From synaptic errors to thalamocortical circuitry

Recent data indicate that newly grown synapses in the brain are not guaranteed to innervate their desired target, but can form instead on nearby targets. Such 'errors' introduce representational inaccuracies but improve representational flexibility. Optimizing accuracy and flexibility requires detecting correlated activity and disabling plasticity, explaining the structure of the thalamocortical circuit.     

Are Genetic Counselors and the Social Service System for People with Intellectual Disability Reaching Rapprochement?

Recent advances in syndromic identification have resulted in genetic counselors providing services to increasing numbers of people with intellectual disability (ID) and their families. However, from the standpoint of professionals who support people with ID, genetic counselors are on the periphery of the extensive ID social service system. Reasons for this, based on a review of historical circumstances, definitional differences funding and a divergence of approaches, are critically presented and discussed. A model is offered that would allow for a closer working relationship and an integrated team approach that includes genetic counselors.     

Identifying illness perception schemata and their association with depression and quality of life in cardiac patients

The purpose of this paper is to identify groups of cardiac patients who share similar perceptions about their illness and to examine the relationships between these schemata and psychosocial outcomes such as quality of life and depression. A total of 190 cardiac patients with diagnoses of myocardial infarction, stable angina pectoris or chronic heart failure, completed a battery of psychosocial questionnaires within four weeks of their admission to hospital. These included the Brief Illness Perceptions Questionnaire (BIPQ), Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI II) and The MacNew Health-related Quality of Life instrument (MacNew). BIPQ items were subjected to latent class analysis (LCA) and the resulting groups were compared according to their BDI II and MacNew scores. LCA identified a five-class model of illness perception which comprised the following: (1) Consequence focused and mild emotional impact, n?=?55, 29%; (2) Low illness perceptions and low emotional impact, n?=?45, 24%; (3) Control focused and mild emotional impact, n?=?10, 5%; (4) Consequence focused and high emotional impact, n?=?60, 32%; and (5) Consequence focused and severe emotional impact, n?=?20, 10%. Gender and diagnosis did not appear to reflect class membership except that class 2 had a significantly higher proportion of AMI patients than did class 5. There were numerous significant differences between classes in regards to depression and health-related quality of life. Notably, classes 4 and 5 are distinguished by relatively high BDI II scores and low MacNew scores. Identifying classes of cardiac patients based on their illness perception schemata, in hospital or shortly afterwards, may identify those at risk of developing depressive symptoms and poor quality of life.     

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue part 1: conceptual and definitional issues in psychiatric diagnosis

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances.     

Indices of Laterality in Turner Syndrome

The present study explored the utility of manual laterality in predicting verbal and visual-spatial functioning and educational placement among girls and adolescents with Turner syndrome (TS). A significant curvilinear relationship emerged between derived Performance Intelligence Quotient (PIQ) and motor skill laterality such that either very strong or very weak laterality was less advantageous for visual-spatial skills than moderate laterality. A significant negative correlation, but no curvilinear relation, emerged between derived Verbal Intelligence Quotient (VIQ) and degree of motor skill laterality, with more strongly lateralized participants showing lower verbal skills than weakly lateralized participants. Hand preference category showed no significant relationships with VIQ, PIQ, or educational placement.     

A kinematic comparison of successful and unsuccessful tennis serves across the elite development pathway

While velocity generation is an obvious prerequisite to proficient tennis serve performance, it is also the only stroke where players are obliged to negotiate a unique target constraint. Therefore, the dearth of research attending to the accuracy component of the serve is surprising. This study compared the body, racquet and ball kinematics characterising successful serves and service faults, missed into the net, in two groups of elite junior female players and one professional female tennis player. Three-dimensional body, racquet and ball kinematics were recorded using a 22-camera VICON motion analysis system. There were no differences in body kinematics between successful serves and service faults, suggesting that service faults cannot be attributed to a single source of biomechanical error. However, service faults missing into the net are characterized by projection angles significantly further below the horizontal, implying that consistency in this end-point parameter is critical to successful performance. Regulation of this parameter appears dependent on compensatory adjustments in the distal elbow and wrist joints immediately prior to impact and also perceptual feedback. Accordingly, coordination of the distal degrees of freedom and a refined perception-action coupling appear more important to success than any isolated mechanical component of the service action.     

Neural binding of space and time: An introduction

Some of the central problems to be solved by the brain, such as figure-ground coding and object recognition, concern the binding of separately coded feature elements into coherent object representations. The binding problem has recently been approached by a variety of disciplines, notably psychophysics and experimental psychology, electrophysiology and neurophysiology, and computational modelling. This Special Issue brings together 21 of papers, mainly all from psychology and computational modelling, that address issues in Gestalt formation, the relation of the grouping and binding processes to visual attention, the role of temporal factors for grouping and binding, the neuronal correlates of binding mechanisms, the development of binding operations in infants, and the breakdown of these processes following brain damage.     

Everyday Cognitive Functioning in Cardiac Patients: Relationships Between Self-report,Report of a Significant Other and Cognitive Test Performance

ABSTRACT

Candidates for cardiac bypass surgery often experience cognitive decline. Such decline is likely to affect their everyday cognitive functioning. The aim of the present study was to compare cardiac patients' ratings of their everyday cognitive functioning against significant others' ratings and selected neuropsychological tests. Sixty-nine patients completed a battery of standardised cognitive tests. Patients and significant others also completed the Everyday Function Questionnaire independently of each other. Patient and significant other ratings of patients' everyday cognitive difficulties were found to be similar. Despite the similarities in ratings of difficulties, some everyday cognitive tasks were attributed to different processes. Patients' and significant others' ratings were most closely associated with the neuropsychological test of visual memory. Tests of the patients' verbal memory and fluency were only related to significant others' ratings. Test scores of attention and planning were largely unrelated to ratings by either patients or their significant others.     

The Impact of Strategic Trajectory Optimization on Illusory Target Biases During Goal-Directed Aiming

During rapid aiming, movements are planned and executed to avoid worst-case outcomes that require time and energy to correct. As such, downward movements initially undershoot the target to avoid corrections against gravity. Illusory target context can also impact aiming bias. Here, the authors sought to determine how strategic biases mediate illusory biases. Participants aimed to Müller-Lyer figures in different directions (forward, backward, up, down). Downward biases emerged late in the movement and illusory biases emerged from peak velocity. The illusory effects were greater for downward movements at terminal endpoint. These results indicate that strategic biases interact with the limb-target control processes associated with illusory biases. Thus, multiple control processes during rapid aiming may combine and later affect endpoint accuracy (D. Elliott et al., 2010 Elliott, D., Hansen, S., Grierson, L. E. M., Lyons, J., Bennett, S. J., &; Hayes, S. J. (2010). Goal-directed aiming: two components but multiple processes. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 1023–1044.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).