Obesity and resistance to cancer chemotherapy: interacting roles of inflammation and metabolic dysregulation.

The prevalence of obesity, an established risk factor for many chronic diseases, including several types of cancer, has risen steadily over the past four decades in the United States and worldwide. To date, research in this area has focused on the epidemiologic associations between obesity and cancer risk, as well as on the mechanisms underlying those associations. However, an emerging but understudied issue of clinical importance is the diminution of chemotherapeutic efficacy in obese cancer patients. The mechanisms underlying the negative impact of obesity on therapeutic responses are likely multifactorial. The effects of obesity on chemotherapy drug pharmacokinetics and dosage have been extensively reviewed elsewhere, so this review will focus on the interplay among obesity, increased inflammation, metabolic perturbations, and chemoresistance. The ultimate goal of this review is to delineate areas for future research that could lead to the identification of new targets and strategies for improved cancer outcomes in obese patients.

In search of a deep psychobiology of hypnosis: visionary hypotheses for a new millennium.

This search for the deep psychobiological foundations of hypnosis begins with a review of some of the paradoxes of historical hypnosis and the impasse of current theory. It is proposed that further progress requires a deeper investigation of how psychosocial cues can modulate the mechanisms of healing at the CNS, autonomic, neuroendocrine and cellular-genetic levels. The dynamics of hypnotic communication and healing from the cognitive-behavior level to the cellular-genetic are outlined in four stages: (1) Information transduction between the experiences of consciousness and the limbic-hypothalamic-pituitary system; (2) The psychosomatic network of messenger molecules and their receptors; (3) The immediate early gene protein cascade; and (4) State dependent memory, learning and behavior. Neuroscience research is outlined for its contributions to a mathematical model of how a psychobiological approach to the therapeutic applications of hypnosis and the placebo response could facilitate neurogenesis in the human hippocampus and healing at the cellular-genetic-protein level throughout the body. A series of ten hypotheses is proposed as a guide for theory and research in therapeutic hypnosis utilizing DNA chip technology in the new millennium.

The Feigenbaum scenario as a model of the limits of conscious information processing.

The Feigenbaum scenario of the mathematical period doubling sequence from order to deterministic chaos has led to new insights about the nonlinear dynamics of a wide variety of physical and biological systems. Multiple realms from purely mechanical systems, fluid dynamics and weather to the patterns of biological growth and the dynamic of the heart, hormone and brain rhythms have been found to exhibit aspects of the Feigenbaum period doubling sequence. We explore the possibility that the Feigenbaum scenario can be extended to experiences of sensation, perception and human cognition as well. We also review the empirical data that supports the view that the Feigenbaum scenario of the period doubling sequence may portray an important limit in conscious information processing. We conclude that a major function of consciousness may be to transform the nonlinear, irrational and difficult to predict dynamics of unconscious nature into the more linear, rational and predictable psychodynamics that make human experience and social life possible.

The psychobiology of mind-body communication: the complex, self-organizing field of information transduction.

The current information revolution in molecular biology has important implications for an new understanding of the phenomenology of mind, memory and behavior as a complex, self-organizing field of information transduction. This paper traces the pathways of information transduction in life processes from the molecular-genetic level to the dynamics of mind and behavior together with suggestions for future research exploring the psychobiology of mind-body communication and its implications for the psychotherapeutic arts of the future.

Biological rhythms as organization and information.

While it is generally acknowledged that modern science began with the quantification of time in the measurement of linear physical processes in space by Galileo and Newton, the biological sciences have only recently developed appropriate experimental and mathematical methods for the description of living systems in terms of processes of non-linear, recursive dynamics. We now recognize that living organisms have patterns of exquisitely timed processes that are as intricate as their spatial structure and organization. Self-similarities of life processes in time and space have evolved to generate an ensemble of oscillators within which analogous functions may be discerned on many different time scales. The increasing complexity of periodic relationships on and between the many levels of biological organization are uncovered by current research. Recent efforts to reformulate the foundation of physics from the quantum to the cosmological level by using the concept of information as the common denominator integrating time, structure and energy remind us of an apparently analogous suggestion in the chronobiological literature which also describes the periodic dynamics of living systems as information processing. In this paper we review the periodic processes of living systems on all levels from the molecular, genetic and cellular to the neuroendocrinological, behavioural and social domains. Biological rhythms may be conceptualized as the evolution of ever more complex dynamics of information transduction that optimize the temporal integrity, development, and survival of the organism.