This paper examines the materialization of trauma as both a narrative and embodied phenomenon in Hassan Bani Ameri's 2006 novel, Gonjeshkha Behesht ra Mifahmand, using contemporary narrative and trauma theory. The postmodernist narrative, told from the perspective of a photojournalist, reconstructs events surrounding the death of a celebrated Iran-Iraq War commander. I argue that traumatic truths resist full integration into conventional frameworks of understanding, evident in the novel's non-linear, fragmented narrative and its shift from visual realism to confessional surrealism in an ending that challenges traditional storytelling and historical documentation. By vividly simulating the sensory processing of traumatic memories, the novel emphasizes the material reality of trauma that demands to be seen, heard, and physically felt, thus negating celebratory institutional narratives around the culture of war and martyrdom.

Perceptualism is a prominent theory analyzing emotions as perceptual experiences of value. A long-standing challenge to perceptualism says that emotions cannot be perceptual because they are subject to normative assessments in terms of reasons and rationality, while perceptual experiences are not. I defend perceptualism from this charge. My argument begins by distinguishing two forms of normative assessment: fundamental and non-fundamental. Perceptualism is compatible with the latter (i.e., non-fundamental reasons and rationality); even sensory experiences are so assessable. I next argue that emotions are only non-fundamentally assessable. Following this argument, I outline a perceptualist-friendly theory of emotions as non-fundamentally normatively assessable.

This study adopted a Kansei engineering methodology to examine users’ Kansei values toward automotive interior designs by conducting experiments under two models: sensory experience and perceived value evaluation models. In the sensory experience model, 60 participants were recruited to experience using 27 vehicle samples and to assign scores to eight Kansei keywords. Hayashi's quantification theory type 1 was used to calculate the weight of 12 interior space items and 40 interior design categories. In the perceived value evaluation model, 60 participants completed a questionnaire on the influence levels of the Kansei keywords on their Kansei values from the perspectives of four consumer perceived value dimensions. The questionnaire scores were then evaluated using factor analysis to extract nine primary factors affecting participants’ perceptions. This study determined that the interesting and dynamic perceptions corresponded to five design items under the Excitement Quality factors, vigorous and recreational perceptions corresponded to four items under the Relaxation and Comfort factor, and technological and luxurious perceptions corresponded to six items under the Luxury and Splendor factor and the Esteemed Image factor. These findings can help designers and researchers in the relevant sectors create automotive interior designs that fulfill the expectations of users.

The distribution of local preferred directions and motion sensitivities within the receptive fields of so-called tangential neurons in the fly visual system was previously found to match optic flow fields as induced by certain self-motions. The complex receptive-field organization of the tangential neurons and the recent evidence showing that the orderly development of the fly's peripheral visual system depends on visual experience led us to investigate whether or not early visual input is required to establish the functional receptive-field properties of such tangential neurons. In electrophysiological investigations of two identified tangential neurons, it turned out that dark-hatched flies which were kept in complete darkness for 2 days develop basically the same receptive-field organization as flies which were raised under seasonal light/dark conditions and were free to move in their cages. We did not find any evidence that the development of the sophisticated receptive-field organization of tangential neurons depends on sensory experience. Instead, the input to the tangential neurons seems to be “hardwired” and the specificity of these cells to optic flow induced during self-motions of the animal may have evolved on a phylogenetical time scale.