Drogues anciennes, drogues nouvelles, pratiques actuelles (1re partie)

Ever since homo sapiens let go of the hand of the ape to descend from the trees, endowed with a large frontal brain allowing projection and self-reference in the dry savannah, humans left, finally erect, the shaded quiet of those fruit trees for a scary world full of danger and unknowns. From that point on, people invented gods, myths, language, and war and would search in magical plants for ways to relieve suffering and anxiety, ways of escaping the enclosing world, or, by contrast, find the courage to confront it. For millennia, drugs have been the objects of sacred, magical, and therapeutic knowledge. The entirety of medical psychopharmacology is based on the same foundations as this “primitive” psychopharmacology and the technological and scientific revolution of the 19th century, which made it possible to isolate active ingredients and synthesize new molecules, facilitating the emergence of specific means of consumption, increased by the planetary-scale circulation of people, objects, and information. This mass consumption and trafficking, and the profits they generate, create major public health challenges for modern societies, as well as serious sociopolitical and economic problems. In terms of evolution, pure psychoactive drugs and the direct means of administering them are recent phenomena and pathogenic in that they short-circuit adaptive processes by acting directly on the circuits of the primitive brain, which controls emotions and basic survival behaviour. In this way, psychoactive multiple drugs seem to translate into an evolution toward the true chemical regulation of existence. In this first section, we will discuss tranquilizers and psychostimulants, true “analogue” drugs that act as volume controls for wakefulness andmood. Often strongly addictive, they raise widely recognised social, medical and psychological issues, secondary to addiction and its consequences.     

Können Tiere zählen?

The “magical” number four We know already since more than 140 years that humans have the inborn ability to recognize only up to four objects correctly if counting is strictly inhibited. Many vertebrates and the honeybee workers can remember up to four objects albeit they are unable to count. This inborn numerical competence common to humans and animals raises interesting questions concerning the purpose and the evolution of this ability. The “magical” number four is obviously a neurological, historical and mythological enigma.     

Genetic-gonadal-genitals sex (3G-sex) and the misconception of brain and gender,or, why 3G-males and 3G-females have intersex brain and intersex gender

The categorization of individuals as “male” or “female” is based on chromosome complement and gonadal and genital phenotype. This combined genetic-gonadal-genitals sex, here referred to as 3G-sex, is internally consistent in ~99% of humans (i.e., one has either the “female” form at all levels, or the “male” form at all levels). About 1% of the human population is identified as “intersex” because of either having an intermediate form at one or more levels, or having the “male” form at some levels and the “female” form at other levels. These two types of “intersex” reflect the facts, respectively, that the different levels of 3G-sex are not completely dimorphic nor perfectly consistent. Using 3G-sex as a model to understand sex differences in other domains (e.g., brain, behavior) leads to the erroneous assumption that sex differences in these other domains are also highly dimorphic and highly consistent. But parallel lines of research have led to the conclusion that sex differences in the brain and in behavior, cognition, personality, and other gender characteristics are for the most part not dimorphic and not internally consistent (i.e., having one brain/gender characteristic with the “male” form is not a reliable predictor for the form of other brain/gender characteristics). Therefore although only ~1% percent of humans are 3G-“intersex”, when it comes to brain and gender, we all have an intersex gender (i.e., an array of masculine and feminine traits) and an intersex brain (a mosaic of “male” and “female” brain characteristics).     

Logical-Semantic Analysis and the Development of L.S. Vygotsky's Ideas About “Units” and “Elements” of Psychological Systems

Based on an analysis of L.S. Vygotsky's concepts of “units” and “elements” of psychological systems, this article highlights five of their attributes. It shows that these attributes are logically symmetrical, since in their wording they can be converted into one another by negation or by replacing some words with their opposites. This suggests that the concepts of the “unit” and “element” of a system are different poles of one theoretical construct of the activity of human psychology. Thus methods for the study of psychological systems by breaking them down into elements or by separating them into units can be seen as complementary. The article describes differences among the concepts of “unit,” “minimal unit,” and “cell” of a psychological system. It reviews several problems that are solvable using the “method of units,” as well as some concepts of the theory of psychological systems that are understood as holistic, conceptual, and active processes and/or results of human interaction with the world. Among the examples of such systems are “systems of psychological functions” (according to Vygotsky), as well as separate activities (according to A.N. Leontiev), human actions and operations (interactions with the world on the level of objects and mental or physical means). The “component” of a psychological system is defined as any “something” that in some sense belongs to or is included in human interaction with the world. A component that belongs to the system is called an “element” of it, but a component that is included in the functioning and development of the system is called a “part” of it. The article presents the mathematical and psychological foundation of these definitions. It identifies and discusses the substantial (independently existing) components of psychological systems and their attributes (properties and conditions). It describes the relationships between them using the bipolar theoretical constructs “part-element” and “substantial-attributive” component of a system.     

The ethics of fish welfare

The topic of fish welfare in the context of commercial fisheries is a difficult one. From traditionally anthropocentric or human‐centred perspectives, fishes are simply objects for humans to use as they see fit. When it is argued that anthropocentrism is arbitrary, it may appear that a strong animal rights position is the only recourse, with the result that humans ought not to use animals in the first place, if it is at all possible. It can be argued that both positions fail to view human beings as part of the natural world. If human beings are viewed as part of the world from which they live, then it has to be asked what it means to be respectful of the animals which humans use and from which they live. From this perspective, concern for the welfare of the fishes humans eat is simply what should be expected from humans as good citizens in the community of living creatures.     

The Acoela: on their kind and kinships, especially with nemertodermatids and xenoturbellids (Bilateria incertae sedis)

Acoels are among the simplest worms and therefore have often been pivotal in discussions of the origin of the Bilateria. Initially thought primitive because of their “planula-like” morphology, including their lumenless digestive system, they were subsequently dismissed by many morphologists as a specialized clade of the Platyhelminthes. However, since molecular phylogenies placed them outside the Platyhelminthes and outside all other phyla at the base of the Bilateria, they became the focus of renewed debate and research. We review what is currently known of acoels, including information regarding their morphology, development, systematics, and phylogenetic relationships, and put some of these topics in a historical perspective to show how the application of new methods contributed to the progress in understanding these animals. Taking all available data into consideration, clear-cut conclusions cannot be made; however, in our view it becomes successively clearer that acoelomorphs are a “basal” but “divergent” branch of the Bilateria.     

PHLOEM OF PRIMITIVE ANGIOSPERMS. I. SIEVE-ELEMENT ONTOGENY IN THE PETIOLE OF LIRIODENDRON TULIPIFERA L. (MAGNOLIACEAE)

As part of a continuing study of sieve elements in primitive angiosperms, a study of this cell type was undertaken in Liriodendron tulipifera. A typical ontogenetic sequence was observed in which synthetic processes such as wall thickening are followed in time by cellular lysis of nucleus, ribosomes, microtubules, vacuoles, and dictyosomes. This lysis is selective in that certain cellular components (e.g., the plasmalemma) remain unaffected. Concomitant with lysis is the formation of sieve-area pores from plasmodesmata. Comparison of pore size on end and lateral walls indicates that the use of the term “sieve tube” rather than “sieve cell” to describe these elements is appropriate.     

“野生动物”的概念框架和术语定义

“野生动物”(wild animal)一词不止在我国, 在全球的英语使用者中也有不同的含义。通过梳理相关研究、国内法和国际法背景下的定义和适用范围, 结合人类对动物繁殖和生活条件的控制情况, 本文提出了“野生动物”的二维概念框架, 梳理了动物从“野生”到“驯化”的12个连续状态。以下状态即未经中长期人工选择的动物类群应被视为野生动物: (1)其在荒野自然或人工环境(如城市或乡村)中自由生存繁殖, 无论是否存在人工投喂、经救护或辅助生殖后被放归的个体; (2)被捕捉圈养在人工环境中生活, 或源自野外但在圈养条件下出生的个体; (3)直系血亲(《濒危野生动植物种国际贸易公约》解释为世系前四代)仍有野外来源的人工繁育后代; (4)放生、逃逸或引入到自然环境中的人工繁育个体。在野生动物物种保护的目标和语境之下, 经过长期人工选择的驯化动物, 无论其是否在人类控制下生活, 如家养猫狗、家禽家畜或模式实验动物, 以及流浪猫狗、放生禽畜和野化家养动物等都不是“野生动物”。但对于一些经过一定程度的人工选择, 所处人类控制情况和对野外种群的影响各异(如经过多代人工繁育的驯养动物、因人类活动导致的外来动物等), 其是否需被作为野生动物管理, 则需要根据生态安全、物种管理、立法目标等特别设定监管范围。《中华人民共和国野生动物保护法》的保护对象可以考虑为: 受到人类威胁濒临灭绝的, 或者具有重要生态作用的野生动物物种, 其状态可不限于是在野外还是人工控制条件下。其他动物的管理, 可根据遗传资源保护、疫病防控、动物福利和生态安全等需要, 另外设立《动物福利法》《生物安全法》等, 并和已有的法律法规如《动物防疫法》《渔业法》等做好衔接。本文还就《野生动物保护法》可能采用的“野生动物”定义提出建议。     

Wer denkt,der Mensch oder sein Gehirn?

Who decides – humans or their brains? Philosophers' justify their criticism of how brain researchers interpret their results primarily on the basis of the classical philosophical approach of the definition of terms. For instance, they argue that it is nonsensical to assert that the brain is capable of thought, since only a human being possesses this faculty. Brain research has shown, however, that the processes taking place within the brain are necessary and sufficient in order to explain how we think. The author contends that the definition of terms does not advance our knowledge of brain function, the reason being that during a language's development those terms reflect the world‐view current at the time. If terms coined earlier are still used today, they may be outdated and hence, when defined, misleading.     

Neuroanatomical and neurochemical basis of parenting: Dynamic coordination of motivational,affective and cognitive processes

This article is part of a Special Issue “Parental Care”. Becoming a parent is arguably the most profound transforming experience in life. It is also inherently very emotionally and physically demanding, such that the reciprocal interaction with the young changes the brain and behavior of the parents. In this review, we examine the neurobiological mechanisms of parenting primarily discussing recent research findings in rodents and primates, especially humans. We argue that it is essential to consider parenting within a conceptual framework that recognizes the dynamics of the reciprocal mother–young relationship, including both the complexity and neuroplasticity of its underlying mechanisms. Converging research suggests that the concerted activity of a distributed network of subcortical and cortical brain structures regulates different key aspects of parenting, including the sensory analysis of infant stimuli as well as motivational, affective and cognitive processes. The interplay among these processes depends on the action of various neurotransmitters and hormones that modulate the timely and coordinated execution of caregiving responses of the maternal circuitry exquisitely attuned to the young's affect, needs and developmental stage. We conclude with a summary and a set of questions that may guide future research.     

Cosmetic psychopharmacology and the President's Council on Bioethics

Advances in neuroscience and biotechnology have heightened the urgency of the debate over "cosmetic psychopharmacology," the use of drugs to enhance mood and temperament in the absence of illness. Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (2003), the report of the President's Council on Bioethics, has criticized the use of cosmetic psychopharmacology. The Council claimed that cosmetic psychopharmacology will necessarily lead to "severing the link between feelings of happiness and our actions and experiences in the world," but it provided no satisfactory arguments to support this claim and ignored the possibility that cosmetic psychopharmacology might actually enhance the link between happiness and experience. The Council's arguments against cosmetic psychopharmacology depend heavily on the mistaken belief that Prozac and similar antidepressants are mood brighteners in healthy subjects. The empirical evidence, however, clearly indicates that these drugs are not forms of cosmetic psychopharmacology, thus negating much of the Council's arguments. The use of pharmaceutical agents to enhance mood or personality in normal individuals should not be rejected a priori. Instead, the effects of each agent on the individual and on society must be weighed using sound ethical reasoning and the best evidence available.     

The emergence and significance of heavy-duty scrapers in ancient stone toolkits

Heavy-duty scrapers are documented as a specific morphotype in ancient African and Eurasian toolkits from the Oldowan into the Acheulian. They are characterized by a flat platform perpendicularly oriented to a carinated edge. The convex surface of that edge displays semi-peripheral, unidirectional removals associated with steep retouch and/or crush marks. This morphotype has been described from numerous sites covering a long temporal scale and are diversely referred to in French as “rostro-carénés” or “nucléus-racloirs” and in English as “massive scrapers”, “core scrapers”, “large scrapers”, or “heavy end-scrapers”. Morpho-technological definitions and interpretations are reviewed to track the origin and evolution of heavy-duty scrapers over time and space. Results show that tools referred to as heavy-duty scrapers were made on thick cobbles during the Oldowan, and later, at the onset of the Acheulian, on Large Flakes, while smaller-sized items in Late Acheulian sites assume end-scraper morphologies. But should all of these tools really be grouped under a single denomination? Experimental work explores whether heavy-duty scrapers are the result of knapping processes, or if their morphology could be derived from other kinds of activities. Chronological continuity of the attributes specific to heavy-duty scrapers points to their role in ancient toolkits, suggesting that these scarce but ubiquitous primitive implements are, on equal footing with chopper-cores, one of the oldest morphotypes in the world.     

Development through paper deals: space and politics of value in peri-urban India

The article looks at contestations over space in peri-urban India. It studies the acrimonious responses in defense of a local marketplace that occupied public land against the sovereign project of highway expansion in peri-urban West Bengal. It posits an opposition between two aspects of state governance—rational–legal and magical—that shape the contentions. In the rational–legal mode, the expansion of the highways represents the official development goals of progress. The magical aspects of the state engender the circulation of officially approved illegal chits that give occupying migrant villagers’ claim to the space around the highway. The ethnography looks at the affective economy of illegal chits that political parties and local bureaucracies use to bring migrating villagers within their ambit. It explores how illegal chits embody the state’s legible presence in the villagers’ everyday lives, their kinnetworks, communities and transform individual affective orientations toward space. In these new modes of simultaneous “space” and “place” making, public land is understood less as commons, but more as a stretch that could be divided among individuals and households aspiring to be “developed” or upwardly mobile by excluding others. The essay contends that emergence of the “right to the city” as a collective right requires a double-edged critique. A simple celebration of the subversive potential of the magical aspect of the state vis-à-vis its rational–legal mode may not be helpful for a politics of value that seeks to challenge the idea of value (or what makes life worth living) embedded in the wider neoliberal development discourse.     

Links between the discovery of primates and anatomical comparisons with humans,the chain of being,our place in nature,and racism

I focus on the crucial links between the discovery of nonhuman primates by Westerners, discussions on our place in nature, the chain of being, racism, and the history of primate comparative anatomy and of so‐called “anatomical human racial studies.” Strikingly, for more than a millennium humans knew more about the internal anatomy of a single monkey species than about that of their own bodies. This is because Galen used monkeys to infer human anatomy, in line with the human‐animal continuity implied by the Greek notion of scala naturae. With the rise of Christianity, nonhuman primates were increasingly seen in a negative way. A more positive view emerged in the 14th century when nonhuman primates were directly studied/seen by Europeans, culminating in Tyson's 1699 work showing that chimps share more gross anatomical similarities with humans than with monkeys. However, the discomfort caused by this human‐chimp similarity then led to a new idea of animal‐human discontinuity, now related not to anatomy but to “civilization”: between Europeans vs. non‐Europeans + other primates. Moreover, Linnaeus' Systema Naturae and the emergence of “anatomical racial studies” influenced by Camper's craniology then led to even more extreme ideas, such as the notion that Europeans were both mentally and morphologically “ideal.” Unfortunately the biased and often incorrect “results” of such studies, combined with ideas based on Darwin's “struggle for survival”, became crucial in propaganda that lead to the rise of eugenics in the end of the 19th/first half of 20th centuries and that culminated in Nazism. Since the 1950s there has been an emphasis on the continuity/unity between all human groups and other primates, in great part influenced by what happened during World War 2. Reviews such as this one are, therefore, particularly necessary to illuminate and guard against attitudes against “the Other” and racist ideologies that are re‐emerging in modern political discourse across the globe.     

Exosomes: Mediators of Neurodegeneration,Neuroprotection and Therapeutics

Exosomes have emerged as prominent mediators of neurodegenerative diseases where they have been shown to carry disease particles such as beta amyloid and prions from their cells of origin to other cells. Their simple structure and ability to cross the blood–brain barrier allow great opportunity to design a “makeup” with drugs and genetic elements, such as siRNA or miRNA, and use them as delivery vehicles for neurotherapeutics. Their role in neuroprotection is evident by the fact that they are involved in the regeneration of peripheral nerves and repair of neuronal injuries. This review is focused on the role of exosomes in mediating neurodegeneration and neuroprotection.     

Question 7: The Vesicle World: The Emergence of Cellular Life can be Related to Properties Specific to Vesicles

The question “What was the minimum number of genes necessary in the early cell” is rephrased as “Is it feasible to assume that early cells had no genes?” It is shown that a kind of primitive life process could exist on the basis only of properties specific to vesicles, and that it would have the potential to evolve into more complex cell-like processes.     

Ethnographic surreality,possession and the unconscious

In the Second Manifesto of Surrealism, issued by André Breton in 1929, surrealism was described as “a total recuperation of our psychic strength by a means of none other than vertiginous descent into ourselves, systematic illumination of the hidden places and progressive darkening of the other places, a perpetual walk in the forbidden zone”. Surrealism sought to represent the unconscious and forbidden zones of the psyche, of the body, of the noumenal world within, which offered access, for surrealists, to energies and intuitions repressed by “civilized” modes of perception. For Jean Rouch, the significance of surrealism, of automatic writing and ciné‐transe, rested in the potential escape they offered from the formal constraints of conventional film and of conventional perception and observation. In his celebration of ciné‐transe, and of the technological apparatus that makes it possible, it is possible to detect his desire for a freeing‐up of the constraints of consciousness—a desire to “write with the body”, to dream, to tap the unexplored power of the unconscious in its overturning of “reality”, of system, and of convention. As a phaneroscopic “wide‐angle lens”, surreality aimed to document the scientifically unexplainable, the immense experiential overload of ritual possession. It attempted to make visible, in the movement between observation and participation and across disjunctive points of view; the crossings‐over into the unconscious world by which possessed Songhay dancers gained access to powers of phaneroscopic perception. By adopting filmic techniques which follow the surrealist practice of creating “verbal and visual collage”, in which randomly‐generated images, emerging out of a trance‐like state (of “automatic writing” or "ciné‐transe"), are juxtaposed in indeterminate and polyphonic relations with each other in an attempt to disturb or destroy patterns of perception which are confining, rationalistic, linear, or restricted to conscious phenomena, Rouch believed he could create powerful representations of the unknowable. This paper relates the phaneroscopic practice of ethnographic surrealism to psychoanalytic models of the unconscious. In a discussion of Rouch's interpretation of the Hauka spirit cult in his film Les Maîtres Fous, the paper argues that the neo‐Freudian paradigm which allowed him to depict the Sohghay's weekend Hauka rites as a parodic reversion to “savagery” (which both reversed the hierarchy of colonizer/colonized and enabled participants to experience a therapeutic release from the traumas of colonization) has been challenged by Lacanian and post‐Lacanian “re‐readings” of Freud that call into question the extent to which the unconscious can be equated with a pre‐linguistic state characterized by disjunctive “primitive” and “instinctive” energies. The surrealist longing for a rupture of the symbolic order of Western rationalism and a return to the “imaginary order” of the unconscious is confounded in the Lacanian conception of the unconscious as a zone inhabited by the “discourse of the Other”. However, the work of Gillès Deleuze and Félix Guanari [1977] provides a means of conceptualizing the unconscious in terms that avoid simplistic binary logic (phenomenon/noumenon; signifier/signified; subject/object; conscious/unconscious; civilization/savagery). The unconscious is not the “unrepresentable” Other of consciousness; it is a schizophrenic phaneron, a signifying “machine”, a transgressive producer of “group fantasy”. Rejecting both Freud's Oedipal model (the unconscious as primal imagery or “ghostly signifieds"), and the Lacanian notion of the unconscious (as a play of “empty signifiers"). Deleuze and Guattari argue that the unconscious cannot be accounted for in terms of the individual child and its entry into language any more than it can be conceived of as the domain of the primitive. On the contrary, the unconscious is constituted as “group fantasy”, as collective public memory which need not be reduced to elemental (Oedipal) signifiers: “all delirium possesses a world‐historical, political and racial content”. The schizophrenic embodies the public nature of unconscious meaning, since schizophrenia is primarily a communication disorder in which an individual never sees himself in terms of a linguistically‐generated “selfhood”, and fails to adopt the “false” identity which is offered to him in the language of the Other. Schizophrenia is characterized by a refusal to treat some meanings as superior to others, to remain within the bounds of a stable identity, or to distinguish between material (noumenal) things and actions and their (phenomenal) meanings. The schizophrenic unconscious treats all experience as signs, registering language in the same way as the body registers physical stimuli. Thus “meanings in the unconscious are simply meanings as workings of the body” [Harland 1987:174–175]. The schizophrenic as a model for the unconscious holds several implications for those interested in representing the experiential power of public rituals, for the public meanings in circulation during such rituals are material and noumenal, and are registered on the bodies of the dancers as they transgress boundaries and pass beyond consciousness. Rouch's surreality attempted to inscribe this unconscious production of public meaning as it was manifested in the movements of the ritual and in the movements of the camera‐body.     

Information,Representation, Biology

Biosemiotics contains at its core fundamental issues of naturalism: are normative properties, such as meaning, referent, and others, part of the natural world, or are they part of a second, intentional and normative, metaphysical realm — one that might be analogically applied to natural phenomena, such as within biological cells — but a realm that nevertheless remains metaphysically distinct? Such issues are manifestations of a fundamental metaphysical split between a “natural” realm and a realm of normativity and intentionality. This problematic metaphysical split derives from conceptual problems originating with the Pre-Socratics; transcending that split requires correcting those problems. In particular, transcending that split requires a model of metaphysical emergence, and, in particular, normative emergence. This paper will limn that argument regarding metaphysical emergence, but focus most strongly on an overview of a model of normative, representational emergence that overcomes that metaphysical diremption.     

Ethical Implications in Vaccine Pharmacotherapy for Treatment and Prevention of Drug of Abuse Dependence

Different immunotherapeutic approaches are in the pipeline for the treatment of drug dependence. “Drug vaccines” aim to induce the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to drugs and prevent them from inducing rewarding effects in the brain. Drugs of abuse currently being tested using these new approaches are opioids, nicotine, cocaine, and methamphetamine. In human clinical trials, “cocaine and nicotine vaccines” have been shown to induce sufficient antibody levels while producing few side effects. Studies in humans, determining how these vaccines interact in combination with their target drug, are underway. However, although vaccines can become a reasonable treatment option for drugs of abuse, there are several disadvantages that must be considered. These include i) great individual variability in the formation of antibodies, ii) the lack of protection against a structurally dissimilar drug that produces the same effects as the drug of choice, and iii) the lack of an effect on the drug desire that may predispose an addict to relapse. In addition, a comprehensive overview of several crucial ethical issues has not yet been widely discussed in order to have not only a biological approach to immunotherapy of addiction. Overall, immunotherapy offers a range of possible treatment options: the pharmacological treatment of addiction, the treatment of overdoses, the prevention of toxicity to the brain or the heart, and the protection of the fetus during pregnancy. So far, the results obtained from a small-scale experiment using vaccines against cocaine and nicotine suggest that a number of important technical challenges still need to be overcome before such vaccines can be approved for clinical use.