Depression as a psychophysical illness phenomenon

The old Greeks understood depression as a somatic process as well as an oppressing experience. Disturbances of the transmitters, ligands and receptors and the decoupling of the feedback-systems of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical systems with an impairment of the immune-system are experienced as depression with its narcissistic depletion and orientation towards conscience and order. Thereby the conscious experience is less differentiated than the complex somatic processes which are proving it. Under a holistic aspect it is, however, doubtful whether psychotherapy can be differentiated from somatotherapy. Each psychotherapy acts through the sensory organs on the body like somatotherapy. Until now, however, only a few results of research are known concerning somatic parameters, for example of the transmitter- and immune-processes of the body, during a simple, with preference cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy. For that the researchers would have to be trained to reach a reliable evaluation of its somatic parameters. As it was proved scientifically, the influence onto somatic functions is even possible with complex psychotherapeutic methods such as hypnosis. Such research is until now still relatively seldom done. This may be due, on one hand, to the fact that many psychiatrists and other physicians still maintain the fatal psychophysical dualism and on the other hand, that the pharmaceutical industry has until now not had an interest in comparative investigations concerning the effects of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy.     

Pain as a biological phenomenon of consciousness

Pain has not to be considered a false step of nature. On the contrary, it is an extremely effective warning mechanism through which the individual becomes aware of a danger to its own physical integrity from inside the body or from the environment. Pain therefore belongs to the biological devices for evading bodily danger. The conscious experience of pain is the most sophisticated stage of evolution of warning systems, whose simplest form is represented by an unicellular organism which moves away if it anticipates danger from an environmental state. Similar to all qualia, conscious experience of pain cannot be fully explained in terms of neurophysiological events. Conscious pain is a complex perceptual and affective experience influenced not by the amount of the bodily lesion alone, but also by the whole personality of the sufferer. This often makes surgical, medical and psychological treatment of pain difficult and disappointing.     

Heiderian balance as a group phenomenon.

Applied F. Heider's (1958) proposition about intrapersonal states of balance between attraction and perceived agreement to dyads and larger groups. Cluster and chi-square analyses are made of the data from the author's (1961) study of 17 previously unacquainted college students who lived together for the 4 mo of the experiment. This population divided into 1 balanced and 1 imbalanced subgroup. The findings suggest that the commonly reported balance within a population may be attributable to a single subgroup and that subgroup membership and norm formation can outweigh preferences for balance. (5 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rotational transformation of visual figures as a clinical phenomenon.

Notes that extensive clinical literature shows that brain-damaged persons have a tendency to produce spontaneous rotational transformations of visual designs they are reproducing but have difficulty producing such transformations when required to do so. Organismic variables other than neurological status (e.g., age, psychiatric status, and intelligence) also influence the probability of occurrence of these phenomena, as do stimulus and task variables. A review of related perception literature is made, and support is found for the view that spatial orientational and figural information are processed separately by the organism. Both stimulus and organismic variables are capable of affecting or interfering with the processing of the 2 types of information. (3 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identification of MINUS, a small polypeptide that functions as a microtubule nucleation suppressor

In eukaryotic cells, tubulin polymerization must be regulated precisely during cell division and differentiation. To identify new mechanisms involved in cellular microtubule formation, we isolated an activity that suppresses microtubule nucleation in vitro. The activity was due to a small acidic polypeptide of 4.7 kDa which we named MINUS (microtubule nucleation suppressor). MINUS inhibited tau- and taxol-mediated microtubule assembly in vitro and was inactivated by dephosphorylation. The protein was purified to homogeneity from cultured neural (PC12) cells and bovine brain. Microinjection of MINUS caused a transient loss of dynamic microtubules in Vero cells. The results suggest that MINUS acts with a novel mechanism on tubulin polymerization, thus regulating microtubule formation in living cells.