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At least 451 records · Page 25Linked to original sources
PubMed2004

Virokines in the pathogenesis of cancer: focus on human herpesvirus 8.

During evolution, DNA viruses have captured a broad array of cellular genes involved in immune recognition and growth control that are nonessential for viral replication. The encoded virokines and viroceptors may act as mimetics or antagonists of their cellular homologues, altering signal transduction and cell communication towards survival of virus-infected cells. Human herpesvirus type 8 (HHV8) is the most recently identified human oncogenic herpesvirus. It is associated with Kaposi's sarcoma and lymphoproliferative diseases, such as pleural effusion lymphomas and multicentric Castleman's disease. HHV8 has captured a unique number of cellular regulatory genes, which redirect gene expression and cell growth, prevent apoptosis and immune recognition, and interfere with tumor suppressor gene function. HHV8 encodes a unique virokine, viral interleukin-6, which is particularly relevant for the pathogenesis of HHV8-associated tumors, since it participates in transformation and mediates autocrine and paracrine mitogenic and proinflammatory effects. Viral IL-6 differs fundamentally from human IL-6 in receptor engagement for signal transduction and thus constitutes a singular model to understand the facets of human and viral cytokine biology. We provide an overview of the role of virokines in cancer, with a particular focus on the differences of human and viral IL-6 in the pathophysiology of HHV8-associated tumors.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

The measurement of body-mind-spirit well-being toward multidimensionality and transcultural applicability.

The Body-Mind-Spirit model of health promotion (Chan, Ho&Chow, 2002) guided the construction of a multidimensional inventory for assessing holistic health. Named Body-Mind-Spirit Well-Being Inventory (BMSWBI), it comprises four scales: Physical Distress, Daily Functioning, Affect, and Spirituality (differentiated from religiosity and conceived as ecumenical). Respondents (674 Chinese adults from Hong Kong) completed the BMSWBI via the Internet. Results indicate that all four scales have high reliability, with alpha coefficients ranging from .87 to .92, and concurrent validity. Factor analysis indicates that (a) positive and negative affect form two distinct factors; and (b) spirituality comprises three distinct aspects, tranquility, resistance to disorientation, and resilience. Spirituality is positively associated with mental well-being, positive affect, satisfaction with life, and hope; but negatively associated with negative affect and perceived stress. These results suggest that the inventory may be used to assess different dimensions of health satisfactorily.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Building bridges between body and mind: The analysis of an adolescent with paralyzing chronic pain.

This paper describes the evaluation, initial psychotherapy and subsequent psychoanalysis of an adolescent who presented with a severe psychosomatic process involving total body pain and profound fatigue. The author details the complex and multifaceted nature of the psychosomatic process as it unfolded in the treatment. The psychosomatic problem was not a single entity, but rather was comprised of diverse interwoven elements such as somatization, conversion on pre-oedipal and oedipal levels, conflicts over aggression, sexuality, identity, masochism, secondary gain, anaclitic depression, internalized self-other interactions with a depressed mother and transgenerational transmission of trauma. The author uses the case material to discuss technical approaches to problems that often arise in the analytic treatment of patients with complicated chronic pain and fatigue as the primary complaints. Such approaches include respecting the mind-body split as a primary defense, speaking the language of the body along with the language of the mind and developing the verbal sphere around the non-verbal symptoms. The author emphasizes that complicated chronic pain problems are common and can be helped by psychoanalysis as long as the unique and complex features are understood and reflected in the technical approach.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

The construct of control in mind-body medicine: implications for healthcare.

Research suggests that one of the principal reasons patients are attracted to alternative medicine is that they find many of these therapies more congruent with their philosophical orientation toward health. Many mind-body approaches, which are some of the most frequently used classifications of complementary and alternative therapies, grow out of research demonstrating the important role of psychological factors in treating and preventing illness. This article reviews research on one such factor--control--and its importance in health. Studies demonstrating the following are highlighted: (1) illness frequently results in feelings of loss of control; (2) gaining a sense of control can help patients to cope with illness; (3) whereas control may influence physiological function and health outcomes, the amount of active control we can exercise over physical functioning and health is limited; and (4) it is important to match control strategies to patient control styles and preferences. The implications of mind-body studies are also discussed.

Complementary Therapies↗
PubMed2002

Mind-body techniques in wound healing.

Even the most skilled and resourceful wound care provider encounters stagnation of wound healing from time to time. Patients with chronic, nonhealing wounds often display negative thought patterns and behavioral tendencies that, in turn, hinder biological and emotional healing. An increasing body of research supports the negative effect of stress on wound healing. The impact of deeper, emotion-based "wounds" as complicating factors in conventional wound healing are being further explored. It is theorized that emotions such as lack of self worth, guilt, and anger are strongly correlated to the chronic, nonhealing wound. Mind-body techniques such as affirmations, creative visualization, relaxation, and conscious breathing are suggested for incorporation into the treatment program. These techniques seek to empower and engage the patient by promoting greater personal awareness and assertion in the healing process. Wound care providers are seen as facilitators of the innate healing potential inside each individual. Mind-body techniques are offered as a complement for a more comprehensive wound healing strategy.

Humans↗
PubMed2003

Mind-body concepts and mental illness: a study of Japanese values.

This paper examines Japanese mind-body concepts and attempts to tease out some of the ways this philosophical orientation influences the Japanese view of mental illness. An analysis of key Japanese words will demonstrate that traditionally the Japanese have viewed the mind and body as inextricably intertwined and that this interconnectedness extends to the Japanese self conceptualization. It is argued that this Japanese value orientation sheds light on the stigma associated with mental illness and equally helps to explain the Japanese tendency to somatisize psychological distress. Because "mental" illness is perceived as a character weakness, "somatic talk" becomes a culturally coded idiom of distress providing the Japanese with a culturally acceptable way to influence the behavior of others while at the same time avoiding being labeled with a psychiatric disorder. Somatization in Japan, then, can be understood as an inherently ethical event that has more to do with morals than medicine.

Humans↗
PubMedDate not supplied

On the psycho- in psychophysiology: notes for a history of the mind-body effect.

One hundred and twenty-five years of the dialogue between psychology and physiology reveal a vibrant discussion about the mind-body effect--the ability of waking consciousness to influence its own normally unconscious physiology through conscious intention, and conversely, the reciprocal effect of physiology on consciousness. In the early phase, the data remained largely anecdotal. Scientific study of the emotions then opened the door to dynamic theories of the subconscious. Such formulations, however, were repeatedly overshadowed by concurrent advances in brain neurophysiology, which rejected not only any exploration of the unconscious that relied on the method of symbolism, but also the reality of the unconscious itself. Nevertheless, scientific advances at the interface between psychology and physiology persisted. Since the 1950s, however, there has been an explosion of new work in the neurosciences at the interface between molecular genetics, endocrinology, neurology, immunology, and psychiatry. This has fueled both new research and renewed discussion about the mind-body effect, a dialogue that is now, in part, also a response to a counter-culture revolution occurring at the interface between the delivery of clinical services throughout the healthcare professions and an increasingly sophisticated consumer demand for alternative and complementary therapies.

Consciousness↗
PubMed2004

Toxic success and the mind of a surgeon.

In his role of invited lecturer to the 75th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Coast Surgical Association in Maui, Hawaii, Dr Pearsall shared some of the results of his clinical study of highly successful persons and how their success and their pursuit of it often resulted in health and family problems. He highlighted 15 of his findings related directly to the physicians and surgeons included in his sample and suggested that healthy success is related less to time management than attention management. He pointed out that hard work, time pressure, stress, and a demanding schedule had less of a toxic effect than a lack of mindful engagement with life and those with whom we share it. He concluded with 5 ancient Hawaiian principles of healthy success Hawaiian style, the concept of po'okela, meaning achieving excellence through mindful awareness of shared values rather than individual objectives.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1993

Society, mind and body in chronic fatigue syndrome: an anthropological view.

An anthropological view of chronic fatigue syndrome places the study of illness in social context. Data from an interview study of 50 chronically fatigued patients demonstrate the relation of local social worlds--families, workplaces, communities--to the meaning and experience of illness. Negative life events and difficulties, multiple commitments, and a hectic pace are among prominent themes in the subjects' local worlds. These themes are reflected in: (1) attributions of illness onset to social sources, (2) the symbolism of the core complaint of fatigue, and (3) an illness-induced, positively valued lifestyle transformation suggesting the rejection of culturally prescribed 'busyness'. Dichotomous definitions of the relation of mind and body are shown to be part of culture, not Nature, in the paper's second section. The 'mind-body dichotomy' and the differing values attached to physical and psychological disorders by a naturalistic scientific paradigm explain the delegitimizing experiences of sufferers, who find their illness dismissed as psychosomatic and therefore 'not real'. A conceptualization of chronic fatigue syndrome which links local social worlds to psychological distress, felt bodily sensation and biological changes is proposed. Collaborative teams of social scientists and medical researchers might fruitfully pursue aspects of social context in relation to psychiatric, immunological and viral dimensions of the illness.

Culture↗
PubMed1993

What is the mind-body problem?

The mind-body problem exists because we naturally want to include the mental life of conscious organisms in a comprehensive scientific understanding of the world. On the one hand it seems obvious that everything that happens in the mind depends on, or is, something that happens in the brain. On the other hand the defining features of mental states and events, features like their intentionality, their subjectivity and their conscious experiential quality, seem not to be comprehensible simply in terms of the physical operation of the organism. This is not just because we have not yet accumulated enough empirical information: the problem is theoretical. We cannot at present imagine an explanation of colour perception, for example, which would do for that phenomenon what chemistry has done for combustion--an explanation which would tell us in physical terms, and without residue, what the experience of colour perception is. Philosophical analyses of the distinguishing features of the mental that are designed to get us over this hurdle generally involve implausible forms of reductionism, behaviouristic in inspiration. The question is whether there is another way of bringing mental phenomena into a unified conception of objective reality, without relying on a narrow standard of objectivity which excludes everything that makes them interesting.

Animals↗
PubMed1998

The nested networks of brains and minds.

The reductionist approach to the brain shows promise of revolutionizing our ideas about what single neurons can do. A spine on a cortical pyramidal cell is about the size of a single Escherichia coli, and if the internal machinery of a spine is anything like as well organized as that of E. coli, the whole pyramidal cell with its 5000 spines must be capable of computations an order of magnitude more complex than those demanded of the neurons used for current models of the brain. These computations might enable single neurons to detect spatiotemporal patterns, i.e. Hebb's 'phase sequences'. Reductionism is apparently limited because its drive is to look for explanations at lower levels in the organizational tree. For this purpose it often uses isolated preparations in which such lower levels can be studied but higher levels cannot, because they have been thrown down the sink. Reductionism will never lead us to understand organization and interaction in parts discarded or ignored, and this must include the interactions between individual human minds that are crucial for understanding human society. Our brains possess a 'commentary system', a mechanism that can make reports on the internal status of some parts of the brain. This makes possible networks of minds, and the present meeting is such a network whose interactions are being recorded for posterity. On a grander scale such networking creates a cultural forum where communal goals and purposes are formulated, disseminated, modified, and often perpetuated in lasting form. The resulting group behaviour has obvious survival value, and is perhaps the feature that distinguishes humans most clearly from other species.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

The information-processing approach to the human mind: Basics and beyond.

Cognitive psychology attempts to understand the nature of the human mind by using the information-processing approach. In this article, the fundamentals of the cognitive approach will be presented. It will be argued that the human mind can be described at three levels-computational, algorithmic-representational, and implementational-and that the cognitive approach has both important theoretical and practical/clinical implications. Finally, it will be suggested that the study of cognitive psychology can provide a foundation for other fields of social science, including the field of clinical psychology.

Cognition↗
PubMed2002

A space for measuring mind and brain: interdisciplinarity and digital tools in the development of brain mapping and functional imaging, 1980-1990.

Brain mapping is said to have opened up the possibility of a new collaboration between the sciences of mind and the sciences of the brain, potentially leading to a new kind of scientist, sometimes called "cognitive neuroscientist." This article traces the recent history of brain mapping and analyzes the processes that have led to a new "close working relationship" between the sciences of mind and brain. A key part of the working relationship is shown to be constituted through the development of the Talairach system, a digital space in which to measure structure and function. The development of meaningful brain mapping data involves the creation of measurement spaces that allow interdisciplinary collaboration and is not the result solely of theoretical developments or of the application of a technology.

Brain↗
PubMed1996

Theory of mind and pragmatic understanding following right hemisphere damage.

It has been maintained that 3-year-olds' difficulties in correctly predicting the undesired outcome of false beliefs reflects difficulties in interpreting the implications of conversations rather than a conceptual limitation in their theory of mind. As the right hemisphere has been seen to be responsible for the interpretation of the pragmatic aspects of communication, right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) and left-hemisphere-damaged (LHD) adult patients in our study were compared on their ability to correctly draw inferences in false belief tasks. The RHD but not the LHD patients were found to have difficulties similar to those of young children in understanding the conversational implications test questions. Most reported that a central story character would look for a pet in the place where it was really located instead of where the character believed it was located. However, when then asked in a control question where the pet really was, the RHD patients often switched their answer to the test question and referred to the believed location. Removal of the need to infer the questioner's meaning enabled both RHD and LHD subjects to make correct false belief predictions. The results are discussed in terms of the effects of brain damage on spatial memory and the pragmatic demands of theory of mind tasks.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

What does the frontomedian cortex contribute to language processing: coherence or theory of mind?

The frontomedian cortex (FMC) has been shown to be important for coherence processes in language comprehension, i.e., for establishing the pragmatic connection between successively presented sentences. The same brain region has a role during theory-of-mind processes, i.e., during the attribution of other people's actions to their motivations, beliefs, or emotions. In this study, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 T to disentangle the relative contributions of the FMC to theory-of-mind (ToM) and coherence processes, respectively. The BOLD response of nine participants was recorded while they listened to pragmatically coherent or unrelated sentence pairs. Using a logic instruction for inanimate sentence pairs, ToM processing was discouraged during the first part of the experiment. Using explicit ToM instructions for sentence pairs mentioning human protagonists, ToM processing was induced during the second part. In three of the resulting four conditions a significant increase in the BOLD response was observed in FMC: when ToM instructions were given, both coherent and incoherent trials elicited frontomedian activation, in replication of previous results showing involvement of the FMC during ToM tasks. When logic instructions were given, the coherent trials, but not the incoherent trials, activated the FMC. These results clearly show that the FMC plays a role in coherence processes even in the absence of concomitant ToM processes. The findings support the view of this cortex having a domain-independent functionality related to volitional aspects of the initiation and maintenance of nonautomatic cognitive processes.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Creativity in biology and in the human mind (manifestation of concepts).

The article is based on the widely held notion that creativity is a phenomenon studied in two branches of the science of life: psychology (in a wide sense) on one side, and evolutionary biology on the other. Therefore, an analysis of creativity of the mind should contribute to the solution of problems in biological evolution, problems which cannot be fully explained by the orthodox assumption of small steps of mutation and selection. This analysis is restricted to three classes of creativity, which are: a) organismal creativity, as exemplified by the creation of organs such as "eye" and "heart". b) mental-scientific creativity, exemplified by Newton's notion of "gravity" between planets and stars. c) mental-technological creativity, exemplified by Gutenberg's invention of "printing by movable types". The analysis of these classes is based on concepts, which are interrelated structurally by means of propositions. Two types of propositions are distinguished: factual ones named "cognita", and hypothetical ones named "hypothetical episodes". A further basis of the analysis is the assumption that creativity consists of several phases, of which incubation and insight are the essential ones. In carrying out the analysis, the writer shows that incubation functions on two or three lines of thought, one of which can be expressed by factual cognita, and the other ones predominantly by hypothetical episodes. Those several lines are integrated by means of logical implication, by which insight into a novel concept is obtained. In a second method of analysis, the several lines of incubation are represented by networks. In this method, the novel concept is obtained by integrating the individual networks into a common structure. It is proved that the methods of analysis described above can be applied to all three classes of creativity definined previously. Drawing conclusions from the analysis, the writer points out that the organismal concepts were manifested in biological evolution many millions of years prior to the appearance of man and his brain on earth. The writer, therefore, argues that a great number of concepts are not a creation of man's mind, but are entities which pre-existed man and were manifested to him. Such concepts may be conceived as forming a time-independent "conceptual universe" external to the "material universe" of galaxies, stars and organisms. Thus, for example, the concept of an "eye" was manifested in biological evolution as the organ "eye" of many organisms. Much later, this concept was manifested to man, when he invented the optical camera.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Animals↗
PubMed1985

The clinical use of mindfulness meditation for the self-regulation of chronic pain.

Ninety chronic pain patients were trained in mindfulness meditation in a 10-week Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program. Statistically significant reductions were observed in measures of present-moment pain, negative body image, inhibition of activity by pain, symptoms, mood disturbance, and psychological symptomatology, including anxiety and depression. Pain-related drug utilization decreased and activity levels and feelings of self-esteem increased. Improvement appeared to be independent of gender, source of referral, and type of pain. A comparison group of pain patients did not show significant improvement on these measures after traditional treatment protocols. At follow-up, the improvements observed during the meditation training were maintained up to 15 months post-meditation training for all measures except present-moment pain. The majority of subjects reported continued high compliance with the meditation practice as part of their daily lives. The relationship of mindfulness meditation to other psychological methods for chronic pain control is discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1993

Drawing the boundary between subject and object: comments on the mind-brain problem.

Physics says that it cannot deal with the mind-brain problem, because it does not deal in subjectivities, and mind is subjective. However, biologists (among others) still claim to seek a material basis for subjective mental processes, which would thereby render them objective. Something is clearly wrong here. I claim that what is wrong is the adoption of too narrow a view of what constitutes 'objectivity', especially in identifying it with what a 'machine' can do. I approach the problem in the light of two cognate circumstances: (a) the 'measurement problem' in quantum physics, and (b) the objectivity of standard mathematics, even though most of it is beyond the reach of 'machines'. I argue that the only resolution to such problems is in the recognition that closed loops of causation are 'objective'; i.e. legitimate objects of scientific scrutiny. These are explicitly forbidden in any machine or mechanism. A material system which contains such loops is called 'complex'. Such complex systems thus must possess non-simulable models; i.e. models which contain impredicativities or 'self-references' which cannot be removed, or faithfully mapped into a single coherent syntactic time-frame. I consider a few of the consequences of the above, in the context of thus redrawing the boundary between subject and object.

Biophysical Phenomena↗