Keynote lectures (in alphabetical order, according to the lecturers’ last names)

Abstract

Keynote lectures (in alphabetical order, according to the lecturers’ last names)     

Emergency psychiatry and crisis intervention in a primary clinic

The terms Notfall and Krise, and the semantic problems arising, are elucidated; and an analysis of one years work in provision for emergency psychiatry and stress intervention is presented. Psychoreactive syndromes were found to be most common, followed in second place by psychotic conditions. In third place come disorders in connection with alcohol, which display a rising tendency. 40% of the clinic's beds are occupied by acute emergency cases, chiefly of short duration. Emergency provision is thus shown to be a major feature in the work of psychiatric clinics.     

Bandpass characteristics of high-frequency sensitivity and visual experience in blindsight

Patient RP suffers a unilateral right homonymous quadrant anopia but demonstrates better than chance discrimination for stimuli presented in the blind field at temporal frequencies between 33 and 47 Hz (all significant at p < .05, binomial). Examination of her reports of visual experience during blind-field discrimination suggests a more complex picture in which experiences particular to correct discrimination are not found at low-mid-gamma frequencies, but are significantly more likely than average (76%, p < .001) at a lower frequency (22 Hz) at which blindsight is not observed. We believe that visual experience may serve to support blindsight if discrimination tasks are generally impaired at frequencies outside of the low-mid-gamma band. If this is so, although generally experienced as non-specific and unstructured light, the visual experience that accompanies discrimination performance must be based upon a neural representation which includes information on the visual features present in the stimulus.     

Neurobiological degeneracy: Supporting stability,flexibility and pluripotentiality in complex motor skill

This paper investigated neurobiological degeneracy of the motor system that emerged as a function of levels of environmental constraint. Fourteen participants performed a breaststroke-swimming task that required them to develop a specific biomechanically expert pattern and in turn provide the basis for a suitable task vehicle to study the functional role of movement variability. Inter-limb coordination was defined based on the computation of continuous relative phase between elbow and knee oscillators. Unsupervised cluster analysis on arm–leg coordination revealed the existence of different patterns of coordination when participants achieved the same task goal under different levels of environmental constraints (i.e. different amounts of forward resistances). In addition, clusters differed in terms of higher order derivatives (e.g., joint angular velocity, joint amplitude), suggesting an effective role for degeneracy in learning by allowing the exploration of the key relationships between motor organization and interacting constraints. There is evidence to suggest that neurobiological degeneracy supports the potential for motor re-organization to enhance motor learning.     

Real-World Knowledge Facilitates Interpretation of Paintings by Naive Art Observers

It is often assumed that women kill themselves because of love and men because of achievement problems. The authors evaluated the suicide notes of 56 U.S. adult women and men with regard to love and achievement motives. Love themes were significantly more common than achievement themes, independent of sex and age. This suggests that, at least for U.S. adults who leave suicide notes, relationship concerns may be a dominant component of the motivation for suicide.     

Using response time measures to assess "guilty knowledge"

How can a suspect's guilt or innocence be reliably tested? The validity of the polygraph, which measures changes in physiological arousal during a "guilty knowledge" test, is controversial (e.g., T. R. Bashore & P. E. Rapp, 1993; T. P. Cross & L. Saxe, 1992; D. T. Lykken, 1998; J. P. Rosenfeld, 1995; R. Steinbrook, 1992). One alternative to the polygraph examines event-related potentials recorded during a memory interference task (L. A. Farwell & E. Donchin, 1991). The present study extended this paradigm to determine whether response times (RTs) can accurately identify participants possessing specific guilty knowledge. Results from Experiment 1 showed that RT alone can reliably discriminate "guilty" from "innocent" participants. Experiments 2a and 2b indicated that an RT-based paradigm is more resistant to strategic manipulation than previously suggested (Farwell & Donchin, 1991). This RT-based paradigm may be a viable alternative to the polygraph for detecting guilty knowledge.     

Effect of increasing energy cost on arm coordination in elite sprint swimmers

The purpose of this study was to analyze the changes in stroke parameters, motor organization and swimming efficiency with increasing energy cost in aquatic locomotion. Seven elite sprint swimmers performed a 6×300-m incremental swimming test. Stroke parameters (speed, stroke rate and stroke length), motor organization (arm stroke phases and arm coordination index), swimming efficiency (swimming speed squared and hand speed squared) and stroke index were calculated from aerial and underwater side-view cameras. The energy cost of locomotion was assessed by measuring oxygen consumption and blood lactate. Results showed that the increase in energy cost of locomotion was correlated to an increase in the index of coordination and stroke rate, and a decrease in stroke length (p<.05). Furthermore, indicators of swimming efficiency and stroke index did not change significantly with the speed increments (p<.05), indicating that swimmers did not decrease their efficiency despite the increase in energy cost. In parallel, an increase in the index of coordination IdC and stroke rate were observed, along with a decrease in stroke length, stroke index and hand speed squared with each increment, revealing an adaptation to the fatigue within the 300m.     

Zur Gefährlichkeit ehemaliger Patienten des Maßregelvollzugs (§ 63 StGB)

Background

The prediction of dangerousness in mentally ill offenders – and here mainly the issue of safety – is still of primary interest for forensic experts and also the public. The effectiveness of treatment and therefore of the whole German forensic system is generally measured by recidivism rates of this clientele.

Methods

The Essen prospective Multi-Centre Prognosis Study began in 1997, and 23 forensic hospitals in Germany took part. Data of 321 subjects were collected with a follow-up of up to 10 years (mean 7.5 years). This article presents topical recidivism rates.

Results

Currently the general recidivism rate is 31.5% and for severe reoffences 10.3% which is relatively low in comparison to other recent studies.

Conclusions

The rate of general recidivism of forensic patients in Germany has been reduced in the last years while the rate of severe reoffence was constant. In order to reduce the number of reoffences further studies should analyze the forensic aftercare.