van Beveren Nico J M, de Haan Lieuwe
Erasmus University Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2008 Jul 9;3(7):e2577. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002577.
In many scientific disciplines the use of a metaphor as an heuristic aid is not uncommon. A well known example in somatic medicine is the 'defense army metaphor' used to characterize the immune system. In fact, probably a large part of the everyday work of doctors consists of 'translating' scientific and clinical information (i.e. causes of disease, percentage of success versus risk of side-effects) into information tailored to the needs and capacities of the individual patient. The ability to do so in an effective way is at least partly what makes a clinician a good communicator. Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder which affects approximately 1% of the population. Over the last two decades a large amount of molecular-biological, imaging and genetic data have been accumulated regarding the biological underpinnings of schizophrenia. However, it remains difficult to understand how the characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia such as hallucinations and delusions are related to disturbances on the molecular-biological level. In general, psychiatry seems to lack a conceptual framework with sufficient explanatory power to link the mental- and molecular-biological domains.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we present an essay-like study in which we propose to use visualized concepts stemming from the theory on dynamical complex systems as a 'visual metaphor' to bridge the mental- and molecular-biological domains in schizophrenia. We first describe a computer model of neural information processing; we show how the information processing in this model can be visualized, using concepts from the theory on complex systems. We then describe two computer models which have been used to investigate the primary theory on schizophrenia, the neurodevelopmental model, and show how disturbed information processing in these two computer models can be presented in terms of the visual metaphor previously described. Finally, we describe the effects of dopamine neuromodulation, of which disturbances have been frequently described in schizophrenia, in terms of the same visualized metaphor.
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The conceptual framework and metaphor described offers a heuristic tool to understand the relationship between the mental- and molecular-biological domains in an intuitive way. The concepts we present may serve to facilitate communication between researchers, clinicians and patients.
在许多科学学科中，使用隐喻作为启发式辅助手段并不罕见。躯体医学中一个广为人知的例子是用于描述免疫系统的“防御军队隐喻”。事实上，医生的日常工作很大一部分可能包括将科学和临床信息（即疾病病因、成功概率与副作用风险）“翻译”成适合个体患者需求和能力的信息。以有效方式做到这一点的能力至少在一定程度上是使临床医生成为优秀沟通者的原因。精神分裂症是一种严重的精神障碍，影响着约1%的人口。在过去二十年中，已经积累了大量关于精神分裂症生物学基础的分子生物学、影像学和遗传学数据。然而，仍然难以理解精神分裂症的特征性症状，如幻觉和妄想，是如何与分子生物学水平的紊乱相关的。总体而言，精神病学似乎缺乏一个具有足够解释力的概念框架来连接精神和分子生物学领域。
方法/主要发现：在此，我们呈现一项类似论文的研究，其中我们提议使用源于动态复杂系统理论的可视化概念作为“视觉隐喻”，以连接精神分裂症的精神和分子生物学领域。我们首先描述一个神经信息处理的计算机模型；我们展示如何使用复杂系统理论中的概念来可视化该模型中的信息处理。然后我们描述两个用于研究精神分裂症主要理论——神经发育模型的计算机模型，并展示如何根据先前描述的视觉隐喻来呈现这两个计算机模型中受干扰的信息处理。最后，我们根据相同的可视化隐喻描述多巴胺神经调节的作用，多巴胺神经调节紊乱在精神分裂症中经常被描述。
结论/意义：所描述的概念框架和隐喻提供了一种启发式工具，以直观的方式理解精神和分子生物学领域之间的关系。我们提出的概念可能有助于促进研究人员、临床医生和患者之间的沟通。
