The geology of the Frangistra-Karpenisia region, Greece

Imperial Users onl

Examining the Genetic and Environmental Relationship between Parent Personality and Childhood Deviance

The purpose of this project was to examine the relations between parent personality and child externalizing behaviors (e.g., acting out, aggression). To do this, parent personality, child temperament, and externalizing behaviors in children were examined. To further understand the role of genetics vs. environmental influences, identical (MZ; monozygotic) twins and fraternal (DZ; dizygotic) twins were compared. This allowed the percentage of the relation that was due to shared environment between the parent and the child versus the percentage of the relation that was due to genetic commonalities between the parent and child to be examined. For this study, archival data from twins aged 5 to 10 years and their parents were used. Additionally, supplemental data from families that were missing data from one age were collected. Several questionnaires were used to assess the personality of the parents, as well as the temperament and behaviors of the children. It was found that parent personality was not related to externalizing behaviors in children, but childhood temperament, specifically adaptability, was related to externalizing behaviors in children. Furthermore, it was found that parent personality was related to childhood temperament, which could indicate an indirect link between parent personality and externalizing behaviors via child temperament. Lastly, it was found that these relations were in part due to shared genes between the parents and the children, indicating that genes also play a large role in the behaviors of children and that it is not only the environment in which they are raised that is important

Efficacy and effectiveness of psychological interventions for symptoms of complex PTSD in adults

The notion of complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is a longstanding yet contentious one: it has only recently been included as a diagnostic entity in its own right in the most recent version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11: World Health Organization, 2018), and, after considerable debate, was not incorporated into the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5: American Psychiatric Association, 2013). As such, the evidence base for how best to treat difficulties associated with complex trauma remains patchy. Further, most studies and meta-analyses to date have focused on highly controlled research trials across quite disparate populations, so our understanding of which interventions may be effective to the majority of clients seeking help for difficulties associated with CPTSD in “real-world” clinical practice (namely, those whose complex trauma originated in childhood), remains very limited. Chapter one of this thesis presents the results of a meta-analysis of the efficacy and effectiveness of psychological interventions for adult survivors of complex, childhood trauma, considering both randomized, controlled trials and non-RCTs. This meta-analysis showed that many interventions are effective in reducing symptoms of PTSD in this population; uncontrolled effect sizes (pre- to post- treatment) and controlled effect sizes (treatment versus control group measures at post-treatment) were generally largest for trauma-focused and “phase based” treatments compared to those aimed at initial safety and stabilization. Uncontrolled effect sizes were generally larger for RCTs (d = 1.02) compared with uncontrolled trials (d = 0.7). However, very few studies examined the effects of treatment on additional symptoms of complex PTSD (emotion dysregulation, negative self-concept, and interpersonal functioning), or more general measures of distress or functioning, which may arguably be of greater importance to many people seeking help with their difficulties. Chapter two presents the findings of a large-scale (n = 634) “real-world” study of outcomes associated with a safety and stabilization group intervention, “Survive and Thrive”, for women survivors of complex trauma as implemented in routine clinical care within two NHS Adult Mental Health services. This study found that Survive and Thrive appears to be acceptable, safe, and effective in reducing overall psychological distress and symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety, with pre- to post-treatment effect sizes ranging from 0.5 – 0.81 (Cohen’s d) and proportions of participants achieving clinically significant improvements in symptoms ranging from 23 – 40% - at least, among those who complete treatment. However, the lack of a control group and high drop-out rate (46%) means that these preliminary findings are likely over-estimates of overall effectiveness and acceptability for the population of treatment-seeking women as a whole and must therefore be treated with caution. We hope the findings will contribute to the evidence base for psychological interventions for complex PTSD, ultimately allowing clients greater choice of evidence-based treatments for their longstanding and debilitating difficulties

Beyond the global motion deficit hypothesis of developmental dyslexia: a cross-sectional study of visual, cognitive, and socio-economic factors influencing reading ability in children

Although primarily conceptualized as a disorder of phonological awareness, developmental dyslexia is often associated with broader problems perceiving and attending to transient or rapidly-moving visual stimuli. However, the extent to which such visual deficits represent the cause or the consequence of dyslexia remains contentious, and very little research has examined the relative contributions of phonological, visual, and other variables to reading performance more broadly. We measured visual sensitivity to global motion (GM) and global form (GF), performance on various language and other cognitive tasks believed to be compromised in dyslexia (phonological awareness, processing speed, and working memory), together with a range of social and demographic variables often omitted in previous research, such as age, gender, non-verbal intelligence, and socio-economic status in an unselected sample (n = 132) of children aged 6 – 11.5 yrs from two different primary schools in Edinburgh, UK. We found that: (i) Mean GM sensitivity (but not GF) was significantly lower in poor readers (medium effect size); (ii) GM sensitivity accounted for only 3% of the variance in reading scores; (iii) GM sensitivity deficits were observed in only 16% of poor readers; (iv) the best predictors of reading performance were phonological awareness, non-verbal intelligence, and socio-economic status, suggesting the importance of controlling for these in future studies of vision and reading. These findings suggest that developmental dyslexia is unlikely to represent a single category of neurodevelopmental disorder underpinned by lower-level deficits in visual motion processing

The neural stem cell secretome and its role in brain repair.

Compelling evidence from experimental animal disease models and early-phase clinical trials identifies the transplantation of neural progenitor/stem cells (NSCs) as a viable path towards the development of clinically applicable exogenous stem cell therapies. Building from current advances in the field of NSC biology and following the positive outcomes of NSC transplantation studies, the contemporary view is that transplanted NSCs act as local 'factories' capable of producing and secreting a wide array of immune and neurotrophic factors. This has launched a 'stem cell race' to identify the mechanisms behind stem-cell mediated repair in what has been labeled the paracrine hypothesis. This hypothesis proposes that NSC grafts act as a natural source of potent biologics capable of modulating and promoting the restoration of several key functions in the central nervous system (CNS) tissue following acute or chronic tissue damage. Investigators have been inspired to examine novel ways to harness and utilize the pro-regenerative properties of NSC therapies as an alternative approach to a more classical (small molecule based) treatment of CNS diseases. In this review, we will discuss the most recent findings of human NSC (hNSCs) transplants in experimental animal models of CNS diseases that identify of hNSC-secreted factors, including those trafficked within extracellular membrane vesicles (EVs), and the outcomes of recent clinical trials utilizing hNSC therapeutics in CNS diseases

Stem Cells of the Aging Brain.

The adult central nervous system (CNS) contains resident stem cells within specific niches that maintain a self-renewal and proliferative capacity to generate new neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes throughout adulthood. Physiological aging is associated with a progressive loss of function and a decline in the self-renewal and regenerative capacities of CNS stem cells. Also, the biggest risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases is age, and current in vivo and in vitro models of neurodegenerative diseases rarely consider this. Therefore, combining both aging research and appropriate interrogation of animal disease models towards the understanding of the disease and age-related stem cell failure is imperative to the discovery of new therapies. This review article will highlight the main intrinsic and extrinsic regulators of neural stem cell (NSC) aging and discuss how these factors impact normal homeostatic functions within the adult brain. We will consider established in vivo animal and in vitro human disease model systems, and then discuss the current and future trajectories of novel senotherapeutics that target aging NSCs to ameliorate brain disease

Harnessing the Neural Stem Cell Secretome for Regenerative Neuroimmunology.

Increasing evidence foresees the secretome of neural stem cells (NSCs) to confer superimposable beneficial properties as exogenous NSC transplants in experimental treatments of traumas and diseases of the central nervous system (CNS). Naturally produced secretome biologics include membrane-free signaling molecules and extracellular membrane vesicles (EVs) capable of regulating broad functional responses. The development of high-throughput screening pipelines for the identification and validation of NSC secretome targets is still in early development. Encouraging results from pre-clinical animal models of disease have highlighted secretome-based (acellular) therapeutics as providing significant improvements in biochemical and behavioral measurements. Most of these responses are being hypothesized to be the result of modulating and promoting the restoration of key inflammatory and regenerative programs in the CNS. Here, we will review the most recent findings regarding the identification of NSC-secreted factors capable of modulating the immune response to promote the regeneration of the CNS in animal models of CNS trauma and inflammatory disease and discuss the increased interest to refine the pro-regenerative features of the NSC secretome into a clinically available therapy in the emerging field of Regenerative Neuroimmunology

Walking, talking and looking: effects of divided attention on gaze behaviour and visual search performance in a real-world environment

Visually-guided behaviour in the laboratory may not always reflect that in larger-scale environments, using more realistic tasks. (eg Smith et al, 2008 Cogn Process 9 121-126). Here, we explored (1) what people look at; (2) how quickly they find a target; and (3) whether divided attention (counting backwards in 7 s from 100) influences performance in a large-scale, active, visual search task in a real-world environment. Fourteen young adults (19–25 years) were asked to locate a target (white postcard) in a shop window as they walked along a pavement in Edinburgh, UK, under both ‘control’ and ‘divided attention’ conditions. Eye movements were recorded using a head-mounted eye tracker and coded manually according to object-based (‘what’) and location-based (‘where’) categories. Measurements were made from the point of first fixation on the correct shop display. Participants fixated significantly less often on task-relevant objects, and took significantly longer to find the target in the ‘divided attention’ condition compared with the control. No differences were found in terms of location-based (‘where’) categories. This suggests that real-world visual search performance in large-scale environments requires the activity of limited capacity, central attentional resources, but that visual scanning strategies (‘where’ we look) may not