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Biomedical subjects

J M Stern

Publications and source records attributed to J M Stern.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMed1985

The quality of the psychotherapeutic process in brain-injured patients.

This paper reviews the various mental processes which occur in patients with organic brain damage and the changes to which these patients are subjected. At the early stages directly following injury, it is necessary to restructure the personality and help it emerge from the chaotic state characterizing this phase. Later treatment concentrates on giving meaning to the different object relationships and the dialectic between self-representation and object representation. Special stress is put on the therapist's role as a receptacle for the aggressive contents which the patient transfers to him and on the necessity, on he therapist's part, to master his own counter-transference reactions and to present an identification model permitting the restoration of the patient's inner world. The psychotherapeutic model is based on the already existing models in other area of mental pathology, which have been developed in recent years, in particular in the theory of narcissism and object relations.

Brain Injuries↗
PubMed1985

On the use of dreams as a means of diagnosis of brain-injured patients.

In our psychotherapeutic work with brain injured patients it has become apparent that there exists a divergence between the two modes of expression with which the patient reflects his inner truth. In contrast to the patient's conscious self-perception, which is usually distorted by his cognitive deficits and by his defense mechanisms, the dream--the unconscious, uncovers another reality. The present paper cites a repeated pattern of initial dreams and an attempt is made to understand its diagnostic and prognostic meaning.

Brain Injuries↗
PubMed1985

The use of dreams as a psychotherapeutic technique with brain injured patients.

Reports of dreams elicited from brain-injured patients at the Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital in Israel were incorporated into the psychotherapeutic process. Our experience indicated that: It is possible to increase and enrich dream activity in quantity and in substance in the course of the treatment; This approach can affect all of the components of the personality which have been in regression after injury; Dream analysis does not require complex cognitive abilities and surmounts the special difficulty these patients have in using language and abstract concepts; It is possible to bring to the surface inner and subconscious contents residing in the patient that were ignored before; and The residual content of the premorbid personality is also expressed, thus facilitating the patient's inner contact between his former identity and his new one. This permits a renewed consolidation of the personality while making use of the psychic forces and parts which remained intact.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

The mourning process with brain injured patients.

The purpose of this article is to point out the specific aspects of the mourning process in cases of brain injury and to compare them to the mourning process in other kinds of pathology. The difficulty of this process in brain injured patients is related to the fact that the patient has to mourn over parts of his personality which have been lost, or have been changed and therefore are frequently difficult to be grasped by him. This unusual mourning process in its first stage is characterized by massive use of denial and isolation as defense mechanisms. In later stage, we are confronted with depressive reactions and witness introjective defense mechanisms which enable the patient to change his attitude toward himself and the surrounding world and to restore a kind of new life based on the residual parts of his previous personality.

Brain Injuries↗
PubMed1985

Day Center experience in rehabilitation of craniocerebral injured patients.

The Day Center for head-injured patients specialises in treating patients at later stages following brain trauma. The goal of therapy is social reintegration as measured by the quality of family and social life and by actual occupational status. At this later stage, a year or more since injury, the cognitive and behavioral aspects of brain damage determine the outcome of rehabilitation. The therapy aims at preserving as well as improving patients' overall performance including family life and therefore their families are treated as well. As the patients are not hospitalised at this stage, the asset of this model is that it constitutes an arresting factor in preventing regressive attitudes acquired during hospitalisation which is a sheltered framework. The Day Center System encourages the patients to cope "in vivo" with reality, while the therapy given strives at providing them with the instruments needed for coping in actual life situations. We present here our experience in 38 patients admitted consecutively during the course of a year. The results show that the therapeutic milieu was of great help in preserving as well as improvement patients' performance; furthermore, it is evident that some improvement was achieved even after several years post trauma.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Metabolic responses to suckling in postpartum lactating rats.

The effects of suckling on the metabolic activity both of pituitary tissue and of subnuclei in the supraoptic and paraventricular nuclei of the hypothalamus were assessed by means of the [14C]deoxyglucose (2-DG) method of autoradiography. Three groups of female rats were deprived of their pups and of food for 6 h on the fifth or sixth day after parturition. Metabolic activity was assessed either before, during, or after a bout of suckling. The anterior pituitary is more active in suckled than in either non-suckled or postsuckled females. These differences may be a consequence of depletion/transformation/repletion of prolactin during a bout of suckling. The posterior pituitary is metabolically more active in suckled females and in postsuckled females than in non-suckled rats. These differences may reflect metabolic activity needed for the dynamics of oxytocin release and the restoration of ionic gradients. The dorsal and ventral subdivisions of the supraoptic nucleus and the lateral, dorsal, and posterior subnuclei of the paraventricular nucleus were more active in postsuckled females than in non-suckled females. These metabolic changes in the subnuclei of the magnocellular neurohypophysial system may reflect increased resynthesis of oxytocin (and vasopressin) in the cell bodies following a bout of suckling.

Animals↗
PubMed1984

Do pup ultrasonic cries provoke prolactin secretion in lactating rats?

Marked prolactin (PRL) secretion in response to the ultrasonic distress vocalizations of rat pups in lactating dams deprived of their pups for 6 hr was reported by others. In two experiments, this phenomenon could not be confirmed under our testing conditions at either 1 or 2 weeks postpartum, although behavioral responses to the ultrasounds were noted. In addition, suckling-induced PRL secretion did not differ consistently as a function of the tape recording (pup ultrasounds, 45 kHz artificially produced ultrasounds, or blank tape) heard prior to the return of pups. The functional significance of rat pup ultrasounds is considered.

Animals↗
PubMed1983

Reproductive success, postpartum maternal behavior, and masculine sexual behavior of neonatally androgenized female hamsters.

Sex differences in maternal behavior induced by pup stimulation (sensitization) have been reported for rats and hamsters and may be affected by the presence or absence of perinatal androgen treatment. Postpartum maternal behavior and litter survival in golden hamsters treated with testosterone propionate (TP) as neonates were studied. A high dose of TP (300 micrograms)1 eliminated feminine reproductive capacity when given on Day 2 or 4 postpartum and had no discernible effect on Day 12. Treatment on Days 6, 8, or 10 resulted in treatment day-dependent deficiencies in reproductive success which fell short of sterility in most females. These deficiencies included low birth weight, weight gain, and higher litter losses than controls. However, the maternal behavior of TP dams, as measured by retrieval and crouching, appeared to be normal. The disparity between delivery and successful rearing of normal-weight young may include uterine incompetence, lactation deficiency, and hypercannibalism. Behavioral masculinization was a more sensitive index of neonatal androgen action than any aspect of defeminization, but the two phenomena were dissociated in individuals.

Animals↗
PubMed1983

Maternal behavior priming in virgin and caesarean-delivered Long-Evans rats: effects of brief contact or continuous exteroceptive pup stimulation.

The effects of 8 days of prior exposure to pups (Priming) in the form of continuous exteroceptive (smell, sight and sound), or 15 min/day physical access (taste and touch possible) stimulation on the subsequent latency to become maternal during cohabitation with pups (concaveation) was studied in Long-Evans female rats. Brief daily access was effective in hastening the onset of maternal behavior only in those virgins which engaged in pup licking during Priming and in maintaining short-latency maternal responsiveness only in those day 21 pregnancy-terminated, thelectomized rats which initiated maternal behavior during Priming. Exteroceptive stimulation was ineffective in both virgins and caesarean-sectioned rats. These findings stress the importance of physical interactions with pups (unrelated to nipple stimulation) for the development of nurturance.

Animals↗
PubMed1980

In utero alcohol heightens juvenile reactivity.

The behavioral teratogenicity of ethanol was studied in a laboratory model of the fetal alcohol syndrome. Pregnant rats were placed in one of three groups: Ethanol (4 g ethanol/kg intubated twice daily; Purina Chow ad lib.); Sucrose (7 g sucrose/kg intubated instead of ethanol; Untreated (no intubations; Purina Chow ad lib.). Ethanol offspring did not differ from either control group in neonatal body weight or developmental measures. On Day 35, 2 female offspring per litter were tested for reactivity to acoustic startle stimuli. Activity was measured during the pre-stimulus foreperiod and during inter-stimulus intervals. Ethanol pups displayed heightened startle reactivity in the absence of hyperactivity or disrupted habituation. These data indicate that ethanol in utero produces hyperreactivity in the absence of morphological, body weight or developmental abberations.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1979

Failure of severe maternal stress or ACTH during pregnancy to affect emotionality of male rat offspring: implications of litter effects for prenatal studies.

Daily maternal neck restraint, whole body restraint, hyperthermia, and ACTH treatment during the last 3rd of gestation had no reliable effect on open-field and cage-emergence behavior in male Sprague-Dawley offspring. Many of these treatments, however, produced considerable maternal pathology and evidence for maternal adrenocorticoid release. Significant litter effects were found for almost every morphological and behavioral measure. Failure to control for the litter variable may account for many previously reported effects of prenatal stress on emotionality in rats. Female rats showed greater activity and less defecation than males on postpubertal open-field and cage emergence tests.

Adrenalectomy↗
PubMed1978

Sensory regulation of maternal behavior in rats: effects of pup age.

Maternal behavior (retrieving, crouching, and licking) was induced in Sprague-Dawley virgin female rats by constant exposure to pups aged 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12, 13-14, or 15-16 days. The incidence of spontaneous components of maternal behavior, notably retrieving, was greater towards pups 1-8 days of age than towards older pups, whereas the occurrence of cannibalism did not differ as a function of pup age. With pups 1-2 through 13-14 days, the latency to onset of full maternal behavior was shortest with 1-2-day-old pups (2-day median) and longest with 13-14-day-old pups (7-day median). Females exposed to pups aged 3-4 through 11-12 days did not differ significantly in their latencies, the medians of which ranged from 4.0 to 5.5 days. Only 1 female out of 8 exposed to pups aged 15-16 days became fully maternal, but 5 more displayed components of maternal responsiveness. The optimal nature of neonates and the general attractiveness of a wider range of pup ages as stimuli for the elicitation of maternal behavior in rats, as well as comparisons to mice and hamsters, were discussed.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1978

Maternal stress and pituitary-adrenal manipulations during pregnancy in rats: effects on morphology and sexual behavior of male offspring.

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the demasculinizing and feminizing effects of prenatal stress (i.e., stress applied to the mother during pregnancy) in rats reported previously are mediated by activation of the maternal pituitary-adrenal axis. Neither whole-body restraint, with or without hyperthermia, nor ACTH treatment during the last third of gestation had any reliable effect on masculine or feminine sexual behavior in male Sprague-Dawley offspring, although these treatments produced maternal pathology and evidence of maternal adrenocorticoid release. Significant littermate similarity was found for almost every morphological and behavioral measure. Failure to control for the litter variable may account for many previously reported effects of prenatal stress on sexual behavior in rats. The discrepancy between the present and earlier findings is discussed in terms of methodological and theoretical considerations.

Adrenal Glands↗
PubMed1978

Cranio-cerebral injured patients: A psychiatric clinical description.

It seems possible to outline a relatively constant progression of psychiatric symptoms in the brain injured patient. Preliminary observations indicate that two sub-groups merit more extensive investigation: The group with frontal pathology, in which a more extensive trial of amphetamine seems justified, and the other group, with tubular vision, in which more thorough premorbid and postmorbid psycho-dynamic evolution would be of great value.

Brain Injuries↗