Healy D
Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge Clinical School.
Psychiatr Dev. 1987 Winter;5(4):349-76.
Thomas Kuhn's model of the structure of scientific procedure is outlined and applied to salient aspects of recent psychopharmacological research into the bioneural substrates of the affective disorders. It is argued that the amine hypotheses of these disorders are irrefutable in practice although not in principle and that their survival despite a lack of convincing supporting evidence and dis-proof of their initial premises suggests that they serve a paradigmatic function and that the core of this paradigm is psychological in nature rather than neurobiological. An attempt is made to show how an awareness of such functions may help explain otherwise puzzling features of the literature on the psychopharmacology of the affective disorders. Such an awareness may also help to indicate the steps necessary to replace the amine hypotheses or the likely future prospects for these hypotheses.
托马斯·库恩的科学程序结构模型被勾勒出来，并应用于近期关于情感障碍生物神经基质的精神药理学研究的显著方面。有人认为，这些障碍的胺假说在实践中虽然不是在原则上是不可反驳的，而且尽管缺乏令人信服的支持证据且其最初前提被证伪，但它们仍然存在，这表明它们起到了范式的作用，而且这个范式的核心本质上是心理学的而非神经生物学的。本文试图说明，意识到这种功能如何有助于解释情感障碍精神药理学文献中其他令人困惑的特征。这种意识也可能有助于指出取代胺假说所需的步骤或这些假说可能的未来前景。
