Aristotle is oftentimes viewed through a strictly philosophical lens as heir to Plato and has having introduced logical rigor where an emphasis on the theory of Forms formerly prevailed. It must be appreciated that Aristotle was the son of a physician, and that his inculcation of the thought of other Greek philosophers addressing health and the natural elements led to an extremely broad set of biologically- and medically-related writings. As this article proposes, Aristotle deepened the fourfold theory of the elements (...) with anatomic and physiologic observations. In books like History of Animals, Parts of Animals, and the lost Anatomai, he actively dissected organisms and recorded his findings. The corpus of medically-related literature Aristotle developed had a direct influence on subsequent Greek thinkers, including Galen, and on Medieval Islamic and modern Western practitioners such as William Harvey. Aristotle's ideas continue to influence modern medical thinkers in Europe and America through both his interpretation by European philosophers gaining the attention of medical humanists, and his writings' enduring impact on medical researchers balancing scientific with more personalistic approaches to medicine. (shrink)

This paper investigates the reception of a set of Florentine anatomical wax models on display at the medico-surgical academy Josephinum in late-eighteenth-century Vienna. Celebrated in Florence as tools of public enlightenment, in the Habsburg capital the models were criticised by physicians, who regarded the Josephinum and its surgeons as a threat to their medical authority. The controversy surrounding these models from the empire’s periphery temporarily destabilised the relationship between surgeons and physicians in the Austrian capital. The (...) debate on the utility of the Tuscan anatomical models in Vienna highlights the fact that the centre of the Habsburg empire was by no means medically homogeneous, and that the implementation of reforms could be as difficult to achieve in the capital as in the provinces. (shrink)

It is now increasingly accepted that many existing biological and medical ontologies can be improved by adopting tools and methods that bring a greater degree of logical and ontological rigor. In this chapter we will focus on the merits of a logically sound approach to ontologies from a methodological point of view. As we shall see, one crucial feature of a logically sound approach is that we have clear and functional definitions of the relational expressions such as ‘is a’ and (...) ‘part of ’. (shrink)

(1963). The early teaching of anatomy at Padua, with special reference to a model of the Padua anatomical theatre. Annals of Science: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 1-26.

ABSTRACT In an unpublished anatomical treatise written around 1670, the English anatomist and fellow of the Royal Society of London Edmund King proposed that the human body was ultimately an assemblage of tubes and contained liquids. Without literally seeing every of its constituents to be tubular, how did King come to posit a tubular body? This article tackles the question by examining King’s inquiry about the pulse against his framing of the circulatory system into a universally tubular model. Asking (...) how King registered this model despite the limited visibility of vascularity in practice, I discuss the place of analogy in his anatomical observation. I argue that analogy constituted an essential strategy for extending what King had perceived to account for the hardly perceptible nuances of the human body. I concentrate on two of his analogies, in which the artery was compared to the cord and the ureter. These two analogies revealed remarkable epistemic potency in representing and reasoning the pulse as the inherent motion of the living artery. They suggest that in seventeenth-century observation accounts, analogy was not simply a rhetoric suspicious of violating the principle of scientific empiricism; rather, they opened up ways of seeing and imagining nature. (shrink)

The Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) is a map of the human body. Like maps of other sorts – including the map-like representations we find in familiar anatomical atlases – it is a representation of a certain portion of spatial reality as it exists at a certain (idealized) instant of time. But unlike other maps, the FMA comes in the form of a sophisticated ontology of its objectdomain, comprising some 1.5 million statements of anatomical relations among some 70,000 (...) anatomical kinds. It is further distinguished from other maps in that it represents not some specific portion of spatial reality (say: Leeds in 1996), but rather the generalized or idealized spatial reality associated with a generalized or idealized human being at some generalized or idealized instant of time. It will be our concern in what follows to outline the approach to ontology that is represented by the FMA and to argue that it can serve as the basis for a new type of anatomical information science. We also draw some implications for our understanding of spatial reasoning and spatial ontologies in general. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine some of the anatomical implications of Campanella's theory of magic, focusing in particular on his crìtique of Aristotle's and Galen's anatomical views. By magic Campanella meant first and foremost communication of energy and knowledge. It is no accident that he viewed both medicine and rhetoric as constitutive disciplines of magic. In doing so, he appealed to the time-honoured notion of the magic of the word theorised in ancient times by the (...) sophist Gorgias. The distinctive feature in Campanella's system of magic is that the word is both a symbolic and a physical entity. Meaning flows from nature to the mind and from the mind to nature. Words are both carriers of meanings and physical agents of psychosomatic transformation. As can be demonstrated by pointing to such paradigmatic cases as natural divination and prophecy, the force of the imagination, the patient's trust in the power of the physician or the healer, and the many influences that air exercises on the body, Campanella's theory of magic rests on a definite anatomo-physiological basis. The most original aspect, though, is the way in which Campanella reinterpreted Arìstotle's and Galen's prìnciples of anatomy so that he could adapt his medical views to the broader framework of his theory of magic (practice), on the one hand, and metaphysics (theory), on the other. In addition, Campanella's onginal account of emotions and passions supported a comprehensive system of magical practice that dispensed with the basic principles of both Aristotle's and Galen's physiology. Campanella was convinced that the vital operations of the body could not be explained by simply relying on the unsentient functions of the vegetative soul (Aristotle) or on the natural faculties of the body (Galen), nor could they be accounted for by assuming the existence of incorporeal souls (Aristotle) or bodily temperaments (Galen). By circumventing both Aristotle's hylomorphism and Galen's vital matenalism of the temperaments, and by appropriating the Stoic view of rational pneuma, he managed to produce a physiological model that was more flexible in dealing with the complex interplay of knowledge, action and appetite, and above all, better suited to account for a universe in which the flow of life and meaning encompassed varìous levels of communication. (shrink)

This article examines the cultural dimensions of synthetic ‘body fat replicas’, anatomically modelled objects used in educational and medical settings to train subjects in particular affective responses to fat/ness. Specifically, I focus on theorizing the phenomenological experience of embodied engagements with such models, and exploring the manner in which the replicas are designed to participate in the shaping of emotional orientations toward one’s own body and those of others. Appealing to the work of contemporary social and cultural theorists, I (...) consider how the capacity of objects to act as nexuses for the commingling of abstract and concrete, psychological and material, inner space and outer life, and meaning and affect situates these lumps of polyvinyl chloride as valuable aids to elucidating the cultural polyvalence of ‘fat’. This article is oriented around the application of a selection of insightful theoretical work, drawn from the multidisciplinary field of science and technology studies, as well as from sociological research on medicine and the body. I argue that, by moving toward an understanding of fat/ness as a phenomenon comprised, in Annemarie Mol’s terminology, of ‘multiple enactments’, we can better understand how ‘fat’ has come to embody particular sets of meanings and emotions in the context of a contemporary medicalized transnational culture. (shrink)

Morphological EvoDevo is a field of biological inquiry in which explicit relations between evolutionary patterns and growth or morphogenetic processes are made. Historically, morphological EvoDevo results from the coming together of several traditions, notably Naturphilosophie, embryology, the study of heterochrony, and developmental constraints. A special feature binding different approaches to morphological EvoDevo is the use of formalisms and mathematical models. Here we will introduce anatomical network analysis, a new approach centered on connectivity patterns formed by anatomical parts, (...) with its own concepts and tools specifically designed for the study of morphological EvoDevo questions. Riedl’s concept of burden is tightly related to the use of anatomical networks, providing a nexus between the evolutionary patterns and the structural constraints that shape them. (shrink)

A common object found within medical museums is the developmental series: an arrangement of embryos depicting the transformation of an unremarkable blob into an anatomically organized and recognizable organism. The developmental series depicts a normative process, one where bodies emerge in reliable sequential stages to reveal anatomically perfect beings. Yet a century before the developmental series would become a visual model of embryological development, the very process of development itself was discerned through the comparative study of preserved human fetuses—specifically, those (...) deemed “monstrous” or characterized as “malformations.” This article examines how anatomically diverse fetal bodies were reformulated from singular curiosities into alternative developmental pathways whose characteristics testified to the laws of nature and to the primordial, physical relationship between humans and other species. In early nineteenth century Amsterdam, the father-son team of physicians Gerard and Willem Vrolik built up an internationally renowned anatomical museum famous especially for Willem’s collection of fetal malformations. Physical preparations of fetal malformations play a central role in Willem’s monumental handbook on developmental embryology: comparing human embryos against one another and the embryos of other species, Willem plots out a sequence of embryological development in which a body’s form marks its place within the ever-unfolding natural order. In conversation with the literature on model organisms, this article explores how the “monstrous” gets standardized and, in doing so, contributes to the scientific production of a normative physiological process. (shrink)

The physician and philosopher Johannes Jessenius, an enthusiastic anatomist in Wittenberg, often had to defend his anatomical practices against Lutheran orthodoxy, as is apparent from the invitations he wrote concerning his dissections. His most systematic defence can be found in the introduction to his description of the dissection performed in Prague in 1600, where he provides three different strategies for the justification of anatomical research. The first method traditionally builds on the use of the ancient dictum ‘know thyself;’ (...) the second strategy is based on teleology, which Jessenius adopted from Vesalius’ work; and the final method is derived from the philosophical tradition of the Renaissance. Jessenius makes use of the concept of the dignity of man in order to support the dignity of anatomical practice. The fundamental meaning of the philosophical framework of Jessenius’s approach emerges from the comparison with both Andreas Vesalius, whose Fabric was one model for Jessenius’s anatomical work, and with the speech delivered by Adamus Zaluzanius a Zaluzaniis prior to Jessenius’s Prague anatomical performance. (shrink)

This paper proposes an outline for a typology of the different forms that scientific objects can take in the life sciences. The first section discusses preparations (or specimens)—a form of scientific object that accompanied the development of modern biology in different guises from the seventeenth century to the present: as anatomical–morphological specimens, as microscopic cuts, and as biochemical preparations. In the second section, the characteristics of models in biology are discussed. They became prominent from the end of the (...) nineteenth century onwards. Some remarks on the role of simulations—characterising the life sciences of the turn from the twentieth to the twenty-first century—conclude the paper. -/- . (shrink)

This article reviews models of the cerebellum and motor learning, from the landmark papers by Marr and Albus through those of the present time. The unique architecture of the cerebellar cortex is ideally suited for pattern recognition, but how is pattern recognition incorporated into motor control and learning systems? The present analysis begins with a discussion of exactly what the cerebellar cortex needs to regulate through its anatomically defined projections to premotor networks. Next, we examine various models showing (...) how the microcircuitry in the cerebellar cortex could be used to achieve its regulatory functions. Having thus defined what it is that Purkinje cells in the cerebellar cortex must learn, we then evaluate theories of motor learning. We examine current models of synaptic plasticity, credit assignment, and the generation of training information, indicating how they could function cooperatively to guide the processes of motor learning. (shrink)

Mathematical models of the heart have developed over a period of about 40 years. Cell types in all regions of the heart have been modelled and they are now being incorporated into anatomically detailed models of the whole organ. This combination is leading to the creation of the first ‘virtual organ,’ which is being used in drug discovery and testing, and in simulating the action of devices, such as cardiac defibrillators. Simulation is a necessary tool of analysis in (...) attempting to understand biological complexity. We often learn as much from the failures as from the successes of mathematical models. It is the iterative interaction between experiment and simulation that is important. Examples are given where this process has been instrumental in some of the major advances in the field. BioEssays 24:1155–1163, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The neuropathologies of the self are disorders of the self and identity that occur in association with neuropathology and include perturbations of the bodily, relational, and narrative self. Right, especially medial-frontal and orbitofrontal lesions, are associated with these conditions. The ego disequilibrium theory proposes this brain pathology causes a disturbance of ego boundaries and functions and the emergence of developmentally immature styles of thought, ego functioning, and psychological defenses including denial, projection, splitting, and fantasy that the NPS patient has in (...) common with the child. I hypothesize that during brain development between approximately ages 3 and 7 immature defensive functions and fantasies tend to be replaced by mature defenses and the inhibition of fantasy a process that depends upon maturational processes within the right hemisphere. I propose a four-tiered model of the NPS that emphasizes a multifactorial approach and includes both negative and positive, bottom up and top down, and neuropsychological and psychological factors. (shrink)

During the last 115 years, the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws has promulgated more than 300 uniform or model acts. These acts have been drafted to produce uniformity among state laws, and to provide clarity and stability in critical areas of the law. Uniform Anatomical Gift Acts were promulgated in 1968 and again in 1987. The third and most recent revision of the Act was promulgated in 2006 and amended in 2007. This act was placed on (...) NCCUSL’s target list; that is, commissioners were asked to make its enactment a priority in their home states. In 2007, 20 states enacted UAGA 2006; by mid-2008, UAGA 2006 had been introduced or enacted in over a dozen more states and the District of Columbia. NCCUSL’s goal for UAGA 2006 is enactment in all states by 2009. (shrink)

The rise of mathematical developments in the theories of consciousness has led to new measures to detect consciousness in a system. The Integrated Information Theory is one of the best mathematical rooted attempts to quantify the level of consciousness in a system with Φ as the effective information generated in a system above its parts. Recently, the IIT has inspired the Perturbational Complexity Index to detect conscious states in patients with disorders of consciousness, and it has shown to have almost (...) perfect classification accuracy. In this study, we explore the statistical correspondence between the theoretical Φ and the experimental PCI through a neurocomputational model of coupled oscillators that can be artificially perturbed, which mainly focuses on the dynamics of collective synchronization between subsets of brain areas. Our results reveal that both measures are statistically related but, in principle, this relationship is far to be perfect. These results are discussed in the context of the model of coupled oscillators, which mainly focuses on the dynamics of collective synchronization between subsets of brain areas. (shrink)

Epistemological esthetization of knowledge can have a lot of forms. In this article I focus my reflection on the person that is an electronic simulation model. The background for the reflections will be the simulation anatomical model Visible Human Project (VHP). The problem is what cognitive function the model fulfils and what it simulates. Conclusions: 1. VHP is not associated with real body, but with other anatomical models; it is not a simulation of real body, but only (...) a simulation of its perception by us; 2. The function of anatomical simulation model has educational character. It also involves projecting medical intervention, which minimalizes invasiveness of actions. It is a part of training preparing to undertake computer-aided surgical procedures. (shrink)

Every normally developing human infant solves the difficult problem of mapping their native-language phonology, but the neural mechanisms underpinning this behavior remain poorly understood. Here, motor constellation theory, an integrative neurophonological model, is presented, with the goal of explicating this issue. It is assumed that infants’ motor-auditory phonological mapping takes place through infants’ orosensory “reaching” for phonological elements observed in the language-specific ambient phonology, via reference to kinesthetic feedback from motor systems, and auditory feedback from resulting speech and speech-like sounds. (...) Attempts are regulated by basal ganglion–cerebellar speech neural circuitry, and successful attempts at reproduction are enforced through dopaminergic signaling. Early in life, the pace of anatomical development constrains mapping such that complete language-specific phonological mapping is prohibited by infants’ undeveloped supralaryngeal vocal tract and undescended larynx; constraints gradually dissolve with age, enabling adult phonology. Where appropriate, reference is made to findings from animal and clinical models. Some implications for future modeling and simulation efforts, as well as clinical settings, are also discussed. (shrink)

The structure of the brain and the nature of evolution suggest that, despite its uniqueness, language likely depends on brain systems that also subserve other functions. The declarative / procedural model claims that the mental lexicon of memorized word- specific knowledge depends on the largely temporal-lobe substrates of declarative memory, which underlies the storage and use of knowledge of facts and events. The mental grammar, which subserves the rule-governed combination of lexical items into complex representations, depends on a distinct neural (...) system. This system, which is composed of a network of specific frontal, basal - ganglia, parietal and cerebellar structures, underlies procedural memory, which supports the learning and execution of motor and cognitive skills, especially those involving sequences. The functions of the two brain systems, together with their anatomical, physiological and biochemical substrates, lead to specific claims and predictions regarding their roles in language. These predictions are compared with those of other neurocognitive models of language. Empirical evidence is presented from neuroimaging studies of normal language processing, and from developmental and adult- onset disorders. It is argued that this evidence supports the DP model. It is additionally proposed that “ language ” disorders, such as specific language impairment and non-fluent and fluent aphasia, may be profitably viewed as impairments primarily affecting one or the other brain system. Overall, the data suggest a new neurocognitive framework for the study of lexicon and grammar. (shrink)

The Human Embryology Collection at the Centre of Anatomy Göttingen, created between 1942 and 1970, represents a unique interrelation of histological sectional series of human embryos and large-format physical models open to the public based on them. The collection was established long after the heyday of human embryology. It is also remarkable in another aspect: while usually models within the discipline are considered research objects, Göttingen embryologist Erich Blechschmidt (1904–1992) based his understanding on a pedagogical impetus. The article (...) highlights the distinctive and unconventional features of Blechschmidt’s undertaking against its disciplinary background. My focus lies on the two practices that are central to human embryology—collecting and modelling—, as well as the derived collection stocks. The special tension between individuality and universality that already characterized the process of their creation is also reflected in the later use of the collection. This tension allowed Blechschmidt to utilize the models in embryological research and anatomical teaching as well as in the broad social debate on abortion and the ethical status of human embryos. (shrink)

This essay explores the use of stringed instruments (and in particular the harpsichord) as models of brain and cognitive function in eighteenth-century French medicine and natural philosophy. These comparisons were founded in part on the anatomical investigations of the latter half of the seventeenth century, which had established both the “fibrous” structure of the white and gray matter of the cerebrum and the vibratory movement the brain underwent in the performance of its functions. Musical instruments—and in particular the (...) harpsichord—helped these philosophers speculate about how the brain worked as the material instrument of sensation and thought: they were machines at once mechanical and affective, grounded in the materiality of their wooden boards and metal strings, yet symbolizing the rational—and immaterial—harmonies of music. (shrink)

Luigi Sacco (1769–1863) was the main protagonist of early vaccination campaign in Italy. He found a native source of vaccine lymph: with that, he personally vaccinated more than 500,000 people and furnished all Italy and some Middle East countries too. Starting from the pictures of his books, Sacco proposed to create wax models of real and spurious smallpox pustules in human, cow, sheep and horse; just to permit, not only to doctors, but also to all other health operators, the (...) identification of the right pustules from where to extract active lymph for vaccination. In the Museum of Pathological Anatomy of the Padua University Medical School, we have four anatomical waxes which corresponded exactly to the explicative pictures in 1809 Sacco’s treatise on Vaccine. We have found the same models also at the University of Milan, Pavia and Bologna—the main cities of Cisalpine Republic , the state of North Italy formed at the epoch of Sacco following the Napoleon conquest. The history of the diffusion of these models presented in this text will be a starting point to develop wider questions. In particular, this history could be useful to improve our understanding of the birth of scientific and experimental medicine through XIX and XX Century. (shrink)

Registration of a series of the two-dimensional electron microscope images of the brain tissue into volumetric form is an important technique that can be used for neuronal circuit reconstruction. However, complex appearance changes of neuronal morphology in adjacent sections bring difficulty in finding correct correspondences, making serial section neural image registration challenging. To solve this problem, we consider whether there are such stable "markers" in the neural images to alleviate registration difficulty. In this paper, we employ the spherical deformation model (...) to simulate the local neuron structure and analyze the relationship between registration accuracy and neuronal structure shapes in two adjacent sections. The relevant analysis proves that regular circular structures in the section images are instrumental in seeking robust corresponding relationships. Then, we design a new serial section image registration framework driven by this neuronal morphological model, fully utilizing the characteristics of the anatomical structure of nerve tissue and obtaining more reasonable corresponding relationships. Specifically, we leverage a deep membrane segmentation network and neural morphological physical selection model to select the stable rounded regions in neural images. Then, we combine feature extraction and global optimization of correspondence position to obtain the deformation field of multiple images. Experiments on real and synthetic serial EM section neural image datasets have demonstrated that our proposed method could achieve more reasonable and reliable registration results, outperforming the state-of-the-art approaches in qualitative and quantitative analysis. (shrink)

Although seeing is commonly experienced as a unitary activity, the scientific description of vision resists such an intuitive account. Both psychologists and neuroscientists are in agreement with the idea that the elaboration of visual information is distributed across several different routes provided with different functions. Importantly, these routes can be mapped onto well-identified anatomical subdivision of the visual system. Crucially, although originally based on the assumption that different visual information are elaborated via different neural channels, such a model is (...) nowadays used as a tool for indicating a common neural basis between action and perception. The present review is aimed at providing a description of how the modular model of visual system has developed from a model where action and perception are considered as segregate to a model where action and perception are considered ass two labels of the same concept. (shrink)

Holobionts, consisting of a host and diverse microbial symbionts, function as distinct biological entities anatomically, metabolically, immunologically, and developmentally. Symbionts can be transmitted from parent to offspring by a variety of vertical and horizontal methods. Holobionts can be considered levels of selection in evolution because they are well-defined interactors, replicators/reproducers, and manifestors of adaptation. An initial mathematical model is presented to help understand how holobionts evolve. The model offered combines the processes of horizontal symbiont transfer, within-host symbiont proliferation, vertical symbiont (...) transmission, and holobiont selection. The model offers equations for the population dynamics and evolution of holobionts whose hologenomes differ in gene copy number, not in allelic or loci identity. The model may readily be extended to include variation among holobionts in the gene identities of both symbionts and host. (shrink)

There have been repeated attempts in the history of comparative biology to provide a mechanistic account of morphological homology. However, it is well-established that homologues can develop from diverse sets of developmental causes, appearing not to share any core causal architecture that underwrites character identity. We address this challenge with a new conceptual model of Character Identity Mechanisms. ChIMs are cohesive mechanisms with a recognizable causal profile that allows them to be traced through evolution as homologues despite having a diverse (...) etiological organization. Our model hypothesizes that anatomical units at different levels of organization—cell types, tissues, and organs—have level-specific ChIMs with different conserved parts, activities, and organization. Relying on a methodology of conceptual engineering, we show how the ChIM concept advances our understanding of the developmental basis of morphological characters, while forging an important link between comparative and mechanistic biology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adolph Meyer’s Psychobiology in Historical Context, and Its Relationship to George Engel’s Biopsychosocial ModelEdwin R. Wallace IV (bio)Keywordspsychobiology, integrative models of psychiatry, biopsychosocial modelBefore addressing the importance of Adolf Meyer and the question of his impact on the biopsychosocial model of the psychoanalytical internist George Engel, let us tersely sketch the history of functionalism in medicine/psychiatry, and of the nineteenth/early twentieth century’s progressive abandonment of it in favor (...) of basic science reductive models of “disease,” not illness.FunctionalismWhereas Hippocratic physicians diagnosed diatheses in terms of humoral excesses or deficiencies, their primary emphasis was on the ill person. They began with careful histories of the patient’s complaints and his or her daily life course, customary activities, typical foods and beverages imbibed, and the exacerbation or relief of symptoms associated with any or all of these. They also asked questions about his physical and social environment. They carefully looked for any clinically pertinent signs, and might physically examine the patient or his excretions. When they arrived at a diagnosis (say, an excess of yellow or black bile, or of blood or phlegm), they would educate the patient about it and discuss possible approaches. Although leeching, emetics, or purgatives might be prescribed, “dietetics” was the core of the treatment. Much more than recommendations about dietary intake, this involved conversations about “lifestyle” management in general: exercise, fresh air, habit changes, and perhaps bathing in mineral waters or spas. If the patient were “melancholic” (which then included what we would now consider a variety of psychiatric disorders), he or she might be prescribed daily swimming and other forms of vigorous exercise, conversations with a philosopher, [End Page 347] attendance at theatrical comedies, or even referral to an Asklepian temple for “incubation sleep” and priestly dream interpretation. Often doctors worked closely with physical trainers, to whom they sent their patients. In short, their orientation was holistic (“mind”/”body” integration), directed first and foremost toward an individual ill person.In the second century, C.E. Galen, despite his humoral and anatomical pathologies, was similarly holistic or functionalist. He resorted to a variety of physical examinational methods while also attending to the patient’s mental/emotional status. He described one case where he was attending a woman for syncopal episodes. His examinations of her included his customary attention to the pulse. During one evening session, a servant entered and happened to mention that he had just seen the handsome Pylades dancing. Suddenly her pulse became irregular and she fainted straight away. This led Galen to consider love sickness, and perhaps not humoral or organ pathology. He tested his hypothesis during subsequent visits. Whenever another dancer or actor was mentioned, her pulse remained regular and her sensorium alert, but when Pylades was mentioned the irregular pulse and fainting recurred. Because she was married, Galen realized her insoluble conflict, and treated her accordingly.From the fall of Rome until the rise of University Medicine in the later Middle Ages, medical lore and doctoring was in monastic hands—each monastery had its clerical medic, who might also attend outsiders. They were attuned to the traditional triad of major mental disorders—mania, melancholia, and phrenitis—which they explained somatically. However, they also encountered lesser mental/emotional disorders for which they developed their own nosology. “Scrupulosity,” for example, characterized a committed monk with an unrealistic sense of sinfulness and guilt—which often drove him to self-mortification such as flagellation, hair shirts with chains underneath, and so forth, for which the remedy was kindly pastoral counseling. “Accedia” was akin to our “dysthymia,” whose sufferer was affected by sadness, lassitude, and impaired capacity to carry out the monastic routine. This was viewed as straddling the boundary between sickness and sin. Routine physical labor (“occupational therapy”) and prayers, confession, penance, and “pep talks” were prescribed.When universities with medical schools arose in the latter Middle Ages, students’ educations were mostly bookish and theoretical. Hippocratic and Galenic somatic orientations were still preeminent. (Vesalius would not publish his illustrated anatomical text until 1543.) Dietetics and purgatives, bloodletting, and so on were still favored treatments. Nevertheless, doctors gave considerable time and attention to their patients as ill... (shrink)

Transient global amnesia is a benign memory disorder with etiologies that have been debated for a long time. The prevalence of stressful events before a TGA attack makes it hard to overlook these precipitating factors, given that stress has the potential to organically effect the brain. Cortical spreading depression was proposed as a possible cause decades ago. Being a regional phenomenon, CSD seems to affect every aspect of the micro-mechanism in maintaining the homeostasis of the central nervous system. Corresponding evidence (...) regarding hemodynamic and morphological changes from TGA and CSD have been accumulated separately, but the resemblance between the two has not been systematically explored so far, which is surprising especially considering that CSD had been confirmed to cause secondary damage in the human brain. Thus, by deeply delving into the anatomic and electrophysiological properties of the CNS, the CSD-TGA model may render insights into the basic pathophysiology behind the façade of the enigmatic clinical presentation. (shrink)

Although great progress in neuroanatomy and physiology has occurred lately, we still cannot go directly to those levels to discover the neural mechanisms of higher cognition and consciousness. But we can use neurocomputational methods based on these details to push this project forward. Here we describe vector subtraction as an operation that computes sequential paths through high-dimensional vector spaces. Vector-space interpretations of network activity patterns are a fruitful resource in recent computational neuroscience. Vector subtraction also appears to be implemented neurally (...) in primate frontal eye field activity, which computes dimensions of saccadic eye movements. We use this apparent neural implementation as a model and construct from it a general neurocomputational account of an important type of sequential cognitive and conscious process. We defend the biological plausibility of all components of the general model and show that it yields testable anatomical and physiological predictions. We close by suggesting some interesting consequences for consciousness if our model characterizes correctly the neural mechanisms producing a common type of episode in our conscious streams. (shrink)

Two essential periods may be identified in the early stages of the history of vitamin D-resistant rickets. The first was the period during which a very well known deficiency disease, rickets, acquired a scientific status: this required the development of unifying principles to confer upon the newly developing science of pathology a doctrine without which it would have been condemned to remain a collection of unrelated facts with very little practical application. One first such unifying principle was provided by the (...) notion of hygiene; while the blanket explanations provided by this notion alone were much too general to enable rickets to achieve scientific status, it did point out the need to look for specific external causes for the disease and to examine the life-style and dietary habits of the patients. The second phase of the conceptualization of the disease was the assumption of a specific cause — that is, using concepts developed in the area of infectious diseases. This was made possible by fundamental similarities between deficiency and infectious diseases, in spite of their apparent differences. Both types of illness have some of the characteristics of what Georges Canguilhem calls the ontological representation of disease as opposed to dysharmonic representations, which primarily concern the endocrine diseases. It is precisely this shift from one to the other manner of perceiving ill health that enabled the identification of the vitamin D-resistant rickets. Conceptualization of the notion of vitamin D resistancy required that the conditions causing the disease be looked for within the organism rather than outside it; this was thus the first time that endocrine concepts were applied to studying the physiology of vitamin D.The history of resistant rickets therefore represents an interesting model for understanding the growth of biomedical knowledge. It allows the development of a number of more general ideas on the question of the relationship between biology and medicine and on the thorny problem of specificity in medical thinking. As far as this topic is concerned it can be seen that there was an ongoing exchange between medical and biological thinking during the initial period up until 1937, and that one could deny any such specificity in medical thinking during this same period. Albright, for example, used human diseases as spontaneously produced models for experimental biology. It was also more feasible for an experimental biologist to administer toxic doses than for a clinician to do so.What, then, if any, is the place of the specificity of medical thinking in this history? The fact that medicine is characterized not only by it ccognitive content78 but also by its final aim, which is to restore health, makes it necessary to take factors other than objective knowledge into consideration. This is particularly evident in two aspects of medicine, therapeutics and nosology, and in approaching the notion of pathological individuality.Therapeutic activity has a largely empirical approach. Many drugs, such as cod-liver oil, were discovered empirically. Treatment often in the past, and still now, has proceeded by trial and error, upon no established theoretical basis. At this level the relationship between biology and medicine is roughly comparable to that between science and technology79 \3- that is, it is impossible to reduce either therapeutics or technical activities to the simple application of basic science. In this sense, the application of vitamin D to vitamin-resistant rickets is quite typical. Further-more, in the case studied here, the therapeutic activity heralds a definite breaking away from the medicatrix naturae of conventional medicine dating back to ancient times, and it embodies a new concept of the organism and of disease: no longer can the diseased organism be thought of as merely having a perturbed equilibrium requiring restoration by means of a natural style of medicine. On the contrary, vitamin D resistance is an obstacle that indicates profound biological dysfunction, to be rectified only by means of an extremely aggressive and therefore dangerous therapy. The therapy thus serves to reveal the severity of the dysfunction, thereby leading inevitably to conceptual innovation. This sheds light on the theoretical innovations of which the therapeutic activity is capable.Therapeutic activity is also influenced by notions of health and illness, normal and pathological states, none of which may be determined entirely objectively. For example, the term healing as used by Albright in the case of resistant rickets that he described may be discussed in this light.Nosology, or the classification of diseases, depends largely on the description of clinical syndromes, which are themselves mainly based on subjective elements (discomfort, disability, or the extent of a patient's suffering). The advent of pathological anatomy at the beginning of the nineteenth century disrupted classification by introducing the concept of localized anatomical lesions81-and, hence, an element of material objectivity \3- into nosology. Radiological examination further complicated matters by enabling the equivalent of an autopsy on living matter. Lastly, biological examination complicated nosology by showing that biological anomalies may exist in human beings without necessarily leading to a pathological condition. Medical thinking can choose to combine all these elements to describe a disease, but can also separate them and retain only a few, or a single one, according to requirements - as did Albright.The notion of biological and pathological individuality is fundamental to the development of medical thinking. Whatever its theoretical origin, medical thinking has since ancient times incorporated the idea that each individual reacts differently to the same treatment and his own specific pathological tendencies. I mentioned earlier that in the history of vitamin D-resistant rickets the notion of rachitic tendency reflected this type of thinking. After 1937, this history progressed by successively separating new individual entities, affecting smaller and smaller groups of individuals in each case. In other words, the need to understand and to define individual illness more closely required the development of new concepts and the construction of new individual categories of disease linking these concepts to older clinical, radiological, and biochemical elements. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify the epistemological foundations of the Freudian energetics model, starting with a historical review of the 19th century scientific context in which Freud's research lay down its roots. Beyond the physiological and anatomical references of Project for a Scientific Psychology, the physiology Freud makes reference to is in reality primarily anchored in an epistemological model derived from physics. Whilst across the Rhine, the autonomy of physiology in relation to physics was far from being accomplished, as (...) a counterpoint, in France, the revolution in physiology driven by Claude Bernard established itself autonomously from physics,. In contrast, Freud's scientific landscape is entirely dominated by the physics elevated to the rank of an ideal science. The influence of Helmholtz, who is both a medical doctor and a physicist, has a determining influence on Freud's training. The discoveries in physics at that time, in particular the formulation of the principle of 'conservation of force' - first principle of thermodynamics - will constitute the points of reference upon which Freud will elaborate his energetics model, then subsequently, the idea of economy in his metapsychology. In this way we can trace both the historic and epistemological path that led Freud from a concept based on physics, and more specifically thermodynamic energy, to an idea of nervous energy that constitutes the basis of the concept of "quantity" as it is stated as 'first fundamental idea' in Project for a Scientific Psychology. This notion will subsequently evolve, and lead Freud to the introduction of the concept of 'psychical energy,' this time in a purely metapsychological sense. (shrink)

Artificial neural networks have weaknesses as models of cognition. A conventional neural network has limitations of computational power. The localist representation is at least equal to its competition. We contend that locally connected neural networks are perfectly capable of storing and retrieving the individual features, but the process of reconstruction must be otherwise explained. We support the localist position but propose a “hybrid” model that can begin to explain cognition in anatomically plausible terms.

: This article analyses some of the anatomical waxes in the Museo della Specola in Florence. Executed in at least two different periods in the history of Florentine wax modelling (in the late 17th century and between the 18th and 19th centuries), they project culturally determined images of the body which are analysed from a historico-semiotic perspective. "Rotten corpses," a "disembowelled woman" and a "flayed man" emerge as salient figures in the collection and reveal the close tie between (...) class='Hi'>anatomical representations and aesthetics, social relations and religious scruples, in other words, the culture tout court which produced them. (shrink)

This article analyses some of the anatomical waxes in the Museo della Specola in Florence. Executed in at least two different periods in the history of Florentine wax modelling , they project culturally determined images of the body which are analysed from a historico-semiotic perspective. "Rotten corpses," a "disembowelled woman" and a "flayed man" emerge as salient figures in the collection and reveal the close tie between anatomical representations and aesthetics, social relations and religious scruples, in other words, (...) the culture tout court which produced them. (shrink)

. This article analyses some of the anatomical waxes in the Museo della Specola in Florence. Executed in at least two different periods in the history of Florentine wax modelling, they project culturally determined images of the body which are analysed from a historico-semiotic perspective. “Rotten corpses,” a “disembowelled woman” and a “flayed man” emerge as salient figures in the collection and reveal the close tie between anatomical representations and aesthetics, social relations and religious scruples, in other words, (...) the culture tout court which produced them. (shrink)

" In Imagination and the Meaningful Brain, psychoanalyst Arnold Modell claims that subjective human experience must be included in any scientific...

Abstract.Since the gene splicing debates of the 1980s, the public has been exposed to an ongoing sequence of genetic and reproductive technologies. Many issue areas have outcomes that lose track of people's inner values or engender opposing religious viewpoints defying final resolution. This essay relocates the discussion of what is an acceptable application from the individual to the societal level, examining technologies that stand to address large numbers of people and thus call for policy resolution, rather than individual fiat, in (...) their application. A major source of guidance is the “Genetic Frontiers” series of professional dialogues and conferences held by the National Conference for Community and Justice from 2002 to 2004. Genetic testing, human gene therapy, genetic engineering of plants and animals, and stem cell technology are examined. While differences in perspective on the beginning of life persist, a stepwise approach to the examination of genetic testing reveals areas of general agreement. Stewardship of life, human co‐creativity with the divine, and social justice help define the bounds of application of genetic engineering and therapy; compassionate care plays a major role in establishing stem cell policy. Active, sustained dialogue is a useful resource for enabling sharing of religious values and crystallization of policies. (shrink)