Hoarding in obsessive-compulsive disorder: results from the OCD Collaborative Genetics Study

Hoarding behavior occurs frequently in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Results from previous studies suggest that individuals with OCD who have hoarding symptoms are clinically different than non-hoarders and may represent a distinct clinical group. In the present study, we compared 235 hoarding to 389 non-hoarding participants, all of whom had OCD, collected in the course of the OCD Collaborative Genetics Study. We found that, compared to non-hoarding individuals, hoarders were more likely to have symmetry obsessions and repeating, counting, and ordering compulsions; poorer insight; more severe illness; difficulty initiating or completing tasks; and indecision. Hoarders had a greater prevalence of social phobia and generalized anxiety disorder. Hoarders also had a greater prevalence of obsessive-compulsive and dependent personality disorders. Five personality traits were independently associated with hoarding: miserliness, preoccupation with details, difficulty making decisions, odd behavior or appearance, and magical thinking. Hoarding and indecision were more prevalent in the relatives of hoarding than of non-hoarding probands. Hoarding in relatives was associated with indecision in probands, independently of proband hoarding status. The findings suggest that hoarding behavior may help differentiate a distinct clinical subgroup of people with OCD and may aggregate in some OCD families. Indecision may be a risk factor for hoarding in these families.     

Physical and Mental Health and Functioning Among Traumatic Brain Injury Close Relatives: The Role of Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms

Severe Traumatic brain injury (sTBI) often instigates widespread long-lasting disability and is accompanied by extensive rehabilitation. Unsurprisingly, sTBI also holds malignant consequences for patients’ close relatives. The burden caused by the injury and its severity explains some of the ramifications for the relatives. Additionally, some findings demonstrate that patients with sTBI and their relatives develop posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms. However, although the link between PTS symptoms and physical and mental health is well-documented in literature, the effect of PTS symptoms on relatives of patients with sTBI has barely been examined. This study examines the influence of PTS symptoms of patients with sTBI and their relatives on the physical and mental health and functioning of the relatives. Patients who sustained a severe sTBI (Abbreviated Injury Scale of the head region > 3) and close relatives were included in a multi-center, prospective cohort study (TRAST-MI). One-hundred patients and their relatives were assessed at 2, 6, and 12 months post injury. Outcome variables included health-related quality of life (SF-12) as well as emotional, cognitive, interpersonal, and total functioning (PCRS). Relatives’ physical health was predicted by relatives’ PTS symptoms (Slope=−1.76; p = .043), and mental health was predicted by both patients’ (Slope=−2.77; p = .034) and relatives’ (Slope=−6.59; p < .001) PTS symptoms. Functioning level was only predicted by patients’ PTS symptoms (Slope=−.25; p_<.001). The findings emphasize that TBI should be considered a comprehensive traumatic experience reaching further than mere physical damage to the brain and its direct consequences, affecting the injured individual and close relatives.     

Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Interpatch foraging in honeybees—rational decision making at secondary hubs based upon time and motivation

For honeybees, Apis mellifera, the hive has been well known to function as a primary decision-making hub, a place from which foragers decide among various directions, distances, and times of day to forage efficiently. Whether foraging honeybees can make similarly complex navigational decisions from locations away from the hive is unknown. To examine whether or not such secondary decision-making hubs exist, we trained bees to forage at four different locations. Specifically, we trained honeybees to first forage to a distal site “CT” 100?m away from the hive; if food was present, they fed and then chose to go home. If food was not present, the honeybees were trained to forage to three auxiliary sites, each at a different time of the day: A in the morning, B at noon, and C in the afternoon. The foragers learned to check site CT for food first and then efficiently depart to the correct location based upon the time of day if there was no food at site CT. Thus, the honeybees were able to cognitively map motivation, time, and five different locations (Hive, CT, A, B, and C) in two spatial dimensions; these are the contents of the cognitive map used by the honeybees here. While at site CT, we verified that the honeybees could choose between 4 different directions (to A, B, C, and the Hive) and thus label it as a secondary decision-making hub. The observed decision making uncovered here is inferred to constitute genuine logical operations, involving a branched structure, based upon the premises of motivational state, and spatiotemporal knowledge.     

Subliminal food images compromise superior working memory performance in women with restricting anorexia nervosa

Prefrontal cortex (PFC) is dysregulated in women with restricting anorexia nervosa (RAN). It is not known whether appetitive non-conscious stimuli bias cognitive responses in those with RAN. Thirteen women with RAN and 20 healthy controls (HC) completed a dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) working memory task and an anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) conflict task, while masked subliminal food, aversive and neutral images were presented. During the DLPFC task, accuracy was higher in the RAN compared to the HC group, but superior performance was compromised when subliminal food stimuli were presented: errors positively correlated with self-reported trait anxiety in the RAN group. These effects were not observed in the ACC task. Appetitive activation is intact and anxiogenic in women with RAN, and non-consciously interacts with working memory processes associated with the DLPFC. This interaction mechanism may underlie cognitive inhibition of appetitive processes that are anxiety inducing, in people with AN.     

Perhaps There Is Accounting for Taste: Evaluating the Creativity of Products

Ratings on a creativity rating scale of students' designs of a hands-free mobile phone holder were compared for 2 sets of raters: experts (professional art teachers) and novices (visual art students). Reliabilities of total creativity scores were high for both groups, and interjudge consistency on total creativity scores, as well as on grades, was high among novices, but not as high among experts. Correlations between grades and total functional creativity scores within and across groups of raters (experts and novices) were highly significant. Scores on the scale resembled those yielded by assessments using grades and the scale did not yield better consistency among judges than conventional grades. Nonetheless, it provided a differentiated assessment of products that made it possible to explain the basis of experts' opinions and the reasons for disagreement, and to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of students' designs in a systematic and differentiated way.     

Justification and Praxeological foundationalism 1

At least since Descartes the epistemological turn derived its impetus from the sceptical challenge to provide a justification for all knowledge claims. According to a foundational view, a claim to know something is justified only when the justification refers to ultimate grounds in the form of self‐supporting propositions. This paper's title suggests that justification may be seen from a different perspective, namely that of acting. Wittgenstein's examples show that the sceptic's maxim ‐ doubt everything ‐ breaks down because some beliefs and judgments have to be accepted unconditionally if one is to believe or judge something else. Wittgenstein concludes that the certainty we are looking for is to be found in the very nature of the language‐game.     

Delinquency and Child Guidance: Selected Papers by August Aichhorn Edited by Otto Fleischmann,Paul Kramer and Helen Ross

A year-long psychotherapy group consisting of two co-therapists and eight grandmothers who were parenting their daughters' children is presented. Three models that correspond to the co-therapists' psychoanalytic developmental orientation were used to describe the group phases of development. A number of themes that emerged at different points in the group's life are delineated. They include: authority, control, sibling rivalry, the generation gap, dealing with schools, illness and mortality, isolation, defensiveness, anger, fear of going crazy, guilt, shame, separation, and abandonment. Transference and countertransference issues are also discussed.