Keeping Your Thesis Legal

This booklet accompanies workshops presented by the Archbishop Alemany Library, focused on theses and rights risk management. It gives you more information on the copyright implications of making your thesis available on the web, as required by your graduate program. While its focus is primarily on digital theses (eTheses) rather than traditional printed versions, there is some coverage of the copyright law differences between the two different formats

Compassion Focused Approaches to Working With Distressing Voices

This paper presents an outline of voice-hearing phenomenology in the context of evolutionary mechanisms for self- and social- monitoring. Special attention is given to evolved systems for monitoring dominant-subordinate social roles and relationships. These provide information relating to the interpersonal motivation of others, such as neutral, friendly or hostile, and thus the interpersonal threat, versus safe, social location. Individuals who perceive themselves as subordinate and dominants as hostile are highly vigilant to down-rank threat and use submissive displays and social spacing as basic defenses. We suggest these defense mechanisms are especially attuned in some individuals with voices, in which this fearful-subordinate – hostile-dominant relationship is played out. Given the evolved motivational system in which voice-hearers can be trapped, one therapeutic solution is to help them switch into different motivational systems, particularly those linked to social caring and support, rather than hostile competition. Compassion focused therapy (CFT) seeks to produce such motivational shifts. Compassion focused therapy aims to help voice-hearers, (i) notice their threat-based (dominant-subordinate) motivational systems when they arise, (ii) understand their function in the context of their lives, and (iii) shift into different motivational patterns that are orientated around safeness and compassion. Voice-hearers are supported to engage with biopsychosocial components of compassionate mind training, which are briefly summarized, and to cultivate an embodied sense of a compassionate self-identity. They are invited to consider, and practice, how they might wish to relate to themselves, their voices, and other people, from the position of their compassionate self. This paper proposes, in line with the broader science of compassion and CFT, that repeated practice of creating internal patterns of safeness and compassion can provide an optimum biopsychosocial environment for affect-regulation, emotional conflict-resolution, and therapeutic change. Examples of specific therapeutic techniques, such as chair-work and talking with voices, are described to illustrate how these might be incorporated in one-to-one sessions of CFT.CH-M was supported by a Medical Research Council Clinical Research Training Fellowship (MR/L01677X/1) to investigate Compassion Focused Therapy for Psychosis

Topiramate modulates pH of hippocampal CA3 neurons by combined effects on carbonic anhydrase and Cl(−)/HCO(3)(−) exchange

1. Topiramate (TPM) is an anticonvulsant whose impact on firing activity and intracellular pH (pHi) regulation of CA3 neurons was investigated. 2. Using the 4-aminopyridine-treated hippocampal slice model bathed in bicarbonate-buffered solution, TPM (25–50 μM) reduced the frequency of epileptiform bursts and action potentials without affecting membrane potential or input resistance. Inhibitory effects of TPM were reversed by trimethylamine-induced alkalinization. 3. TPM also lowered the steady-state pHi of BCECF-AM-loaded neuronal somata by 0.18±0.07 pH units in CO(2)/HCO(3)(−)-buffered solution. Subsequent to an ammonium prepulse, TPM reduced the acidotic peak but clearly slowed pHi recovery. These complex changes were mimicked by the protein phosphatase inhibitor okadaic acid. 4. Alkalosis upon withdrawal of extracellular Cl(−) was augmented by TPM. Furthermore, at decreased pHi due to the absence of extracellular Na(+), TPM reversibly increased pHi. These findings demonstrate that TPM modulates Na(+)-independent Cl(−)/HCO(3)(−) exchange. 5. In the nominal absence of extracellular CO(2)/HCO(3)(−) buffer, both steady-state pHi and firing of epileptiform bursts remained unchanged upon adding TPM. However, pHi recovery subsequent to an ammonium prepulse was slightly increased, as was the case in the presence of the carbonic anhydrase (CA) inhibitor acetazolamide. Thus, a slight reduction of intracellular buffer capacity by TPM may be due to an inhibitory effect on intracellular CA. 6. Together, these findings show that TPM lowers neuronal pHi most likely due to a combined effect on Na(+)-independent Cl(−)/HCO(3)(−) exchange and CA. The apparent decrease of steady-state pHi may contribute to the anticonvulsive property of TPM