Immersion as an embodied cognition shift: aesthetic experience and spatial situated cognition.

BACKGROUND: The main hypothesis of situated cognition is related to the origin of mental processes: the environment is thought to be the source of all cognitive processes. However, immersion enables a dual perception of space by enabling to perceive both the routine environment and a new way to see the world. AIMS: We want to provide a further insight into the transition from on-line cognition to off-line cognition: we want to show that aesthetic experience towards immersive art comes from the awareness that one's cognition depends on the environment. Although this specific cognition is not independent from the general environment, it abstracts the individuals from their idiosyncratic environment. Therefore, immersive art may induce cognitive processes that are borderline cases of situated cognition. METHOD: Aesthetic experience regarding spatial cognition will be described using an approach of embodied aesthetics, that is to say an approach which connects phenomenology of perception and cognitive sciences. RESULTS: No experiments are contemplated as of now. CONCLUSIONS: The experience of immersive art makes individuals become aware that their perceptual processes can adapt to the environment. Thus, the self-experience, which is typical of aesthetic experience, may be the cornerstone of off-line cognition.

Low quality evidence of epidemiological observational studies on leishmaniasis in Brazil.

BACKGROUND: Brazil has implemented systematic control methods for leishmaniasis for the past 30 years, despite an increase in cases and continued spread of the disease to new regions. A lack high quality evidence from epidemiological observational studies impedes the development of novel control methods to prevent disease transmission among the population. Here, we have evaluated the quality of observational studies on leishmaniasis conducted in Brazil to highlight this issue. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: For this systematic review, all publications on leishmaniasis conducted in Brazil from January 1st, 2002 to December 31st, 2012 were screened via Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist to select observational studies involving human subjects. The 283 included studies, representing only 14.1% of articles screened, were then further evaluated for quality of epidemiological methods and study design based on the STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational studies in Epidemiology) checklists. Over half of these studies were descriptive or case reports (53.4%, 151), followed by cross-sectional (20.8%, n = 59), case-control (8.5%, n = 24), and cohort (6.0%, n = 17). Study design was not stated in 46.6% (n = 181) and incorrectly stated in 17.5% (n = 24). Comparison groups were utilized in just 39.6% (n = 112) of the publications, and only 13.4% (n = 38) employed healthy controls. Majority of studies were performed at the city-level (62.9%, n = 178), in contrast with two (0.7%) studies performed at the national-level. Coauthorship networks showed the number of author collaborations rapidly decreased after three collaborations, with 70.9% (n = 659/929) of coauthors publishing only one article during the study period. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: A review of epidemiological research in Brazil revealed a major lack of quality and evidence. While certain indicators suggested research methods may have improved in the last two years, an emphasis on observational research which employs comparison groups and representative samples is urgently needed.