Manic Depressive Disorder (Bipolar Disorder) and its effect on the family unit

Bipolar affective disorder can mean many years of pain, confusion and loneliness for sufferers. This can also be said to be true for their families. Most relatives develop a fixed set of attitudes ranging from supportive, whatever the circumstances, to the persistently critical and hostile. It is not possible to know if the latter may be a trait or the outcome of a developmental process, but the complexity of these emotions would have some significance in the relapse, and on the family unit as a whole. This study focuses on how family members are affected by living with bipolar disorder sufferers. It is based on relative studies of schizophrenia (The Nithsdale Schizophrenia Surveys 1993, McCreadie et al). Aspects examined include: relationships, practical management, emotional support care given to relatives suffering from bipolar disorder on relative's own health, the extreme difficulty that people with the illness experience in learning from life, and the significance of stress for relatives, both financial and social. The study uses in-depth interviewing and questionnaires methodology to measure the emotions, attitudes and feelings of relatives living closely with the sufferers, and the social consequences on the family unit. The results show that the high-EE (Expressed Emotion) critical families, when the sufferers and relatives are in conflict there is a prolonged and escalating "mutual" negativity. It makes no distinction as to the originators of the negative sequence. Furthermore, in contrast to work on EE or affective style, the results indicate that in low-EE families there is an actively supportive attitude to the sufferers. This parallel is present in the study, but the findings also stress the need for the sufferers to be supporting of their carers. The cases of relapse show that the sufferers and the carers play at least an equal part in the negative inter-action associated with relapse

Magic moments: New word learning in children

Memory representations of words are thought to undergo changes with consolidation: Episodic memories of novel words are transformed into lexical representations that interact with other words in the mental dictionary. Behavioral studies have shown that this lexical integration process is enhanced when there is more time for consolidation. Neuroimaging studies have further revealed that novel word representations are initially represented in a hippocampally-centered system, whereas left posterior middle temporal cortex activation increases with lexicalization. In this study, we measured behavioral and brain responses to newly-learned words in children. Two groups of Dutch children, aged between 8–10 and 14–16 years, were trained on 30 novel Japanese words depicting novel concepts. Children were tested on word-forms, word-meanings, and the novel words’ influence on existing word processing immediately after training, and again after a week. In line with the adult findings, hippocampal involvement decreased with time. Lexical integration, however, was not observed immediately or after a week, neither behaviorally nor neurally. It appears that time alone is not always sufficient for lexical integration to occur. We suggest that other factors (e.g., the novelty of the concepts and familiarity with the language the words are derived from) might also influence the integration process

Magic moments: New word learning in children

Item does not contain fulltextMemory representations of words are thought to undergo changes with consolidation: Episodic memories of novel words are transformed into lexical representations that interact with other words in the mental dictionary. Behavioral studies have shown that this lexical integration process is enhanced when there is more time for consolidation. Neuroimaging studies have further revealed that novel word representations are initially represented in a hippocampally-centered system, whereas left posterior middle temporal cortex activation increases with lexicalization. In this study, we measured behavioral and brain responses to newly-learned words in children. Two groups of Dutch children, aged between 8–10 and 14–16 years, were trained on 30 novel Japanese words depicting novel concepts. Children were tested on word-forms, word-meanings, and the novel words’ influence on existing word processing immediately after training, and again after a week. In line with the adult findings, hippocampal involvement decreased with time. Lexical integration, however, was not observed immediately or after a week, neither behaviorally nor neurally. It appears that time alone is not always sufficient for lexical integration to occur. We suggest that other factors (e.g., the novelty of the concepts and familiarity with the language the words are derived from) might also influence the integration process.nul

Richness of information about novel words influences how episodic and semantic memory networks interact during lexicalization

Item does not contain fulltextThe complementary learning systems account of declarative memory suggests two distinct memory networks, a fast-mapping, episodic system involving the hippocampus, and a slower semantic memory system distributed across the neocortex in which new information is gradually integrated with existing representations. In this study, we investigated the extent to which these two networks are involved in the integration of novel words into the lexicon after extensive learning, and how the involvement of these networks changes after 24 h. In particular, we explored whether having richer information at encoding influences the lexicalization trajectory. We trained participants with two sets of novel words, one where exposure was only to the words' phonological forms (the form-only condition), and one where pictures of unfamiliar objects were associated with the words' phonological forms (the picture-associated condition). A behavioral measure of lexical competition (indexing lexicalization) indicated stronger competition effects for the form-only words. Imaging (fMRI) results revealed greater involvement of phonological lexical processing areas immediately after training in the form-only condition, suggesting that tight connections were formed between novel words and existing lexical entries already at encoding. Retrieval of picture-associated novel words involved the episodic/hippocampal memory system more extensively. Although lexicalization was weaker in the picture-associated condition, overall memory strength was greater when tested after a 24 hour delay, probably due to the availability of both episodic and lexical memory networks to aid retrieval. It appears that, during lexicalization of a novel word, the relative involvement of different memory networks differs according to the richness of the information about that word available at encoding.14 p