Social Media and Electronics’ Impacts on Psychological Well-being

The use of electronics, specifically social media, has grown immensely in recent years along with the increase of mental illness, thus implying a possible correlation between the two. The use of digital media may have serious impacts on the psychological well-being of adolescents, teenagers, and adults. This review will focus on the specific psychological impacts that electronics and social media have on adolescents, along with the contributions social media has to the development of depression in all ages, and how language use can be accurate predictors of common mental conditions. It is unclear why depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, sleep disorders and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are becoming so prevalent. The underlying causes of these conditions must be discovered, and prevention techniques must be implemented for future generations

Working memory impairment as an endophenotypic marker of a schizophrenia diathesis

AbstractThis review focuses on the viability of working memory impairment as an endophenotypic marker of a schizophrenia diathesis. It begins with an introduction of the construct of working memory. It follows with a consideration of the operational criteria for defining an endophenotype. Research findings regarding the working memory performance of schizophrenia and schizophrenia-spectrum patients, first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls, are reviewed in terms of the criteria for being considered an endophenotypic marker. Special attention is paid to specific components of the working memory deficit (namely, encoding, maintenance, and manipulation), in terms of which aspects are likely to be the best candidates for endophenotypes. We examine the extant literature regarding working memory performance in bipolar disorder and major depression in order to address the issue of relative specificity to schizophrenia. Despite some unresolved issues, it appears that working memory impairment is a very promising candidate for an endophenotypic marker of a schizophrenia diathesis but not for mood disorders. Throughout this review, we identify future directions for research in this exciting and dynamic area of research and evaluate the contribution of working memory research to our understanding of schizophrenia

Time Distortions in Mind

Time Distortions in Mind brings together current research on temporal processing in clinical populations to elucidate the interdependence between perturbations in timing and disturbances in the mind and brain. For the student, the scientist, and the stepping-stone for further research

Time Distortions in Mind

Time Distortions in Mind brings together current research on temporal processing in clinical populations to elucidate the interdependence between perturbations in timing and disturbances in the mind and brain. For the student, the scientist, and the stepping-stone for further research. Readership: An excellent reference for the student and the scientist interested in aspects of temporal processing and abnormal psychology

About psychotic-like experiences and auditory verbal hallucinations : Transdiagnostic investigations of neurobiological, cognitive, and emotional aspects of a continuous phenomenon

Hallucinations and delusions are known to be key symptoms of psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, and have been studied extensively. However, these experiences also occur in other mental disorders, which suggests a transdiagnostic perspective with shared underlying cognitive mechanisms across various psychological illnesses. In addition, hallucinations and delusions are continuous phenomena that occur not only in patients with mental disorders, but also in healthy individuals in the general population, spanning from childhood to adulthood. To understand the development and maintenance of such psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) in general, and auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) specifically, neurobiological, cognitive, and emotional factors need to be taken into consideration. The aim of this thesis is to examine these factors by investigating underlying brain mechanisms of inner speech processes, the impact of emotions, and core schemas about the self and others in different groups of individuals along the continuum from healthy individuals to voice hearers with different underlying disorders. In paper 1, we investigated PLEs in Norway in a sample from the general population, using the screening questions of the Questionnaire for Psychotic Experiences (QPE), an interview that captures the presence and phenomenology of various psychotic experiences separately. Participants with mental disorders reported more frequent lifetime and current hallucinatory experiences than participants without mental disorders, with childhood experiences being rather low. We further replicated findings that young age, illegal drug use, lower level of education, and having parents with a mental disorder are associated with higher endorsement rates of PLEs. Finally, we revealed that the mere presence of PLEs does not discriminate between individuals with and without a mental disorder. Taken together, the findings of paper 1 support existing models that both hallucinations and delusions exist on a structural and phenomenological continuum. In paper 2, we investigated neurobiological factors of cognitive inner speech processes by using a neurostimulation method called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to modulate source monitoring abilities in healthy individuals. We modulated reality monitoring (distinguishing between external and internal sources) and internal source monitoring abilities (distinguishing between two or more internal sources). We found that internal source monitoring abilities were significantly enhanced during active online tDCS, while reality monitoring abilities were unaffected by stimulation. Our findings suggest that there are different brain areas involved in reality and internal source monitoring: Internal source monitoring seems to involve Broca’s area. Reality monitoring, however, seems to rely more on the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) as shown in other studies. In paper 3, we focused on cognitive and emotional aspects of AVHs, namely the impact of emotions and affect on AVH phenomenology in non-clinical and different clinical populations. Depending on the underlying psychopathology, these phenomena show different phenomenological aspects. Our aim was to determine the mediating roles of anxiety and depression in the relationship between positive and negative core schemas about the self and others, and emotional aspects of AVHs for three groups: non clinical voice hearers, affective voice hearers, and non-affective voice hearers. Results showed full mediating effects of anxiety in affective voice hearers in the relationship between negative core schemas and all phenomenological aspects, but not in non-affective voice hearers. Depression was not a mediator in any of the groups. These findings suggest different emotional mechanisms for different groups of voice hearers, depending on the underlying psychopathology of individuals with AVHs. Overall, we conclude that the findings support a continuous and transdiagnostic perspective of PLEs in general, and AVHs specifically. However, more integrative transdiagnostic investigations in different groups of individuals along the continuum are needed as studying AVHs in only one modality or one clinical population is unlikely to bring us closer to understanding how these phenomena develop in the first place.Doktorgradsavhandlin

Chronic ketamine use and psychotic symptomatology.

This thesis examines the effects of chronic use of ketamine, a non-competitive N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, on subjective experience and cognition. It is important to explore the chronic effects of ketamine as the number of individuals using the drug recreationally is increasing both in the UK and worldwide. There is a paucity of research exploring the chronic effects of ketamine. Many studies have shown that acutely ketamine induces psychotic-like symptomatology and specific cognitive dysfunction in healthy, drug-naive volunteers. For this reason, a ketamine model of the psychoses has been proposed. However the few studies of the effects of chronic ketamine have provided mixed findings. Part 1 of the thesis comprises a literature review, which investigates the psychotomimetic effects of ketamine, through the synthesis of current research findings, to determine whether ketamine is a useful model of the symptomatology characteristic of the psychoses. It presents an overview of ketamine and its association with the psychoses, before providing a detailed account of the functional psychoses and drug models of the psychoses (namely the dopamine hypothesis, the serotonin hypothesis and the glutamate hypothesis). The review then synthesises the acute and chronic ketamine studies to date, highlighting which states appear to be best modelled (i.e. the pre-psychotic, acute or chronic state experienced by individuals with idiopathic psychoses). Finally, the review briefly considers the treatment implications of the ketamine model of psychoses, and the risk chronic ketamine use poses to users in terms of developing fully-manifest psychotic symptomatology. In Part 2, an investigation of the chronic effects of ketamine on subjective experiences and cognitive functioning is reported, in order to determine whether chronic ketamine models symptomatology associated with the pre-psychotic state of idiopathic psychoses (where the term idiopathic refers to psychotic symptomatology of unknown aetiology, i.e. that which occurs in the majority of the general population and is not drug-induced). This investigation was part of a joint project conducted with 2 other trainees to investigate the chronic effects of ketamine, cannabis and cocaine on subjective experiences and cognitive functioning (See Appendix 1 for details of the contribution made by each trainee). The empirical paper reports a between subjects study which compared 21 frequent ketamine users (who used ketamine daily), 20 infrequent ketamine users (who used ketamine a maximum of once or twice a week) and 20 controls (who reported no illicit drug use). On a clinical index of symptomatology (SPI-A), a 'frequency' effect was observed: frequent ketamine users were found to be higher in psychotic-like symptomatology (i.e. basic symptoms) than infrequent users, who in turn were found to be higher in symptomatology than controls. Both groups of ketamine users were also found to be higher in psychosis proneness on a general population index of psychotic-like markers (OLIFE) compared with controls. Furthermore, both groups of ketamine users demonstrated impaired episodic memory and working memory compared to controls. Group differences were found in executive functioning. Part 3 comprises a critical appraisal of the research. It includes reflections on my experience of the research process and conducting research with the ketamine using population, as well as reflections on clinically relevant observations