Antidepressant treatment of children: clinical relapse is unrelated to tricyclic plasma concentrations

Plasma concentrations of imipramine and amitriptyline and their desmethylated metabolites were measured in 20 children being treated for major depressive illness 2 wk. and 5 to 10 wk. after achieving drug dosages of 2.25 mg/kg body weight. At 2 wk. all children had exhibited clinical improvement, but by 10 wk. 4 of the 10 children treated with imipramine and 5 of the 10 children treated with amitriptyline had experienced clinical relapse of depressive symptoms. Tricyclic antidepressant plasma concentrations and ratios were comparable in the subgroups of children who maintained their clinical improvement and those who relapsed. There was no evidence of a systematic decline in plasma tricyclic antidepressant concentrations in those children who relapsed.     

A noninvasive index of hemispheric activity

Tympanic thermometers were used to measure fluctuations in the temperature of the left and right hemispheres of 22 normal high school students while performing verbal and nonverbal visual discrimination tasks. The nonverbal task involving face recognition demonstrated the predicted effect of hemispheric bias on performance: The subjects performed better when they showed a relative rise in right-hemisphere temperature. No significant relationship between hemispheric temperature and level of performance was observed during the verbal task, perhaps owing to the opportunity to treat effectively the nonwords as either linguistic strings or visual patterns. It is concluded that tympanic temperature effectively measures hemispheric activity during cognitive processing.     

Learning effects of knowledge of results upon time estimation

College students of both sexes served as their own controls to test three hypotheses in each of two separate experiments designed to assess the learning effects of knowledge of results upon time estimation. The results indicated that (1) knowledge of results in the form of feedback to the nearest hundredth of a second significantly increased the mean accuracy of time estimations obtained by the method of production, (2) that knowledge of results significantly decreased the variance of the time estimations, and (3) that sex difference as a main effect was not significant in either experiment. A major conclusion of the present study was that variance represents an authentic and independent measure of learning.     

Physical exercise, social background, and the well-being of older adult women

28 older women participating in an exercise program were compared to 30 older women not participating in an exercise program on two behavioral measures. There were no significant main effects for participation-nonparticipation in an exercise program. Significant main effects were found, however, for each of three social variables.     

What can it mean to know?

This paper offers a critique of the prevailing epistemological assumptions which undergird modern Pastoral Care and Counseling education. By drawing upon emerging insights in Transpersonal Psychology and Consciousness disciplines, along with the ontological perspectives of Martin Heidegger and John Macquarrie, the attempt is made to reclaim the modes of knowing of William James and Anton Boison. This paper includes practical and concrete examples of how one supervisor is attempting to put a new paradigm into practice.