Reducing drug and alcohol use and improving well-being for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians using the Community Reinforcement Approach: A feasibility and acceptability study

There is a lack of evidence of effective and appropriate drug and alcohol treatment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This paper contributes to addressing the evidence gap by examining the feasibility and acceptability and conducting a pre/post-evaluation of the Aboriginal-adapted Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA) delivered in New South Wales, Australia. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal clients (n = 55) received tailored CRA delivery between March and November 2013. Compared to the original US version, tailored CRA had reduced technical language, reduced number of treatment sessions, and the addition of group delivery option. An Australian training manual with local case studies was developed. Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Test (ASSIST), Kessler-5 (K-5) and the Growth Empowerment Measure were used. 58% of participants were followed-up at 3 months. Tailored CRA was feasible to deliver in a rural, community-based health setting, and rated by clients as highly effective and acceptable. CRA was associated with statistically significant reductions in the use of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, amphetamine and over the counter medication, and levels of psychological distress, and an increase in levels of empowerment for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal clients. This study provides evidence for the feasibility and acceptability of an Aboriginal-adapted psychological intervention addressing drug, alcohol and mental health outcomes.     

Dimensions of Religiousness and Spirituality as Predictors of Well-Being in Advanced Chronic Heart Failure Patients

We examined relationships between seven dimensions of religion/spirituality (RS) (forgiveness, daily spiritual experiences, belief in afterlife, religious identity, religious support, public practices, and positive RS coping) and three dimensions of well-being (physical, mental, and existential) in a sample of 111 patients with advanced chronic heart failure. Participants completed questionnaires at baseline and 3 months later. Results showed that fairly high levels of RS were reported on all seven dimensions. Furthermore, RS dimensions were differentially related to well-being. No aspect of RS was related to physical well-being, and only a few aspects were related to mental well-being. Forgiveness was related to less subsequent depression, while belief in afterlife was related to poorer mental health. All aspects of RS were related to at least one aspect of existential well-being. In particularly, daily spiritual experiences were linked with higher existential well-being and predicted less subsequent spiritual strain. These results are consistent with the view that in advanced disease, RS may not affect physical well-being but may have potent influences on other aspects of well-being, particularly existential aspects.     

Yoga Practice May Buffer the Deleterious Effects of Abuse on Women's Self-Concept and Dysfunctional Coping

Women who experienced abuse as children or adults can suffer from symptoms such as dissociations, physiological regulation difficulties, and mood disturbances that might not respond to traditional interventions. Given the benefits of yoga, we hypothesized that yoga practice would ameliorate the negative impact of abuse on psychological functioning. Our findings suggest that frequent yoga practice might ameliorate the negative impact of abuse history on self-concept and coping skills. In addition, our findings suggest that women who incorporate yoga into other areas of life could get the greatest psychological benefits. Given the preliminary nature of this study, further research into the benefits of yoga on women who have child or adult abuse histories is warranted.     

Spatial training and high-frequency stimulation engage a common pathway to enhance glutamate release in the hippocampus

We have measured depolarization-induced release of endogenous glutamate in synaptosomes prepared from the dentate gyrus after the induction of LTP by high-frequency stimulation in anesthetized rats, and after training in the water maze. Both spatial training and LTP in untrained rats were accompanied by an increase in glutamate release from dentate synaptosomes. The enhancement of synaptosomal glutamate release induced by high-frequency stimulation was abolished in well-trained rats, and was reduced in partially trained rats and in rats trained in a nonspatial task. However, the magnitude of LTP was similar in well-trained and untrained groups. These results indicate that spatial training activates a glutamate release pathway that converges with that activated in LTP, and demonstrate an unexpected dissociation between increased glutamate release and LTP.     

Perception of sequentially presented tactile point stimuli

Either two or three brief (10 msec) airjet stimuli were sequentially presented to any of the 24 interjoint regions of the fingers (thumbs excluded). The stimulus onset interval (SOI) ranged from zero (simultaneous presentation) through 200 msec. The S’s task in one part of the experiment was to report the positions stimulated in the order that the stimuli were presented; in a second part it was to rate the apparent motion produced by the stimulus sequence. While the ability of Ss to spatially localize the stimuli was a constant independent of SOI, their ability to temporally order the stimuli depended strongly on SOI. With two stimuli, these sequential errors decayed exponentially with SOI with a time constant of 26 msec. With three stimuli, however, both the sequential errors and equivalent temporal Urnen were more than twice as large as with two stimuli, indicating that the three-stimulus task is considerably more difficult than the two, and that the same simple temporal resolution model does not explain both cases. A model with a constant rate of information uptake, however, can explain both of these cases.     

A Comparison of Taped Problems With and Without a Brief Post-Treatment Assessment on Multiplication Fluency

An adapted alternating treatments design was used to compare the effectiveness of a taped-problems (TP) intervention with TP and an additional immediate assessment (TP + AIA) on the multiplication fluency of six fifth-grade students. During TP, the students listened to a tape playing a series of multiplication problems and answers three times. Students were instructed to try to beat the tape by writing each answer before they heard it on the tape. The interval between each problem and answer was varied as the problems were repeated. For the TP + AIA condition, immediately after completing TP, students completed an extra assessment sheet consisting of the same problems heard on the tape. Results showed increases in math-fact fluency across both treatment sets of problems (TP and TP + AIA) and a control set of problems. However, results varied across students and only two of the students showed meaningful gains when the TP was supplemented with the AIA. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Preservation of long-term memory and synaptic plasticity despite short-term impairments in the Tc1 mouse model of Down syndrome

Down syndrome (DS) is a genetic disorder arising from the presence of a third copy of the human chromosome 21 (Hsa21). Recently, O’Doherty and colleagues in an earlier study generated a new genetic mouse model of DS (Tc1) that carries an almost complete Hsa21. Since DS is the most common genetic cause of mental retardation, we have undertaken a detailed analysis of cognitive function and synaptic plasticity in Tc1 mice. Here we show that Tc1 mice have impaired spatial working memory (WM) but spared long-term spatial reference memory (RM) in the Morris watermaze. Similarly, Tc1 mice are selectively impaired in short-term memory (STM) but have intact long-term memory (LTM) in the novel object recognition task. The pattern of impaired STM and normal LTM is paralleled by a corresponding phenotype in long-term potentiation (LTP). Freely-moving Tc1 mice exhibit reduced LTP 1 h after induction but normal maintenance over days in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampal formation. Biochemical analysis revealed a reduction in membrane surface expression of the AMPAR (α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-propionic acid receptor) subunit GluR1 in the hippocampus of Tc1 mice, suggesting a potential mechanism for the impairment in early LTP. Our observations also provide further evidence that STM and LTM for hippocampus-dependent tasks are subserved by parallel processing streams.     

Information available In brief tactile presentations

Two experiments investigated characteristics of Immediate recall for brief tactile stimuli applied to the 24 interjoint regions of the fingers of both hands (thumbs excluded) The obtained Immediate-memory span varied from 35 to 7,5 stimulus positions correct after correction for guessing, similar to the results In analogous visual studies, Properties of any hypothetical tactile short-term memory were studied by requiring subjects to report only a specified portion of the stimuli presented, and by varying the time of occurrence of the marker specifying which portion of the stimuli to report, In this partial-report condition, subjects had more stimulus information available at the time of reporting than their immediate memory spans indicated, provided that the stimulus marker occurred within 0.8 sec after stimulus termination, The data suggest that at least for the amount of training employed here, any tactile short-term memory has much less capacity than an analogous visual short-term memory.