Los autores abordan el desafío de integrar la medicina convencional, la medicina psicosomática, y la medicina alternativa, necesario, según señalan, no sólo por razones clínicas y económicas, sino por el desafío de crear una teoría comprehensiva que integre la riqueza de datos aparentemente disparatados y teorías de la salud y la enfermedad en un todo organizado. Se trata de llegar a una medicina integrada. En este trabajo los autores identifican ocho visiones fundacionales sobre la naturaleza, cada una de las cuales (...) genera hipótesis diferentes acerca de la naturaleza y de la medicina, y han conducido a tres diferentes conceptos de medicina. El artículo aborda cómo el conocimiento de tales hipótesis puede alcanzar el objetivo de integrar la medicina. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article took up the first two questions. Part II will take up the second two questions. Question 3 deals with the question as to whether DSM-V should assume a conservative or assertive posture in making changes from DSM-IV. That question in turn breaks down into discussion of diagnoses that depend on, and aim toward, empirical, scientific validation, and diagnoses that are more value-laden and less amenable to scientific validation. Question 4 takes up the role of pragmatic consideration in a psychiatric nosology, whether the purely empirical considerations need to be tempered by considerations of practical consequence. As in Part 1 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM – whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part 1 of this article took up the first two questions. Part 2 took up the second two questions. Part 3 now deals with Questions 5 & 6. Question 5 confronts the issue of utility, whether the manual design of DSM-III and IV favors clinicians or researchers, and what that means for DSM-5. Our final question, Question 6, takes up a concluding issue, whether the acknowledged problems with the earlier DSMs warrants a significant overhaul of DSM-5 and future manuals. As in Parts 1 & 2 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further (...) questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

Phosphoinositides are inositol‐containing phospholipids whose hydrolysis is a key step in the rapid responses of animal cells to extracellular signals. Whether they play similar roles in plant cells has not been established, and some have suggested alternative roles as direct modulators of specific proteins. Nonetheless, evidence is accumulating that phosphoinositide hydrolysis mediates transduction of some signal in plants. The evidence is strongest for a role in triggering the shedding of flagella by the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under acid stress. Rapid (...) kinetic analysis indicates that phosphoinositide hydrolysis occures within half a second and could trigger the rapid loss of flagella. Plant responses to pathogens and osmotic stress, as well as the regulation of turgor changes which underlie stomatal opening and closing and the movement of leaves and flower parts, may also be mediated by phosphoinositide hydrolysis. The evidence thus indicates that at least one reason plants have phosphoinositides is to mediate transduction of environmental signals. (shrink)

1. Introduction : humanity's urge to understand -- 2. Elements of scientific thinking : skepticism, careful reasoning, and exhaustive evaluation are all vital. Science Is universal -- Maintaining a critical attitude. Reasonable skepticism -- Respect for the truth -- Reasoning. Deduction -- Induction -- Paradigm shifts -- Evaluating scientific hypotheses. Ockham's razor -- Quantitative evaluation -- Verification by others -- Statistics : correlation and causation -- Statistics : the indeterminacy of the small -- Careful definition -- Science at the frontier. (...) When good theories become ugly -- Stuff that just does not fit -- 3. Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the "Indies" : it can be disastrous to stubbornly refuse to recognize that you have falsified your own hypothesis -- 4. Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Priestley both test the befuddling phlogiston theory : junking a confusing hypothesis may be necessary to clear the way for new and productive science -- 5. Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction but fails to unify electromagnetism and gravitation : it is usually productive to simplify and consolidate your hypotheses -- 6. Wilhelm Röntgen intended to study cathode rays but ended up discovering X-rays : listen carefully when Mother Nature whispers in your ear : she may be leading you to a Nobel Prize -- 7. Max Planck, the first superhero of quantum theory, saves the universe from the ultraviolet catastrophe : assemble two flawed hypotheses about a key phenomenon into a model that fits experiment exactly and people will listen to you even if you must revolutionize physics -- 8. Albert Einstein attacks the problem "Are atoms real?" from every angle : solving a centuries-old riddle in seven different ways can finally resolve it -- 9. Niels Bohr models the hydrogen atom as a quantized system with compelling exactness, but his later career proves that collaboration and developing new talent can become more significant than the groundbreaking research of any individual -- 10. Conclusions, status of science, and lessons for our time. Conclusions from our biographies -- What thought processes lead to innovation? -- Is the scientist an outsider? -- The status of the modern scientific enterprise -- Lessons for our time -- Can the scientific method be applied to public policy? -- Why so little interest in science? -- Knowledge is never complete. (shrink)

Max Weber famously wrote that world images determine the tracks along which societies move. This article examines the relation between world images and the so-called tracks of society, which in this metaphor resemble the current concept of institution. This concept is now associated with the ‘new institutionalisms’ in social science and has no connection to the civilizational level of analysis that Weber used. This article reexamines Weber’s usage of the terms and employs the terms to analyze differences in the principles (...) of legitimacy between those emerging in the West and those in China, differences that Weber himself did not recognize. (shrink)

Rutherford and Lindell (2011) review an extensive literature on lateralization of emotion. As they note, an important issue surrounding this question is the nature of emotion, which bears on what, precisely, is lateralized. The present comments are intended to broaden the context of the review, by considering lateralization from the standpoint of a bivariate model of evaluative processes and a neuroevolutionary perspective.

Some have argued that because factually meaningful assertions must be falsifiable, putative theistic assertions such as “God loves us” are not meaningful because they are not falsifiable. It is further suggested that every attempt to make a factually significant theistic assertion founders on the same shoal of falsifiability.

The precise relationship between the autonomic nervous system and emotion has been a topic of intense debate and research throughout the history of modern psychology. The present article considers some of the more influential theoretical frameworks that continue to drive contemporary research on the relationship between emotion and physiological processes. In particular, we highlight the multiple routes through which somatovisceral afference influences emotion and how this relates to the topic of emotion-specific patterns of autonomic nervous system activity.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Karl Marx issued several critiques of political economy writings stressing the exclusive duality of states and the national economies. He argued that capitalism had characteristic features quite apart from those shaped by the idiosyncrasies of national economies. In the first part of this article, we critique the contemporary state-centered explanations for the industrialization of East Asia on same grounds. We claim that most political economists misinterpret or entirely ignore the significance of export-led industrialization, which is a (...) characteristic feature of East Asian capitalism. In the second part of the article, we demonstrate the importance of the retail revolution in the US and Europe on Asian industrialization. In particular, we show that the development of the sequential ordering system that is an inherent feature of Western-based contract manufacturing differentially shaped the industrial organization of East Asian economies. The resulting path-dependent trajectories of development, in turn, encouraged government policy-makers to ‘buy into’ trends of global capitalism in different ways. The trajectories also led business people to privilege and adapt some social institutions and cultural patterns over other ones. (shrink)

Excellence in the care of hospital patients, particularly those in an intensive care unit, reflects esprit de corps among the care team. Esprit de corps depends on a delicate balance; each clinician must preserve a sense of personal responsibility for “my” patient and yet participate in the collaborative work essential to the care of “our” patient. A harmful imbalance occurs when a physician demands total control of the decision-making process, especially concerning end-of-life treatment options. Although emotional factors may push a (...) physician to claim decision-making exclusivity, compounded by a legal framework that overemphasizes individual responsibility, esprit de corps can be preserved through timely communication among clinicians and a recognition that optimal care for “my” patient requires effective team practice. (shrink)

THE TWO-FOLD PURPOSE OF THIS DISCUSSION IS: (1) TO CRITICIZE THE FIRST THREE OF HUME�S REASONS FOR REJECTING AS UNRELIABLE THE HISTORICAL RECORDS OF MIRACLES; (2) TO DRAW A DISTINCTION BETWEEN DESCRIPTION AND EXPLANATION WHICH CHALLENGES THE "A PRIORI" JUDGEMENT THAT AUTHENTIC MIRACLE REPORTS CANNOT FORM A RELIABLE PART OF HISTORY. HUME FAILED TO REALIZE THAT THE NATURALISTIC EXPLAINABILITY OF AN EVENT SAID TO BE A MIRACLE IS NOT LOGICALLY IMPLIED BY ITS ACCURATE DESCRIPTION.

Behrendt & Young's (B&Y's) theory offers a potentially important perspective on the neurobiology of schizophrenia, but it remains incomplete. In addition to bottom-up contributions, such as those associated with disturbances in sensory constraints on cognitive processes, a comprehensive model requires the integration of the consequences of abnormal top-down modulation of input processing for the evolution of “underconstrained” perceptions. Dysfunctional cholinergic modulation of input functions represents a necessary mechanism for the generation of false perceptions.

ABSTRACT The expansion of health research to low and middle income countries has increased the likelihood of exploitation and undue influence in economically vulnerable populations. In behavioral research, “reasonable availability”, which was originally developed for biomedical research and advocates for the equitable provision of any product developed during the research process, cannot always prevent exploitation. In such cases and settings, the informed consent process may lack cross-cultural validity and therapeutic misconceptions may arise. This article advocates for a mutual learning framework (...) where international researchers can gain cultural competence while training and empowering local partners, increasing community ownership of health research. (shrink)

Microtubules are organized into diverse cellular structures in multicellular organisms. How is such diversity generated? Although highly conserved overall, variable regions within α‐ and β‐tubulins show divergence from other α‐ and β‐tubulins in the same species, but show conservation among different species. Such conservation raises the question of whether diversity in tubulin structure mediates diversity in microtubule organization. Recent studies probing the function of β‐tubulin isotypes in axonemes of insects(1) suggest that tubulin structure, through interactions with extrinsic proteins, can direct (...) the architecture and supramolecular organization of microtubules. (shrink)

Evaluative processes have their roots in early evolutionary history, as survival is dependent on an organism’s ability to identify and respond appropriately to positive, rewarding or otherwise salubrious stimuli as well as to negative, noxious, or injurious stimuli. Consequently, evaluative processes are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom and are represented at multiple levels of the nervous system, including the lowest levels of the neuraxis. While evolution has sculpted higher level evaluative systems into complex and sophisticated information-processing networks, they do not (...) come to replace, but rather to interact with more primitive lower level representations. Indeed, there are basic features of the underlying neuroarchitectural plan for evaluative processes that are common across levels of organization—including that of evaluative bivalence. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 150-152.

Fear, sadness, surprise, anger, lust and love - virtually nothing was more important in the paintings ofthe Golden Age than convincingly depicting human emotions. In this publication, the Frans Hals Museum and Rembrandt expert Gary Schwartz present a selection of masterpieces in which these emotions are sublimely portrayed. According to seventeenth-century connoisseurs, the beauty of a painting was not even half as important as the passions that could be seen in that painting; they formed the soul of the (...) work. Painters such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Maerten van Heemskerck and Cornelis van Haarlem were masters at depicting a range of emotions. Their works are presented in a new context - the emotional life - and with a focus on the flourishing scientific study of emotions in our own time. Emotions will be published in conjunction with the first exhibition in the Netherlands to present this essential component of painting. Exhibition: Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands (11.10.2014-15.02.2015). (shrink)

This article observes that one of the most interesting developments in tort scholarship during recent years has been the emergence of a literature analyzing tort problems from feminist perspectives. The article looks at three of the areas that feminist writers have explored: the possibility of a "reasonable woman" standard as an alternative to the "reasonable man"; the possible recognition of a duty to rescue, which allegedly would be in harmony with feminist ethics; and the issue of how the tort system (...) should respond to types of harms that are disproportionately suffered by women. The article concludes that the feminist discussions of these topics have enriched the discourse of tort. Still, those discussions have been, in significant respects, inadequate. They have failed, for example, to take advantage of the relevant empirical information; and certain key issues relating to legal history and legal theory have remained underdeveloped. (shrink)

No one need deny the importance of language to thought and cognition. At the same time, there is a tendency in studies of mind and mental functioning to assume that properties and principles of linguistic, or language-like, forms of representation must hold of forms of thought and representation in general. Consideration of a wider range of symbol systems shows that this is not so. In turn, various claims and arguments in cognitive theory that depend on assumptions applicable only to linguistic (...) systems, do not go through or become difficult to state in a manner that makes them both interesting and plausible. (shrink)

The qigong state of bigu is believed to be supported by the absorption of qi from the universe. Gamma radiation is ubiquitous in the cosmos and, according to some, may be a possible source of energy for cellular functioning. When the concept of energy is integrated with the concept of dynamical systems, the logic leads to the theory—termed systemic memory—that predicts all systems, from the micro to macro, store information and energy to various degrees. New research indicates that the human (...) body absorbs gamma radiation from the environment and emits high-frequency X rays. There are substantial individual differences in these effects that appear to be related, in part, to the psychological state of the person. Future research can determine if bigu is associated with increased absorption of gamma radiation and/or decreased emission of high frequency X rays. The hypothesis that qi can be viewed as quality information is proposed. (shrink)