Suicide after surgical treatment in patients with epilepsy: a meta-analytic investigation

Suicide is a major issue in surgically treated epileptic patients. A meta-analysis was performed comparing suicides in a sample of such patients and in the general population. The Index Medicus and the World Health Statistics Annual were searched to ascertain the suicide rates in the age groups indicated in the studies of epileptic patients for specific years and country. 11 studies were selected, comprising 2,425 patients, 24 of whom committed suicide. Data obtained for each study were processed together to calculate the mean number of suicides per 100,000 individuals with surgically treated epilepsy for each year. This meta-analysis shows that suicide in patients with epilepsy after surgical treatment is more frequent than in the general population. Results are discussed with particular attention to possible causative factors.     

The medical student experience with disasters and disaster response

Medical students from New York City were integrally involved in the response by health professionals to aid the families of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. The present study was performed to investigate the emotional impact of this involvement on medical students from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. One hundred fifty-seven students responded to a mail survey that explored their personal and professional involvement in the disaster as well as their psychiatric symptoms in the week after the event and at the time of the survey (3.5 months after the event). Findings suggested a differential emotional impact on female students and on students involved in less supervised and more emotionally intense activities. However, involvement in the relief effort, per se, did not contribute to psychiatric symptomatology. It may have been associated with enhanced professional self-esteem among the students. These findings have implications for future planning of psychiatric response to disasters.     

Transforming animal species: the case of ‘oncomouse’

In this paper I deal with ethical implications arising from animal biotechnology. I analyse some general questions surrounding the production of transgenic animals through a specific case study: the oncomouse. In particular, I explore ethical factors involved in the production of oncomice. This is because biologists genetically modify animals’ germ cells and refuse to modify human germ cells. I will underline how the international community has thus far justified this ‘ethical difference’. The opinions here expressed are personal and do not commit the European Commission. Maurizio Salvi is member of the Scientific Staff of the Higher Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven. Currently he is a Scientific Officer (National Expert Detached) of the European Commission, (Directorate-General XII, Science Research and Development, Directorate B.II.3) dealing with Bioethics research.     

The Hopelessness Scale: a factor analysis

A confirmatory factor analysis of the Beck Hopelessness Scale in a sample of 340 Italian students did not support the 3-factor model reported for previous samples of psychiatric patients. A follow-up principal axis factor analysis yielded two interpretable correlated factors, suggesting that the structure of the scale may differ across clinical and nonclinical groups and as a function of nationality.     

Artificial organisms as tools for the development of psychological theory: Tolman’s lesson

In the 1930s and 1940s, Edward Tolman developed a psychological theory of spatial orientation in rats and humans. He expressed his theory as an automaton (the "schematic sowbug") or what today we would call an "artificial organism." With the technology of the day, he could not implement his model. Nonetheless, he used it to develop empirical predictions which tested with animals in the laboratory. This way of proceeding was in line with scientific practice dating back to Galileo. The way psychologists use artificial organisms in their work today breaks with this tradition. Modern "artificial organisms" are constructed a posteriori, working from experimental or ethological observations. As a result, researchers can use them to confirm a theoretical model or to simulate its operation. But they make no contribution to the actual building of models. In this paper, we try to return to Tolman's original strategy: implementing his theory of "vicarious trial and error" in a simulated robot, forecasting the robot's behavior and conducting experiments that verify or falsify these predictions.     

Church Attendance,Problems of Measurement,and Interpreting Indicators: A Study of Religious Practice in the United States, 1975–2010

Church attendance is usually measured in surveys by asking a direct question about frequency of churchgoing over a preset period of time, which is typically a year. Different studies have cast doubt over the validity of this indicator as it tends to overestimate actual attendance to a significant degree. The aim of this article is to compare data on church attendance provided by two different types of research conducted in the United States between 1975 and 2010: survey data (GSS) and data obtained from time use surveys (ATUS). This comparison has three main objectives: (1) to confirm the hypothesis that survey data tend to overestimate actual attendance; (2) to show that this overestimation is not constant over time and space, but tends to vary in an erratic and unpredictable way; and (3) to demonstrate that data provided by time use surveys are more reliable than the frequencies of churchgoing provided by traditional surveys when the objective is to identify trends in religiosity in a population.     

Measuring the automatic negative self-schema: New evidence for the construct and criterion validity of the Depression Implicit Association

The construct and criterion validity of the Depression Implicit Association Test (Depression IAT) as a marker of an automatic negative self-schema was investigated. The Depression IAT and other measures were administered to a sample of 116 participants (72 females) aged 37.28 (SD = 15.69) that was composed by 56 patients with an history of suicide ideation (SI) and by 60 university students. Combining students and patients’ sub-samples, results revealed that the Depression IAT was significantly and positively correlated with self-report scales of depression and hopelessness as well as with implicit and explicit measures of death-life identification. On the contrary, it was negatively correlated with life satisfaction, optimism, and self-esteem scales. These results give new evidence for the construct validity of the Depression IAT. Moreover, considering only the patients’ sub-sample, significant correlations between Depression IAT scores and SI in the last year, month, and week, as well as in a follow-up observation two months later, were found. These correlations remain unchanged even when the Death IAT was controlled for, supporting the incremental validity of the Depression IAT. Overall, these results provide new evidence for the construct and criterion validity of the Depression IAT as a marker of an automatic negative self-schema.     

Linking major depression and the neural substrates of associative processing

It has been proposed that mood correlates with the breadth of associative thinking. Here we set this hypothesis to the test in healthy and depressed individuals. Generating contextual associations engages a network of cortical regions including the parahippocampal cortex (PHC), retrosplenial complex, and medial prefrontal cortex. The link between mood, associative processing, and its underlying cortical infrastructure provides a promising avenue for elucidating the mechanisms underlying the cognitive impairments in major depressive disorder (MDD). The participants included 15 nonmedicated individuals with acute major depressive episodes and 15 healthy matched controls. In an fMRI experiment, participants viewed images of objects that were either strongly or weakly associated with a specific context (e.g., a beach chair vs. a water bottle) while rating the commonality of each object. Analyses were performed to examine the brain activation and structural differences between the groups. Consistent with our hypothesis, controls showed greater activation of the contextual associations network than did depressed participants. In addition, PHC structural volume was correlated with ruminative tendencies, and the volumes of the hippocampal subfields were significantly smaller in depressed participants. Surprisingly, depressed participants showed increased activity in the entorhinal cortex (ERC), as compared with controls. We integrated these findings within a mechanistic account linking mood and associative thinking and suggest directions for the future.     

The Dynamics of Religious Practice in Spain from the Mid‐19th Century to 2010

Like other Western countries, Spain is rapidly becoming more secularized. While there is almost unanimous agreement that this is happening, significant discord exists about the phases of the process and the speed of its development. This is mostly due to the use of partial and sometimes unreliable data. The aim of this study is to remedy these uncertainties. Our work is based on the data provided by time‐use surveys conducted in 2003 and 2010. Using some basic provisional but reasonable assumptions, we demonstrate that it is possible to identify a plausible dynamic of secularization in Spain starting in the second half of the 19th century. We also highlight the fact that the different indicators feature some significant time lags. Indeed, the dating of the start of the secularization process varies depending on whether reference is made to data on birth cohorts, the overall population, or the “visibility” of the phenomenon.