Mild Reinforcement Learning Deficits in Patients With First-Episode Psychosis

Numerous studies have identified reinforcement learning (RL) deficits in schizophrenia. Most have focused on chronic patients with longstanding antipsychotic treatment, however, and studies of RL in early-illness patients have produced mixed results, particularly regarding gradual/procedural learning. No study has directly contrasted both rapid and gradual RL in first-episode psychosis (FEP) samples. We examined probabilistic RL in 34 FEP patients and 36 controls, using Go/NoGo (GNG) and Gain vs Loss-Avoidance (GLA) paradigms. Our results were mixed, with FEP patients exhibiting greater impairment in the ability to use positive, as opposed to negative, feedback to drive rapid RL on the GLA, but not the GNG. By contrast, patients and controls showed similar improvement across the acquisition. Finally, we found no significant between-group differences in the postacquisition expression of value-based preference in both tasks. Negative symptoms were modestly associated with RL measures, while the overall bias to engage in Go-responding correlated significantly with psychosis severity in FEP patients, consistent with striatal hyperdopaminergia. Taken together, FEP patients demonstrated more circumscribed RL impairments than previous studies have documented in chronic samples, possibly reflecting differential symptom profiles between first-episode and chronic samples. Our finding of relatively preserved gradual/procedural RL, in briefly medicated FEP patients, might suggest spared or restored basal ganglia function. Our findings of preserved abilities to use representations of expected value to guide decision making, and our mixed results regarding rapid RL, may reflect a lesser degree of prefrontal cortical functional impairment in FEP than in chronic samples. Further longitudinal research, in larger samples, is required.postprin

Cognitive and affective perspectives on formation and maintenance of grandiose delusions of a patient with schizophrenia

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Schedule effect and laparoscopic-assisted vaginal hysterectomy

[[abstract]]Background: Prolonged surgical workload and different starting times of laparoscopic-assisted vaginal hysterectomy, (LAVH) might be factors influencing surgical and patient's outcomes. Aims: The aim of this study is to elucidate possible detrimental results of the schedule effect on LAVH. Methods: Retrospective cohort study based on patient charts and hospital's electronic database in a tertiary teaching hospital. A total of 217 consecutive women who underwent LAVH for gynecological diseases were enrolled. Among them, 159 LAVHs performed by four surgeons were divided into three groups according to three different starting times of the operation. Among 159 LAVHs, 110 performed by the same surgeon were divided into three groups in the same way. Variables related to operative and medical outcomes were compared and analysed by one-way ANOVA and chi-squared test. Results: Data on both all women (159 cases) and subgroup women (110 cases) revealed that no statistical significant differences among the three groups including length of hospital stay, shift of serum haemoglobin, shift of serum haematocrit, flatulence-relief time, surgical blood loss, blood transfusion rate, rate of postoperative,e fluid injection over two days after surgery or complication rate. Interestingly, the first LAVH scheduled within the 08.30 to 10.29 hours time slot had the longest mean operation time. LAVHs starting within the 15.30 to 17.29 hours time slot had the shortest mean operation time. Conclusion: The time of day in which LAVH is performed does not have a detrimental effect on outcome. Successful LAVH is dependent on multidisciplinary team work to achieve good surgical and patient outcomes

Incorporating Support Vector Machine for Identifying Protein Tyrosine Sulfation Sites

[[abstract]]Abstract: Tyrosine sulfation is a post-translational modification of many secreted and membrane-bound proteins. It governs protein-protein interactions that are involved in leukocyte adhesion, hemostasis, and chemokine signaling. However, the intrinsic feature of sulfated protein remains elusive and remains to be delineated. This investigation presents SulfoSite, which is a computational method based on a support vector machine (SVM) for predicting protein sulfotyrosine sites. The approach was developed to consider structural information such as concerning the secondary structure and solvent accessibility of amino acids that surround the sulfotyrosine sites. One hundred sixty-two experimentally verified tyrosine sulfation sites were identified using UniProtKB/SwissProt release 53.0. The results of a five-fold cross-validation evaluation suggest that the accessibility of the solvent around the sulfotyrosine sites contributes substantially to predictive accuracy. The SVM classifier can achieve an accuracy of 94.2% in fivefold cross validation when sequence positional weighted matrix (PWM) is coupled with values of the accessible surface area (ASA). The proposed method significantly outperforms previous methods for accurately predicting the location of tyrosine sulfation sites. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 30: 2526-2537, 200

Sustainability of Treatment Effect of a 3-year Early Intervention Programme for First-episode Psychosis in Hong Kong

Parallel Session 1 – Health and Health Services: abstract no. S2published_or_final_versio

Subjective recovery in patients with first-episode psychosis in Hong Kong

Poster PresentationINTRODUCTION: The concept of recovery can be organized into two types: objective and subjective (1). Objective recovery is defined as the remission of clinical symptoms and improved everyday functioning, while subjective recovery is a personal understanding of recovery that varies individually. Understanding subjective recovery facilitates treatment adherence. The study aims to investigate the subjective determinants of perceived non-recovery to patients with first-episode psychosis in Chinese sample and the factors affecting subjective recovery ...published_or_final_versio

12-year follow-up student of mortality due to suicide among first-episode psychosis cohort: Is the early intervention program more effective in reducing excess mortality due to suicide in psychosis

Oral Presentation: O10. Treatment and clinical service: no. O10.8published_or_final_versio

Relationship between cognitive function and symptomology with self-stigma in patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders

E-PosterBACKGROUND: Self-stigma can be understood as a process of an individual gaining awareness of the associated stereotypes, agreeing with them and thus applying them to oneself [1]. This suggests the involvement of complex cognitive processes behind the development of self-stigma. Previous studies have also suggested that clinical symptoms are related to both cognitive function and self-stigma [2,3]. The current study examined the relationship of cognitive functions, clinical symptoms and self-stigma ...published_or_final_versio

Web-Based Psychoeducation Program for Caregivers of First-Episode of Psychosis: An Experience of Chinese Population in Hong Kong

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