145 research outputs found
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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
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
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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
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
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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
-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
Treatment outcomes in schizophrenia: qualitative study of the views of family carers
Background: Schizophrenia is a complex, heterogeneous disorder, with highly variable treatment outcomes, and relatively little is known about what is important to patients. The aim of the study was to understand treatment outcomes informal carers perceive to be important to people with schizophrenia. Method: Qualitative interview study with 34 individuals and 8 couples who care for a person with schizophrenia/ schizoaffective disorder. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed by a thematic framework based approach. Results: Carers described well-recognised outcomes of importance, alongside more novel outcomes relating to: Safety (of the patient/others); insight (e.g. into non-reality of psychotic phenomena); respite from fear, distress or pain; socially acceptable behaviour; getting out of the house; attainment of life milestones; changes in personality and/or temperament; reduction of vulnerability to stress; and several aspects of physical health. Conclusions: These findings have the potential to inform the development of patient- or carer- focused outcome measures that take into account the full range of domains that carers feel are important for patients.EUFAM
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