Efficacy of bifocal diagnosis-independent group psychoeducation in severe psychiatric disorders: results from a randomized controlled trial

Despite evidence for its efficacy, diagnosis-specific psychoeducation is not routinely applied. This exploratory randomized controlled trial analyses the efficacy of an easily implementable bifocal diagnosis-mixed group psychoeducation in the treatment of severe psychiatric disorders regarding readmission, compliance and clinical variables, for example global functioning. Inpatients of the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel (N=82) were randomly assigned to a diagnosis-mixed psychoeducational (PE) or a non-specific intervention control group. Relatives were invited to join corresponding family groups. Results at baseline, 3- and 12-month follow-ups are presented. Better compliance after 3months and a lower suicide rate were significant in favour of PE. For most other outcome variables, no significant differences, however advantages, in PE were found. In summary, it can be concluded that diagnosis-mixed group psychoeducation is effective in the treatment of severe psychiatric disorders. The effects can be classified as induced by distinctive psychoeducational elements. Findings similar to those on psychosis-specific programmes justify clinical application and further investigatio

Distrust before first sight: Knowledge- and appearance-based effects of trustworthiness on the visual consciousness of faces

Not all visual stimuli processed by the brain reach the level of conscious perception. Previous research has shown that the emotional value of a stimulus is one of the factors that can affect whether it is consciously perceived. Here, we investigated whether social-affective knowledge influences a face’s chance to reach visual consciousness. Furthermore, we took into account the impact of facial appearance. Faces differing in facial trustworthiness (i.e., being perceived as more or less trustworthy based on appearance) were associated with neutral or negative socially relevant information. Subsequently, an attentional blink task was administered to examine whether the manipulated factors affect the faces’ chance to reach visual consciousness under conditions of reduced attentional resources. Participants showed enhanced detection of faces associated with negative as compared to neutral social information. In event-related potentials (ERPs), this was accompanied by effects in the time range of the early posterior negativity (EPN) component. These findings indicate that social-affective person knowledge is processed already before or during attentional selection and can affect which faces are prioritized for access to visual consciousness. In contrast, no clear evidence for an impact of facial trustworthiness during the attentional blink was found

Minimization of free radical damage by metal catalysis of multivitamin/multimineral supplements

Multivitamin/multimineral complexes are the most common dietary supplements. Unlike minerals in foods that are incorporated in bioorganic structures, minerals in dietary supplements are typically in an inorganic form. These minerals can catalyze the generation of free radicals, thereby oxidizing antioxidants during digestion. Here we examine the ability of a matrix consisting of an amino acid and non-digestible oligosaccharide (AAOS) to blunt metal-catalyzed oxidations. Monitoring of ascorbate radical generated by copper shows that ascorbate is oxidized more slowly with the AAOS matrix than with copper sulfate. Measurement of the rate of oxidation of ascorbic acid and Trolox® by catalytic metals confirmed the ability of AAOS to slow these oxidations. Similar results were observed with iron-catalyzed formation of hydroxyl radicals. When compared to traditional forms of minerals used in supplements, we conclude that the oxidative loss of antioxidants in solution at physiological pH is much slower when AAOS is present

Dutch modality exclusivity norms : Simulating perceptual modality in space

Perceptual information is important for the meaning of nouns. We present modality exclusivity norms for 485 Dutch nouns rated on visual, auditory, haptic, gustatory, and olfactory associations. We found these nouns are highly multimodal. They were rated most dominant in vision, and least in olfaction. A factor analysis identified two main dimensions: one loaded strongly on olfaction and gustation (reflecting joint involvement in flavor), and a second loaded strongly on vision and touch (reflecting joint involvement in manipulable objects). In a second study, we validated the ratings with similarity judgments. As expected, words from the same dominant modality were rated more similar than words from different dominant modalities; but - more importantly - this effect was enhanced when word pairs had high modality strength ratings. We further demonstrated the utility of our ratings by investigating whether perceptual modalities are differentially experienced in space, in a third study. Nouns were categorized into their dominant modality and used in a lexical decision experiment where the spatial position of words was either in proximal or distal space. We found words dominant in olfaction were processed faster in proximal than distal space compared to the other modalities, suggesting olfactory information is mentally simulated as "close" to the body. Finally, we collected ratings of emotion (valence, dominance, and arousal) to assess its role in perceptual space simulation, but the valence did not explain the data. So, words are processed differently depending on their perceptual associations, and strength of association is captured by modality exclusivity ratings

The ERP signature of the contextual diversity effect in visual word recognition

Behavioral experiments have revealed that words appearing in many different contexts are responded to faster than words that appear in few contexts. Although this contextual diversity (CD) effect has been found to be stronger than the word-frequency (WF) effect, it is a matter of debate whether the facilitative effects of CD and WF reflect the same underlying mechanisms. The analysis of the electrophysiological correlates of CD may shed some light on this issue. This experiment is the first to examine the ERPs to high- and low-CD words when WF is controlled for. Results revealed that while high-CD words produced faster responses than low-CD words, their ERPs showed larger negativities (225-325 ms) than low-CD words. This result goes in the opposite direction of the ERP WF effect (high-frequency words elicit smaller N400 amplitudes than low-frequency words). The direction and scalp distribution of the CD effect resembled the ERP effects associated with "semantic richness." Thus, while apparently related, CD and WF originate from different sources during the access of lexical-semantic representations.The research reported in this article has been partially funded by Grants PSI2011-26924 (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) and GV/2014/067 (Conselleria d'Educacio, Investigacio, Cultura i Esport de la Generalitat Valenciana).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Efficacy of bifocal diagnosis-independent group psychoeducation in severe psychiatric disorders: results from a randomized controlled trial

Abstract Despite evidence for its efficacy, diagnosis-specific psychoeducation is not routinely applied. This exploratory randomized controlled trial analyses the efficacy of an easily implementable bifocal diagnosis-mixed group psychoeducation in the treatment of severe psychiatric disorders regarding readmission, compliance and clinical variables, for example global functioning. Inpatients of the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel (N = 82) were randomly assigned to a diagnosis-mixed psychoeducational (PE) or a non-specific intervention control group. Relatives were invited to join corresponding family groups. Results at baseline, 3-and 12-month follow-ups are presented. Better compliance after 3 months and a lower suicide rate were significant in favour of PE. For most other outcome variables, no significant differences, however advantages, in PE were found. In summary, it can be concluded that diagnosis-mixed group psychoeducation is effective in the treatment of severe psychiatric disorders. The effects can be classified as induced by distinctive psychoeducational elements. Findings similar to those on psychosis-specific programmes justify clinical application and further investigation

Electrophysiological chronometry of graded consciousness during the attentional blink

One of the ongoing debates about visual consciousness is whether it can be considered as an all-or-none or a graded phenomenon. While there is increasing evidence for the existence of graded states of conscious awareness based on paradigms such as visual masking, only little and mixed evidence is available for the attentional blink paradigm, specifically in regard to electrophysiological measures. Thereby, the all-or-none pattern reported in some attentional blink studies might have originated from specifics of the experimental design, suggesting the need to examine the generalizability of results. In the present event-related potential (ERP) study (N = 32), visual awareness of T2 face targets was assessed via subjective visibility ratings on a perceptual awareness scale in combination with ERPs time-locked to T2 onset (components P1, N1, N2, and P3). Furthermore, a classification task preceding visibility ratings allowed to track task performance. The behavioral results indicate a graded rather than an all-or-none pattern of visual awareness. Corresponding graded differences in the N1, N2, and P3 components were observed for the comparison of visibility levels. These findings suggest that conscious perception during the attentional blink can occur in a graded fashion