Cerebrospinal fluid cytologic findings in children with borrelia infections (neuroborreliosis)

The infection of the central nervous system by Borrelia burgdorferi induces usually a mononuclear (lympho-mono-plasmocellular) cytogram of the cerebrospinal fluid in humans. The initial granulocytosis of the liquor cerebrospinalis typical for bacterial infections is transistory only. Such cytologic findings may be misleading to a diagnosis as virus infection. In case of clinical signs (Bannwarth syndrome), typical anamnesis or chronic lymphocytic meningitis the estimation of specific IgG/IgM borrelia antibodies is indicated and the antibiotic therapy should be performed.     

Cerebrospinal fluid diagnosis of multiple sclerosis]

Starting from the knowledge accumulated with respect to the etiopathogenesis and the components of immunoreaction a minimal to maximal program by steps has been developed for the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in multiple sclerosis (MS). It is based on fundamental methods (I), special supplementary methods (II), and relatively specific immunological methods (III). For MS five possible conditions of the CSF could be determined from alterations of cells and variations in protein: a (1) typically complete and (2.) typically incomplete immunoreactive encephalomyelitic (encephalitic) syndrome, a (3.) nonspecific CSF-syndrome of low degree and less typical character (in the sense of an acute or subacute irritation syndrome) an (4.) atypical syndrome of a considerable degree, and a (5.) normal condition of the cerebrospinal fluid. The significance of immunoreactive cerebrospinal fluid syndromes to the diagnostic criteria of multiple sclerosis as well as further relatively disease-specific methods (such as the MEM test and MSF assay) of determining cellular immunity, are discussed.     

Cerebrospinal fluid findings in chronic cerebral-organic psychiatric axis syndrome

Retrospective examinations of liquors from 136 children with a chronic brain-organic psychic axis syndrome following brain damage during infancy yielded pathological findings in 75.7% of the cases. These included changes in total protein content, slight increases in cell counts and the occurrence of monocytic forms of stimulus, but rarely changes in the pattern produced by electrophoresis of the liquor. Combinations of these pathological findings are rare, so that it is not possible to elaborate a typical liquor syndrome for this group of patients.     

Emergence and singular limits

Recent work by Robert Batterman and Alexander Rueger has brought attention to cases in physics in which governing laws at the base level “break down” and singular limit relations obtain between base- and upper-level theories. As a result, they claim, these are cases with emergent upper-level properties. This paper contends that this inference—from singular limits to explanatory failure, novelty or irreducibility, and then to emergence—is mistaken. The van der Pol nonlinear oscillator is used to show that there can be a full explanation of upper-level properties entirely in base-level terms even when singular limits are present. Whether upper-level properties are emergent depends not on the presence of a singular limit but rather on details of the ampliative approximation methods used. The paper suggests that focusing on explanatory deficiency at the base level is key to understanding emergence in physics.     

Chunk limits and length limits in immediate recall: a reconciliation

Whereas some research on immediate recall of verbal lists has suggested that it is limited by the number of chunks that can be recalled (e.g., N. Cowan, Z. Chen, & J. N. Rouder, 2004; E. Tulving & J. E. Patkau, 1962), other research has suggested that it is limited by the length of the material to be recalled (e.g., A. D. Baddeley, N. Thomson, & M. Buchanan, 1975). The authors investigated this question by teaching new paired associations between words to create 2-word chunks. The results suggest that both chunk capacity limits and length limits come into play. For the free recall of 12-word lists, 6 pre-learned pairs could be recalled about as well as 6 pre-exposed singletons, suggesting a chunk limit. However, for the serially ordered recall of 8-word lists, 4 pre-learned pairs could be recalled about as well as 8 pre-exposed singletons, suggesting a length limit. Other conditions yielded intermediate results suggesting that sometimes both limits may operate together.     

Dance and psychotherapy--possibilities and limits

From a starting point of therapeutic and prophylactic components identifiable in the dance, the authors regard the dance as deserving of greater attention than was hitherto the case in programs of physiotherapy, psychotherapy, and sociotherapy. From the existing essays at a therapy basing on body and motion, they infer basic common points, and to promote discussion, they state their attitudes in respect of the potential and rank of the dance in the concept of complex multimodal psychotherapy.     

Contrasting effects of sensory limits and capacity limits in visual selective attention

The effects of perceptual load and those of target-stimulus degradation on distractor processing were contrasted. Targets either had to be found among several nontargets (high perceptual load) or were presented alone and were intact (low perceptual load), had reduced size and contrast (Experiment 1), had reduced duration and were followed by a mask (Experiment 2), or had reduced visual acuity owing to position eccentricity (Experiment 3) in the degraded low-load condition. The results showed that both high perceptual load and target degradation increased general task difficulty, as is reflected by overall reaction times and accuracy. However, whereas high perceptual load reduced response-competition effects of irrelevant distractors, target degradation increased distractor effects. These results support the hypothesis that distractor processing depends on the extent to which high perceptual load exhausts attention in relevant processing and provide a dissociation between perceptual load and general task difficulty and processing speed.     

Cerebrospinal fluid concentrations of biogenic amines and corticotropin-releasing factor in adolescent non-human primates as a function of the timing of adverse early rearing

Adolescent bonnet macaques nursed as infants by mothers facing unpredictable requirements for food procurement (variable foraging demand, VFD) display persistent neurobiological disturbances. This study examined the long-term neurochemical and behavioral effects of adverse rearing initiated later in infancy than in previous cohorts of subjects to test the hypothesis that the timing of an early adverse experience would influence patterns of biobehavioral outcome. Cisternal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) monoamine and corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) concentrations were obtained from 20 bonnet macaques (11 VFD-reared and 9 normally reared controls) approximately 2 years after the end of differential rearing. VFD-reared primates displayed on multiple samplings significantly lower CSF CRF concentrations and higher CSF 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) concentration compared to controls. In the VFD-reared, significant inverse correlations between CRF and all three monoamines were found (5-HIAA, 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenethyleneglycol and homovanillic acid), most prominently for 5-HIAA. In controls, but not VFD-reared subjects, CSF CRF was positively correlated with changes in "gregariousness" upon presentation of a fear stimulus. VFD-reared subjects displayed greater baseline hierarchical engagement than controls. In contrast to prior findings, in which rearing under VFD conditions at an earlier age led to increased CSF CRF compared with controls, CSF CRF was lower after later exposure to VFD rearing than in controls. Thus, the timing of exposure to VFD conditions early in life evidently determines whether CSF CRF was found to be elevated or decreased, within the context of increased serotonin metabolism, during the course of primate maturation.     

Levels of selection and capacity limits

Subjects performed a visual target-detection task in eight experiments. We examined the effects of word relevancy (word in relevant or irrelevant location) and display load (1-4 words) on physical, semantic, and controlled processing of nontargets. Interwoven with the detection task was a test-word identification task that was used to measure priming potency of nontargets. Physical and semantic levels of processing were measured in terms of identity and semantic priming, respectively. Nontarget primes were repeated as test words in identity priming. Nontarget primes were semantic associates of test words in semantic priming. Controlled processing of nontargets was measured in terms of recognition memory on a subsequent test. All measures increased with word relevancy and decreased with display load. The priming effects remained intact even when word presentation was speeded up and controlled processing was sharply curtailed. The data indicate that all levels of processing are selective and capacity limited.     

Consciousness and the limits of memory

Intermodal representationalism is a popular theory of consciousness. This paper argues that intermodal representationalism is false, or at least likely so. The argument turns on two forms of exceptional episodic memory: hyperthymesia and prodigious visual memory in savant syndrome. Emerging from this argument is a broader lesson about the relationship between memory and perception; that it may be possible to entertain in memory the very same content as in a corresponding perceptual experience, and that the ‘overflow’ interpretation of the classic Sperling paradigm experiments may not fully generalize.     

The limits of anchoring

Anchoring and adjustment is a pervasive bias in which decision makers are influenced by random or uninformative numbers or starting points. As a means of understanding this effect, we explore two limits on anchoring. In Experiments 1 and 2, implausibly extreme anchors had a proportionally smaller effect than anchors close to the expected value of the lotteries evaluated. In Experiments 2 and 3, anchoring occurred only if the anchor and preference judgment were expressed on the same scale. Incompatible anchors and response modes resulted in no anchoring bias. A confirmatory search mechanism is proposed to account for these results.