Neurophysiology of conversion disorders: a historical perspective.

The aim of this paper is to present a short historical perspective on the neurophysiological approach to hysteria and conversion disorders. The body of this paper will be constituted of three main parts. In the first part, we will present the significant progress due to some pioneers of neurology/psychiatry during the XIXth century.

Understanding and encouraging feedback-seeking behaviour: a literature review.

Objectives: The goals of this paper are to review the literature on feedback-seeking behaviour using a self-motives framework and to provide practical recommendations for medical educators on how to encourage feedback-seeking behaviour.

Methods: To gain a better understanding of feedback-seeking behaviour, we apply a self-motives framework. Through this conceptual lens, we define feedback-seeking behaviour and review its antecedents and consequences.

Visual processing of emotional expressions in mixed anxious-depressed subclinical state: an event-related potential study on a female sample.

Aims: Controversy remains about the existence and the nature of a specific bias in emotional facial expression processing in mixed anxious-depressed state (MAD).

Material And Methods: Event-related potentials were recorded in the following three types of groups defined by the Spielberger state and trait anxiety inventory (STAI) and the Beck depression inventory (BDI): a group of anxious participants (n=12), a group of participants with depressive and anxious tendencies (n=12), and a control group (n=12). Participants were confronted with a visual oddball task in which they had to detect, as quickly as possible, deviant faces amongst a train of standard neutral faces.

Exploring the functional architecture of person recognition system with event-related potentials in a within- and cross-domain self-priming of faces.

In this paper, we explored the functional properties of person recognition system by investigating the onset, magnitude, and scalp distribution of within- and cross-domain self-priming effects on event-related potentials (ERPs). Recognition of degraded pictures of famous people was enhanced by a prior exposure to the same person's face (within-domain self-priming) or name (cross-domain self-priming) as compared to those preceded by neutral or unrelated primes. The ERP results showed first that the amplitude of the N170 component to famous face targets was modulated by within- and cross-domain self-priming, suggesting not only that the N170 component can be affected by top-down influences but also that this top-down effect crosses domains.

The perception of fearful and happy facial expression is modulated by anxiety: an event-related potential study.

Anxiety is supposed to interfere with cognitive and emotional processing and high level of trait-anxiety has been associated with an attentional bias for fearful faces, even in sub-clinical anxiety. On the basis of the Spielberger State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), twenty students were grouped as low vs. high anxious.