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The Psychiatric Body
Published in Roger Cooter, John Pickstone, Medicine in the Twentieth Century, 2020
In the final decades of the twentieth century, these theoretical, experimental, and diagnostic developments inspired a massive research campaign to determine the physical correlates of every possible form of psychopathology. Studies have cascaded from the press dealing with the neurophysiology of hysteria, brain cell loss in bipolar affective disorders, basal ganglia and limbic system dysfunction in obsessive-compulsive disorders, positron emission tomographical image measurements of borderline personality disorders, parietal glucose metabolic rate change of anorexia nervosa patients, and volumetric analyses of the brain and cerebrospinal fluid of severe depressives. Genetic studies of hysteria, agoraphobia, panic disorder, depression, and hypochondriasis have appeared. Schizophrenia is the most interpreted disease category in modern psychiatry. Organically inclined psychiatrists have variously associated schizophrenic illness with a diminution of higher cortical function, weakened left hemisphere function, hypofunction of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the prefrontal cortex, and lowered levels of blood flow in the frontal lobes. Building on nineteenth-century work on cerebral lateralization, researchers have studied differential hemispheric brain function in all the major psychiatric disorders. A new subfield, psychoneuroendocrinology, has investigated psychiatric aspects of the interaction between the body’s glands — the thyroid, the adrenals, the part of the pancreas that produces insulin, and the sexual glands — on the central nervous system.
Historical Perspectives on Psychoneuroimmunology
Published in Herman Friedman, Thomas W. Klein, Andrea L. Friedman, Psychoneuroimmunology, Stress, and Infection, 2020
The notion of integration is neither new nor, for the most part, can it be considered controversial. It was David Hamburg, I think, who pointed out that biochemistry, a hybrid discipline, was initially viewed as a combination of poor biology and weak chemistry. Today, it is basic and central to the study of medicine. Psychopharmacology is a recognition of the fact that drug effects depend to a large extent on the state of the organism into whom they are introduced. Neuroendocrinology reflects an appreciation of the fact that the functions of the endocrine system can not be fully understood without reference to its interactions with the nervous system. And psychoneuroendocrinology acknowledges that the feedback and feed forward pathways between these “systems” influence and are influenced by behavior. Hybrid disciplines are not always or solely attempts at integration or synthesis. Basic fields such as neurochemistry or immunopharmacology, and clinical subspecialties such as neuropsychiatry, for example, designate a focus within a parent “discipline.” In fact, in keeping with the Zeitgeist of the biomedical model, the latter reductionistic referent is probably the more common one.
Psychophysiology of Imagery and Healing: A Systems Perspective
Published in Anees A. Sheikh, Imagination and Healing, 2019
This chapter has focused on the potential healing properties of imagery, emphasizing the systems concepts of connection and information interpretation as they influence self-regulation occurring at biological, psychological and social levels. This chapter has not discussed the opposite side of the coin, namely the disconnection/disregulation/disorder role that imagery can play in promoting disease [19]. However, the logic of how the theory can be applied to imagery that is disconnecting and therefore is psychophysiologically disordering should be self-evident. Also, this chapter has not discussed the applications of the theory to psychoneuroendocrinology and psychoneuroimmunology, two important new interdisciplinary fields within behavioral medicine. Again, the logic of how the theory can be applied to imagery/neural/immune connections that should promote self-regulation and healing at multiple levels in disorders such as cancer should be self-evident.
A thank-you note from the Chief-Editor
Published in The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, 2019
The journal aims to publish original work derived from research on the full spectrum of biological mechanisms, encompassing classical and novel techniques in biological psychiatry, as well as strategies such as neuroimaging, genetics, neuropsychopharmacology, psychoneuroendocrinology and neuropsychology. Furthermore, the journal aims to educate the scientific community by publishing treatment guidelines, consensus reports and reviews. Since publications need to be processed timely, the maximum of days from submission to decision in the WJBP has been benchmarked to around 71 days. The total citation volume rose from 1054 in 2010 to 2165 in 2017, which indicates a good standing in the scientific community. As some journals have high numbers of self-cites, which in turn also affects the IF, it is worth mentioning that our journal is in the lower range of about 2.5% self-cites, which went into the IF calculation in 2017. The WJBP follows a hybrid model with regard to open access, e.g., the authors can submit manuscripts with or without open access, which from my point-of-view is important to maintain, since not all authors have the monetary background to finance their publications, for which they usually have to pay between € 2,000 and € 3,000 per article.
What is the relative contribution of biological and psychosocial factors to the generation of hypoxia headache?
Published in Canadian Journal of Pain, 2018
Diletta Barbiani, Eleonora Camerone, Fabrizio Benedetti
In 1977, Engel1 challenged the medical and scientific community by putting forward a new medical model that takes into account biological, psychological, and social factors as important determinants of illness. According to this biopsychosocial model, the anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of different organs and systems take an important part in the emergence and course of illness, yet they are not enough, because additional factors must be included in a global model of illness. Many psychological and social aspects have been recognized over the centuries by physicians and psychologists as contributing factors to the emergence of certain diseases, but the scientific formulation of such a contribution is relatively recent.2 This is attributable to the recent emergence of modern concepts in psychosomatics, psychoneuroimmunology, and psychoneuroendocrinology.
Epistemological reflections on chances and borders of “biological psychiatry”
Published in The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, 2021
Georg Juckel, Paraskevi Mavrogiorgou
In addition – and this is too often underestimated in view of the complex psychoneuroendocrinology or immunology – the psyché is formed and influenced by many other physical functions (Roth 2003). There are complex interactions between body and mind, as a result of which somatic symptoms are formed as an expression of many mental disorders (e.g. depression) in which the entire organism comprising body, mind and psyché falls ill. This alone – the close connection and interplay between them – increases the demand and complexity of scientific explanations almost immeasurably. Body, mind and psyché are intertwined, their respective parts difficult to separate from each other, because presumably they are only order categories created by us and we (i.e. our brain, tempting in self-knowledge) cannot do otherwise, being evolutionarily designed in such a way that further abilities beyond these probably do not offer a selection advantage (McGinn 1999). This close interconnection of body and mind has nowadays led to the hypothesis of the so-called ‘embodied mind’, which was foreseen be e.g. Schopenhauer long ago (Baptista 2020). Regarding the brain, for example, we have to distinguish the following: it is the control centre of the organism, therefore primarily only a physical ‘organ’ that always reacts appropriately to certain stimuli, just like any other organ. However, as a control centre it is closely linked to all physical function because it reacts accordingly, or in case of difficulties with other organs it is also activated and reacts. Thus, on the one hand, mind and consciousness seem to arise as a primary activity of the brain and, on the other hand, psychic functions are an expression of the ontogenetical-phylogenetical and developmental-psychological cooperation of brain and body; however, these very important and decisive points have to be neglected here (Edelman and Tononi 2000). Basically, every mental disorder is primarily a reaction of an organ or organs, with the usual reaction of the human body, such as inflammation, hormonal/metabolic changes and adjustment of regulatory circuits. Therefore, all psychiatric illnesses – presumably rather at a micro- than macrofunctional level, which cannot be further investigated up to now– must be seen primarily as organic and, in the stricter sense, as brain-organic illnesses. Indeed, several factors such as environment (e.g. city, nature), the socio-cultural life and so on play a major role here, since they also build up neuronal ‘engrams’ and changed brain´s microcircuit, which we should call all as (brain-)organic disease. The brain is not something extraordinary, which many people think. It provides a complex steering tool, developed during evolution for adjusting and surviving of such an organism interaction with the environment. Therefore, scientific investigation of mind and psyché failed to forget the (brain-)organic side on the one hand, but also the multi-level bidirectional interactions between the central and peripheral nerve systems with all kind of inner and outer environments (including mental processes of course). Biological psychiatry has definitively a further need to deepen and enhance such approaches (one basal example for that could be findings relating neurobiology and psychotherapy (Juckel and Edel 2013).