Context-dependent information processing in patients with schizophrenia.

Thirty schizophrenic patients fulfilling the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV criteria for schizophrenia and 30 control participants were shown a set of incomplete sentences, and were asked to complete them with the first word(s) that came to mind. Target sentences included an ambiguous word, the ambiguity of which was not resolved within the clause. However, completion necessarily required participants to select one specific meaning.

[Depression and somatic diseases. On one retrospective study of 210 patients with major depression hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital].

Associations between depression and somatic disorders are common and little studied. We present the results of a retrospective study including 210 psychiatric inpatients, suffering from a major depressive episodes (MDE-DSM III-R criteria). The purpose of this study was: first, to access the prevalence of comorbid MDEs with somatic illness, second to describe the clinical, therapeutic and evolutionary characteristics of MDEs secondary to a physical trouble, comparatively with primary depressions and depressions secondary to another psychiatric disorder.

The cortical serotonin2 receptors studied with positron-emission tomography and [18F]-setoperone during depressive illness and antidepressant treatment with clomipramine.

Background: Changes in serotonin (5-HT)2 receptor densities were reported in depression by postmortem studies and following treatment with tricyclic antidepressants in animal studies. Here, 5-HT2 receptors were studied in vivo in depressed patients.

Methods: Cortical 5-HT2 receptors were investigated prospectively using positron-emission tomography and [18F]-setoperone in 7 depressed patients, before and after at least 3 weeks of clomipramine (CMI), 150 mg daily.

Frontal dysfunction in neurologically normal chronic alcoholic subjects: metabolic and neuropsychological findings.

Background: Neuropsychological and imaging studies suggest that frontal dysfunction may occur in apparently normal chronic alcoholic subjects.

Methods: To investigate this issue further, we performed neuropsychological and fluorodeoxy-glucose-PET studies in 17 chronic alcoholics without patent neurological and psychiatric complications.

Results: Metabolic abnormalities were found in the mediofrontal and in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, but not in the orbitofrontal cortex.

Self-concept and mood: a comparative study between depressed patients with and without borderline personality disorder.

Within the framework of Self-Structure Theory, this study investigated the relationship between depressed mood and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) on self and others descriptions, with a special emphasis on the self-structure's valence, that is, its affective, negative and/or positive content. Seventeen DSM-III-R unipolar depressed patients with associated BPD (DSM-III-R axis II) and twelve unipolar depressed patients without BPD were compared to eighteen non-psychiatric controls on four measures of evaluation and of affective discrepancy of descriptions of self and others. Subjects were administered the grid repertory technique.