Mental and Medical Sciences Today

Abstract

Journal of Mind and Medical Sciences is designed as a free online, open access, interdisciplinary and peer-reviewed journal. The JMMS mission is to address ideas and issues related to mind and medicine, publishing scientific review and empirical papers regarding mental and medical health and disease. Our goal is to stimulate constructive debates among scholars, researchers, physicians, scientists and health professionals with respect to the latest discoveries and trends in the field. The journal pays special attention to interdisciplinary and integrative perspectives, focusing primarily on papers approaching mind and body as a unitary domain of study.

Editorial

Journal of Mind and Medical Sciences is designed as a free online, open access, interdisciplinary and peer-reviewed journal. The JMMS mission is to address ideas and issues related to mind and medicine, publishing scientific review and empirical papers regarding mental and medical health and disease. Our goal is to stimulate constructive debates among scholars, researchers, physicians, scientists and health professionals with respect to the latest discoveries and trends in the field. The journal pays special attention to interdisciplinary and integrative perspectives, focusing primarily on papers approaching mind and body as a unitary domain of study.

Our supposition is that the study of the human body and mind needs to be better integrated—in fact should not be studied in isolation from one another, a position that originates fact from the collaborative efforts of the two main editors, namely a psychologist and a physician.

As an example, the mind body problem—an age-old question—is still a much debated topic. Despite enormous progress in neuroimaging, it remains unclear how abstract ideas come to “control” the physical brain and body to generate actions, responses, and behaviors. Thus, abstract ideas of the mind (e.g., the desire to seek a promotion, to become famous, or to help those surrounding you) can drive decision making and life choices more strongly than the concrete/ biological needs of the body (food, warmth, shelter, etc.). From a pathological perspective, heavy psychological and physical burden can “overload” the mind, creating a mental condition of stress which may then negatively impact bodily function through symptoms such as gastric ulcer, hypertension, and so on.

From the opposite perspective, the body and brain can interfere with and direct the functioning of mind. The need for sleep, for example, is due to fluctuation of neuromodulators within the brain. When such neuromodulators are pharmacologically manipulated, mental states of sleep, anesthesia, or alertness can be induced; or, using another example, mental illness (depression, schizophrenia, etc.) can be ameliorated. Many visceral diseases (pancreatitis, liver cirrhosis, etc.) can interfere with brain function and behavior through such modulators (pancreatic/ hepatic encephalopathy), and frequently treatment of the visceral illness can lead to amelioration of accompanying psychological/psychiatric symptoms.

In conclusion, the mind cannot and should not be studied separately from the physical body and brain, psychology and medicine having in common a large and unexplored realm of study both in health and disease. At the same time we understand the challenge presented by this journal’s mission, recognizing that such an integrated approach depends in great measure on small steps, arduous progress, and accumulations made within each specialty. For this reason we are open to any thought-provoking manuscripts interrelating the mental and/ or medical sciences, while reserving priority for those papers that offer a unified approach for mind and medicine.

Appropriate for consideration is not only fundamental and clinical research in all areas of the mental and medical sciences, but also case studies, reviews, and opinions from scientific personalities.