Exploring the rationality of patients with delusions through semi-structure discourse

What patients reveal in their first person verbal accounts forms the basis of the clinical assessment (e.g. PANSS) and diagnosis ( DSM ) upon which all subsequent research hinges. Much of the rich experience (phenomenology) of someone with psychosis does not lend itself to objective methods , yet these experiences are those we need to understand if psychological and neuroscientific theories are to advance. In this paper I propose a method , knowledge elicitation , to systematically explore patients verbal reports of their delusions and other beliefs . The method has been well used in psychology to reveal the processes used by experts when making decisions in naturalistic situations. The assumption is that patients are also experts in how they proceed in evaluating the truth of their own and other peoples’ beliefs. Utilizing two case studies it is shown that this method can turn up rich information concerning a patient’s skills in deliberating about truth and falsity of beliefs and the likelihood that the use of such skills may be context specific . When asked to evaluate the beliefs of others, even if these include a delusional belief identical to their own , then there is considerably more deliberation and greater use of established procedures that expert decision makers use , resulting in the presentation of greater rationality than would otherwise be assumedPeer reviewe

A 5 item version of the Compliance Questionnaire for Rheumatology (CQR5) successfully identifies low adherence to DMARDs

© 2013 Hughes et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedTaking DMARDs as prescribed is an essential part of self-management for patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis. To date, the Compliance Questionnaire for Rheumatology (CQR) is the only self-report adherence measure created specifically for and validated in rheumatic diseases. However, the factor structure of the CQR has not been reported and it can be considered lengthy at 19 items. The aim of this study was to test the factor structure of the CQR and reduce the number of items whilst retaining robust explanation of non-adherence to DMARDs. Such a reduction would increase the clinical utility of the scale, to identify patients with sub-optimal adherence to DMARDs in the clinic as well as for research purposes.Peer reviewe

Complications of pregnancy and delivery in relation to psychosis in adult life: data from the British perinatal mortality survey sample

Original article can be found at: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?iid=137629 Copyright BMJ PublishingTo evaluate whether events occurring at or around the time of birth contribute to the onset of psychotic illness in adult life.Peer reviewe

Elasticity and confabulation in schizophrenic delusions

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Prediction Error in Reinforcement Learning : A Meta-analysis of Neuroimaging studies

Activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses were used to examine the neural correlates of prediction error in reinforcement learning. The findings are interpreted in the light of current computational models of learning and action selection. In this context, particular consideration is given to the comparison of activation patterns from studies using instrumental and Pavlovian conditioning, and where reinforcement involved rewarding or punishing feedback. The striatum was the key brain area encoding for prediction error, with activity encompassing dorsal and ventral regions for instrumental and Pavlovian reinforcement alike, a finding which challenges the functional separation of the striatum into a dorsal ‘actor’ and a ventral ‘critic’. Prediction error activity was further observed in diverse areas of predominantly anterior cerebral cortex including medial prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. Distinct patterns of prediction error activity were found for studies using rewarding and aversive reinforcers; reward prediction errors were observed primarily in the striatum while aversive prediction errors were found more widely including insula and habenula.Peer reviewedSubmitted Versio

Visual Crowding and Category Specific Deficits for Pictorial Stimuli: A Neural Network Model

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Childhood antecedents of schizophrenia and affective illness: social adjustment at ages 7 and 11

Original article can be found at: http://www.bmj.com/ Copyright BMJ PublishingTo investigate the social adjustment in childhood of people who as adults have psychiatric disorders. Design - Subjects in a prospectively followed up cohort (the national child development study) who had been admitted as adults to psychiatric hospitals were compared with the rest of the cohort on ratings of social behaviour made by teachers at the ages of 7 and 11 years.Peer reviewe

Learning through experience: an emergent connectionist account of letter production behaviour

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A modular attractor model of semantic access

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com . Copyright Springer. DOI : 10.1007/BFb0098154This paper presents results from lesion experiments on a modular attractor neural network model of semantic access. Real picture data forms the basis of perceptual input to the model. An ultrametric attractor space is used to represent semantic memory and is implemented using a biologically plausible variant of the Hopfield model. Lesioned performance is observed to be in agreement with neuropsychological data. A local field analysis of the attractor states of semantic space forms a basis for interpreting these results.Peer reviewe

Representations and character recognition: an issue for action in perception

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