Clinical neurophysiology of visual and auditory processing in dyslexia: a review.

Neurophysiological studies on children and adults with dyslexia provide a deeper understanding of how visual and auditory processing in dyslexia might relate to reading deficits. The goal of this review is to provide an overview of research findings in the last two decades on motion related and contrast sensitivity visual evoked potentials and on auditory event related potentials to basic tone and speech sound processing in dyslexia. These results are particularly relevant for three important theories about causality in dyslexia: the magnocellular deficit hypothesis, the temporal processing deficit hypothesis and the phonological deficit hypothesis. Support for magnocellular deficits in dyslexia are primarily provided from evidence for altered visual evoked potentials to rapidly moving stimuli presented at low contrasts. Consistently ERP findings revealed altered neurophysiological processes in individuals with dyslexia to speech stimuli, but evidence for deficits processing certain general acoustic information relevant for speech perception, such as frequency changes and temporal patterns, are also apparent.

A naturalização dos fenômenos sobrenaturais e a construção do cérebro possuído: um estudo da medicalização do transe e da possessão no século XIX / The Naturalization of Supernatural Phenomena and the Construction of the possessed brain: a study of trance and possession medicalization in nineteenth century

Este trabalho procura discutir o modo como os fenômenos sobrenaturais foram apropriados, pela ciência, no século XlX. a teoria do magnetismo animal, criada por Mesmer, com suas variadas interpretações por várias gerações de discípulos; a construção da teoria da hipnose, com a codificação da histeria abrindo definitivamente as portas das censuras acadêmicas; e a teoria da dissociação, criada no final daquele século, demonstram diferentes explicações fisicalistas que, muitas vezes, serviram para estabelecer distâncias entre um saber popular e o conhecimento de elites profissionais. A construção do cérebro possuído, no século XlX, apoiada na nosologia da histeria, codificada pela Escola de Salpêtrière, refletiu uma importante transformação social da época, em um processo de laicização da assistencia pública, fundamental para a afirmação da psiquiatria como disciplina nascente...

This study discusses the way supernatural phenomena were enfolded by science in nineteenth century. The theory of magnetism, created by Mesmer, and its different interpretations by generations of disciples; the theory of hypnosis with hysteria codification, opening the academic censure; and the dissociation theory, created at theend of the nineteenth century, had demonstrated different efforts of finding physicals explanations, which served, in most cases, to establish distances between folk knowledge and elites of professional knowledge. The construction of the “possessed” brain, in nineteenth century, based on the hysteria nosology of Salpêtrière School,reflected an important social transformation, at that time, in a laicization process of public assistance, and an affirmation of psychiatry as a nascent discipline. Nowadays, the codification of complex mental states as trance, spiritual possession, which inhabit superstitious and popular imagination, receive a nosologic entity status from official diagnostic classification in psychiatry. Brain is mostly the reference used in the hope ofsupernatural naturalization.

[From the Gestaltkreis to synergetics: irreversible structural and dynamic functional couplings]. / Vom Gestaltkreis zur Synergetik: Die Bedeutung irreversibel-struktureller und dynamisch-funktioneller Kopplungen.

With the present contribution, we attempt to merge the work of several generations of physiology and psychosomatics. The common denominator in an array of observation levels appear in these works as the relationship between irreversible-structural and dynamic-functional couplings and synchronisations. In this context, studies on the level of the common brainstem system appear to be the base for a neuro-bio-psychic self-organisation. Studies culled from psychosomatics of Heidelberg, notably the Gestaltkreis theory, the Methodenkreis (methodological loop), the Bipersonalität (bipersonality), and the Simultandiagnostik (simultaneous diagnostics) exhibit the origin of complex functions which have been analyzed and quantified employing nonlinear methods developed in synergetics. Relevance of coupling and synchronisation, desynchronisation, resp., is, however, not limited to the scope of psychosomatic medicine. Fixed or functional, they are essential constituents to neurophysiological processes, such as association, dissociation, resp. This equally holds for evidence based medicine which is to benefit from any dynamic process analysis.

Reeducación sensitiva de la mano / Sensitive reeducation of the hand

En este trabajo se realiza un estudio sobre la importancia del aspecto evolutivo, social, cultural y por supuesto físico de la reeducación sensitiva de la mano, además de realizar un análisis del aspecto neurofisiológico de la misma, en función a los receptores, inervación y circuitos nerviosos, tanto a nivel medular como central. Posteriormente se muestran los diferentes procedicimientos de valoración del aspecto sensitivo de la mano, mediante técnicas analíticas. Por último se incluye un breve repaso por el Método Perfetti en la reeducación de la mano, basado principalmente en los avances neurofisiológicos y en la utilización de las funciones cognitivas o superiores del hombre. Este método, desarrollado en su inicio para el paciente neurológico, se aplica en otras afecciones, resaltando la importancia del componente sensitivo como primordial en la reeducación de la mano (AU)

Estimulação magnética transcraniana de baixa freqüência no tratamento da depressão / Low frequency transcranial magnetic stimulation for treatment of depression

Este artigo descreve aspectos neurofisiológicos e clínicos do uso da estimulação magnética transcraniana repetitiva (EMTr), especialmente a de baixa freqüência. Técnicas de neuroimagem e hipóteses sobre o funcionamento da EMTr em longo prazo são abordados. Alguns resultados de estudos que envolvem EMTr de baixa freqüência no tratamento da depressão são citados, especialmente um estudo realizado na Universidade de Brasília usando a aplicação da EMTr de baixa freqüência (0,5Hz), duas vezes por semana, durante quatro semanas, em dez pacientes. Neste estudo utilizando a escala de Hamilton de 17 itens, os pacientes foram analisados em três momentos: T-0, T-1 e T-2, respectivamente, início, meio e final das aplicações. Como resultado se observou um decréscimo significativo (p < 0,01) nas suas pontuações, quando comparados os três momentos, utilizando-se o teste x² de Friedman. As possíveis vantagens desta técnica são discutidas.

IX Antonio Arrigo Award. Clinical neurophysiology in neuromuscular disorders: usefulness and limitations.

This lecture focuses on the impact of classic and modern electrophysiological techniques on the diagnostic approach to patients with neuromuscular disorders, placing emphasis on the limitations of currently used techniques and on the future prospects of clinical neurophysiology. The refinement of old techniques together with the development of new ones will hopefully improve the diagnostic capability of neurophysiology, improve understanding of the complex pathogenic mechanisms underlying neuromuscular disorders and help further the research of new therapeutic strategies.

In search of a deep psychobiology of hypnosis: visionary hypotheses for a new millennium.

This search for the deep psychobiological foundations of hypnosis begins with a review of some of the paradoxes of historical hypnosis and the impasse of current theory. It is proposed that further progress requires a deeper investigation of how psychosocial cues can modulate the mechanisms of healing at the CNS, autonomic, neuroendocrine and cellular-genetic levels. The dynamics of hypnotic communication and healing from the cognitive-behavior level to the cellular-genetic are outlined in four stages: (1) Information transduction between the experiences of consciousness and the limbic-hypothalamic-pituitary system; (2) The psychosomatic network of messenger molecules and their receptors; (3) The immediate early gene protein cascade; and (4) State dependent memory, learning and behavior. Neuroscience research is outlined for its contributions to a mathematical model of how a psychobiological approach to the therapeutic applications of hypnosis and the placebo response could facilitate neurogenesis in the human hippocampus and healing at the cellular-genetic-protein level throughout the body. A series of ten hypotheses is proposed as a guide for theory and research in therapeutic hypnosis utilizing DNA chip technology in the new millennium.

Opening the grey box.

The single neurone has been the guiding light for generations of neuroscientists. Now there are signs from experimental and theoretical work on the neocortex that we are on the threshold of a revolution in which the hegemony of the single neurone will be replaced by much more circuit-oriented concepts. We consider here why traditional views of the significance of single neurones are fading in power, and consider the problem of deciding on the form of a new order.

Mind-brain reduction: new light from the philosophy of science.

The discussion of the reduction of mental states to brain states is placed in the broader context of reduction in other scientific disciplines such as chemistry, physics and biology. This is important in achieving a perspective on what sort of business reduction is and in seeing that reductions are primarily transitions between theories and only derivatively relations between phenomena. It also reveals that though reducing theories sometimes absorb the old theory as largely correct, more often the old theory is substantially modified and revised and sometimes it is replaced outright. How much of the old theory survives in the reducing theory depends on its empirical integrity and whether its basic categories are empirically sound. The reduction of psychology to neuroscience is considered in this light and it is suggested that psychology may be substantially revised or even replaced by a reduction to neuroscience.