The impact of a closed-loop thalamocortical model on the spatiotemporal dynamics of cortical and thalamic traveling waves.

Propagation of activity in spatially structured neuronal networks has been observed in awake, anesthetized, and sleeping brains. How these wave patterns emerge and organize across brain structures, and how network connectivity affects spatiotemporal neural activity remains unclear. Here, we develop a computational model of a two-dimensional thalamocortical network, which gives rise to emergent traveling waves similar to those observed experimentally. We illustrate how spontaneous and evoked oscillatory activity in space and time emerge using a closed-loop thalamocortical architecture, sustaining smooth waves in the cortex and staggered waves in the thalamus. We further show that intracortical and thalamocortical network connectivity, cortical excitation/inhibition balance, and thalamocortical or corticothalamic delay can independently or jointly change the spatiotemporal patterns (radial, planar and rotating waves) and characteristics (speed, direction, and frequency) of cortical and thalamic traveling waves. Computer simulations predict that increased thalamic inhibition induces slower cortical frequencies and that enhanced cortical excitation increases traveling wave speed and frequency. Overall, our results provide insight into the genesis and sustainability of thalamocortical spatiotemporal patterns, showing how simple synaptic alterations cause varied spontaneous and evoked wave patterns. Our model and simulations highlight the need for spatially spread neural recordings to uncover critical circuit mechanisms for brain functions.

Corrective biology: psychosomatics in and as neuropsychoanalysis.

This article analyses how and with what consequences body-mind relations (the sphere of the psychosomatic) are being modelled in the 21st century through considering the interdiscipline of neuropsychoanalysis. The promise of the term psychosomatic lies in its efforts to rework standard, bifurcated models of mind and body: somatic acts are simultaneously psychic acts. But neuropsychoanalysis, as it brings the neurosciences and psychoanalysis together to model an embodied 'MindBrain', ends up evacuating another potent characteristic found in much of the psychosomatic tradition-its refusal to adjudicate, a priori, what counts as the adaptive or well-regulated subject. The psychosomatic problem in psychoanalysis profoundly disturbs everyday models of functionality, adaptation and agency, by positing the psyche as an 'other' of the physiological within the physiological. By contrast, neuropsychoanalysis ends up parsing too easily the healthy from the pathological body, such that it is only the latter that is subject to forces that work against self-preservation and self-regulation. In so doing, neuropsychoanalysis recasts the radical problematic that the psychosomatic installed for psychoanalysis in the direction of a corrective biology. This corrective biology is given form in two ways: (1) through translating the Freudian drive-that unruly and foundational concept which addresses the difficult articulation of soma and psyche-into a series of Basic Emotion Systems modelled by the affective neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp and (2) through resituating and quarantining the troubling, non-adaptive aspects of the Freudian psyche within the domain of addiction. That easy separation between the healthy and the pathological is all too often found in current descriptions of healthcare and patient encounters. The article refuses it and calls for the revivification of other ways of thinking about how human subjects-psychosomatic organisms-find ways to live, and to die.

Aportes de la Neurociencia y la Semiótica a la teoría y clínica de las patologías tempranas / Contributions from Neuroscience and Semiotics to the theoretical and clinical study of early pathologies

A través de ciertos aportes de la Neurociencia y la Semiótica a la teoría psicoanalítica, se intenta mostrar la articulación de tres elementos que, según se postula, constituyen los cimientos de la estructura psíquica. Estos son: los afectos, la relación de objeto y la formación de signos. Estos elementos no se pueden entender por separado ni excluyéndose, puesto que se entrelazan en una relación compleja que da lugar al fenómeno psíquico. Así, los afectos, tal como postula la Neurociencia actual, ya en su mismo origen biológico tienen una función relacional y de aprehensión de signos. Por su parte, la relación de objeto, para cumplir con su función, primero biológica y después psíquica, necesita un contexto afectivo y de significación. Y, por último, la formación de signos, o semiosis, es imprescindible para organizar lo afectivo y lo relacional (AU)

Drawing upon certain contributions from Neuroscience and Semiotics, this paper will attempt to demonstrate the articulation of three elements which, as postulated by the author, constitute the foundation of the psychic structure. These are: affects, object relations and symbol formation. These elements cannot be understood separately nor can they be taken in exclusion, since they intertwine in a complex relationship giving rise to psychic phenomena. Consequently, as postulated by current Neuroscience, affects already contain in their biological origin a linking function and the apprehension of signs. On the other hand, object relations, for their part, in order to fulfil their initially biological and then psychic function, require a context of affect and meaning. Lastly, sign processes, or Semiotics, are imperative to the affective and relational organizations (AU)

Una nueva «vacuna»: la del autoconocimiento. Autoconocimiento a través de la neurociencia, la inteligencia emocional y el mindfulness / A new vaccine. The vaccine of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge through neuroscience self-knowledge, emotional intelligence and the mindfulness

Un alto porcentaje de pacientes acuden a la consulta del pediatra por un problema que tiene una raíz emocional o psicosocial. Para este tipo de pacientes, el pediatra, en muchas ocasiones, no tiene conocimiento suficiente y el sistema público de salud ofrece alternativas escasas. Los conocimientos que la neurociencia, la inteligencia emocional y el mindfulness aportan acerca del funcionamiento de la mente del ser humano permiten un empoderamiento de este, convirtiéndose en dueño de su vida y en responsable de su felicidad, lo que repercute en una mejora en su salud física, emocional y mental. El autoconocimiento, una nueva "vacuna" para la prevención de muchas enfermedades con base emocional (AU)

A high percentage of patients come to the pediatrician consultation by a problem that has an emotional root, psycho-social. For such patients, the pediatrician on many occasions, do not have enough knowledge and the public health system offers few alternatives. Knowledge provided by neuroscience, emotional intelligence and the mindfulness about the functioning of the human mind allows an empowerment of this, becoming owner of his life and in charge of your happiness, what has an impact on an improvement in their physical, emotional and mental health. Self-knowledge, a new vaccine for the prevention of many diseases with emotional core (AU)

Auditory implicit semantic priming in Spanish-speaking children with and without specific language impairment

We analyzed whether Spanish-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) showed deficits in lexical-semantic processing/organization, and whether these lexical measures correlated with standardized measures of language abilities. Fourteen children with Typical Language Development (TLD) and 16 age-matched children with SLI (8;0-9;11 years) participated. In a Lexical Decision (LD) task with implicit semantic priming, children judged whether a given speech pair contained two words (semantically related/unrelated) or a word-pseudoword. Children received a comprehensive language and reading test battery. Children with TLD exhibited significant semantic priming; they were faster for semantically related word pairs than for unrelated (p < .001) and than for word-pseudoword pairs (p < .0002). The group with SLI did not exhibit significant semantic priming, despite showing more variability. Children with SLI made significantly slower LDs [F(1, 26) = 4.61, p < .05, partial η2 = .15] and more errors [F(1, 26) = 4.16, p < .05, partial η2 = .13] than children with TLD. Mean response time across all LD conditions and the receptive vocabulary (PPVT-III) were significantly negativity correlated for children with SLI (r = -.71, p = .004). Children with SLI, especially those with the poorest language scores, showed a semantic-lexical deficit and a weakness in lexical-semantic association networks. Their performance on the LD task was significantly slower and poorer than for children with TLD. Increasing a child’s vocabulary may benefit lexical access (AU)

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Farmacoterapia para niños con síndrome de Down / No disponible

El campo de la farmacología cognitiva para niños con discapacidad intelectual no existe todavía, pero el reciente desarrollo de la investigación que atiende a este objetivo parece prometedor. La investigación informada por la neurociencia, dirigida a conocer la base neurobiológica de la discapacidad intelectual en el síndrome de Down y otras patologías neurogenéticas está empezando a acumular una masa crítica investigadora con la atracción necesaria para avanzar hacia adelante. Agentes farmacológicos que apuntan a receptores GABA y glutamato y transportadores de dopamina ofrecen perspectivas como para iniciar ensayos clínicos. Las terapias basadas en células e intervenciones biológicas relacionadas con ellas se encuentran todavía en etapas muy inmaduras o ensayo preclínico, pero la infraestructura y los recursos que se necesitan para apoyar estos esfuerzos investigadores están lejos de conseguirse, lo que dificulta el progreso en este campo. La capacidad para convertir hallazgos fundamentales conseguidos desde la neurofarmacología y la neurociencia cognitiva en terapias fundamentadas en dichos hallazgos que mejoren las vidas de los niños con trisomía 21 sigue siendo, pues, todo un reto digno de afrontar (AU)

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In quest of constitutional principles of "neurolaw".

The growing use of brain imaging technology and the developing of cognitive neuroscience pose unaccustomed challenges to legal systems. Until now, the fields of Law much affected are the civil and criminal law and procedure, but the constitutional dimension of "neurolaw" cannot be easily underestimated. As the capacity to investigate and to trace brain mechanisms and functional neural activities increases, it becomes urgent the recognition and definition of the unalienable rights and fundamental values in respect of this new techno-scientific power, that must be protected and safeguard at "constitutional level" of norms such as: human dignity, personal identity, authenticity and the pursuit of individual "happiness". As the same as for the law regulating research and experimentation on human genome adopted in the past years, one may also argue if the above mentioned fundamental principles of "neurolaw" must be fixed and disciplined also at European and International level.

Psychopathology in the 21st century.

OBJECTIVES: The present publication sets out to evaluate the position of psychopathology in the 21st century and should also serve as a basis for defining the framework for the future tasks of the WFSBP Task Force. METHODS: Review of publications on the various approaches of psychopathology in general and of different tasks, theories and tools of psychopathology approaches in particular. RESULTS: The main tasks of psychopathology are, to record and describe experiential and behavioral abnormalities in their intersubjective context, to explain their origin from an objective scientific perspective, and to attempt to understand them from the subjective perspective of the patient. In order to provide stable fundaments for the work in clinical and scientific psychiatry all three components are indispensable. CONCLUSIONS: The future of psychiatry hence lies in the hands of a type of psychopathology that we will call Integrative Psychopathology. The main tasks of psychopathology can only be pursued in close cooperation with other branches of science interested in studying psychiatric issues. Whereas contemporary psychopathology must lay the foundations for that cooperation, Integrative Psychopathology must be complemented by further advancements in Theoretical Psychopathology, so as to enable conceptual new developments, which can then be fruitful for cooperative research and psychiatric clinical practice.

Translational research in spinal cord injury: a survey of opinion from the SCI community.

Much like our colleagues studying neuroprotection for acute stroke, we in the spinal cord injury (SCI) community have witnessed the preclinical emergence of numerous promising neuroprotective and neuro-regenerative treatments that have then disappointingly failed to demonstrate convincing efficacy in clinical trials. In contrast to the stroke field, the SCI community lacks guidelines to steer the preclinical development of therapies and maximize their chance of success prior to translation into expensive and laborious clinical trials. We conducted a survey of the SCI research community to garner perspectives on the question of what preclinical evidence was required before translating an experimental treatment into clinical trials. The opinions of the 324 respondents about what constitutes necessary preclinical evidence before moving to human SCI trials revealed strong support for the demonstration of efficacy in large-animal models, cervical injury models, and for independent replication of promising results. Marked differences exist between the sentiments of the respondents and the translational experience of our field. A framework for guiding the preclinical development of novel therapies prior to human translation would be helpful for ensuring clinical success. Greater dialogue on this issue is necessary to improve our chances of successfully bringing effective treatments to patients with this devastating injury.

The rebirth of neuroscience in psychosomatic medicine, Part II: clinical applications and implications for research.

During the second half of the last century, biopsychosocial research in psychosomatic medicine largely ignored the brain. Neuroscience has started to make a comeback in psychosomatic medicine research and promises to advance the field in important ways. In this paper we briefly review select brain imaging research findings in psychosomatic medicine in four key areas: cardiovascular regulation, visceral pain in the context of functional gastrointestinal disorders, acute and chronic somatic pain and placebo. In each area, there is a growing literature that is beginning to define a network of brain areas that participate in the functions in question. Evidence to date suggests that cortical and subcortical areas that are involved in emotion and emotion regulation play an important role in each domain. Neuroscientific research is therefore validating findings from previous psychosomatic research and has the potential to extend knowledge by delineating the biological mechanisms that link mind and body more completely and with greater specificity. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this work for how research in psychosomatic medicine is conducted, the ways in which neuroscientific advances can lead to new clinical applications in psychosomatic contexts, the implications of this work for the field of medicine more generally, and the priorities for research in the next 5 to 10 years.

The rebirth of neuroscience in psychosomatic medicine, Part I: historical context, methods, and relevant basic science.

Neuroscience was an integral part of psychosomatic medicine at its inception in the early 20th century. Since the mid-20th century, however, psychosomatic research has largely ignored the brain. The field of neuroscience has burgeoned in recent years largely because a variety of powerful new methods have become available. Many of these methods allow for the noninvasive study of the living human brain and thus are potentially available for integration into psychosomatic medicine research at this time. In this first paper we examine various methods available for human neuroscientific investigation and discuss their relative strengths and weaknesses. We next review some basic functional neuroanatomy involving structures that are increasingly being identified as relevant for psychosomatic processes. We then discuss, and provide examples of, how the brain influences end organs through "information transfer systems," including the autonomic, neuroendocrine, and immune systems. The evidence currently available suggests that neuroscience holds great promise for advancing the goal of understanding the mechanisms by which psychosocial variables influence physical disease outcomes. An increased focus on such mechanistic research in psychosomatic medicine is needed to further its acceptance into the field of medicine.