“…Remarkable it may fitly be called; for what more singular than that nearly a third part of existence should be passed in a state thus far separate from the external world! – a state in which consciousness and sense of identity are scarcely maintained; where memory and reason are equally disturbed; and yet, with all this, where the fancy works variously and boldly, creating images and impressions which are carried forwards into waking life, and blend themselves deeply and strongly with every part of our mental existence (Ref , p. 432).…”
Research indicates that sleep promotes various cognitive functions, such as decision-making, language, categorization, and memory. Of these, most work has focused on the influence of sleep on memory, with ample work showing that sleep enhances memory consolidation, a process that stores new memories in the brain over time. Recent psychological and neurophysiological research has vastly increased understanding of this process. Such work not only suggests that consolidation relies on plasticity-related mechanisms that reactivate and stabilize memory representations, but also that this process may be experimentally manipulated by methods that target which memory traces are reactivated during sleep. Furthermore, aside from memory storage capabilities, memory consolidation also appears to reorganize and integrate memories with preexisting knowledge, which may facilitate the discovery of underlying rules and associations that benefit other cognitive functioning, including problem solving and creativity. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1433. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1433 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
“…Remarkable it may fitly be called; for what more singular than that nearly a third part of existence should be passed in a state thus far separate from the external world! – a state in which consciousness and sense of identity are scarcely maintained; where memory and reason are equally disturbed; and yet, with all this, where the fancy works variously and boldly, creating images and impressions which are carried forwards into waking life, and blend themselves deeply and strongly with every part of our mental existence (Ref , p. 432).…”
Research indicates that sleep promotes various cognitive functions, such as decision-making, language, categorization, and memory. Of these, most work has focused on the influence of sleep on memory, with ample work showing that sleep enhances memory consolidation, a process that stores new memories in the brain over time. Recent psychological and neurophysiological research has vastly increased understanding of this process. Such work not only suggests that consolidation relies on plasticity-related mechanisms that reactivate and stabilize memory representations, but also that this process may be experimentally manipulated by methods that target which memory traces are reactivated during sleep. Furthermore, aside from memory storage capabilities, memory consolidation also appears to reorganize and integrate memories with preexisting knowledge, which may facilitate the discovery of underlying rules and associations that benefit other cognitive functioning, including problem solving and creativity. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1433. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1433 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
“…For example, in 1575, Ambroise Paré (1510–1590), a royal surgeon at the French court, wrote: “The virus will swarm and travel through the veins, artery and nerves to the noble parts as we see the fire along a harquebus rope”. Claude Pouteau (1724–1775), a French surgeon, wrote in 1775 about hospital gangrene: “This irritating fever ignited by a foreign virus.” In 1839, Sir Henry Holland (1788–1873), Queen Victoria's physician (and cousin of Charles Darwin), wrote: “We can consider the animalcules brought by the air or by humans as the source of the disease, in a form non-recognized by our senses, or by any other direct means of research, but nonetheless subject to certain laws of propagation and dissemination similar to those of other species and producing the virus that acts deleterious to the human body.” 9 , 10 , 11 …”
Humanity has regularly faced the threat of epidemics and pandemics over the course of history. Successful attempts to protect populations were initially made with the development of new vaccines, such as those against plague and cholera, under the leadership of the bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine. Vaccines have led to the complete eradication of smallpox and bovine plague and a major reduction in other infectious diseases including diphtheria, typhoid fever, poliomyelitis, and Haemophilus influenzae type B meningitis. While a few coronaviruses have been identified that seasonally infect humans by causing mild symptoms, the emergence of a new zoonotic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has rapidly triggered the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a global pandemic responsible for widespread mortality. The severe phenotypes of COVID-19 resemble a previous infectious threat that was initially designated as hospital fever and puerperal fever, presently known as sepsis. A SARS-CoV-2 infection has frequently been considered as a form of viral sepsis (owing to common features with bacterial sepsis) but is also associated with an array of specific and unique symptoms. Rapid progress in anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development, in particular, the design of efficient messenger RNA (mRNA) and recombinant adenovirus vaccines, is crucial for curbing the pandemic.
“…Some doctors held the view of Sir Henry Holland (1788-1873), 22 Queen Victoria's physician, that there was 'an undoubted connection between dyspeptic disorders and the irregular forms of the gouty constitution'.…”
During most of his adult life, in counterpoint to his fame in describing the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin was chronically ill. He consulted many doctors with only limited and temporary success. His symptoms were many and varied. His doctors favoured dyspepsia or suppressed gout as the diagnosis. The Water Cure was only effective initially. Many diagnoses have been proposed by physicians since then. Perhaps he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), not instead of but as well as other physical problems. His symptoms match with criteria for PTSD. Traumatic episodes from his life are considered in this paper: his mother's painful, sudden death from an acute abdominal event when he was eight; his reaction to seeing operations without anaesthetic; the deaths of three of his children, including his beloved daughter, Annie, aged ten; and being overwhelmed by his chronic, unrelenting symptoms. Trauma had not been conceptualised as a diagnosis in Darwin's time. Rather, hysteria and, in war, irritable heart were names given to what is now called PTSD.
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