Publications by authors named "Isobel Williams"

Opioid use continues to increase, particularly among women of reproductive age. As a result, increasing numbers of infants are born with prenatal exposure to opioids, suffering both acute and long-term negative consequences. Studies performed across the past 5 years have highlighted both peripheral and central inflammation as a consistent feature of prenatal opioid exposure.

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Purpose Of Review: Idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) is a chronic headache disorder with increasing prevalence. Although characterized by raised intracranial pressure causing papilledema with a risk of visual impairment, psychological symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and cognitive impairment are frequently seen but are understudied and under-reported. Together, these can negatively affect quality of life.

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Background And Purpose: Cognitive complaints are common in functional neurological disorder (FND), but it is unclear whether objective neurocognitive deficits are present. This systematic review summarized validated/standardized cognitive test performance in FND samples across cognitive domains.

Methods: Embase, PsycInfo and MEDLINE were searched from inception to 15 May 2023, combining terms for FND and cognitive domains (e.

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Article Synopsis
  • Functional neurological disorder (FND) is a common and serious condition that many doctors don’t fully understand.
  • It has been recognized for over 100 years but people with FND still face unfair treatment and discrimination.
  • The text argues that FND is a feminist issue because it often affects women and highlights the need for better education and healthcare for those affected by this disorder.
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Illness representations refer to a person's beliefs about their health condition and are thought to influence clinical outcomes. By understanding factors related to illness representations, potentially modifiable targets for psychological intervention can be identified. The aim of this systematic review was to synthesise the literature on factors associated with illness representations in people with epilepsy and functional seizures.

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Objectives: Research suggests that higher Body Mass Index is associated with improved survival in people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (pwALS). Yet, understanding of the barriers and enablers to increasing calorie intake is limited. This study sought to explore these issues from the perspective of pwALS, informal carers, and healthcare professionals.

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Background: People living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) face many challenges with respect to taking adequate nutrition. Growing evidence links weight loss with negative prognostic outcomes. We aimed to explore the practice of dietitians in the UK with regard to the nutritional management of ALS.

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The aim of this study was to investigate how nutritional management services for people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (pwALS) are structured in the UK, in order to gain insight into current practice and identify key barriers and enablers to delivering and providing services. : A three-part, sequential mixed-methods study was conducted that comprised (i) a thematic analysis of data from five focus groups (with 47 ALS health professionals from 41 UK organizations and four service user representatives), (ii) a nationwide cross-sectional survey (281 ALS healthcare professionals) and (iii) a freedom of information request (251 organizations). : UK nutritional management services for pwALS are coordinated from specialist ( = 22) and non-specialist care centers ( = 89), with national variability in the organization and delivery of services.

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Introduction: Research suggests that patients with Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder (pwFND) struggle to identify their own emotions and associated physiological cues (interoceptive sensitivity, IS). However, it is not known how this deficit interacts with stress. This study aimed to assess IS in pwFND at baseline and following stress induction, and relate the findings to self-reported emotion processing difficulties.

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Objective: Dopamine agonists are the main pharmacological intervention for the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, dopaminergic medication has been associated with disinhibitory psychopathology in some patients. The aim of this study was to test the effect of dopaminergic medication on inhibitory control in patients with PD using the paced Random Number Generation task (RNG), which requires inhibition of prepotent counting in series to produce a random sequence of numbers.

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Background & Aims: Weight loss is common in people with neurodegenerative diseases of the motor system (NDMS), such as Parkinson's disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and is associated with reduced quality of life, functional ability and survival. This systematic review aims to identify interventions and intervention components (i.e.

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Unlabelled: Motor neuron disease (MND), also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a neurodegenerative disorder that causes progressive muscle paralysis and typically leads to death within 3 years. As no cure is currently available, symptomatic management is the mainstay of treatment. An important part of this is optimizing nutritional intake with evidence that this may positively affect survival and quality of life.

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Unlabelled: Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) are characterized by paroxysmal alterations in motor and sensory functions resembling epileptic seizures, but are not caused by epileptiform activity. In recent years, there has been increasing scientific interest in emotion dysregulation in patients with PNES (pwPNES), but the literature has not yet been interpreted within a broader model of emotion dysregulation. The aim of this review was therefore to synthesize the existing literature on emotion dysregulation in pwPNES within the extended process model (EPM) of emotion regulation.

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Background: Functional neurological symptoms (FNS) are considered non-volitional and often very disabling, but are not explainable by neurological disease or structural abnormalities. Brief Augmented Psychodynamic Interpersonal Therapy (BAPIT) was adapted to treat the putative emotion processing deficits thought to be central to FNS aetiology and maintenance. BAPIT for FNS has previously been shown to improve levels of distress and functioning, but it is unknown whether improvements on such measures correlate with changes in emotion processing ‒ which this treatment focuses on.

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Background: Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN DBS) ameliorates the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, some aspects of executive control are impaired with STN DBS.

Objective: We tested the prediction that (i) STN DBS interferes with switching from automatic to controlled processing during fast-paced random number generation (RNG) (ii) STN DBS-induced cognitive control changes are load-dependent.

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Edward Wilson was an artist, doctor, naturalist and explorer. He was on both Scott's Antarctic expeditions of the early 1900s, as Junior Surgeon and Zoologist on the Discovery expedition of 1901 and as Chief of Scientific Staff on the Terra Nova expedition of 1910. He reached the Pole with Scott in 1912 and died with him on their ill-fated return from the Pole.

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