Factors influencing the processing of visual information from non-verbal communications.

Aims: This paper examines the relationship between observational behavior and the observers' result assumptions, using a contained diagram that includes significant non-verbal information, such as gestures. The ability of care workers to assess a patient's mental status on the basis of non-verbal information would be considered an important skill necessary to understanding patient condition.

Methods: One hundred and eleven subjects were asked to take a test exploring two types of psychological status, and their eye movements were monitored during testing.

Preliminary genome-wide association study of bipolar disorder in the Japanese population.

Recent progress in genotyping technology and the development of public databases has enabled large-scale genome-wide association tests with diseases. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study (GWAS) of bipolar disorder (BD) in Japanese cohorts. First we used Affymetrix 100K GeneChip arrays in the analysis of 107 cases with bipolar I disorder and 107 controls, and selected markers that were nominally significant (P < 0.

High prevalence of anxiety and depression in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma.

Purpose: To assess anxiety and depression in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG).

Design: Multicenter prospective case-control study.

Participants: Two hundred thirty patients with POAG and 230 sex-matched and age-matched reference subjects with no chronic ocular conditions except cataracts.

Revised psychopharmacological algorithms for the treatment of mood disorders in Japan.

Objective. To revise the psychopharmacology algorithms for the treatment of mood disorders published in 1999 in Japan. Methods.

The new GRID Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression demonstrates excellent inter-rater reliability for inexperienced and experienced raters before and after training.

The Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD) is the de facto international gold standard for the assessment of depression. There are some criticisms, however, especially with regard to its inter-rater reliability, due to the lack of standardized questions or explicit scoring procedures. The GRID-HAMD was developed to provide standardized explicit scoring conventions and a structured interview guide for administration and scoring of the HAMD.

Personality assessment based on the five-factor model of personality structure in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma.

Purpose: Several characteristic personality types have been reported for glaucoma patients in previous studies. However, none of the previous studies used a common structural theory of personality. In this study, we conducted a multicenter cross-sectional case-control study using the recently established five-factor model of personality structure.

Eating disorders with binge-eating behaviour are associated with the s allele of the 3'-UTR VNTR polymorphism of the dopamine transporter gene.

Objective: The dopaminergic system is associated with feelings of pleasure and reward and with positive hedonic processes related to food, sexual activity and certain substances. Because it is recognized that patients who have eating disorders with binge-eating behaviour have a high comorbidity of substance dependence, we examined the association between the variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) polymorphism in the 3; untranslated region of the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1) and eating disorders with binge-eating behaviour.

Methods: The subjects were 90 female Japanese patients with eating disorders diagnosed using DSM-IV; they were compared with 115 healthy female controls.

No association between genotype of the promoter region of serotonin transporter gene and serotonin transporter binding in human brain measured by PET.

The human serotonin transporter (5-HTT) gene has a polymorphism in the 5'-flanking promoter region that is called the serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR). In lymphoblast cell lines, the promoter activity of the 5-HTT gene is dependent on 5-HTTLPR allelic variants. The transcriptional activity of the l allele was more than twice as high as that of the s allele.