Ryan Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 3644604 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ryan Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ryan |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Laureate Institute for Brain Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4448-185X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Identifying Patient Factors Associated with Subspecialty Appointment Attendance Rates After Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Discharge
Our objective was to understand the rates of missed follow-up appointments following discharge from a tertiary neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) over the course of 1 year. We abstracted demographic and clinical information from the medical record into a database, including appointment referrals and outcomes of those appointments. Follow-up compliance data were reviewed for one calendar year following NICU discharge for each patient. Using our d…
The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (Leas): Normative Data From a Community Sample and Observed Interactions With Sex, Marital Status, Education, and Age
Emotional awareness (EA) is a valuable cognitive skill relevant to understanding human behavior and social relationships. The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) was developed in 1990 and has been utilized extensively in research to measure individuals' EA. However, there is no published normative information on this instrument in a U.S. sample. We report normative LEAS data (n = 381, M age = 42.71, 51% females, 85.30 % White) for demograp…
Does emotion regulation mediate the relationship between interoception/alexithymia and co-morbid depression/anxiety? Evidence from two independent samples
Unconscious Activation of Negative Emotional Memories Increases Pain Unpleasantness
OBJECTIVE: The influence of unconscious emotional processes on pain remains poorly understood. The present study tested whether cues to forgotten unpleasant images might amplify pain (i.e., in the absence of conscious recall). METHODS: Seventy-two healthy female adults (19 to 34 years) performed an adapted Think/No-think paradigm (T/NT) using 72 combinations of neutral face images (cues) paired with 36 neutral and 36 unpleasant images. After comp…
Impaired emotional awareness is associated with childhood maltreatment exposure and positive symptoms in schizophrenia
These data suggest that emotional awareness impairments observed in schizophrenia may be exacerbated by exposure to childhood maltreatment, possibly putting individuals at greater risk for experiencing positive symptoms of psychosis
Emotional awareness amplifies affective sensitivity to social support for women with breast cancer
Emotional awareness (EA) is thought to facilitate psychological health by aiding emotion regulation in oneself and garnering social support from others. This study tested these potential relationships within a one-year longitudinal study of 460 women (age 23-91 years, mean 56.4 years) recently diagnosed with breast cancer (i.e., within four months). The women completed measures of emotional awareness, social support, social stress, affective symp…
Large-scale, collaborative imagery survey in archaeology: The Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History and Archaeology (GeoPacha)
Imagery-based survey is capable of producing archaeological datasets that complement those collected through field-based survey methods, widening the scope of analysis beyond regions. The Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History and Archaeology (GeoPACHA) enables systematic registry of imagery survey data through a 'federated' approach. Using GeoPACHA, teams pursue problem-specific research questions through a common data schema and interf…
Improvements in mindfulness, interoceptive and emotional awareness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal emotion management following completion of an online emotional skills training program
Socioemotional skills, such as the ability to recognize, understand, and regulate the emotions of self and others, are associated with both physical and emotional health. The present study tested the effectiveness of a recently validated online training program for increasing these emotional skills in adults. In this study, 448 participants (323 female) were randomly assigned to complete this training program or a placebo control program. Among t…
From Generative Models to Generative Passages: A Computational Approach to (Neuro) Phenomenology
This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as computational phenomenology because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy (e.g., the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Pon…
Lower Levels of Directed Exploration and Reflective Thinking Are Associated With Greater Anxiety and Depression
Anxiety and depression are often associated with strong beliefs that entering specific situations will lead to aversive outcomes - even when these situations are objectively safe and avoiding them reduces well-being. A possible mechanism underlying this maladaptive avoidance behavior is a failure to reflect on: (1) appropriate levels of uncertainty about the situation, and (2) how this uncertainty could be reduced by seeking further information (…
Active inference models do not contradict folk psychology
Active inference offers a unified theory of perception, learning, and decision-making at computational and neural levels of description. In this article, we address the worry that active inference may be in tension with the belief–desire–intention (BDI) model within folk psychology because it does not include terms for desires (or other conative constructs) at the mathematical level of description. To resolve this concern, we first provide a brie…
Awareness drives changes in reward value which predict eating behavior change: Probing reinforcement learning using experience sampling from mobile mindfulness training for maladaptive eating
Scoping the potential for earthquake early warning in Aotearoa New Zealand: A sectoral analysis of perceived benefits and challenges
Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems are used to detect earthquakes and provide advanced notice of strong shaking intensity, allowing people to take pre-emptive actions that benefit the health of infrastructure and the life-safety of the public. With the advancement of technical research of EEWs, there is also an increasing need to understand EEW's potential impacts on society. In this study, we investigated the perspectives of various sectors …
Affective agnosia: A core affective processing deficit in the alexithymia spectrum
Affective agnosia, an impairment in knowing how one feels emotionally, has been described as an extreme deficit in the experience and expression of emotion that may confer heightened risk for adverse medical outcomes. Alexithymia, by contrast, has been proposed as an over-arching construct that includes a spectrum of deficits of varying severity, including affective agnosia at the more severe end. This perspective has been challenged by Taylor an…
The importance of identifying underlying process abnormalities in alexithymia: Implications of the three-process model and a single case study illustration
An Embodied Neurocomputational Framework for Organically Integrating Biopsychosocial Processes: An Application to the Role of Social Support in Health and Disease
OBJECTIVE: Two distinct perspectives-typically referred to as the biopsychosocial and biomedical models-currently guide clinical practice. Although the role of psychosocial factors in contributing to physical and mental health outcomes is widely recognized, the biomedical model remains dominant. This is due in part to (a) the largely nonmechanistic focus of biopsychosocial research and (b) the lack of specificity it currently offers in guiding cl…
The Role of Prefrontal Cortical Surface Area and Volume in Preclinical Suicidal Ideation in a Non-Clinical Sample
Suicidal ideation (SUI) can occur in the absence of concomitant psychiatric diagnoses, and even normal levels can be problematic among individuals experiencing excess stress or lack of social support. The objective of this study was to investigate the neuroanatomical basis of SUI in non-clinical human populations who are within the normal limits of SUI, after accounting for elevated stress and perceived lack of social support. Neuroanatomical dat…
Higher Emotional Awareness Is Associated With Reduced Pain in Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients: Preliminary Results
This inverse relationship between emotional awareness and both pain and somatization symptoms is consistent with evidence that irritable bowel syndrome patients experience reduced pain from therapies designed to improve emotional awareness. The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale could potentially be used to identify patients who could benefit from such therapy and could potentially be a moderator of response to efficacious psychological therapie…
Particularism and racial mobility into privileged occupations
Greater cortical thickness within the limbic visceromotor network predicts higher levels of trait emotional awareness
Alternating conj/disjunctions: The case of Japanese "-toka" and "-tari"
This paper investigates the interpretation of Japanese -toka and -tari, two nonexhaustiveparticles that receive conjunctive interpretations in upward-entailingenvironments, but disjunctive interpretations in downward-entailing and question contexts.We analyze -toka and -tari as items that introduce unstructured sets of alternatives in aHamblin-style alternative semantics (Hamblin, 1973; Kratzer and Shimoyama, 2002), andderive their conjunctive an…
Biased Competition Favoring Physical Over Emotional Pain: A Possible Explanation for the Link Between Early Adversity and Chronic Pain
BACKGROUND: Early adversity predisposes to chronic pain, but a mechanistic explanation is lacking. Survivors of early adversity with chronic pain often seem impaired in their ability to be aware of, understand, and express distressing emotions such as anger and fear in social contexts. In this context, it has been proposed that pain may at times serve as a "psychic regulator" by preventing awareness of more intolerable emotions. METHOD: This narr…
Increases in Emotional Intelligence After an Online Training Program Are Associated With Better Decision-Making on the Iowa Gambling Task
Higher levels of emotional intelligence have been associated with better inter and intrapersonal functioning. In the present study, 59 healthy men and women were randomized into either a three-week online training program targeted to improve emotional intelligence ( n = 29), or a placebo control training program targeted to improve awareness of nonemotional aspects of the environment ( n = 30). Compared to placebo, participants in the emotional i…
A neuro-cognitive defense of the unified self
Successful Goal-Directed Memory Suppression is Associated With Increased Inter-Hemispheric Coordination Between Right and Left Frontoparietal Control Networks
The neural basis of suppressing conscious access to one's own memories has recently received considerable attention, with several studies suggesting this process engages frontal-parietal cognitive control regions. However, researchers to date have not examined the way right and left hemisphere cognitive control networks coordinate with one another to accomplish this. We had 48 participants (25 female) complete a Think/No Think (T/NT) task for mem…
Large-scale, collaborative imagery survey in archaeology: The Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History and Archaeology (GeoPacha)
Imagery-based survey is capable of producing archaeological datasets that complement those collected through field-based survey methods, widening the scope of analysis beyond regions. The Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History and Archaeology (GeoPACHA) enables systematic registry of imagery survey data through a 'federated' approach. Using GeoPACHA, teams pursue problem-specific research questions through a common data schema and interf…
Active inference models do not contradict folk psychology
Active inference offers a unified theory of perception, learning, and decision-making at computational and neural levels of description. In this article, we address the worry that active inference may be in tension with the belief–desire–intention (BDI) model within folk psychology because it does not include terms for desires (or other conative constructs) at the mathematical level of description. To resolve this concern, we first provide a brie…
Particularism and racial mobility into privileged occupations
Explanation, understanding, and control
Do Brains Have an Arrow of Time
There is a persisting tension that exists between the block universe conception of time in modern physics and philosophy and the conception of time that stems naturally from experience, and entropic asymmetries have been proposed to explain this tension. This article argues that as biochemical processes in the brain depend upon spontaneous entropy increases in the forward-time direction, this should provide an entropic basis for the unidirectiona…
Croatia and Nato: Moving Toward Alliance Membership
NATO's “Open-Door” policy continues to generate much enthusiasm from aspiring countries across eastern and southern Europe. This paper examines Croatia's efforts to meet NATO's membership standards and assesses its reforms and policy changes across three issue areas, including civil-military relations, military modernization, and recent foreign policy directions. Our research suggests that Croatia has made significant improvements in moving towar…
Role of medial prefrontal cortex in representing one’s own subjective emotional responses: A preliminary study
Explanation, understanding, and control
Do Brains Have an Arrow of Time
There is a persisting tension that exists between the block universe conception of time in modern physics and philosophy and the conception of time that stems naturally from experience, and entropic asymmetries have been proposed to explain this tension. This article argues that as biochemical processes in the brain depend upon spontaneous entropy increases in the forward-time direction, this should provide an entropic basis for the unidirectiona…
Unwanted reminders: The effects of emotional memory suppression on subsequent neuro-cognitive processing
A neuro-cognitive defense of the unified self
Successful Goal-Directed Memory Suppression is Associated With Increased Inter-Hemispheric Coordination Between Right and Left Frontoparietal Control Networks
The neural basis of suppressing conscious access to one's own memories has recently received considerable attention, with several studies suggesting this process engages frontal-parietal cognitive control regions. However, researchers to date have not examined the way right and left hemisphere cognitive control networks coordinate with one another to accomplish this. We had 48 participants (25 female) complete a Think/No Think (T/NT) task for mem…
Greater cortical thickness within the limbic visceromotor network predicts higher levels of trait emotional awareness
Alternating conj/disjunctions: The case of Japanese "-toka" and "-tari"
This paper investigates the interpretation of Japanese -toka and -tari, two nonexhaustiveparticles that receive conjunctive interpretations in upward-entailingenvironments, but disjunctive interpretations in downward-entailing and question contexts.We analyze -toka and -tari as items that introduce unstructured sets of alternatives in aHamblin-style alternative semantics (Hamblin, 1973; Kratzer and Shimoyama, 2002), andderive their conjunctive an…
Biased Competition Favoring Physical Over Emotional Pain: A Possible Explanation for the Link Between Early Adversity and Chronic Pain
BACKGROUND: Early adversity predisposes to chronic pain, but a mechanistic explanation is lacking. Survivors of early adversity with chronic pain often seem impaired in their ability to be aware of, understand, and express distressing emotions such as anger and fear in social contexts. In this context, it has been proposed that pain may at times serve as a "psychic regulator" by preventing awareness of more intolerable emotions. METHOD: This narr…
Increases in Emotional Intelligence After an Online Training Program Are Associated With Better Decision-Making on the Iowa Gambling Task
Higher levels of emotional intelligence have been associated with better inter and intrapersonal functioning. In the present study, 59 healthy men and women were randomized into either a three-week online training program targeted to improve emotional intelligence ( n = 29), or a placebo control training program targeted to improve awareness of nonemotional aspects of the environment ( n = 30). Compared to placebo, participants in the emotional i…
The importance of identifying underlying process abnormalities in alexithymia: Implications of the three-process model and a single case study illustration
An Embodied Neurocomputational Framework for Organically Integrating Biopsychosocial Processes: An Application to the Role of Social Support in Health and Disease
OBJECTIVE: Two distinct perspectives-typically referred to as the biopsychosocial and biomedical models-currently guide clinical practice. Although the role of psychosocial factors in contributing to physical and mental health outcomes is widely recognized, the biomedical model remains dominant. This is due in part to (a) the largely nonmechanistic focus of biopsychosocial research and (b) the lack of specificity it currently offers in guiding cl…
The Role of Prefrontal Cortical Surface Area and Volume in Preclinical Suicidal Ideation in a Non-Clinical Sample
Suicidal ideation (SUI) can occur in the absence of concomitant psychiatric diagnoses, and even normal levels can be problematic among individuals experiencing excess stress or lack of social support. The objective of this study was to investigate the neuroanatomical basis of SUI in non-clinical human populations who are within the normal limits of SUI, after accounting for elevated stress and perceived lack of social support. Neuroanatomical dat…
Higher Emotional Awareness Is Associated With Reduced Pain in Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients: Preliminary Results
This inverse relationship between emotional awareness and both pain and somatization symptoms is consistent with evidence that irritable bowel syndrome patients experience reduced pain from therapies designed to improve emotional awareness. The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale could potentially be used to identify patients who could benefit from such therapy and could potentially be a moderator of response to efficacious psychological therapie…
Particularism and racial mobility into privileged occupations
Scoping the potential for earthquake early warning in Aotearoa New Zealand: A sectoral analysis of perceived benefits and challenges
Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems are used to detect earthquakes and provide advanced notice of strong shaking intensity, allowing people to take pre-emptive actions that benefit the health of infrastructure and the life-safety of the public. With the advancement of technical research of EEWs, there is also an increasing need to understand EEW's potential impacts on society. In this study, we investigated the perspectives of various sectors …
Affective agnosia: A core affective processing deficit in the alexithymia spectrum
Affective agnosia, an impairment in knowing how one feels emotionally, has been described as an extreme deficit in the experience and expression of emotion that may confer heightened risk for adverse medical outcomes. Alexithymia, by contrast, has been proposed as an over-arching construct that includes a spectrum of deficits of varying severity, including affective agnosia at the more severe end. This perspective has been challenged by Taylor an…
Awareness drives changes in reward value which predict eating behavior change: Probing reinforcement learning using experience sampling from mobile mindfulness training for maladaptive eating
From Generative Models to Generative Passages: A Computational Approach to (Neuro) Phenomenology
This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as computational phenomenology because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy (e.g., the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Pon…
Lower Levels of Directed Exploration and Reflective Thinking Are Associated With Greater Anxiety and Depression
Anxiety and depression are often associated with strong beliefs that entering specific situations will lead to aversive outcomes - even when these situations are objectively safe and avoiding them reduces well-being. A possible mechanism underlying this maladaptive avoidance behavior is a failure to reflect on: (1) appropriate levels of uncertainty about the situation, and (2) how this uncertainty could be reduced by seeking further information (…
Active inference models do not contradict folk psychology
Active inference offers a unified theory of perception, learning, and decision-making at computational and neural levels of description. In this article, we address the worry that active inference may be in tension with the belief–desire–intention (BDI) model within folk psychology because it does not include terms for desires (or other conative constructs) at the mathematical level of description. To resolve this concern, we first provide a brie…
Improvements in mindfulness, interoceptive and emotional awareness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal emotion management following completion of an online emotional skills training program
Socioemotional skills, such as the ability to recognize, understand, and regulate the emotions of self and others, are associated with both physical and emotional health. The present study tested the effectiveness of a recently validated online training program for increasing these emotional skills in adults. In this study, 448 participants (323 female) were randomly assigned to complete this training program or a placebo control program. Among t…
Does emotion regulation mediate the relationship between interoception/alexithymia and co-morbid depression/anxiety? Evidence from two independent samples
Unconscious Activation of Negative Emotional Memories Increases Pain Unpleasantness
OBJECTIVE: The influence of unconscious emotional processes on pain remains poorly understood. The present study tested whether cues to forgotten unpleasant images might amplify pain (i.e., in the absence of conscious recall). METHODS: Seventy-two healthy female adults (19 to 34 years) performed an adapted Think/No-think paradigm (T/NT) using 72 combinations of neutral face images (cues) paired with 36 neutral and 36 unpleasant images. After comp…
Psychology (23 works) · Cognition (11 works) · Cognitive psychology (11 works) · Clinical Psychology (10 works) · Psychiatry (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes (8 works) · Neuroscience (8 works) · Developmental psychology (6 works) · Medicine (6 works)