The old new theory of modern Russian psychiatry: a biopsychosocial approach (institutional discourse)

The article is discussed («Review of psychiatry and medical psychology named after V.M. Bekhterev». 2020; 2: 3-15), which examines the biopsychosocial model as the theoretical basis (scientific, clinical, preventive, therapeutic) of modern psychiatry, in particular, the biological (genetic) domain.The purpose of the discourse: from the standpoint of philosophy and methodology of science, to determine the place of the biological domain (biomedical research) of the biopsychosocial (biopsychosocial—spiritual) (BPS) approach (theory) in Russian psychiatry, in particular, from the standpoint of the subject of psychiatry and its main section-clinical psychiatry.Based on methodology and philosophy, and based on anthropological and holistic approaches, the biological domain of the BPS model, which is based on clinical psychiatry as a practice and, accordingly, theory, is discussed through the subject of psychiatry as a science. The significance and role of the subject of psychiatry (pathology, disorders, abnormalities of mental activity) in the ICD-10 and the components of the biopsychosocial (model) approach are discussed. There are differences in the domains of the model and the difficulties of clinical diagnosis (multi-axis, functional, multidimensional) and, accordingly, the study of the etiopathogenesis of mental disorders, the "bias" of diagnosis and therapy. The article deals with the neurological component of the biological domain and the "expansion" of neurologists into psychiatry, which leads to hidden antipsychiatry. The author emphasizes the independence, contiguity and two-paradigm nature of psychiatry as a science (with its own unity of subject and its own method of research—clinical and psychopathological). In addition to the interdisciplinarity of clinical neuroscience, it is proposed to be multidisciplinary (for the sections of psychiatry), but the future belongs to the transdisciplinary research methodology.

Social Representations, Communication, and the Evolution of Cultures

This chapter suggests that, in order to understand changes in both social representations and culture, we need to focus on their systemic nature and on the role of communication processes. Linking up with a lengthy tradition that enhances the social nature of the human mind, the connections between the Frankfurt School’s legacy, cultural psychology, and the socio-constructionist movement are explored from a mature biological-evolutionary perspective. Considering and extending the idea of complexity from the biological domain to the mental, social, and cultural spheres, the attention shifts from structures to processes. What then becomes relevant is how well living and cultural systems are able to constantly regenerate themselves through structural changes and the establishing of new connections. The author suggests that we consider social representations as “maps” that we need to orient ourselves effectively in the “territory” of knowledge, action, and social relations.

DISA tool: discriminative and informative subspace assessment with categorical and numerical outcomes

Motivation: Pattern discovery and subspace clustering play a central role in the biological domain, supporting for instance putative regulatory module discovery from omic data for both descriptive and predictive ends. In the presence of target variables (e.g. phenotypes), regulatory patterns should further satisfy delineate discriminative power properties, well-established in the presence of categorical outcomes, yet largely disregarded for numerical outcomes, such as risk profiles and quantitative phenotypes. Results: DISA (Discriminative and Informative Subspace Assessment), a Python software package, is proposed to assess patterns in the presence of numerical outcomes using well-established measures together with a novel principle able to statistically assess the correlation gain of the subspace against the overall space. Results confirm the possibility to soundly extend discriminative criteria towards numerical outcomes without the drawbacks well-associated with discretization procedures. A case study is provided to show the properties of the proposed method. Availability: DISA is freely available at https://github.com/JupitersMight/DISA under the MIT license.

OryzaGP 2021 update: a rice gene and protein dataset for named-entity recognition

Due to the rapid evolution of high-throughput technologies, a tremendous amount of data is being produced in the biological domain, which poses a challenging task for information extraction and natural language understanding. Biological named entity recognition (NER) and named entity normalisation (NEN) are two common tasks aiming at identifying and linking biologically important entities such as genes or gene products mentioned in the literature to biological databases. In this paper, we present an updated version of OryzaGP, a gene and protein dataset for rice species created to help natural language processing (NLP) tools in processing NER and NEN tasks. To create the dataset, we selected more than 15,000 abstracts associated with articles previously curated for rice genes. We developed four dictionaries of gene and protein names associated with database identifiers. We used these dictionaries to annotate the dataset. We also annotated the dataset using pre-trained NLP models. Finally, we analysed the annotation results and discussed how to improve OryzaGP.

Grammar change

Structurally, cognitive and biological evolution are highly similar. Random variation and constant but blind selection drive evolution within biology as well as within cognition. However, evolution of cognitive programs, and in particular of grammar systems, is not a subclass of biological evolution but a domain of its own. The abstract evolutionary principles, however, are akin in cognitive and biological evolution. In other words, insights gained in the biological domain can be cautiously applied to the cognitive domain. This paper claims that the cognitively encapsulated, i.e. consciously inaccessible, aspects of grammars as cognitively represented systems, that is, the procedural and structural parts of grammars, are subject to, and results of, Darwinian evolution, applying to a domain-specific cognitive program. Other, consciously accessible aspects of language do not fall under Darwinian evolutionary principles, but are mostly instances of social changes.

The perception of biopsychosocial impacts of COVID-19 during lockdown restrictions over time in the UK – a mixed methods study

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the health of individuals physically, mentally, and socially. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of this impact across the pandemic from a biopsychosocial stance. Methods: A survey created by the research team was employed between November 2020 and February 2021 across social media, relevant organizations, and networks. The survey incorporated 5-time points across the different stages of the pandemic, covering biological, psychological, and social. There were 5 items for each survey (Very Positive affect to Very Negative affect), and analysis was undertaken using SPSS version 16. Descriptive statistics and non-parametric Friedman and Wilcoxon Tests, as well as correlations between the three domains, were implemented. Results: This study included 164 participants (77.0% female and 35.0% male) across 24 out of 38 counties in the UK. The impact of COVID-19 on biological domain was significant across the five data points χ2(4) = 63.99, p < 0.001, psychological χ2(4) = 118.939, p <0.001 and socially χ2(4) = 186.43, p <0.001. Between the 5 data points, 4 out of 5 had a negative impact, however between the first stage of lockdown and the easing of restrictions, findings for biological (Z=-2.35, p <0.05), psychological (Z=-6.61, p < 0.001), and socially (Z = -8.61, p <0.001) were positive. Negative correlations between the three domains across the pandemic are apparent, but in later stages, the biological domain had a positive correlation r = 0.52, p < 0.001. Conclusion: The data shows a negative impact from the self-reported perception of wellbeing from a biopsychosocial stance over time, as well as perceiving the three domains to interact negatively. To address these biopsychosocial issues, the research implies a place-based integrated recovery effort is needed, addressing biological, psychological, and social issues simultaneously. Further research should investigate biopsychosocial health among a more generalizable population.