Cognitive Enhancement Therapy Improves Frontolimbic Regulation of Emotion in Alcohol and/or Cannabis Misusing Schizophrenia: A Preliminary Study

Individuals with schizophrenia who misuse substances are burdened with impairments in emotion regulation. Cognitive enhancement therapy (CET) may address these problems by enhancing prefrontal brain function. A small sample of outpatients with schizophrenia and alcohol and/or cannabis substance use problems participating in an 18-month randomized trial of CET (n = 10) or usual care (n = 4) completed posttreatment functional neuroimaging using an emotion regulation task. General linear models explored CET effects on brain activity in emotional neurocircuitry. Individuals treated with CET had significantly greater activation in broad regions of the prefrontal cortex, limbic, and striatal systems implicated in emotion regulation compared to usual care. Differential activation favoring CET in prefrontal regions and the insula mediated behavioral improvements in emotional processing. Our data lend preliminary support of CET effects on neuroplasticity in frontolimbic and striatal circuitries, which mediate emotion regulation in people with schizophrenia and comorbid substance misuse problems

Feasibility and preliminary efficacy data from a computerized cognitive intervention in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

Children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) are significantly impaired in their academic performance and functionality due to cognitive deficits, especially in attention, memory, and other facets of executive function. Compounding these cognitive deficits is the remarkably high risk of major psychoses, occurring in 25% of adolescents and adults with the disorder. There are currently no evidence-based interventions designed to improve the cognitive deficits in these individuals. We implemented a neuroplasticity-based computerized cognitive remediation program for 12 weeks in 13 adolescents with 22q11DS, assessed feasibility, and measured changes in cognition before and after the intervention compared to a control group of 10 age- and gender-matched children with 22q11DS. Our results indicated that despite their cognitive impairments, this intervention is feasible in children with 22q11DS, with high rates of adherence and satisfaction. Our preliminary analyses indicate that gains in cognition occur with the intervention. Further study in a larger randomized controlled trial would enable assessment of efficacy of this novel intervention

Social cognitive training in adolescents with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome: feasibility and preliminary effects of the intervention: Social cognitive training in 22q11DS

Children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) often have deficits in social cognition and social skills that contribute to poor adaptive functioning. These deficits may be of relevance to the later occurrence of serious psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia. Yet, there are no evidence-based interventions to improve social cognitive functioning in children with 22q11DS

Fronto-Limbic Brain Dysfunction during the Regulation of Emotion in Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is characterized by significant and widespread impairments in the regulation of emotion. Evidence is only recently emerging regarding the neural basis of these emotion regulation impairments, and few studies have focused on the regulation of emotion during effortful cognitive processing. To examine the neural correlates of deficits in effortful emotion regulation, schizophrenia outpatients (N = 20) and age- and gender-matched healthy volunteers (N = 20) completed an emotional faces n-back task to assess the voluntary attentional control subprocess of emotion regulation during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Behavioral measures of emotional intelligence and emotion perception were administered to examine brain-behavior relationships with emotion processing outcomes. Results indicated that patients with schizophrenia demonstrated significantly greater activation in the bilateral striatum, ventromedial prefrontal, and right orbitofrontal cortices during the effortful regulation of positive emotional stimuli, and reduced activity in these same regions when regulating negative emotional information. The opposite pattern of results was observed in healthy individuals. Greater fronto-striatal response to positive emotional distractors was significantly associated with deficits in facial emotion recognition. These findings indicate that abnormalities in striatal and prefrontal cortical systems may be related to deficits in the effortful emotion regulatory process of attentional control in schizophrenia, and may significantly contribute to emotion processing deficits in the disorder

Operation of an array of field-change detectors to provide ground truth for FORTE data

The authors have deployed an array of fast electric-field-change sensors around the state of New Mexico to help identify the lightning processes responsible for the VHF RF signals detected by the FORTE satellite`s wide-band transient radio emission receivers. The array provides them with locations and electric-field waveforms for events within New Mexico and into surrounding states, and operates continuously. They are particularly interested in events for which there are coincident FORTE observations. For these events, they can correct both the array and FORTE waveforms for time of flight, and can plot the two waveforms on a common time axis. Most of the coincident events are from cloud-go-ground discharges, but the most powerful are from a little-studied class of events variously called narrow bipolar events and compact intra-cloud discharges. They have therefore focused their attention on these events whether or not FORTE was in position to observe them

Observations and Inferred Physical Characteristics of Compact Intracloud Discharges

Compact intracloud discharges (CIDS) represent a distinct class of electrical discharges that occur within intense regions of thunderstorms. They are singular discharges that produce brief (typically 3 µs in duration) broadband RF emissions that are 20 to 30 dB more powerful than radiation from all other recorded lightning processes in the HF and VHF radio spectrum. Far field electric field change recordings of CIDS consist of a single, large-amplitude bipolar pulse that begins to rise during the RF-producing phase of the CID and typically lasts for 20 µs. During the summer of 1998 we operated a 4-station array of electric field change meters in New Mexico to support FORTE satellite observations of transient RF and optical sources and to learn more about the phenomenology and physical characteristics of CIDS. Over 800 CIDS were detected and located during the campaign. The events were identified on the basis of their unique field change waveforms. CID source heights determined using the relative delays of ionospherically reflected source emissions were typically between 4 and 11 km above ground level. Events of both positive and negative polarity were observed with events' of initially- negative polarity (indicative of discharges occurring between underlying positive and overlying negative charge) occurring at slightly higher altitudes. Within CID field change waveforms the CID pulse was often followed within a few ms by one or more smaller-amplitude pulses. We associate these subsequent pulses with the initial activity of a "normal" intracloud flash, the inference being that some fraction of the time, a CID initiates an intracloud lightning flash

Correlations Between Brain Structure and Symptom Dimensions of Psychosis in Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective, and Psychotic Bipolar I Disorders

Introduction: Structural alterations may correlate with symptom severity in psychotic disorders, but the existing literature on this issue is heterogeneous. In addition, it is not known how cortical thickness and cortical surface area correlate with symptom dimensions of psychosis. Methods: Subjects included 455 individuals with schizophrenia, schizoaffective, or bipolar I disorders. Data were obtained as part of the Bipolar Schizophrenia Network for Intermediate Phenotypes study. Diagnosis was made through the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. Positive and negative symptom subscales were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Structural brain measurements were extracted from T1-weight structural MRIs using FreeSurfer v5.1 and were correlated with symptom subscales using partial correlations. Exploratory factor analysis was also used to identify factors among those regions correlating with symptom subscales. Results: The positive symptom subscale correlated inversely with gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness in frontal and temporal regions, whereas the negative symptom subscale correlated inversely with right frontal cortical surface area. Among regions correlating with the positive subscale, factor analysis identified four factors, including a temporal cortical thickness factor and frontal GMV factor. Among regions correlating with the negative subscale, factor analysis identified a frontal GMV-cortical surface area factor. There was no significant diagnosis by structure interactions with symptom severity. Conclusions: Structural measures correlate with positive and negative symptom severity in psychotic disorders. Cortical thickness demonstrated more associations with psychopathology than cortical surface area

Long-duration gamma-ray emissions from 2007 and 2008 winter thunderstorms

The Gamma-Ray Observation of Winter THunderclouds (GROWTH) experiment, consisting of two radiation-detection subsystems, has been operating since 2006 on the premises of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant located at the coastal area of Japan Sea. By 2010 February, GROWTH detected 7 long-duration $\gamma$-rays emissions associated with winter thunderstorms. Of them, two events, obtained on 2007 December 13 and 2008 December 25, are reported.On both occasions, all inorganic scintillators (NaI, CsI, and BGO) of the two subsystems detected significant gamma-ray signals lasting for >1 minute. Neither of these two events were associated with any lightning. In both cases, the gamma-ray energy spectra extend to 10 MeV, suggesting that the detected gamma-rays are produced by relativistic electrons via bremsstrahlung. Assuming that the initial photon spectrum at the source is expressed by a power-law function,the observed photons can be interpreted as being radiated from a source located at a distance of 290-560 m for the 2007 event and 110-690 m for the 2008 one, both at 90% confidence level.Employing these photon spectra, the number of relativistic electrons is estimated as 10^9 - 10^{11}. The estimation generally agrees with those calculated based on the relativistic runaway electron avalanche model. A GROWTH photon spectrum, summed over 3 individual events including the present two events and another reported previously, has similar features including a cut-off energy, to an averaged spectrum of terrestrial gamma-ray flashes.Comment: 46 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in JGR-Atmospher

Brief Report: Is Impaired Classification of Subtle Facial Expressions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Related to Atypical Emotion Category Boundaries?

Impairments in recognizing subtle facial expressions, in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), may relate to difficulties in constructing prototypes of these expressions. Eighteen children with predominantly intellectual low-functioning ASD (LFA, IQ <80) and two control groups (mental and chronological age matched), were assessed for their ability to classify emotional faces, of high, medium and low intensities, as happy or angry. For anger, the LFA group made more errors for lower intensity expressions than the control groups, classifications did not differ for happiness. This is the first study to find that the LFA group made more across-valence errors than controls. These data are consistent with atypical facial expression processing in ASD being associated with differences in the structure of emotion categories