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The effects of 11 antipsychotic drugs on the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDHC) prepared from bovine heart and rat brain were investigated. All inhibited PDHC to varying extents. With clinically equivalent doses, chlorpromazine and thioridazine inhibited the most and fluphenazine and thiothixene the least. The relationship of degree of inhibition of PDHC by neuroleptics to clinical improvement of 32 outpatients treated with acetazolamide and thiamine (A + T) ancillary therapy for chronic mental illness suggests that patients treated with psychoactive drugs that inhibit PDHC the least are most likely to have a favorable response with A + T treatment.

Twenty-four chronic schizophrenic patients were treated successfully with the addition of acetazolamide and thiamine (A + T) to their unchanged existing therapies in a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study. Therapeutic effects were measured by the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms and the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms. Overall, 50% of the patients showed improvement on all assessment scales. No untoward effects occurred in these patients or in patients in previous studies who have been treated continuously with A + T therapy for as long as 3 years.

Our aims was to "tonify" chronic psychiatric patients, i.e., restore their physiological homeostasis and sense of well-being by using standardized acupuncture. In eighteen subjects, eleven diagnosed as schizophrenic, feelings of well-being lasting no longer than three days were obtained in over 60% of the treatments. In more than two-thirds of the cases normalization of blood pressure values tending to 120/80 was evident. Degree of physiological change did not appear to be associated with overall psychological improvement; neither was the number of treatments associated with long-term improvement. For further studies, increased treatment frequency and less rigidly controlled procedures are suggested.

Summary The introduction of a sheltered workshop on a ward of 20 chronic schizophrenics has greatly influenced the behavior of the majority of them. Industrial productivity has become an important part of our research on activity, location, and interaction of patients. We present preliminary results obtained during 85 consecutive weeks of which the workshop operated 53 weeks. o 1. In most cases the capacity to work seems to be independent of intelligence and clinical picture. Seventy per cent of our patients, including some severely regressed, have reacted positively to the opportunity to work for money. This observation may be of use in ascertaining the potential of chronic patients. 2. Drug administration or withdrawal in the majority of regularly working patients did not influence the average output of our (simple) types of work, but it did affect the weekly variation in output. Some implications of these findings are discussed in relation to our policies regarding the mentally ill.

The organizer of this session and the authors of this paper believe their contributions are most significant in the expansion into workable form of the humanistic orientation of the founders of our fields, while offering strong remedial responses in line with their forewarnings against inhumanistic use as the fields developed. Our central formulation is that the human being, with his Human Brain and Human Knowledge Process, is a special product of biological evolution, an evolving evolutionary system forming general system whose appearance has introduced a new type of evolution - noogenetic or knowledge evolution - that is rapidly replacing biological evolution as the primary source of system forming in ourselves and in our world. The theme and content of our paper are summarized in a series of premises about the evolution and function of the Human Brain, which portray a way of thinking and working that is more in concordance with the realities of our present world and its future evolution. The point of view they represent is supported by rapidly accumulating convergent evidence from work being carried on in a variety of fields. We would recommend their incorporation into ongoing and planned cybernetics and systems research.

On the spring of last year, diphosphopyridine nucleotide (DPN or NAD, coenzyme I of the cellular oxidation-reduction systems) was claimed to be effective in short-term treatment of schizophrenia. 1 This method of treatment was based on the results of studies showing the purported beneficial effect of long-term administration of niacin (nicotinic acid, a constituent of the vitamin B complex) or its derivative niacinamide in schizophrenia. 2,3 Since niacinamide is an integral part of the coenzyme, it was suggested that these therapeutic effects were exerted by diphosphopyridine nucleotide and could readily be elicited by administering 1 to 2 gm of this preparation orally; 75% of the treated cases were said to show undeniable improvement five to seven days after the beginning of treatment. 1 Our evaluation of diphosphopyridine for the treatment of patients with chronic schizophrenia who were residing in our research ward will be reported in full in a speciality