Extrastriatal dopamine D2-receptor availability in social anxiety disorder

Alterations in the dopamine system are hypothesized to influence the expression of social anxiety disorder (SAD) symptoms. However, molecular imaging studies comparing dopamine function between patients and control subjects have yielded conflicting results. Importantly, while all previous investigations focused on the striatum, findings from activation and blood flow studies indicate that prefrontal and limbic brain regions have a central role in the pathophysiology. The objective of this study was to investigate extrastriatal dopamine D2-receptor (D2-R) availability in SAD. We examined 12 SAD patients and 16 healthy controls using positron emission tomography and the high-affinity D2-R radioligand [C-11]FLB457. Parametric images of D2-R binding potential were derived using the Logan graphical method with cerebellum as reference region. Two-tailed one-way independent ANCOVAs, with age as covariate, were used to examine differences in D2-R availability between groups using both region-based and voxel-wise analyses. The region-based analysis showed a medium effect size of higher D2-R levels in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in patients, although this result did not remain significant after correction for multiple comparisons. The voxel-wise comparison revealed elevated D2-R availability in patients within OFC and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex after correction for multiple comparisons. These preliminary results suggest that an aberrant extrastriatal dopamine system may be part of the disease mechanism in SAD

Nordic OCD and Related Disorders Consortium: Rationale, design, and methods

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a debilitating psychiatric disorder, yet its etiology is unknown and treatment outcomes could be improved if biological targets could be identified. Unfortunately, genetic findings for OCD are lagging behind other psychiatric disorders. Thus, there is a pressing need to understand the causal mechanisms implicated in OCD in order to improve clinical outcomes and to reduce morbidity and societal costs. Specifically, there is a need for a large-scale, etiologically informative genetic study integrating genetic and environmental factors that presumably interact to cause the condition. The Nordic countries provide fertile ground for such a study, given their detailed population registers, national healthcare systems and active specialist clinics for OCD. We thus formed the Nordic OCD and Related Disorders Consortium (NORDiC, www.crowleylab.org/nordic), and with the support of NIMH and the Swedish Research Council, have begun to collect a large, richly phenotyped and genotyped sample of OCD cases. Our specific aims are geared toward answering a number of key questions regarding the biology, etiology, and treatment of OCD. This article describes and discusses the rationale, design, and methodology of NORDiC, including details on clinical measures and planned genomic analyses

Community Educators and the Struggle for Recognition Theorising meaning, educator and institution in Ireland’s community education field using a generative grounded theory approach.

This thesis explores community education in Ireland in a threefold enquiry examining; (a) the core meaning which community education holds for practitioners in the field, (b) how the role of community educators shares a connectedness with liberatory struggle for social justice, and (c) what space community education and its educators occupy within its institutional provider, the Vocational Education Committees (VECs). Community education in Ireland is a vibrant field of practice operating on the fringes of mainstream education. Its origins can be traced to the early instructors of the Vocational Education Committees in the early part of the last century. Women’s community education has shaped the practice in Ireland since the 1970s. The year 2000 marked a significant step forward in terms of recognition for community education with the publication of the White Paper on Adult Education. In this thesis the author draws on his experience working in the community education sector to engage with other community educators to reflect on the generative themes of meaning, educator role and institution in this field of practice. The first aspect of the research explores the meaning of community education from the practitioner perspective, and finds a clear preference for an empowerment meaning. However, the findings suggest there is no clear settlement on the meaning of empowerment, and concludes there is a need to articulate an understanding of empowerment in the context of a critical analysis of power. The second aspect of the research concerns the role of the community educator and the connectedness of this role to a broader liberatory struggle for social justice. Using Honneth’s concept of a struggle for recognition, the findings point to a critical role which is poorly recognized within the education field in Ireland. A key purpose of the research is to rediscover the roots of this role in Gramsci’s organic intellectuals and Freire’s radicals and reclaim the critical role of the community educator within the Irish education site. The third aspect of this research examines the space which community education occupies within its institutional provider, the Vocational Education Committees in Ireland. The research presents an assessment of the institutional culture of the VECs. The findings recall the VEC’s radical origins, and its later immersion within the mainstream educational apparatus. Findings point to the tensions between a dominant school ethos and subordinate community education ethos in the VEC and proposes a critical coalition for the future. The findings suggest that community education facilitators have a role to play in occupying a critical space within the VECs. The unique contribution of this research is that it presents a theorized community education from the perspective of its workers, the community educators. The research methodology combines Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory with Freirean liberatory pedagogy. The result is a unique contribution to a generative grounded theorization of community education in Ireland today