To act or not to act

To Act or Not to Act: Endocannabinoid/Dopamine Interactions in Decision-Making

Decision-making is an ethologically adaptive construct that is impaired in multiple psychiatric disorders. Activity within the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system has been traditionally associated with decision-making. The endocannabinoid system through its actions on inhibitory and excitatory synapses modulates dopamine activity and decision-making. The aim of this brief review is to present a s...

JC viraemia in kidney transplant recipients: to act or not to act?

Human polyomaviruses have entered the domain of clinical decision-making in renal transplantation and this has coincided with the use of more potent immunosuppressive regimens. BK polyomavirus has predominated, resulting in nephropathy and ureteral strictures with the potential for graft loss [1]. JCV is a type of human polyomavirus, named with the initials of the patient from whom the virus wa...

To cyclize or not to cyclize: catching enzyme evolution in the act.

If you look at the biggest genes in soil and marine bacteria, you tend to see the chemical blueprints for making natural products such as peptides and polyketides. Over the past decade, collective efforts of enzymologists working with synthetic and analytical chemists have been catching up with the data dump from microbial genome sequencing. Following this story line, we now understand how cyan...

Learning to Act

In this paper I argue that to understand minded agency – the capacity we typically find instantiated in instances of human behaviour that could sensibly be questioned by asking “What did you do?” – one needs to understand childhood, i.e. the trajectory of learning to act. I discuss two different types of trajectory, both of which seem to take place during childhood and both of which might be co...

Intending to Act