Psychiatry and Neuroscience Update – Vol. V

This book offers a multidisciplinary approach to the phenomenon of addiction, including a discussion of its anthropological, neurological, psychiatric and social aspects. The editors have maintained this multidisciplinary criterion since the first volume of the Psychiatry and Neuroscience Update collection. Approaching a topic from multiple points of view guides the mentality to open to biological and psychological relationships and facilitates translational extrapolations. The ability to establish relationships, closer or more distant, but always binding, is thus stimulated, whether for study, research or the interpretation of clinical reality.

As in previous volumes, the book opens with a part dedicated to anthropological and philosophical aspects, thus ensuring the validity of the humanistic aspect. Intersubjectivity, epistemological reflections, the meaning of ecstasy, and philosophical reflection leading to therapy are explored. Part 2—From Basic Neurosciences to Human Brain—presents a set of basic investigations with high translational content. This corresponds with the editors’ intention to build bridges, here between the basic and the clinical, favoring the translational. Chapters present topics of interest to both fields, such as the neurobiology of addictions, cocaine, and benzodiazepines. Part 3 establishes links between neurosciences, learning, teaching, and the social environment. It begins with a chapter on executive functioning before discussing excessive use of computer technology and educational interventions for patients with alcohol addiction. The fourth part of the book attempts to explain pathological human behavior. It is about establishing links between brain disorders and diseases in the strict sense. Among other topics, chapters deal with cognitive dysfunction in addiction, neuroimaging, and stigma around substance use disorders.

Psychiatry and Neuroscience Update: Addiction: From Laboratory and Anthropology to Clinical Practice – Vol. V was edited and authored by a multidisciplinary group of authors and will be vital for an equally multidisciplinary group of readers: psychiatrists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and any other clinician or researcher that is interested in addictions. Those in the humanities, particularly anthropologists and philosophers, will find the first part of great interest.