Neuropsychedelia examines the revival of psychedelic science since the "Decade of the Brain." After the breakdown of this previously prospering area of psychopharmacology, and in the wake of clashes between counterculture and establishment in the late 1960s, a new generation of hallucinogen researchers used the hype around the neurosciences in the 1990s to bring psychedelics back into the mainstream of science and society. This book is based on anthropological fieldwork and philosophical reflections on life and work in two laboratories that have played key roles in this development: a human lab in Switzerland and an animal lab in California. It sheds light on the central transnational axis of the resurgence connecting American psychedelic culture with the home country of LSD. In the borderland of science and religion, Neuropsychedelia explores the tensions between the use of hallucinogens to model psychoses and to evoke spiritual experiences in laboratory settings. Its protagonists, including the anthropologist himself, struggle to find a place for the mystical under conditions of late-modern materialism.

How historical, social, and cultural forces shaped the psychedelic experience in midcentury America, from CIA experiments with LSD to Timothy Leary's Harvard Psilocybin Project. Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activators for one's private muse or part of a political movement? In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers studied psychedelics in all these incarnations, often arriving at contradictory results. In American Trip, Ido Hartogsohn examines how the psychedelic experience in midcentury America was shaped by historical, social, and cultural forces--by set (the mindset of the user) and setting (the environments in which the experience takes place).

Drugs take strange journeys from the black market to the doctor's black bag. Changing marijuana laws in the United States and Canada, the opioid crisis, and the rising costs of pharmaceuticals have sharpened the public's awareness of drugs and their regulation. Government, industry, and the medical profession, however, have a mixed record when it comes to framing policies and generating knowledge to address drug use and misuse. In Strange Trips Lucas Richert investigates the myths, meanings, and boundaries of recreational drugs, palliative care drugs, and pharmaceuticals as well as struggles over product innovation, consumer protection, and freedom of choice in the medical marketplace. Scrutinizing how we have conceptualized and regulated drugs amid the pressing and competing interests of state regulatory bodies, pharmaceutical and for-profit companies, scientific researchers, and medical professionals, Richert asks how perceptions of a product shift – from dangerous substance to medical breakthrough, or vice versa. Through close examination of archival materials, accounts, and records, he brings substances into conversation with each other and demonstrates the contentious relationship between scientific knowledge, cultural assumptions, and social concerns. Weaving together stories of consumer resistance and government control, Strange Trips offers timely recommendations for the future of drug regulation.

Computational neurosciences and systems biology are among the main domains of life science research where mathematical modeling made a difference. This book introduces the many different types of computational studies one can develop to study neuronal systems. It is aimed at undergraduate students starting their research in computational neurobiology or more senior researchers who would like, or need, to move towards computational approaches. Based on their specific project, the readers would then move to one of the more specialized excellent textbooks available in the field. The first part of the book deals with molecular systems biology. Functional genomics is introduced through examples of transcriptomics and proteomics studies of neurobiological interest. Quantitative modelling of biochemical systems is presented in homogeneous compartments and using spatial descriptions. A second part deals with the various approaches to model single neuron physiology, and naturally moves to neuronal networks. A division is focused on the development of neurons and neuronal systems and the book closes on a series of methodological chapters. From the molecules to the organ, thinking at the level of systems is transforming biology and its impact on society. This book will help the reader to hop on the train directly in the tank engine.

A vivid analysis of the history and revival of clinical psychedelic science Psychedelic drugs are making a comeback. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists actively studied the potential of drugs like LSD and psilocybin for treating mental health problems. After a decades-long hiatus, researchers are once again testing how effective these drugs are in relieving symptoms for a wide variety of psychiatric conditions, from depression and obsessive–compulsive disorder to posttraumatic stress disorder and substance addiction. In Acid Revival, Danielle Giffort examines how this new generation of researchers and their allies are working to rehabilitate psychedelic drugs and to usher in a new era of psychedelic medicine. As this team of researchers and mental health professionals revive the field of psychedelic science, they are haunted by the past and by one person in particular: psychedelic evangelist Timothy Leary. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews with people working on scientific psychedelia, Giffort shows how today’s researchers tell stories about Leary as an “impure” scientist and perform his antithesis to address a series of lingering dilemmas that threaten to rupture their budding legitimacy. Acid Revival presents new information about the so-called psychedelic renaissance and highlights the cultural work involved with the reassembly of dormant areas of medical science. This colorful and accessible history of the rise, fall, and reemergence of psychedelic medicine is infused with intriguing narratives and personalities—a story for popular science aficionados as well as for scholars of the history of science and medicine.

When funding agencies and policy organizations consider the role of modeling and simulation in modern biology, the question is often posed, what has been accomplished ? This book will be organized around a symposium on the 20 year history of the CNS meetings, to be held as part of CNS 2010 in San Antonio Texas in July 2010. The book, like the symposium is intended to summarize progress made in Computational Neuroscience over the last 20 years while also considering current challenges in the field. As described in the table of contents, the chapter’s authors have been selected to provide wide coverage of the applications of computational techniques to a broad range of questions and model systems in neuroscience. The proposed book will include several features that establish the history of the field. For each article, its author will select an article originally appearing in a CNS conference proceedings from 15 – 20 years ago. These short (less than 6 page) articles will provide illustrations of the state of the field 20 years ago. The new articles will describe what has been learned about the subject in the following 20 years, and pose specific challenges for the next 20 years. The second historical mechanism will be the reproduction of the first 12 years of posters from the CNS meeting. These posters in and of themselves have become famous in the field (they hang in the halls of the NIH in Bethesda Maryland) and were constructed as allegories for the state and development of computational neuroscience. The posters were designed by the book’s editor, who will, for the first time, provide a written description of each poster.

Neuroinformatics presents cutting-edge techniques for the synergistic study of neuroinformatics. The book facilitates the efforts of discovering neuroscience through the sharing of data and the use of computational models. It demonstrates the use of neuroinformatic components as a mechanism for understanding complex disorders. It contains detailed explanations, advantages, and disadvantages of traditional and non-invasive imaging methods.

The business problem of having inefficient processes, imprecise process analyses and simulations as well as non-transparent artificial neuronal network models can be overcome by an easy-to-use modeling concept. With the aim of developing a flexible and efficient approach to modeling, simulating and optimizing processes, this paper proposes a flexible Concept of Neuronal Modeling (CoNM). The modeling concept, which is described by the modeling language designed and its mathematical formulation and is connected to a technical substantiation, is based on a collection of novel sub-artifacts. As these have been implemented as a computational model, the set of CoNM tools carries out novel kinds of Neuronal Process Modeling (NPM), Neuronal Process Simulations (NPS) and Neuronal Process Optimizations (NPO). The efficacy of the designed artifacts was demonstrated rigorously by means of six experiments and a simulator of real industrial production processes.

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that affects millions of patients worldwide and arises from the concurrent action of multiple pathophysiological processes. The power of mathematical analysis and computational modeling is increasingly utilized in basic and clinical epilepsy research to better understand the relative importance of the multi-faceted, seizure-related changes taking place in the brain during an epileptic seizure. This groundbreaking book is designed to synthesize the current ideas and future directions of the emerging discipline of computational epilepsy research. Chapters address relevant basic questions (e.g., neuronal gain control) as well as long-standing, critically important clinical challenges (e.g., seizure prediction). Computational Neuroscience in Epilepsy should be of high interest to a wide range of readers, including undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty working in the fields of basic or clinical neuroscience, epilepsy research, computational modeling and bioengineering. - Covers a wide range of topics from molecular to seizure predictions and brain implants to control seizures - Contributors are top experts at the forefront of computational epilepsy research - Chapter contents are highly relevant to both basic and clinical epilepsy researchers