Determination of lithium in serum and saliva of patients with manic-depressive disorder

The slight therapeutic breadth involved means that manic depressive lithium prophylaxis may call for life-long routine management. The lithium/serum-level checks required hitherto are here compared with a non-invasive method, that of determining the lithium level from a mixture of the patient's saliva, a method involving no danger that will eventually assume considerable importance.     

Anticonvulsive therapy and complications of pregnancy in epileptic patients

During observation of 92 pregnancies, epileptic seizures, pregnancy complications and complications regarding the newborns were noticed with 67 women having epilepsy and correlated by means of following therapeutic aspects: without anticonvulsive therapy, monotherapy, combined therapy. Most of the attacks suffered women that were treated by combined therapy. Pregnancy and birth complications appeared nearly to the same extent more with patients under mono- and combined therapy than with patients without therapeutic treatment. Most frequently we saw complications and malformations with regard to the children in that group of mothers that had been treated by an anticonvulsive combined therapy.     

Unconscious processing of dichoptically masked words

In three experiments, the subjects' task was to decide whether each of a series of words connoted something good (e.g., fame, comedy, rescue) or bad (stress, detest, malaria). One-half second before the presentation of each such target word, an evaluatively polarized priming word was presented briefly to the nondominant eye and was masked dichoptically by either the rapidly following (Experiment 1) or simultaneous (Experiments 2 and 3) presentation of a random letter-fragment pattern to the dominant eye. (The effectiveness of the masking procedure was demonstrated by the subjects' inability to discriminate the left vs. right position of a test series of words.) In all experiments, significant masked priming effects were obtained; evaluative decisions to congruent masked prime-target combinations (such as a positive masked prime followed by a positive target) were significantly faster than those to incongruent (e.g., negative prime/positive target) or noncongruent (e.g., neutral prime/positive target) combinations. Also, in two of the three experiments, when subjects were at chance accuracy in discriminating word position, their position judgments were nevertheless significantly influenced by the irrelevant semantic content (LEFT vs. RIGHT) of the masked position-varying words. The series of experiments demonstrated that two very different tasks--speeded judgment of evaluative meaning and nonspeeded judgment of word position--yielded statistically significant and replicable influences of the semantic content of apparently undetectable words. Coupled with previous research by others using the lexical decision task, these findings converge in establishing the reliability of the empirical phenomenon of semantic processing of words that are rendered undetectable by dichoptic pattern masking.     

Virtual action planning in Parkinson's disease: a control study.

Cognitive planning deficits affect patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and traditional psychometric tests meet difficulties to evaluate their impact on daily life activities. Virtual reality (VR) may provide a new means of assessment. The objective of this study was firstly to develop a virtual environment (VE) useful to explore planning and secondly to examine the effectiveness of using VR in the assessment of cognitive planning for patients with PD. A virtual supermarket (VS) was designed in which participants carried out a task close to daily activities: a test of shopping list. There were two preliminary sessions to familiarize the participants with the software and the supermarket's layout. Then, during the assessment session, participants completed the task, without any time limitation. Global intellectual efficiency was assessed in order to exclude patients with dementia. Data related to the performance in the VS were recorded. Five patients with PD and five age-matched healthy volunteers, meeting inclusion criteria, constituted our convenience sample. The patients did not perform as well as the control group. In particular, the session's duration and the distance covered were longer. The patients' path is specific with numerous stops, turning around, and hesitancies. Finally, their motivation for further training sessions is aroused. The results underline the potential of using VR in the assessment of cognitive planning in PD. A larger analysis is currently being carried out to confirm and to explore all the outcome measures.     

Subliminal words activate semantic categories (not automated motor responses)

Semantic priming by visually masked, unidentifiable (“subliminal”) words occurs robustly when the words appearing as masked primes have been classified earlier in practice as visible targets. It has been argued (Damian, 2001) that practice enables robust subliminal priming by automatizing learned associations between words and the specific motor responses used to classify them. Two experiments demonstrate that, instead, the associations formed in practice that underlie subliminal priming are between words and semantic categories. Visible words classified aspleasant or unpleasant in practice with one set of response key assignments functioned later as subliminal primes with appropriate valence, even when associations of keys with valences were reversed before the test. This result shows that subliminal priming involves unconscious categorization of the prime, rather than just the automatic activation of a practiced stimulus-response mapping.     

Diagnosis of Schizophrenia by Rorschach Patterns

In the belief that the diagnostic validity of Rorschach methods would gain from formalizing the judgmental processes of clinicians, 14 score patterns were constructed from eight Rorschach variables, each pattern designed to characterize patients in one of three broad diagnostic categories, Schizophrenic, Borderline Psychotic, or “Other.” A random sample of 196 patients of a VA mental hygiene clinic was drawn from clinic files. The “pattern diagnoses” obtained by applying the pattern system to their Rorschach scores were found significantly related to diagnoses formulated by the examining psychologists and by the clinic intake staff. More patients diagnosed schizophrenic by the pattern method engaged in autistic behavior than patients with other pattern diagnoses. The diagnostic efficiency of the pattern method, measured in terms of ability to reach a definite diagnosis, proportion of correct diagnoses, and proportion of false positive errors, did not differ significantly from the diagnostic efficiency of the psychological examiners, and differed significantly from the psychiatrists' diagnostic efficiency only in producing more “indeterminate” diagnoses. The diagnostic validity of the patterns was considered to be established, but their usefulness as a clinical tool depends heavily on population base rates and the relative costs of false positive and false negative diagnostic errors.     

Influence of motivation,self-beliefs,and instructional practices on science achievement of adolescents in Canada

This study examined the effects of motivation to learn science, science self-beliefs, and science instructional practices on science achievement of 13,985 15-year-old students from 431 schools across Canada. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses, while controlling for student- and school-level demographic characteristics, revealed the substantial predictive effects of motivation to learn science, science self-beliefs, and science instructional practices on science achievement of adolescents. Motivational beliefs—self-efficacy and self-concept—and enjoyment of science had substantial positive predictive effects on science achievement. In contrast, general interest in science had a negative predictive effect on science achievement in the context of other variables. Whereas science teaching using hands-on activities had a substantial positive predictive effect on science achievement, science teaching using student investigations had a substantial negative predictive effect in the context of other variables. The final HLM model indicated that only 8% of the variance in science achievement was between schools and 92% of the variance involved students within schools.     

Virtual reality therapy versus cognitive behavior therapy for social phobia: a preliminary controlled study.

Social phobia is one of the most frequent mental disorders and is accessible to two forms of scientifically validated treatments: anti-depressant drugs and cognitive behavior therapies (CBT). In this last case, graded exposure to feared social situations is one of the fundamental therapeutic ingredients. Virtual reality technologies are an interesting alternative to the standard exposure in social phobia, especially since studies have shown its usefulness for the fear of public speaking. This paper reports a preliminary study in which a virtual reality therapy (VRT), based on exposure to virtual environments, was used to treat social phobia. The sample consisted of 36 participants diagnosed with social phobia assigned to either VRT or a group-CBT (control condition). The virtual environments used in the treatment recreate four situations dealing with social anxiety: performance, intimacy, scrutiny, and assertiveness. With the help of the therapist, the patient learns adapted cognitions and behaviors in order to reduce anxiety in the corresponding real situations. Both treatments lasted 12 weeks, and sessions were delivered according to a treatment manual. Results showed statistically and clinically significant improvement in both conditions. The effect-sizes comparing the efficacy of VRT to the control traditional group-CBT revealed that the differences between the two treatments are trivial.