Neurobiology of the chronicisation of pain in children: the memory of pain and its painful memory

Reviewing the development of nociceptive circuits provides the rationale behind the need to modify and reduce premature painful experiences, especially during the "plastic" neonatal phase. Indeed, if physiological mechanisms of the functional nociceptive system follow a harmonious and predetermined development, it is the individual personal experience, intrinsically random, which will shape the final reactivity of this system and the later painful experience. If pain would not have been the organism's alarm system, we could have simply compared it by analogy to other sensorial systems, which its development depends exclusively on the presence of environmental stimuli. The eyes wait for light, the ears for sound, the skin to be touched, the tongue to taste and the olfactory bulbs to smell. However with pain it is not the quantitative exposure that determines its development, but rather the context-laden aspects of its affliction which in turn create the complex experience and "memory" of pain. Prolonged, but also "unnecessary" exposure to pain transforms it into a futile sensation, which impacts the individual immediately but also resonates into its future. This article reviews recent neurobiological mechanisms (such as neural circuitry, neurotrophins, peripheral and central sensitization, inhibitory pathways) now known to develop during the chronicisation and apprenticing of pain in the growing individual. Its cognizance is vital for a better comprehension of adult pain.     

Normal and disordered sleep

Normal sleep is a complex and reversible state of brain functioning, including reduced inputs and outputs, blunted reflexes, and metabolic and cognitive changes. Evidence supports a role for sleep in the consolidation of an array of learning and memory tasks. Sleep deprivation and fragmentation result in executive dysfunction, increased appetite/weight and cellular stress. Sleep is a vital, complex but plastic function that can be modulated depending on individual heritage and motivation. The major role of sleep in attention and memory raises about concern the reduction in sleep duration recently pointed in teenagers and young adults. Sleep disorders are numerous and various. Their mechanism is not always identified, but may result from a central dysfunction in sleep-wake (e.g. narcolepsy) or circadian (e.g. advanced sleep phase syndrome) systems, from the sleep-related loss of compensation of reflexes normally effective during wakefulness (breathing is the most vulnerable function during sleep), or from other diseases preventing sleep (e.g. psychiatric insomnia, restless legs syndrome).     

Le corps anorexique comme le lieu d’expression d’une souffrance familiale

Anorexia nervosa fascinates because it re-enacts death in such an ostentatious way that it causes a turbine of such strength that it destabilises the family environment, awakens the spectres and threatens the foundations on which the family is built. Through the prism of food, these young girls talk to us about questions of importance for society: the weight of the family history on the construction of the modern family, intergenerational transmission, the evolution of the parental role, our relationship with death, etc. In order to be effective, the treatment of anorexia requires a complete, multimode takeover, in which the maltreated body and mind are taken care of in their mental and physical entirety. Our clinical experience enables us to better comprehend the intergenerational mechanisms that characterise the transmission of family suffering. It also reminds us that the body has a formidable individual, collective, transgenerational and even phylogenetic memory. In this article, we present a summary of our observations of the results of the multimode treatment we offer our anorexic patients at our psychiatric clinic. We specify the articulation of the family therapy to reveal the spectres (Abraham and Torok, 1978) [5] that impregnate the relational fabric within these family bubbles, the bodily work which enables the re-establishment of contact with a physical memory attached to these spectres and the individual psychotherapy which enables the verbalisation of the spectral memory.     

Autobiographic memory: Phenomenological aspects, personal semantic knowledge, generic events and characters (one case of pure retrograde memory recovery)

Tulving et al. [Brain Cogn 8 (1988) 3-20] proposed an operational distinction concerning memory between a semantic component consisting of general information about the individual's past and an episodic component, containing memories of specific events that can be situated in space and time. After a mild head trauma and in the context of professional troubles, patient FF displayed a pure retrograde amnesia concerning both his biographical identity and semantic memories. The patient could no longer access his memories. However, these did not seem completely lost since his answers to tests concerning historical events were better than random, his answers to a television quiz were automatic, he showed temporal transfer phenomena (ecmnesia) and since he retrieved the entirety of his memories within nine months. The patient FF illustrates the loss of retrograde autobiographic memory and the recovery of episodic memories, which requires three elements: a sense of subjective time, an autonoetic awareness (the ability to be aware of subjective time) and a "self" that can travel in subjective time.     

Stem bark chloroform extract of Bombax costatum Pellegr. & Vuillet exhibit anticonvulsant and neuroprotective effects in pentylenetetrazole-induced seizures in rats

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La mémoire autobiographique et le self dans les troubles du spectre autistique sans déficience intellectuelle (TSASDI) à l’âge adulte

Introduction

Autism spectrum disorder combines deficits in socio-communication, restricted, repetitive patterns but also disorders of self and cognitive impairments. Among them, people with ASD have autobiographical memory deficits as shown by several recent studies. Autobiographical memory is a critical function supporting socialization but it represents also an important support for the self as illustrated by the model of Self Memory System put forward by Conway. This cognitive model describes the reciprocal relationships between autobiographical memory and self and then provides a relevant theoretical framework to explore disorders of self by examining autobiographical memory deficits.