The somatic marker affecting decisional processes in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Introduction: Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) demonstrate impairment in decisional processes in which both cognition and emotion play a crucial role.

Methods: We investigated the connection between decision-making performances and choice-related skin conductance responses (SCRs), to identify a somatic marker impairment affecting decisional processes in these patients. We explored SCRs during the Iowa Gambling Task in 20 OCD and 18 control, measuring anticipatory and posticipatory psychophysiological reactions according to card choices and to the outcomes of each selection.

Artificial neural network model for the prediction of obsessive-compulsive disorder treatment response.

Several patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who are refractory to adequate treatment with first-line treatments are considered treatment-resistant. Further surveys were to be implemented to explore the outcome predictors of the antiobsessional response. Such study was aimed at building a model suitable to predict the final outcome of a mixed OCD pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic treatment approaches.

[Procedural directions for a perinatal necropsy protocol usable for data bank purposes].

The authors expose the problems to be solved preliminarily in order to obtain a perfect standardization of autoptic protocols concerning perinatal subjects. Therefore the propose a draft of detailed anamnestic clinical card that follows the woman and the conception product during and after the pregnancy, and suggest the ways for an adequate perinatal diagnostic autoptic protocol. They deem advisable to insert the anamnestic clinical summary, codified with the SNO-MED, in an autoptic data bank, an irreplaceable instrument of interdisciplinary study.