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Overy C and Tansey E M. (eds) (2014)
Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine, vol. 51. London: Queen Mary, University of London.
The variation of mood with the seasons has been acknowledged for a long time. It was in 1984 that the term Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) was first used in a paper by Norman Rosenthal and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD. This volume is an edited transcription of a Witness Seminar held by the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group at Queen Mary University of London in December 2013, which looked at the research leading up to that paper and the thirty years of subsequent investigations into the disorder which affects a significant proportion of the population.
Chaired by Professor Sir Brian Follett, participants, some of whom suffered from SAD, included two of the scientists involved in the early SAD research in the USA - Alfred J Lewy and Norman E Rosenthal, biologists studying photoperiodism, and representatives from SADA, the support organization in the UK for sufferers of this disorder.
Discussion addressed the theories of causation; research into circadian rhythms and the role of melatonin; the symptoms, diagnosis and prevalence of the disorder; and treatment with artificial bright light and drugs. It also covered patient activism, the various perceptions of SAD by medical professionals and its diagnostic classification, and the difficulties of funding research and treatment.
This volume can be freely downloaded here.
A Clinician’s Manual for Light and Wake Therapy
Anna Wirz-Justice
Francesco Benedetti
Michael Terman
‘Light therapy’ is the only treatment in psychiatry that directly evolved out of basic neurobiology research. It is recognized as the treatment of choice for seasonal affective disorder and has been successfully used in non seasonal depressionand other psychiatric or neurologic illnesses, including bulimia nervosa and Alzheimer’s disease. At the same time, ‘wake therapy’ is the fastest antidepressant known. Chronotherapeutic combinations of light and wake therapy achieve fast results and, by reducing residual symptoms, also minimize relapse.
This manual introduces chronotherapeutics for depression, a new synthesis of non-pharmacologic interventions designed to accelerate remission in bipolar and unipolar patients alike. It examines the underlying clinical research, explains the involvement of the circadian timing system, and provides handson instructions for treating inpatients and outpatients. Written by three of the most prominent experts in the research and clinical applications of chronotherapy, this book enables clinicians to implement its principles and let their patients benefit from its practicality and effectiveness.
In this manual psychiatrists, psychologists, primary care physicians and health care administrators find comprehensive overviews of theory, research background, practical guidelines, and future prospects. It is also essential reading for practitioners of sleep medicine.
RESEARCH SIGNPOST, 2009
María Luisa Fanjul-Moles and Raúl Aguilar Roblero (editors)
Old City Publishing Inc., USA, IHS ATP, UK, APAC Publishing, Services Pte Ltd, Singapore:
Corresponding authors: Rüdiger Hardeland, Barbara-Ann Battelle, María Luisa Fanjul-Moles, Claudio R. Lazzari, Mirian David Marques, Luiz Menna-Barreto, Carolina Escobar, Ivette Caldelas, Robyn Hudson, Mauricio Díaz-Muñoz, Raúl Aguilar-Roblero
The goal in editing this book was to provide a comparative view of the current knowledge regarding circadian rhythms and clocks at different phylogenetic levels. The contributing authors reviewed, both, the circadian molecules and the circadian mechanisms which function in representative groups ranging from simple unicellular organisms to complex ones such as invertebrates and non-mammal and mammal vertebrates. The book offers a token of different approaches to the field. Some relate to regulation molecules and their biochemical pathways which are involved in either circadian or exogenous aspects of the rhythmic process or how they function in photoautotrophic unicells as well as the neurobiological and molecular bases of circadian oscillators which function in some invertebrates and vertebrates. A number of works focus on the importance of environmental, social, and nutrient temporal signals as synchronizing agents in insects and in different vertebrate models. The reviews do not center only on the adult organism at the integrative level, but also provide an ontogenetic view at behavioral, physiological, and molecular levels. Furthermore, they supply evidence on the involvement of several organs as potential sources of circadian signaling in different vertebrate groups, which indicates the existence of multioscillatory circadian systems similar to those proposed for some invertebrates. We hope this book will be useful to students, teachers, researchers and to every one who is interested in the rhythms of life.
For detailed table of contents see here.