This opinion piece presents insights derived from research conducted in a radiology department in the United States. For several weeks I followed the head of department while making notes and occasionally discussing them with him. The main objective of this research visit was to study strategies of embodied cognition and the intersubjective ground for individual intentions in the process of image-based diagnosis in order to reveal the essential regularities and personalizations of diagnostic practices as performed by radiologists. I argue that my observation reveals how at least certain aspects of the diagnostic cognition focused on medical imaging are structured and may be improved.
David O., Garnero L. & Varela F. J. (2001) A new approach to the MEG/EEG inverse problem for the recovery of cortical phase-synchrony. In: Insana M. F. & Leahy R. M. (eds.) Information processing in medical imaging. Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 2082. Springer, Berlin: 272–285.
Little has been done yet to study the synchronization properties of the sources estimated from the MEG/EEG inverse problem, despite the growing interest in the role of phase relations in brain functions. In order to achieve this aim, we propose a novel approach to the MEG/EEG inverse problem based on some regularization using spectral priors: The MEG/EEG raw data are filtered in a frequency band of interest and blurred with some specific “regularization noise” prior to the inversion process. This formalism uses non quadratic regularization and a deterministic optimization algorithm. We proceed to Monte Carlo simulations using the chaotic Rössler oscillators to model the neural generators. Our results demonstate that it is possible to reveal some phase-locking between brain sources with great accuracy following the computation of the inverse problem based on scalp MEG/EEG measurements.
Dietrich G., Varela F. J., Huarex V., Bouanani M. & Kazatchkhine M. D. (1993) Selection of the expressed B cell repertoire by infusion of normal immunoglobulin G in a patient with autoimmune thyroiditis. European Journal of Immunology 23: 2945–2950.
In the present study we have analyzed the changes in the expressed antibody repertoire and in temporal fluctuations of antibody levels in serum that followed infusion of normal IgG (IVIg) in a patient with autoimmune thyroiditis. Administration of IVIg resulted in the stimulation of IgM production, in alterations of expressed antibody activity in serum that could not merely be accounted for by the passive transfer of antibody specificities contained in IVIg, in transient down-regulation of B cells clones expressing a specific disease-related idiotype and in the increase in serum in recipient’s autoantibodies specifically reactive with F(ab′)2 fragments of IVIg. In addition, infusion of IVIg shifted the pattern of spontaneous fluctuations of autoantibody activities in the patient’s serum from a pattern indicative of disconnected events in the immune network to a pattern similar to that which is consistently observed in healthy controls. These results suggest that normal IgG may modulate autoreactivity by selecting expressed antibody repertoire through V region-dependent interactions with antibodies.
From 22 January 2019 to 24 January 2019, the 4E Cognition Group held the “Second Workshop on Enactive Approaches to Mind in Health and Disease” at Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas (IIMAS) in Mexico City, Mexico. The aim of the workshop was to discuss different kinds of mental impairments from an enactive stance, potentially contrasted with the basis of healthy mental processes and with other views of cognition.
Le van Quyen M., Martinerie. J., Adam C. & Varela F. J. (1999) Nonlinear analyses of interictal EEG map the brain interdependences in human focal epilepsy. Physica D 127: 250–266.
The degree of interdependence between intracranial electroencephalographic (EEG) channels was investigated in epileptic patients with temporal lobe seizures during interictal (between seizures) periods.With a novelmethod to characterize nonlinear cross-predictability, that is, the predictability of one channel using another channel as data base, we demonstrated here a possibility to extract information on the spatio-temporal organization of interactions between multichannel recording sites. This method determines whether two channels contain common activity, and often, whether one channel contains activity induced by the activity of the other channel. In particular, the technique and the comparison with surrogate data demonstrated that transient large-scale nonlinear entrainments by the epileptogenic region can be identified, this with or without epileptic activity. Furthermore, these recurrent activities related with the epileptic foci occurred in well-defined spatio-temporal patterns. This suggests that the epileptogenic region can exhibit very subtle influences on other brain regions during an interictal period and raises the possibility that the cross-predictability analysis of interictal data may be used as a significant aid in locating epileptogenic foci.
Martinerie J., Adam C., Le Van Quyen M., Baulac M., Renault B. & Varela F. J. (1998) Epileptic crisis can be anticipated by non-linear analysis. Nature Medicine 4: 1173–1176.
This article applies Maturana’s theory of ‘bringing forth’ reality to the clinical domain. Many common features of therapy are redefined including the notions of ‘psychopathology’, languaging and conversations, the family, and cognition. New concepts are introduced, notably those of the multiversa and the placing of objectivity in parenthesis. The rôle of the socially sanctioned specialist (expert) is examined and criticised for pretending to have a privileged access to an objectively existing reality. The authors propose a radical change in epistemology, premised upon the changes in understanding which they propose in relation to the ontology of the phenomenon of cognition. Particular attention is given to the orthogonality of the therapist’s approach to interacting with families.
Spanish translation “La constitución de lo patológico: Ensayo para ser leído en voz alta por dos” in Maturana H. R. (1993) Desde la biología a la psicología. Editing and prologue by Jorge Luzoro: 147–182. This paper is apparently derived from an earlier unpublished Spanish text entitled “Cómo se engendra la patología: Ensayo para ser leído en voz alta entre dos.” This text is documented as a “file” or “unpublished paper” distributed among members of the Sociedad Argentina de Terapia Familia (SATF), which has made it available online at http://www.terapiafamiliar.org.ar/archivos/Maturana – C%F3mo se engendra la patolog%EDa.pdf The SATF version may not be the earliest version. It apparently dates to circa 1987, whereas multiple authors have attributed dates as early as 1980 to the title. This unpublished text noticeably differs from the subsequent English and Spanish publications.
Uexküll T. (1980) Talking in medical science: From objects to subjects. In: Benseler F., Hejl P. M. & Köck W. K. (eds.) Autopoiesis, communication, and society: The theory of autopoietic systems in the social sciences. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt: 113–124.
Excerpt: I have tried to illustrate that the different aspects of talking, and also the different possibilities of avoiding its risks by the help of other forms of communication, are rooted functionally in the consensual systems in which medical science is realized.
Vaz N. M. (2011) Francisco Varela and the immunological self. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 28: 696–703. https://cepa.info/4220
Francisco Varela, a leading neurobiologist and cognitive scientist, made a 10-year-long incursion into immunology. His in-depth contributions aimed to develop a systemic description to replace the standard stimulus/response/regulation scaffold that has governed immunology since its inception in the 19th century. Many of these efforts involved expansions of the notions introduced by Niels Jerne in his idiotypic network theory (Jerne, 1974a, 1974b) with the added notion of organizational closure, derived from the autopoietic theory. However, today, just like yesterday, the immunological community remains inclined to neglect these efforts and instead rests satisfied with half-a-century old clonal selection concepts (Burnet, 1959).
Vaz N. M., Ramos G. C., Pordeus V. & Carvalho C. R. (2006) The conservative physiology of the immune system: A non-metaphoric approach to immunological activity. Clinical and Developmental Immunology 13(2–4): 133–142. https://cepa.info/6357
Historically, immunology emerged as a biomedical science, concerned with host defense and production of anti-infectious vaccines. In the late 50s, selective theories were proposed and from then on, immunology has been based in a close association with the neo-Darwinian principles, such as random generation of variants (lymphocyte clones), selection by extrinsic factors (antigens) – and, more generally, on genetic determinism and functionalism. This association has had major consequences: (1) immunological jargon is full of “cognitive” metaphors, founded in the idea of “foreignness”; (2) the immune system is described with a random clonal origin, coupled to selection by random encounters; and (3) physiological events are virtually absent from immunological descriptions. In the present manuscript, we apply systemic notions to bring forth an explanation including systemic mechanisms able to generate immunological phenomena. We replace “randomness plus selection” and the notion of foreignness by a history of structural changes which are determined by the coherences of the system internal architecture at any given moment. The importance of this systemic way of seeing is that it explicitly attends to the organization that defines the immune system, within which it is possible to describe the conservative physiology of the immune system. Understanding immune physiology in a systemic way of seeing also suggests mechanisms underlying the origin of immunopathogeny and therefore suggests new insights to therapeutic approaches. However, if seriously acknowledged, this systemic/historic approach to immunology goes along with a global conceptual change which modifies virtually everything in the domain of biology, as suggested by Maturana.