Nevertheless, there is sufficient promise in results that continued investigation and the hope for a clearer understanding of mechanisms underlying observed effects is warranted. Acknowledgments This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health (5R37AG-006265-25 and (NIA grant 5R01AG026589-05).
Of the
seasons of the year, the autumn is most melancholy… (Burton, 1621)1 Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical As a science matures, it pays more attention to the temporal dynamics of its target phenomena. The relatively young discipline of psychiatry shows exactly this trajectory, with the temporal dimension receiving growing research interest. This development is quite obvious Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in the domain of mood disorders, where time features in the diagnostic description, phenomenology, and increasingly our causal understanding of the disorders. It is therefore timely to provide an overview of this expanding area. The aims of this article, are fourfold. First, we introduce some philological considerations about the relationship between time and mood. Secondly, we Selumetinib review the (largely European) clinical literature which has focused Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical on the sense
of time in mood disorder phenomenology. Thirdly, we provide a synopsis of the range of empirical evidence indicating that biological timing (particularly circadian rhythms and sleep/wake processes) is critical in the etiology of mood disorders. Finally, we present nonlinear dynamical approaches applied to the analysis of the measures related to psychological Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical time series. The intent of the article is to encourage an open, multidisciplinary approach to generate testable hypotheses about temporality in the mood disorders. Contributions of philology and natural philosophy As often
happens in the evolution of theoretical concepts relevant Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical to psychopathology, early intuitions and illuminating insights can often be found in ancient mythology, philosophy, and art.2 Since ancient times in Western culture, melancholia and mania have been related to characterological and temperamental constellations of the Greek god, Kronos, and of his Latin counterpart, Saturn. Later, the implacable influence of the planet Saturn was often invoked as a symbolic representation of older religious Unoprostone archetypes, even as naturalistic approaches to the study of mood disorders emerged during the Renaissance.3 The Kronos-Saturn hybrid can be summed up as a quintessential ambivalent coexistence of contradictory forces of light and darkness, life and death, rationality and folly, of the highest and most sublime spiritual contemplations and most miserable and lowest confinements of the world, or even the netherworld. The concept was conceived of as the “absolute master of time,” the mighty principle of cosmologic unity, the “One that devours and consumes everything.