Perturbing the Organism

Perturbing the Organism PDF Author: Herbert Weiner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226890418
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Overlooked in the early accounts was that all organisms face many additional types of natural challenges and obstacles in their efforts to survive and reproduce: for example, they must fight or escape predators, replenish diminished food supplies, and anticipate, seasonal changes of climate. Weiner's survey of the literature shows that much progress has been made in understanding the effects of exposing animals to these kinds of naturally occurring stressful experiences and their varied outcomes. Under such conditions there appear patterns of integrated behavioral and physiological responses that are exquisitely attuned to the experience. He carefully assesses the research on the ways in which neural circuits and peptidergic mechanisms in the brain generate and integrate these patterns. In addition, he presents new concepts about the perturbation of subsystems, including biological clocks, which may, or may not, lead to disease or ill-health.

Perturbing the Organism

Perturbing the Organism PDF Author: Herbert Weiner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226890418
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Overlooked in the early accounts was that all organisms face many additional types of natural challenges and obstacles in their efforts to survive and reproduce: for example, they must fight or escape predators, replenish diminished food supplies, and anticipate, seasonal changes of climate. Weiner's survey of the literature shows that much progress has been made in understanding the effects of exposing animals to these kinds of naturally occurring stressful experiences and their varied outcomes. Under such conditions there appear patterns of integrated behavioral and physiological responses that are exquisitely attuned to the experience. He carefully assesses the research on the ways in which neural circuits and peptidergic mechanisms in the brain generate and integrate these patterns. In addition, he presents new concepts about the perturbation of subsystems, including biological clocks, which may, or may not, lead to disease or ill-health.

Perturbing the Organism

Perturbing the Organism PDF Author: Herbert Weiner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Stress (Physiology)
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
The concept of stress pervades modern society, yet there exists no generally accepted definition or classification of stressful experience. This authoritative work is the first to analyze critically the entire range of research and theory on stress in animals and humans, from W.B. Cannon and H. Selye's earliest studies in the 1930s up to the present day. Herbert Weiner not only documents the many empirical and conceptual advances of recent years, but also produces a new definition of stress in organismal terms and provides a classification of the various kinds of stressful experience. Because Cannon and Selye's approaches emphasized physiological and medical aspects, the concept of stress soon became inextricably linked to unavoidable and often overwhelming agents such as injury and infection. Overlooked in the early accounts was that all organisms face many additional types of natural challenges and obstacles in their efforts to survive and reproduce: for example, they must fight or escape predators, replenish diminished food supplies, and anticipate, seasonal changes of climate. Weiner's survey of the literature shows that much progress has been made in understanding the effects of exposing animals to these kinds of naturally occurring stressful experiences and their varied outcomes. Under such conditions there appear patterns of integrated behavioral and physiological responses that are exquisitely attuned to the experience. He carefully assesses the research on the ways in which neural circuits and peptidergic mechanisms in the brain generate and integrate these patterns. In addition, he presents new concepts about the perturbation of subsystems, including biological clocks, which may, or may not, lead to disease or ill-health. Perturbing the Organism is the first book to analyze in detail the relevant research in experimental psychology, psychiatry, medicine, endocrinology, immunology, and psychoneuroimmunology to provide a useful, integrative concept of stress--one that is rooted in an understanding of the organism as an interactive communication system composed of many subsystems. It will interest a wide range of clinicians and researchers throughout the medical and behavioral sciences.

Social Information Transmission and Human Biology

Social Information Transmission and Human Biology PDF Author: Jonathan CK Wells
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 104020256X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Recent research has emphasized that socially transmitted information may affect both the gene pool and the phenotypes of individuals and populations, and that an improved understanding of evolutionary issues is beneficial to those working towards the improvement of human health. In response to a growing interest across disciplines for information regarding the contribution of social behavior to a range of biological outcomes, Social Information Transmission and Human Biology connects the work of evolutionary theorists and those dealing with practical issues in human health and demographics. Combining evolutionary models with biomedical research, authors from various disciplines look at how human behavior influences health, and how reproductive fitness sheds light on the processes that shaped the evolution of human behavior. Both academic and medical researchers will find much useful insight in this text.

Cognitive-Behavioral Strategies in Crisis Intervention

Cognitive-Behavioral Strategies in Crisis Intervention PDF Author: Frank M. Dattilio
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 146250874X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
This book has been replaced by Cognitive-Behavioral Strategies in Crisis Intervention, Fourth Edition, ISBN 978-1-4625-5259-7.

The Health of Populations

The Health of Populations PDF Author: Stephen J. Kunitz
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195308077
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
In the maelstrom of current public health debate over the social determinants of health, this book offers a discussion on the roots of prevalent strains of thought on the matter. The author brings an independent perspective to bear on the debate.

The Health of Populations

The Health of Populations PDF Author: Stephen J. Kunitz M.D.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199748322
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
In the maelstrom of current public health debate over the social determinants of health, this book offers a well-balanced discussion on the roots of prevalent strains of thought on the matter. While this area of research deals in complex problems, it is often dominated by those who deploy rather categorical, partisan positions, citing from a wide range of contradictory statistical studies. Stephen Kunitz brings a measured, balanced and independent perspective to bear on the debate, taking a step back from current arguments to look at the fundamental issues through a socio-historical lens. Part I describes how ideas about the costs and benefits of industrialization, and about the causes of disease, have been used by writers from different ideological persuasions to explain the health of populations. Part II focuses on some of the ideas that have been particularly influential in contemporary debates: factors such as standard of living, community and its loss, inequality, and globalization. The fact that these have been used to support differing explanations of the determinants of population health suggests that there are no easy generalizations in a field with so many discrepant findings. Scientists often ignore anomalous findings in the interests of advancing a particular paradigm, until the anomalies outweigh the norm and a new paradigm is created. This book argues that in considering social determinants of health, no meaningful over-arching explanations may be possible. Rather, it is by immersion in the reality of particular contexts - work settings, historical periods, geopolitical regions, and governmental credos - that we may gain a better understanding of the way in which social forces shape patterns of health and disease.

The Extended Organism

The Extended Organism PDF Author: J. Scott Turner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674044495
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Can the structures that animals build--from the humble burrows of earthworms to towering termite mounds to the Great Barrier Reef--be said to live? However counterintuitive the idea might first seem, physiological ecologist Scott Turner demonstrates in this book that many animals construct and use structures to harness and control the flow of energy from their environment to their own advantage. Building on Richard Dawkins's classic, The Extended Phenotype, Turner shows why drawing the boundary of an organism's physiology at the skin of the animal is arbitrary. Since the structures animals build undoubtedly do physiological work, capturing and channeling chemical and physical energy, Turner argues that such structures are more properly regarded not as frozen behaviors but as external organs of physiology and even extensions of the animal's phenotype. By challenging dearly held assumptions, a fascinating new view of the living world is opened to us, with implications for our understanding of physiology, the environment, and the remarkable structures animals build.

The Mosaic of Contemporary Psychiatry in Perspective

The Mosaic of Contemporary Psychiatry in Perspective PDF Author: Anthony Kales
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461391946
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Psychiatry has undergone a dynamic evolution in the last 40 years, an evolution to which Dr. Louis West made many contributions. Psychiatry today and Dr. West's career are intertwined in a mosaic of interaction. It is therefore fitting that this compilation of essays in honor of Dr. West is entitled The Mosaic of Contemporary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives. The papers collectively form a snapshot of the field of psychiatry today. Each chapter offers a historical perspective of the topic discussed, followed by a description of modern day issues and a look at the future of psychiatry. This book will enhance the knowledge and technical skills of psychiatrists as well as other clinicians in the mental health care field.

Self-representational Approaches to Consciousness

Self-representational Approaches to Consciousness PDF Author: Uriah Kriegel
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262612119
Category : Consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 569

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Book Description
Leading theorists examine the self-representational theory of consciousness as an alternative to the two dominant reductive theories of consciousness, the representational theory of consciousness and the higher-order monitoring theory. In this pioneering collection of essays, leading theorists examine the self-representational theory of consciousness, which holds that consciousness always involves some form of self-awareness. The self-representational theory of consciousness stands as an alternative to the two dominant reductive theories of consciousness, the representational theory of consciousness (RTC) and the higher-order monitoring (HOM) theory, combining elements of both RTC and HOM theory in a novel fashion that may avoid the fundamental deficiencies of each. Although self-representationalist views have been common throughout the history of both Western and Eastern philosophy, they have been largely neglected in the recent literature on consciousness. This book approaches the self-representational theory from a range of perspectives, with contributions from scholars in analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and history of philosophy, as well as two longer essays by Antonio Damasio and David Rudrauf and Douglas Hofstadter. The book opens with six essays that argue broadly in favor of self-representationalist views, which are followed by five that argue broadly against them. Contributors next consider connections to such philosophical issues as the nature of propositional attitudes, knowledge, attention, and indexical reference. Finally, Damasio and Rudrauf link consciousness as lived with consciousness as described in neurobiological terms; and Hofstadter compares consciousness to the "strange loop" of mathematical self-reference brought to light by Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Contributors Andrew Brook, Peter Carruthers, Antonio Damasio, John J. Drummond, Jason Ford, Rocco J. Gennaro, George Graham, Christopher S. Hill, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Terry Horgan, Tomis Kapitan, Uriah Kriegel, Keith Lehrer, Joseph Levine, Robert W. Lurz, David Rudrauf, David Woodruff Smith, John Tienson, Robert Van Gulick, Kathleen Wider, Kenneth Williford, Dan Zahavi

Selforganization

Selforganization PDF Author: W. Krohn
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401729751
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
may be complex without being able to be replaced by something »still more simple«. This became evident with the help of computer models of deterministic-recursive systems in which simple mathematical equation systems provide an extremely complex behavior. (2) Irregularity of nature is not treated as an anomaly but becomes the focus of research and thus is declared to be normal. One looks for regularity within irregularity. Non-equilibrium processes are recognized as the source of order and the search for equilibrium is replaced by the search for the dynamics of processes. (3) The classical system-environment model, according to which the adaptation of a system to its environment is controlled externally and according to which the adaptation of the system occurs in the course of a learning process, is replaced by a model of systemic closure. This closure is operational in so far as the effects produced by the system are the causes for the maintenance of systemic organization. If there is sufficient complexity, the systems perform internal self-observation and exert self-control (»Cognition« as understood by Maturana as self-perception and self-limitation, e. g. , that of a cell vis-a. -vis its environment). 22 But any information a system provides on its environment is a system-internal construct. The »reference to the other« is merely a special case of »self-reference«. The social sciences frequently have suffered from the careless way in which scientific ideas and models have been transferred.