I want to thank Nancy Hein, Renee Luecht, Cynthia, Tom Klebba and Olga Zdanovics for technical assistance, and Kathryn Shay for editing. The cover was created by the painter Hector Giuffre. Boticelli's Venus arises from the sea. Giuffre's Venus arises from a recursion in which the interaction of energy and information creates patterns of ever increasing complexity. This book also incorporates illustrations generously supplied by Gerhard Wesp, Jean-Pierre Luminet, Zerka Moreno, and Jeff Weeks. I also thank the Australian publication that let me reproduce the cartoon in Chapter 13 (www.viacorp.com/flybook/fullgifs.html).This project has a longer history, beginning with my father, Antonio Sabelli, a physician and philosopher whose ideas inspired this work. When he died so young, my uncle Alberto gave me the responsibility of publishing and continuing his work, no doubt in an attempt to sustain me, then only fourteen. His project lasted my entire lifetime. The other root of the project was my mother, Elena Di Benedetto, Ph.D., a physiologist in the research team of Nobelist Bernardo Houssay, who taught me to strive for high scientific goals, and to support my research with my clinical practice to be independent from academic hierarchies. Edmundo Fischer, a Hungarian-Argentine pharmacologist and psychiatrist was directly responsible for my professional education in both pharmacology and psychiatry. James Toman, Director of the Division of Behavioral Science at the Chicago Medical School introduced me to neurophysiology and biocybernetics, and Nora Hojvat de Sabelli educated me in the physical sciences. Mathematics I learned from Louis Kauffman, and it is cogent to end this page thanking him.

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Repeated treatment of mice with lithium chloride (45 mg/kg, i.p., daily for 8 days) reduced the jumping, fighting, stereotypies, and hyperactivity induced by d-amphetamine (5 mg/kg, i.p.). Lithium also reduced the hypoactivity observed 1--3 h after reserpine (0.75 mg/kg, i.p.). In biochemical studies we found that 8-day treatment with lithium markedly reduced (to 45% of control) the recovery from brain of labelled 2-phenylethylamine (PEA) following i.p. injection of labelled L-phenylalanine, while decreasing recovery from brain of labelled PEA following its i.p. injection of 63% of control. In saline-treated mice, d-amphetamine appeared to increase PEA synthesis and to accelerate its disposition, whereas reserpine enhanced PEA synthesis and reduced disposition; all of these effects were antagonized by lithium pretreatments. Since PEA appears to be one of the most powerful behavioral stimulants among endogenous neuroamines, and because its deaminated metabolites are behavioral depressants, such antagonism of brain PEA metabolism may significantly contribute to the prophylactic action of lithium against both manic and depressive behavior.