Jayanti Basu

Religious beliefs and practices, especially in the form of prayer and meditation, have always utilised imagination. Yet, since imagination takes us beyond mundane reality and can accept truth beyond lay logic, religious and spiritual experiences have often been designated as mental derangement. Additionally, undeniably, religion has often become the cause of intercommunity hatred. In this backdrop, the present article examines the possible points of argument between the believers and non-believers in God, and categorises these arguments in terms of their strength and role. A brief review of the empirical evidence of the relationship between religious belief and mental and social health highlights its ambiguity. Therefore, emphasis should be given to understanding the factors mediating this relationship. One such factor might be imagination operating in most religious and spiritual efforts. The possible contribution of imagination to religious belief and experiences has been discussed. The need for research in this emerging domain is highlighted.

Objective: The relationship between perseveration and switching in semantic verbal fluency tasks and the possible role of self-generated interference one must overcome before switching back to a previously visited subcategory has not been explored. Participants & Method: We studied the performance on semantic verbal fluency in 60 cognitively unimpaired subjects, 30 patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and 30 patients with Alzheimer’s Clinical Syndrome–dementia (ACS-Dementia). Our primary analysis focused on the association of switching and switchback with the first perseverative error. Results: Perseveration was significantly associated with switchback in all three groups (χ2 = 24.88, p < .001). Within-cluster perseverations were few. The number of switchbacks was the only significant variable to predict perseverative responses (p < .01). Moving from cognitively unimpaired to aMCI to ACS-Dementia, progressively fewer switches and switchbacks were needed to trigger perseveration. In over half of the perseverations after a switchback in the cognitively unimpaired and aMCI groups and in over a third in the ACS-Dementia group, the subjects had already activated a new word in the switched back subcategory. Conclusion: Switching between subcategories and subsequent switchback play an important role in triggering perseverations in semantic verbal fluency tasks in the cognitively unimpaired as well as in aMCI and ACS-Dementia. Self-generated interference caused by repeated switching may overwhelm the working memory capacity enough to reactivate a previously suppressed response when revisiting an earlier subcategory. Our findings may facilitate a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying perseveration in semantic fluency tests.

Love is widely recognized as one of the most important, desired, and consequential aspects of the human condition, and thus has rightly been the focus of much academic attention. However, this interest has tended to concentrate on specific forms of love—especially romantic and familial forms—to the exclusion of others. One such overlooked form is love of “creation”—of the world and the wider cosmos in which human beings find themselves. Throughout history and across cultures, this kind of love has been developed and articulated by religious and philosophical traditions in diverse ways. This article showcases a selection of ten such traditions, generally through the prism of one particularly important figure within each tradition, including Hinduism, Judaism, Zen Buddhism, Manichaeism, Christianity, Islam, Maasai thought, Cherokee thought, Romanticism, and secular reverence. Through these lenses, the diverse ways love of creation has been expressed can be appreciated. In the conclusion, we also try to find some common ground among these traditions by constructing a provisional set of items for a love of creation measure that would be applicable across traditions.