Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
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Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., B, Biol. Sci. · May 2004
ReviewScar-free healing: from embryonic mechanisms to adult therapeutic intervention.
In man and domestic animals, scarring in the skin after trauma, surgery, burn or sports injury is a major medical problem, often resulting in adverse aesthetics, loss of function, restriction of tissue movement and/or growth and adverse psychological effects. Current treatments are empirical, unreliable and unpredictable: there are no prescription drugs for the prevention or treatment of dermal scarring. Skin wounds on early mammalian embryos heal perfectly with no scars whereas wounds to adult mammals scar. ⋯ This means that scarring may no longer be an inevitable consequence of modem injury or surgery and that a completely new pharmaceutical approach to the prevention of human scarring is now possible. Scarring after injury occurs in many tissues in addition to the skin. Thus scar-improving drugs could have widespread benefits and prevent complications in several tissues, e.g. prevention of blindness after scarring due to eye injury, facilitation of neuronal reconnections in the central and peripheral nervous system by the elimination of glial scarring, restitution of normal gut and reproductive function by preventing strictures and adhesions after injury to the gastrointestinal or reproductive systems, and restoration of locomotor function by preventing scarring in tendons and ligaments.
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Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., B, Biol. Sci. · Feb 2003
ReviewUnderstanding autism: insights from mind and brain.
Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication as well as repetitive behaviours and restricted interests. The consequences of this disorder for everyday life adaptation are extremely variable. The general public is now more aware of the high prevalence of this lifelong disorder, with ca. 0.6% of the population being affected. ⋯ However, advances in these fields are expected as methodological difficulties are overcome. In this paper, recent developments in the field of autism are outlined. In particular, we review the findings of the three main neuro-cognitive theories of autism: theory-of-mind deficit, weak central coherence and executive dysfunction.
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Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., B, Biol. Sci. · Sep 2001
ReviewEpisodic memory and autonoetic consciousness: a first-person approach.
Episodic memory is identified with autonoetic consciousness, which gives rise to remembering in the sense of self-recollection in the mental re-enactment of previous events at which one was present. Autonoetic consciousness is distinguished from noetic consciousness, which gives rise to awareness of the past that is limited to feelings of familiarity or knowing. Noetic consciousness is identified not with episodic but with semantic memory, which involves general knowledge. ⋯ There is evidence that remembering is selectively impaired in various populations, including not only amnesic patients and older adults but also adults with Asperger's syndrome. This first-person approach to episodic memory represents one way in which that most elusive aspect of consciousness, its subjectivity, can be investigated scientifically. The two kinds of conscious experiences can be manipulated experimentally in ways that are systematic, replicable and intelligible theoretically.
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Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., B, Biol. Sci. · Sep 2001
ReviewMemory for events and their spatial context: models and experiments.
The computational role of the hippocampus in memory has been characterized as: (i) an index to disparate neocortical storage sites; (ii) a time-limited store supporting neocortical long-term memory; and (iii) a content-addressable associative memory. These ideas are reviewed and related to several general aspects of episodic memory, including the differences between episodic, recognition and semantic memory, and whether hippocampal lesions differentially affect recent or remote memories. Some outstanding questions remain, such as: what characterizes episodic retrieval as opposed to other forms of read-out from memory; what triggers the storage of an event memory; and what are the neural mechanisms involved? To address these questions a neural-level model of the medial temporal and parietal roles in retrieval of the spatial context of an event is presented. ⋯ Two experiments relating to the model are briefly described. A functional neuroimaging study of memory for the spatial context of life-like events in virtual reality provides support for the model's functional localization. A neuropsychological experiment suggests that the hippocampus does store an allocentric representation of spatial locations.
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Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., B, Biol. Sci. · Sep 2001
ReviewEpisodic memory and common sense: how far apart?
Research has revealed facts about human memory in general and episodic memory in particular that deviate from both common sense and previously accepted ideas. This paper discusses some of these deviations in light of the proceedings of The Royal Society's Discussion Meeting on episodic memory. ⋯ The serial-dependent-independent (SPI) model of the relations among episodic, semantic and perceptual memory systems accounts for a number of puzzling phenomena, such as some amnesic patients' preserved recognition memory and their ability to learn new semantic facts, and holds that episodic remembering of perceptual information can occur only by virtue of its mediation through semantic memory. Although common sense endows many animals with the ability to remember their past experiences, as yet there is no evidence that humanlike episodic memory-defined in terms of subjective time, self, and autonoetic awareness-is present in any other species.