User talk:Péter Érdi/Dynamic neuropharmacology

Reviewer A

AUTHORS: I AM NOT SURE WHAT MY ROLE IS HERE SO I WILL SIMPLY GIVE SOME THOUGHT THATMIGHT IMPROVE THIS ARTICLE. MAYBE ON SEEING THE NEXT CYCLE I CAN BE MORE USEFUL. I REALLY FOUND THIS ARTICLE A BIT CONFUSING. I LIKE THE IDEA OF COMPUTATIONAL NEUROPHARMACOLOGY BUT WAS SURPRISED THAT SOME OBVIOUS TOPICS ARE MISSING WHICH ARE CLEARLY COMPUTATIONAL IN NATURE. FOR EXAMPLE MOLECULAR DYNAMICS STUDIES OF ION CHANNELS AND THE EFFECTS OF DRUGS ON THEM, DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEMS, KINETICS, AND SO ON. ONE OF THE PROBLEMS WITH THIS FIELD IS HAVING A CONVINCING EXAMPLE (THE CITED EXAMPLES ARE NOT VERY CONVINCING). MOST NEUROLOGISTS, LIKE ME, REMEMBER VERY WELL THAT THE "DESIGNED ANTICONVULSANT, GABAPENTIN" FOR EPILEPSY WAS LARGELY A FAILURE FROM THE ANTICONVULSANT POINT OF VIEW AND THE COMPANY ONLY SAVED ITS BUTT BECAUSE IT TURNED OUT TO BE A PRETTY GOOD MEDICATION FOR CHRONIC PAIN (SOMETHING THAT IT WAS NOT DESIGNED TO DO). THUS IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE EMPHASIS SHOULD BE ON WHAT THE POTENTIAL IS FOR THIS FIELD. THUS I WOULD THINK THAT ONE WOULD WANT TO BROADEN OUT THE NET RATHER THAN RESTRICT IT TO JUST DYNAMICAL DISEASES. ALSO I AM NOT CONVINCED THAT THIS NEW FIELD SHOULD RESTRICT ITSELF TO CHEMICAL DRUGS. THE ORIGINAL CONCEPT OF DYNAMICAL DISEASES DID NOT RESTRICT ITSELF TO DRUGS AS POTENTIAL TREATMENTS, BUT ALSO INCLUDED DEVICES (THE ARTICLE YOU CITED BY BELAIR, ET AL MAKES THIS POINT QUOTE WELL). IT IS ALSO POSSIBLE THAT THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DEVICES SUCH AS DEEP BRAIN STIMULATORS, EPIELPSY DEFIBRILLATORS, AND SO ON, COULD BE IMPROVED BY USING CONCEPTS FROM DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS THEORY. ALSO A REALLY BIG SELLING POINT WOULD BE TO USE COMPUTATIONAL MODELS TO PREDICT SIDE-EFFECTS OF DRUGS, ESPECIALLY THOSE THAT ARISE OUTSIDE THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. THUS IT SEEMS TO ME THAT A MUCH STRONGER ARGUMENT FOR COMPUTATIONAL NEUROPHARMACOLOGY COULD BE MADE IF ONE ACTUALLY TRIED TO THINK LIKE A PHARMACOLOGIST AND SYSTEMATICALLY ADDRESSED THESE.

Answers to Reviewer A:

1. to molecular dynamics and others... It is not our intention to review the applications in pharmacology, in general.
Our goal is to   show that based on the fact that drugs have  effects on dynamical patterns at system level, a new way of 
drug discovery can be done by using computational simulations.

2. The statement about the lack of convincing example is TRUE, therefore ...

3. our point is to emphasize the potential of the field.

4. Of course, dynamical patterns cannot be modified by chemicals only, but
also mechanically (neurosurgery), electricity (electro-convulsive therapy),
words (psychotherapy). However, the present paper is intentionally
restricted for neuropharmacology.

5. "TO THINK LIKE A PHARMACOLOGISt": emphatically NOT. Our point is that
while the traditional drug discovery is almost restricted to analyze
drug-receptor interactions, a new way of thinking suggests an alternative
perspective. This is the perspective of control theory, and the goal is to
shift the system by drugs from a pathological dynamic regime to the normal one.

More comments from Reviewer A

It was my understanding that the purpose of Scholarpedia was to provide a source where someone could find up to date information concerning some topic written by an expert in the field. For example, if some one wanted to know about integrate and fire neurons, then one would look up the subject and get an up to date analysis of this model. This does not seem to be the case for this article called Dynamic Neuropharmacology. There is no attempt to cover this field in a way that a first time reader would get a feeling for what is known and what is not. There are lots of people working in the area broadly defined as 'dynamic neuropharmacology' and none of this work is reviewed at all. In fact this article seems to be essentially to be publicity for a single paper written by these authors. If Scholarpedia has a section called "viewpoint' then OK. But surely this isn't the kind of thing that one wants in an encyclopedia, is it?