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This paper examines the psychological significance of traditional African mourning practices in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In Tanzania, untimely multiple losses through AIDS increasingly force communities to forgo traditionally prescribed mourning practices and rituals. An increase in psychiatric and psychological problems associated with incomplete mourning and unresolved grief has been observed in clinical settings. This may be due to the psychosocial inadequacy of these abridged mourning processes. It is unlikely that western forms of grief counseling can replace traditional mourning rituals, at least in terms of psychological efficacy. An approach is suggested that permits a wider elaboration of cultural psychic processes through the creation of new rituals.

GT is supported by funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie (grant agreement No 661452). This review is funded in part by NIH R01EB007615, the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, Broccoli Foundation, WalkAbout Foundation and Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research (Grant No. 16-29-08173-ofi-m). ; Preclinical and clinical neurophysiological and neurorehabilitation research has generated rather surprising levels of recovery of volitional sensory-motor function in persons with chronic motor paralysis following a spinal cord injury. The key factor in this recovery is largely activity-dependent plasticity of spinal and supraspinal networks. This key factor can be triggered by neuromodulation of these networks with electrical and pharmacological interventions. This review addresses some of the systems-level physiological mechanisms that might explain the effects of electrical modulation and how repetitive training facilitates the recovery of volitional motor control. In particular, we substantiate the hypotheses that: (1) in the majority of spinal lesions, a critical number and type of neurons in the region of the injury survive, but cannot conduct action potentials, and thus are electrically non-responsive; (2) these neuronal networks within the lesioned area can be neuromodulated to a transformed state of electrical competency; (3) these two factors enable the potential for extensive activity-dependent reorganization of neuronal networks in the spinal cord and brain, and (4) propriospinal networks play a critical role in driving this activity-dependent reorganization after injury. Real-time proprioceptive input to spinal networks provides the template for reorganization of spinal networks that play a leading role in the level of coordination of motor pools required to perform a given functional task. Repetitive exposure of multi-segmental sensory-motor networks to the dynamics of task-specific sensory input as occurs with repetitive training can functionally reshape spinal and supraspinal connectivity thus re-enabling one to perform complex motor tasks, even years post injury