Modeling the Immune System with Gestures: A Choreographic View of Embodiment in Science

Leonardo ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 509-516
Author(s):  
Klaus Spiess ◽  
Lucie Strecker ◽  
Michael Kimmel ◽  
Melanie Martes ◽  
Peter Pietschmann
Keyword(s):  
Immune System ◽  
Conceptual Spaces ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
Spatiotemporal Features ◽  
Choreographic Analysis

The authors describe a cross-disciplinary collaboration in which they apply both a qualitative/quantitative and a choreographic analysis to the gestures immunologists use when lecturing on immunity. They identify particular spatiotemporal features by which immunologists have mapped, embodied and blended the conceptual spaces of the molecular and cellular. The immunologists’ difficulties in integrating the differing spatiotemporal modes of observing and embodying revealed hidden policies in their concepts of immunity. The variety of modes, blending and cinematic techniques applied invite a closer cross-disciplinary look at the vivid visual scenario of gesturing in science and consideration of its potential for creating corporeal models of art and science.

Précis ofThe creative mind: Myths and mechanisms

1994 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Boden
Keyword(s):  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Computational Approach ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Conceptual Spaces ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
Conceptual Space ◽  
Creative Mind ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Do So

AbstractWhat is creativity? One new idea may be creative, whereas another is merely new: What's the difference? And how is creativity possible? These questions about human creativity can be answered, at least in outline, using computational concepts. There are two broad types of creativity, improbabilist and impossibilist. Improbabilist creativity involves (positively valued) novel combinations of familiar ideas. A deeper type involves METCS: the mapping, exploration, and transformation of conceptual spaces. It is impossibilist, in that ideas may be generated which – with respect to the particular conceptual space concerned – could not have been generated before. (They are made possible by some transformation of the space.) The more clearly conceptual spaces can be defined, the better we can identify creative ideas. Defining conceptual spaces is done by musicologists, literary critics, and historians of art and science. Humanist studies, rich in intuitive subtleties, can be complemented by the comparative rigour of a computational approach. Computational modelling can help to define a space, and to show how it may be mapped, explored, and transformed. Impossibilist creativity can be thought of in “classical” Al terms, whereas connectionism illuminates improbabilist creativity. Most Al models of creativity can only explore spaces, not transform them, because they have no self-reflexive maps enabling them to change their own rules. A few, however, can do so. A scientific understanding of creativity does not destroy our wonder at it, nor does it make creative ideas predictable. Demystification does not imply dehumanization.

Learned Placebo Effects in the Immune System

2014 ◽  
Vol 222 (3) ◽  
pp. 148-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Vits ◽  
Manfred Schedlowski
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Immune System ◽  
Associative Learning ◽  
Placebo Response ◽  
Immunosuppressive Drug ◽  
Immune Functions ◽  
Placebo Effects ◽  
New Therapeutic Approaches ◽  
Biological Variables ◽  
Experimental Approaches

Associative learning processes are one of the major neuropsychological mechanisms steering the placebo response in different physiological systems and end organ functions. Learned placebo effects on immune functions are based on the bidirectional communication between the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral immune system. Based on this “hardware,” experimental evidence in animals and humans showed that humoral and cellular immune functions can be affected by behavioral conditioning processes. We will first highlight and summarize data documenting the variety of experimental approaches conditioning protocols employed, affecting different immunological functions by associative learning. Taking a well-established paradigm employing a conditioned taste aversion model in rats with the immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine A (CsA) as an unconditioned stimulus (US) as an example, we will then summarize the efferent and afferent communication pathways as well as central processes activated during a learned immunosuppression. In addition, the potential clinical relevance of learned placebo effects on the outcome of immune-related diseases has been demonstrated in a number of different clinical conditions in rodents. More importantly, the learned immunosuppression is not restricted to experimental animals but can be also induced in humans. These data so far show that (i) behavioral conditioned immunosuppression is not limited to a single event but can be reproduced over time, (ii) immunosuppression cannot be induced by mere expectation, (iii) psychological and biological variables can be identified as predictors for this learned immunosuppression. Together with experimental approaches employing a placebo-controlled dose reduction these data provide a basis for new therapeutic approaches to the treatment of diseases where a suppression of immune functions is required via modulation of nervous system-immune system communication by learned placebo effects.

The Art and Science of Predicting

1962 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 379-380
Author(s):  
ELI A. RUBINSTEIN
Keyword(s):  
Art And Science
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