing phase, which will gather data on pulmonary and other aspects of the health of FA, and will also serve to screen participants for the other phases. Second is an exercise selection phase, in which a variety of MM exercises will be taught, over a …

Sensory Plasticity In Human Motor Learning., David J Ostry, Paul L Gribble

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

There is accumulating evidence from behavioral, neurophysiological, and neuroimaging studies that the acquisition of motor skills involves both perceptual and motor learning. Perceptual learning alters movements, motor learning, and motor networks of the brain. Motor learning changes perceptual function and the sensory circuits of the brain. Here, we review studies of both human limb movement and speech that indicate that plasticity in sensory and motor systems is reciprocally linked. Taken together, this points to an approach to motor learning in which perceptual learning and sensory plasticity have a fundamental role.

Planning Ahead: Object-Directed Sequential Actions Decoded From Human Frontoparietal And Occipitotemporal Networks., Jason P Gallivan, Ingrid S Johnsrude, J Randall Flanagan

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Object-manipulation tasks (e.g., drinking from a cup) typically involve sequencing together a series of distinct motor acts (e.g., reaching toward, grasping, lifting, and transporting the cup) in order to accomplish some overarching goal (e.g., quenching thirst). Although several studies in humans have investigated the neural mechanisms supporting the planning of visually guided movements directed toward objects (such as reaching or pointing), only a handful have examined how manipulatory sequences of actions-those that occur after an object has been grasped-are planned and represented in the brain. Here, using event-related functional MRI and pattern decoding methods, we investigated the neural basis of …

Move, Interact, And Connect Personally Barter Theatre’S Project Real Gets Implicit In Order To Learn, Megan E. Atkinson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Body movement, hands-on activity, embodiment, social interaction, emotions, and self-reflection allow teaching artists of Barter’s Theatre’s Project REAL to conduct a lesson with an implicit learning experience as the focus. Barter Theatre’s Project REAL exists as a theatre for education program that collaborates with regular classroom teachers on delivering the curriculum through specific theatre exercises in order to connect the material personally to the students’ lives. Theatre tools provide a human experience that enhances learning for the student by use of kinesthetic movement, social learning, emotions and interpersonal skills. To understand the effects of Barter Theatre’s Project REAL, the director …

The Human Motor System Alters Its Reaching Movement Plan For Task-Irrelevant, Positional Forces., Joshua G A Cashaback, Heather R Mcgregor, Paul L Gribble

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

The minimum intervention principle and the uncontrolled manifold hypothesis state that our nervous system only responds to force perturbations and sensorimotor noise if they affect task success. This idea has been tested in muscle and joint coordinate frames and more recently using workspace redundancy (e.g., reaching to large targets). However, reaching studies typically involve spatial and or temporal constraints. Constrained reaches represent a small proportion of movements we perform daily and may limit the emergence of natural behavior. Using more relaxed constraints, we conducted two reaching experiments to test the hypothesis that humans respond to task-relevant forces and ignore task-irrelevant …

A Movement Tool Kit For The Divergent And Convergent Cps Guidelines: Instruction Cards And Activity Floor Mats, Adela Vangelisti

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

A Movement Tool Kit for the Divergent and Convergent CPS Guidelines:

Instruction Cards and Activity Floor Mats

Movement is as natural to humans as breathing is, and, yet, passivity starts early in schools. We are taught to sit still and in silence for long periods of time. By the time we reach adulthood and enter the workforce, we have almost forgotten our sense of embodiment. This lack of movement is counter-productive, not only to learning but to the development of creativity as well. For this project, I designed a tool to recapture the joy and playfulness of movement. Furthermore, the …

The Cost Of Moving Optimally: Kinematic Path Selection., Dinant A Kistemaker, Jeremy D Wong, Paul L Gribble

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

It is currently unclear whether the brain plans movement kinematics explicitly or whether movement paths arise implicitly through optimization of a cost function that takes into account control and/or dynamic variables. Several cost functions are proposed in the literature that are very different in nature (e.g., control effort, torque change, and jerk), yet each can predict common movement characteristics. We set out to disentangle predictions of the different variables using a combination of modeling and empirical studies. Subjects performed goal-directed arm movements in a force field (FF) in combination with visual perturbations of seen hand position. This FF was designed …

Human Premotor Areas Parse Sequences Into Their Spatial And Temporal Features., Katja Kornysheva, Jörn Diedrichsen

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Skilled performance is characterized by precise and flexible control of movement sequences in space and time. Recent theories suggest that integrated spatio-temporal trajectories are generated by intrinsic dynamics of motor and premotor networks. This contrasts with behavioural advantages that emerge when a trained spatial or temporal feature of sequences is transferred to a new spatio-temporal combination arguing for independent neural representations of these sequence features. We used a new fMRI pattern classification approach to identify brain regions with independent vs integrated representations. A distinct regional dissociation within motor areas was revealed: whereas only the contralateral primary motor cortex exhibited unique …