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PubMed2006

The mystery of sleep function: current perspectives and future directions.

The function of sleep is one of the most persistent and perplexing mysteries in biology. Many theories have been proposed to explain why we sleep, but most account for only a portion of sleep behavior and very few enjoy strong experimental support. A critical review of current findings leads to the following conclusions. Sleep is for the brain rather than the body, and the neural process most impacted by sleep is cognition. Sleep may influence cognition in many ways, including the removal of a toxic byproduct of wakefulness, or the restoration of neural substrates needed for mental processes. The evidence for these possibilities, however, is weak or equivocal. On the other hand, converging lines of evidence support the hypothesis that sleep promotes brain plasticity.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

The neural basis of the complex mental task of meditation: neurotransmitter and neurochemical considerations.

Meditation is a complex mental process involving changes in cognition, sensory perception, affect, hormones, and autonomic activity. Meditation has also become widely used in psychological and medical practices for stress management as well as a variety of physical and mental disorders. However, until now, there has been limited understanding of the overall biological mechanism of these practices in terms of the effects in both the brain and body. We have previously described a rudimentary neuropsychological model to explain the brain mechanisms underlying meditative experiences. This paper provides a substantial development by integrating neurotransmitter systems and the results of recent brain imaging advances into the model. The following is a review and synthesis of the current literature regarding the various neurophysiological mechanisms and neurochemical substrates that underlie the complex processes of meditation. It is hoped that this model will provide hypotheses for future biological and clinical studies of meditation.

Amygdala↗
PubMed1993

The psychogeriatric nurse's decision-making process in a mental hospital.

This article looks at the psychogeriatric nurse's decision-making process in a mental hospital. The subjects consist of 26 nurses working on the psychogeriatric wards of one hospital. The data were collected by a questionnaire (N = 26), content analysis of nursing plans (N = 56), and observation of nursing plans meetings (N = 15). The results on the different phases of the decision-making process suggested that nurses had little difficulty with the identification of problems. Data collection tended to concentrate on the physical side of nursing work. The setting of explicit targets for nursing care proved to be difficult. The vast majority of the nurses (85%) felt that decision-making on different nursing alternatives was only moderately or not at all successful. Over half of the nurses felt that their ability to evaluate the outcome of treatment and nursing was either satisfactory or poor.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

The personal myth as a defence against internal primitive aggression.

On the basis of clinical material, it is hypothesized that the personal myth is formed gradually, following a developmental process from early body sensations to screen sensations, to visual screen memories, to verbal thoughts and, finally, to the formation of the personal myth. This sequence corresponds to the successive development of mental processing in human thought. It is suggested that the personal myth, being a symbolic creation, may function in a manner similar to transitional objects, thereby facilitating the separation-individuation process. Also, it is proposed that the latent content of the personal myth pertains to traumatic experiences and conflictual wishes related to either or both the oedipal and the pre-oedipal phase of development. When pre-oedipal elements predominate, the individual's personality is characterized by more primitive self-object representations, intense separation anxiety and a greater degree of unneutralized aggression.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Joint factor analysis of the K-ABC and McCarthy Scales.

A joint-factor analysis was conducted using three major scales of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities and eight Kaufman-ABC sub-tests as variables. Subjects were 90 children ages 4 to 8 1/2 yr. The screen test produced three significant factors, each interpretable from the Kaufman-ABC model. McCarthy Verbal scale was closely associated with the Achievement/Verbal factor; McCarthy Perceptual performance scale loaded highly on the Simultaneous Processing dimension; and McCarthy Quantitative was associated with all three factors. These results provide useful guidelines for interpreting a child's performance on each Index of the McCarthy scales in terms of the mental processing approach used to solve the task. However, the psychometric results must be coordinated with the examiner's clinical observations of the child's problem-solving strategies during administration of the McCarthy scales to understand more completely the processing demands of the Verbal, Perceptual performance, and Quantitative Scales.

Achievement↗
PubMed1991

Schizophrenic syndromes and frontal lobe performance.

A battery of neuropsychological tests sensitive to frontal lobe impairment was administered to 43 chronic schizophrenic patients to delineate the abnormality of mental processing associated with the syndromes of psychomotor poverty and disorganisation, which had been identified in a previous study of the segregation of schizophrenic symptoms. Psychomotor poverty was found to be associated with slowness of mental activity, including slowness of generating words. The disorganisation syndrome was associated with impairment in tests in which the subject is required to inhibit an established but inappropriate response.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Defining the mechanisms of borderline personality disorder.

Understanding the biological connections to mental processes was one of the original goals of psychoanalysis, and the development of cognitive and affective neuroscience and its methods might contribute to actualizing this goal. Personality disorders provide an opportunity to examine the complex mental structures of individuals experiencing extreme difficulties in interacting with their social environment. We provide initial information on a collaboration exploring an approach to one of the most serious personality disorders, borderline personality disorder, based upon the study of normal attention, individual differences in temperament, self definition and attachment organization, with the potential to illuminate the psychology and psychobiology of the disorder and to contribute to psychotherapeutic intervention. This developing model of borderline personality disorder can relate the symptoms to more enduring temperamental aspects of the patients. The goal is to understand the development of neural networks that underlie the abnormalities of adults, and eventually work out the interaction between temperament, genes, and experience that produce the disorder, and potentially inform intervention.

Borderline Personality Disorder↗
PubMed1996

[Burning mouth syndromes and depression. A psychoanalytic approach].

1. Analytical approaches to Burning Mouth Syndrome permit the suggestion that it is a symptom of hidden depression, where the depressive process and its two major indicators (vital sadness and psycho-motor slowing down) are totally or partially concealed by a somatic symptomatology which can strike down any system: vaso-vegetative, cardio-vascular, gastro-intestinal, genito-urinary, muscles and skeleton. 2. Depression is a mental process, part of normal psychic development, which must be overcome at least once in a lifetime in order to reach the status of an autonomous being. Hidden depression is one form of pathological depression, which expresses an inability to (i) mentalize depression, separation, and (ii) become an autonomous being. 3. Burning mouth is a symptom resulting from complex dynamics, from hysterical conversion to the inability to mentalize separation, both with underlying fault in the "narcissistic nucleus" (a term meaning the sense of identity originating in the motherly holding, in the skin to skin touch). 4. Treatment will be a combination of anti-depressive drugs and psychotherapy, drugs being prescribed by the practitioner, and psychotherapy conducted by a therapist with an analytical background.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

School-age outcomes in children with birth weights under 750 g.

BACKGROUND: Since the mid-1980s, increasing numbers of children with birth weights under 750 g have survived to school age. METHODS: We matched a regional cohort of 68 surviving children born from 1982 through 1986 with birth weights under 750 g (mean, 670 g; gestational age, 25.7 weeks) with 65 children weighting 750 to 1499 g at birth and 61 children born at term. Growth, neurosensory status, and functioning at school age in the three groups were compared. Associations of biologic and social risk factors with major developmental outcomes were examined by means of logistic-regression analyses. RESULTS: Children with birth weights under 750 g were inferior to both comparison groups in cognitive ability, psychomotor skills, and academic achievement. They had poorer social skills and adaptive behavior and more behavioral and attention problems. The mean (+/- SD) Mental Processing Composite score for the cohort was 87 +/- 15, as compared with 93 +/- 14 for children with birth weights of 750 to 1499 g and 100 +/- 13 for children born at term (P < 0.001). The rates of mental retardation (IQ < 70) in the three groups were 21, 8, and 2 percent, respectively; the rates of cerebral palsy were 9, 6, and 0 percent; and the rates of severe visual disability were 25, 5, and 2 percent. Major cerebral ultrasonographic abnormalities were associated with mental retardation (odds ratio, 5.4; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.8 to 15.8) and cerebral palsy (odds ratio, 15.2; 95 percent confidence interval, 3.0 to 77.4). Oxygen dependence at 36 weeks was associated with mental retardation (odds ratio, 4.5; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.2 to 10.7) and severe visual disability (odds ratio, 4.3; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.3 to 14.2). Social disadvantage, though associated with several neuropsychological outcomes, was not associated with major developmental impairment. CONCLUSIONS: Children with birth weights under 750 g who survive represent a subgroup of very-low-birth-weight children who are at high risk for neurobehavioral dysfunction and poor school performance.

Adaptation, Physiological↗
PubMed2006

Towards human BCI applications based on cognitive brain systems: an investigation of neural signals recorded from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

One of the critical issues in brain-computer interface (BCI) research is how to translate a person's intention into brain signals for controlling computer programs. The motor system is currently the primary focus, where signals are obtained during imagined motor responses. However, cognitive brain systems are also attractive candidates, in that they may be more amenable to conscious control, yielding better regulation of magnitude and duration of localized brain activity. We report on a proof of principle study for the potential use of a higher cognitive system for BCI, namely the working memory (WM) system. We show that mental calculation reliably activates the WM network as measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Moreover, activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) indicates that this region is active for the duration of mental processing. This supports the notion that DLPFC can be activated, and remains active, at will. Further confirmation is obtained from a patient with an implanted electrode grid for diagnostic purposes, in that gamma power within DLPFC increases during mental calculation and remains elevated for the duration thereof. These results indicate that cortical regions involved in higher cognitive functions may serve as a readily self-controllable input for BCI applications. It also shows that fMRI is an effective tool for identifying function-specific foci in individual subjects for subsequent placement of cortical electrodes. The fact that electrocorticographic (ECoG) signal confirmed the functional localization of fMRI provides a strong argument for incorporating fMRI in BCI research.

Attention↗
PubMed1977

A developmental hierarchy of dyadic relationships.

With the work of Mahler, Bowlby and others it has been increasingly recognized in recent years that there is a sequential progression in the nature of the first dyadic relationship which forms the basis for the type and quality of subsequent interpersonal transactions. Four levels of development of dyadic relationship may be recognized. To begin with the infant is in a state of not recognizing the existence of the other individual - the autistic phase. At the toddler stage there is awareness of a separateness of physical attributes between the child and the significant other, but the persistence of the symbiotic belief that there is substantial co-extension of mental processes between the two. With further separation and individuation in the pre-school and early school-aged child, a period of magical thinking prevails for varying durations in the child, in which there is an attempt made to retain an omnipotent control of the thinking of the significant other by the mechanism of projection of thought. In the mid-elementary school-aged child the decentering process emphasized by Piaget, together with the emerging capacity for making allowance for the context within which events occur, leads to the dyadic relationship being seen by the child as being mediated through the transactions of two autonomous mental apparatuses. Dependent upon the quality of the first dyadic relationships, the nature of the communication which occurs in them, of traumatic psychological events and of the integrity of the integrated forces of personality formation, residues of earlier modes of perceiving the dyadic relationship may be encountered. Examples of these in adolescent and adult patients are given. The recognition of the possibility of shifts in the perception of the levels of the dyadic relationship is of importance in the conduct of individual pschotherapy, as the therapist can then deal more realistically with such topics as the establishment of goals, the management of the modes and quality of communication, as well as of transference and counter-transference relationships. This is particularly true of the treatment of patients with poorly integrated personalities. The fluctuations referred to are seen most dramatically with some schizophrenic patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

[Do infants have fantasies?].

The author develops a three-stage theory of mental processes. In his view the first psychic imprints take the form of sensory-motor schemata (Piaget), perception-affect-action patterns (Lichtenberg) and generalized representations of interaction (Stern). At the age of one-and-a-half, mental activity begins to exist in the form of the ability to freely evoke images. In this way the child is able to transcend reality and to think in terms of things which are absent or have never really existed. At this stage active imagination sets in, combining the real and the possible. The closing stage of this development is the linguistic encoding of the mental. The author suggests reserving the term "fantasy" for the second and third stages and discusses the implications of this proposal for the concept of unconscious fantasy.

Fantasy↗
PubMed1993

Disinhibition of automatic word reading in Parkinson's disease.

The Stroop phenomenon was studied in patients with early and late onset Parkinson's disease (PD) and in normal controls to examine the effect of this disease on generating and controlling automatic mental processes. In the Stroop task subjects are presented with color or neutral words in various colors and asked to ignore the word and name its color as fast as possible. We examined the facilitory and interference effects of the irrelevant word upon naming the color by using computerized version of the Stroop test. Vocal reaction times of both early and late onset PD patients presented an augmented facilitory effect. In addition, error data of the late onset PD patients showed an enlarged interference effect. These effects are related to an impairment in the ability to control automatic-reflexive processes. The augmented facilitory effect is manifest early in the course of PD suggesting that the basal ganglia act to inhibit some automatic cognitive processes. The origin of the interference effect in late onset PD patients is less clear. It may reflect more severe basal ganglia dysfunction; or a decline in cortical inhibitory processes.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Positron emission tomographic study of affective disorders: problems and strategies.

Because anatomical studies of psychiatric disorders in humans have been largely unsuccessful, and because pharmacological interventions in patients with mental illness can be analyzed by means of biochemical assay techniques, positron emission tomography (PET) provides an exciting new means to study mental illness. Using fluorine-18-labeled fluorodeoxyglucose and PET to measure local cerebral glucose utilization, the investigators examined patients with affective disorders and normal age-matched controls. Patients with unipolar depression were studied in a drug-free baseline state following short-term administration of methylphenidate and in a euthymic state in long-term follow-up. Patients with bipolar disorders were studied in either the manic or depressed phases of illness and again in a euthymic state in long-term follow-up. Age-matched controls were studied both with and without methylphenidate administration. The results demonstrate that metabolic subgrouping of patients may be possible. Mood changes produced by pharmacological agents resulted in changes in the patterns of metabolism when compared with the baseline state. Problems associated with the use of PET to study mental illness fall into the categories of patient classification (diagnosis, state, trait, ambient conditions, and mental processes) and data analysis (anatomical and statistical). These problems, the limitations of the present techniques, and strategies for their improvement are discussed. Despite these difficulties, PET should prove to be a fruitful means of exploring the human biochemical abnormalities associated with mental illness.

Bipolar Disorder↗
PubMed1987

Radiographic interpretation of endodontic lesions--a shadow of reality.

The radiographic interpretation of pathological lesions which are endodontic in origin is relatively imprecise as so many variables are involved. Even the presence or absence of a lesion cannot be determined with accuracy and there is little agreement on the criteria which should be applied. Strict attention to the technique of exposing, processing and viewing radiographs is necessary if the information to be gained is to be optimal. The major problem of visual interpretation and the psychological factors involved have been subjected to a certain amount of study and recent work on the mental processes of clinical decision making provide further insight. There is considerable promise being shown by methods of computer analysis and image enhancement and it may be that further development in these fields will provide the degree of objectivity that is essential if improved accuracy in diagnosis is to be achieved.

Bone Resorption↗
PubMed1989

On blaming. An entry to the question of values.

In this paper I have considered acts of blaming as an approach to a psychoanalytic contribution to a theory of moral values--a search for a way of thinking about the mental processes mediating values and valuations. Many modern philosophers do not believe their own discipline will be able to develop complete, valid, acceptable, and workable nondeistic ethical understandings alone. Psychoanalysts cannot either, but psychoanalysis can contribute necessary components in its unique understandings of mental operations. The study of blaming as a part of a larger system of values can also be an avenue to the study of intrapsychic-interactional theoretical propositions. The stability or lack of stability of the "worlds" in which we live has influences on all of us, especially those who are most vulnerable to "external" influences. Empirically, in addition to responses to immediate threats from the outside world, an internal world of blaming always remains. The self may be blamed for its failure to live up to its own standards and rules. Often this internal blaming and acceptance of the blame--thus guilt--operate unrealistically. Nevertheless, some such operations continue in even the most mature people, but in mature people it is possible to transform blaming systems into responsibility systems. Along with other transformations that accompany sublimations, the wholeness of personality can be restored in part. One of the faces of a responsibility system is turned toward inner, passionate, often contradictory animal needs which remain in us all. Unless "owned," channeled, restrained, some wishes would be externally disastrous if converted directly into behavior and personally disastrous if totally repressed instead of channeled. Not only this, their disguised expressions can again become externally harmful to oneself and others when projected outward in the form of blame. The other face is turned toward the ways the individuals' motives join (or rejoin) the affairs of the collective "other"--some of which have to do with the most transcendent qualities in man.

Guilt↗
PubMed2004

Does motor imagery training improve hand function in chronic stroke patients? A pilot study.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the efficacy of motor imagery training for arm function in chronic stroke patients. The relation between mental processes such as attentional and perceived personal control over recovery, and motor imagery was additionally investigated. DESIGN AND SUBJECTS: Twenty patients with long-term motor impairments (mean two years post stroke), were assessed before and after four weeks of training. Ten patients mentally rehearsed movements with their affected arm. Their recovery was compared with patients who performed nonmotor imagery (n =5), or who were not engaged in mental rehearsal (n=5). SETTING: Patients were recruited from the stroke database of Ninewells Hospital, Dundee. Assessment and training were performed at the patients' home. INTERVENTIONS: The motor imagery group was asked to practise daily imagining moving tokens with their affected arm. The nonmotor imagery group rehearsed visual imagery of previously seen pictures. All patients practised physically moving the tokens. MAIN MEASURES: The following variables were assessed before and after training: motor function (training task, pegboard and dynamometer), perceived locus of control, attention control and ADL independence. RESULTS: All patient groups improved on all motor tasks except the dynamometer. Improvement was greater for the motor imagery group on the training task only (average of 14% versus 6%). No effect of motor imagery training was found on perceived or attentional control. CONCLUSIONS: Motor imagery training without supervision at home may improve performance on the trained task only. The relation between movement imagery, attention and perceived personal control over recovery remained unclear.

Female↗