The historical opposition to psychedelic research and implications for credibility in psychiatry.

Psychedelics are a group of psychoactive substances that alter consciousness and produce marked shifts in sensory perception, cognition, and mood. Although psychedelics have been used by indigenous communities for centuries, they have only recently been investigated as an adjunctive therapeutic tool in psychotherapy. Since the early twentieth century, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has been explored for the treatment of several neuropsychiatric conditions characterized by rigid thought patterns and treatment resistance.

Huntington's disease: a forensic risk factor in women.

Background: Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant, neurodegenerative disorder. Associated cognitive deficits including impulsivity and disinhibition are the same factors that also predispose to forensic risk. Men tend to be perpetrators of more severe violent behaviours than women and women are less likely than men to be arrested for violence.

Views from an asylum: a retrospective case note analysis of a nineteenth century asylum.

Purpose: To investigate whether lifelong admission to psychiatric asylum care was usual practice before community psychiatric care was introduced.

Methods: Historical archives (1838-1938) for 50 patients at the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum in England were studied. Regression analyses were performed to investigate associations between predictor variables (age, gender, marital status, social class) and outcomes (diagnoses, length of stay and admission outcomes).

A window into the brain: an in vivo study of the retina in schizophrenia using optical coherence tomography.

Retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) thickness and macular volume (MV) can be measured in vivo using optical coherence tomography (OCT) providing a "window into the brain". RNFL and MV are promising biomarkers in neurological diseases. This study explores the potential of RNFL and MV to detect axonal abnormalities in vivo in schizophrenia and their correlations with clinical features.

Decreased activity in right-hemisphere structures involved in social cognition in siblings discordant for schizophrenia.

Background: Social cognitive deficits contribute to functional disability in schizophrenia. Social cognitive tasks in healthy persons consistently evoke activation of medial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, temporoparietal gyrus, and posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus. We tested the hypothesis that patients with schizophrenia and their unaffected siblings share dysfunction of the same neural networks.

Autonomic nervous system activation during social cognition tasks in patients with schizophrenia and their unaffected relatives.

Objective: The objective of the study was to determine whether patients with schizophrenia and their unaffected first-degree relatives have abnormal autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses to social cognition tasks.

Background: Social cognition impairments are significant in schizophrenia. ANS activity has been shown to be abnormal in schizophrenia patients, and some of the abnormalities seem to be shared by patients' unaffected relatives.

Changes in the frontotemporal cortex and cognitive correlates in first-episode psychosis.

Background: Loss of cortical volume in frontotemporal regions has been reported in patients with schizophrenia and their relatives. Cortical area and thickness are determined by different genetic processes, and measuring these parameters separately may clarify disturbances in corticogenesis relevant to schizophrenia. Our study also explored clinical and cognitive correlates of these parameters.

Emotion processing in schizophrenia: fMRI study of patients treated with risperidone long-acting injections or conventional depot medication.

We employed two event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging tasks using the pictures of mild and intense facial emotions of fear or happiness. The sample comprised 16 chronic schizophrenia patients treated with risperidone long-acting injections (RLAI), 16 patients treated with conventional antipsychotic depots (CONV) and 16 healthy controls (HC). The HC and RLAI groups demonstrated greater activation in the left amygdala in response to intensively fearful faces, and in right cerebellum to intensively happy faces compared with CONV patients.

Emotion processing and theory of mind in schizophrenia patients and their unaffected first-degree relatives.

Previous studies have suggested that social cognition is affected in individuals with schizophrenia. The purpose of this study was to explore to what extent social cognition deficits are shared by unaffected first-degree relatives, and the nature of the relationship between performance in different paradigms of social cognition. 20 Schizophrenia patients (7 females, 31+/-10 years), 20 healthy age- and gender-matched individuals, 20 unaffected first-degree relatives of the schizophrenia patients (11 females, 50+/-20 years), and 20 healthy individuals matched for age and gender were recruited.

Brain pathology in first-episode psychosis: magnetization transfer imaging provides additional information to MRI measurements of volume loss.

Background: Loss of brain volume in first-episode psychosis can be detected using conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), but subtle changes--not leading to reduction in volume--that may contribute to clinical and cognitive abnormalities, may go undetected. Magnetization transfer imaging (MTI), a technique more sensitive to subtle neuropathological changes than conventional MRI, could yield important information on the extent and nature of structural abnormalities.

Methods: Forty-eight patients (33 males) from a population-based sample with first-episode psychosis (41 with schizophrenia and 7 with schizoaffective psychosis) and 47 healthy volunteers (27 males) were studied.

Heart rate variability response to mental arithmetic stress is abnormal in first-degree relatives of individuals with schizophrenia.

Background: Schizophrenia patients exhibit an abnormal autonomic response to mental stress. We sought to determine the cardiac autonomic response to mental arithmetic stress in their unaffected first-degree relatives.

Methods: Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis was performed on recordings obtained before, during, and after a standard mental arithmetic task to induce mental stress.

The effect of long-acting risperidone on working memory in schizophrenia: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Cognitive abnormalities represent an important therapeutic target in the treatment of schizophrenia. Working memory deficits are among the core abnormalities and affect social functioning. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine cortical systems supporting working memory in patients with schizophrenia treated with risperidone long-acting injections (RLAIs) versus those on conventional depot medication (CONV).

Heart rate variability response to mental arithmetic stress in patients with schizophrenia: autonomic response to stress in schizophrenia.

Background: The vulnerability-stress hypothesis is an established model of schizophrenia symptom formation. We sought to characterise the pattern of the cardiac autonomic response to mental arithmetic stress in patients with stable schizophrenia.

Methods: We performed heart rate variability (HRV) analysis on recordings obtained before, during, and after a standard test of autonomic function involving mental stress in 25 patients with DSM-IV schizophrenia (S) and 25 healthy individuals (C).

A pilot study to investigate the effectiveness of emotion recognition remediation in schizophrenia using the micro-expression training tool.

Objective: Emotion recognition impairments are a common feature of schizophrenia. This pilot study investigates the effectiveness of the 'micro-expressions training tool' (METT) to help improve this skill.

Method: Twenty patients with schizophrenia and 20 healthy matched control participants completed the assessment, training and practice subsections of the METT.