TAP reading note: Clarifying the roles of homeostasis and allostasis in physiological regulation
Ramsay and Woods examine homeostasis and allostasis through specific mechanisms: feedback and feedforward control, coordination between effectors, and dysregulation through overshoot, persistent activation or competing effectors. Their account helps turn a terminology debate into physiological questions that can be specified.
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What the study found
Ramsay and Woods examine homeostasis and allostasis through specific mechanisms: feedback and feedforward control, coordination between effectors, and dysregulation through overshoot, persistent activation or competing effectors. Their account helps turn a terminology debate into physiological questions that can be specified.
Scope & limitations
Physiological theory and experimental literature; no new clinical sample.
This is a conceptual critique, and its definition of allostasis differs from other accounts. Mechanistic examples do not estimate intervention effects, and the authors' terminology should not be treated as a field-wide consensus.
Population & sample
Physiological theory and experimental literature; no new clinical sample.
Exposure or intervention
Comparison of feedback, feedforward and effector circuits in homeostatic and allostatic explanations.
Outcomes
Conceptual distinctions and mechanistic explanations; no pooled clinical effect.
Time frame
Multiple regulatory time scales; no common follow-up period.
Research funding
NIH DA023484, DA033453 and DK017844.
Research conflicts of interest
The separate competing-interest statement has not been fully checked.
Reading scope
Focused reading of the full-text overview of allostasis and concluding arguments. The complete control-theory discussion and animal/drug examples have not been examined paragraph by paragraph.
References
Publication record
TAP-RDN-0012 · v0.3 · English
The Allostasis Project is founded and supported by Resilio.
Record for v0.3 · Updated
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Editorial note
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