Reclaiming the humanity in personality disorder.

This paper provides a commentary upon the nursing care of individuals diagnosed with personality disorder and associated education courses. The discussion focuses upon recent policy trends in the UK as a point of departure. This policy discourse is critical of mainstream mental health services in previously operating to exclude such individuals.

Local linear discriminant analysis (LLDA) for group and region of interest (ROI)-based fMRI analysis.

A post-processing method for group discriminant analysis of fMRI is proposed. It assumes that the fMRI data have been pre-processed and analyzed so that each voxel is given a statistic specifying task-related activation(s), and that individually specific regions of interest (ROIs) have been drawn for each subject. The method then utilizes Local Linear Discriminant Analysis (LLDA) to jointly optimize the individually-specific and group linear combinations of ROIs that maximally discriminates between groups (or between tasks, if using the same subjects).

Asymmetrical ventricular enlargement in Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) typically manifests with asymmetric motor symptom onset. Ventricular enlargement, a nonspecific measure of brain atrophy, has been associated with cognitive decline in PD, but not with motor symptom asymmetry. Asymmetrical ventricular enlargement on magnetic resonance images was explored in a monozygotic twin pair discordant for PD and in nine healthy monozygotic twin pairs.

Task specific influences of Parkinson's disease on the striato-thalamo-cortical and cerebello-thalamo-cortical motor circuitries.

The motor deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD) have been primarily associated with internally guided (IG), but not externally guided (EG), tasks. This study investigated the functional mechanisms underlying this phenomenon using genetically-matched twins. Functional magnetic resonance images were obtained from a monozygotic twin pair discordant for clinical PD.

Sex in flies: what 'body--mind' dichotomy?

Sexual behavior in Drosophila results from interactions of multiple neural and genetic pathways. Male-specific fruitless (fruM) is a major component inducing male behaviors, but recent work indicates key roles for other sex-specific and sex-non-specific components. Notably, male-like courtship by retained (retn) mutant females reveals an intrinsic pathway for male behavior independent of fruM, while behavioral differences between males and females with equal levels of fruM expression indicate involvement of another sex-specific component.

ICA Denoising for Event-Related fMRI Studies.

The poor SNR of fMRI data requires that many repetitive trials be performed during an event-related experiment to obtain statistically significant levels of inferred brain activity. This is costly in terms of scanner time, necessitates that subjects perform the behavioural task(s) for long durations which may induce fatigue, and vastly increases the amount of data generated. In this paper, we present a method to enhance the statistical effect size using ICA, so that the same level of significance can be obtained with shorter scanning times.

A double-switch system regulates male courtship behavior in male and female Drosophila melanogaster.

Current models describe male-specific fruitless (fruM) as a genetic 'switch' regulating sexual behavior in Drosophila melanogaster, and they postulate that female (F) and male (M) doublesex (dsx) products control body sexual morphology. In contradiction to this simple model, we show that dsx, as well as fruM and non-sex-specific retained (retn), affect both male and female sexual behaviors. In females, both retn and dsxF contribute to female receptivity, and both genes act to repress male-like courtship activity in the presence or absence of fruM.

Cortical muscle coupling in Parkinson's disease (PD) bradykinesia.

Objectives: To determine if novel methods establishing patterns in EEG-EMG coupling can infer subcortical influences on the motor cortex, and the relationship between these subcortical rhythms and bradykinesia.

Background: Previous work has suggested that bradykinesia may be a result of inappropriate oscillatory drive to the muscles. Typically, the signal processing method of coherence is used to infer coupling between a single channel of EEG and a single channel of rectified EMG, which demonstrates 2 peaks during sustained contraction: one, approximately 10 Hz, which is pathologically increased in PD, and a approximately 30 Hz peak which is decreased in PD, and influenced by pharmacological manipulation of GABAA receptors in normal subjects.

Implementation and evaluation of a new automated interactive image analysis system.

Objective: To compare automated interactive screening using the ThinPrep Imaging System with independent manual primary screening of 12,000 routine ThinPrep slides.

Study Design: With the first 6,000 cases, the Review Scopes (RS) screening results from the 22 fields of view (FOV) only were compared to independent manual primary screening. In the next 6,000 cases, any abnormality detected in the 22 FOV resulted in full manual screening on the cytotechnologist's own microscope.

Isolation and minimization of head motion-induced signal variations in fMRI data using independent component analysis.

Task-related head movement during acquisition of fMRI data represents a serious confound for both motion correction and estimates of task-related activation. Cost functions implemented in most conventional motion-correction algorithms compare two volumes for similarity but fail to account for signal variability that is not due to motion (e.g.

Histone deacetylase-associating Atrophin proteins are nuclear receptor corepressors.

Drosophila Tailless (Tll) is an orphan nuclear receptor involved in embryonic segmentation and neurogenesis. Although Tll exerts potent transcriptional repressive effects, the underlying molecular mechanisms have not been determined. Using the established regulation of knirps by tll as a paradigm, we report that repression of knirps by Tll involves Atrophin, which is related to vertebrate Atrophin-1 and Atrophin-2.

The service architecture of the TeraGyroid experiment.

We describe the service architecture of the successful TeraGyroid experiment. In particular we discuss the use of the open Grid service infrastructure (OGSI) to build the services used during the experiment and illustrate the problems we encountered.

New brain networks are active after right MCA stroke when moving the ipsilesional arm.

Objective: To determine whether, like the paretic arm, movement of the ipsilesional arm after middle cerebral artery (MCA) stroke is associated with widespread neural activation changes in areas anatomically and functionally connected to the lesion.

Methods: In this fMRI experiment, seven patients with right MCA stroke and seven healthy control subjects performed a series of movements with their (nonparetic) right hand. Subjects either mimicked a visual display (visually guided) or generated the same motor task after a visual start signal (self-monitored).

An information-theoretic criterion for intrasubject alignment of FMRI time series: motion corrected independent component analysis.

A three-dimensional image registration method for motion correction of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) time-series, based on independent component analysis (ICA), is described. We argue that movement during fMRI data acquisition results in a simultaneous increase in the joint entropy of the observed time-series and a decrease in the joint entropy of a nonlinear function of the derived spatially independent components calculated by ICA. We propose this entropy difference as a reliable criterion for motion correction and refer to a method that maximizes this as motion-corrected ICA (MCICA).

Acute and persistent pain modulation of attention-related anterior cingulate fMRI activations.

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been implicated in both sustained attention (SA) and pain perception. Nonetheless, only a small body of literature has examined the relationship between SA and pain perception. This study utilized fMRI to examine activation patterns that emerged in the ACC in healthy participants and participants with chronic pain (due to osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee) while completing a sustained attention task with and without exposure to an acute painful stimulus.

Drosophila retained/dead ringer is necessary for neuronal pathfinding, female receptivity and repression of fruitless independent male courtship behaviors.

Mutations in the Drosophila retained/dead ringer (retn) gene lead to female behavioral defects and alter a limited set of neurons in the CNS. retn is implicated as a major repressor of male courtship behavior in the absence of the fruitless (fru) male protein. retn females show fru-independent male-like courtship of males and females, and are highly resistant to courtship by males.

A post-processing/region of interest (ROI) method for discriminating patterns of activity in statistical maps of fMRI data.

To combine functional neuroimaging studies across subjects, anatomical and functional data are typically either transformed to a common space or averaged across regions of interest (ROIs). However, if there are (1) anatomical variations within the subject pool (as in clinical or aging populations), (2) non-Gaussian distributions of task-related activity within a typical ROI or, (3) more ROIs than subjects, neither spatial transformation of the data to a common space nor averaging across all subjects' ROIs is suitable for standard discriminant analysis. To solve these problems, we describe a post-processing method that uses voxel-based statistics representing task-related activity (pooled within ROIs) to establish combinations of ROIs that maximally differentiate tasks across all subjects.

Ataxin 1, a SCA1 neurodegenerative disorder protein, is functionally linked to the silencing mediator of retinoid and thyroid hormone receptors.

Ataxin 1 (Atx1) is a foci-forming polyglutamine protein of unknown function, whose mutant form causes type 1 spinocerebellar ataxia in humans and exerts neurotoxicity in transgenic mouse and fly expressing mutant Atx1. In this study, we demonstrate that Atx1 interacts with the transcriptional corepressor SMRT (silencing mediator of retinoid and thyroid hormone receptors) and with histone deacetylase 3. Atx1 binds chromosomes and mediates transcriptional repression when tethered to DNA.

Linking hemodynamic and electrophysiological measures of brain activity: evidence from functional MRI and intracranial field potentials.

We investigated the relation between electrophysiological and hemodynamic measures of brain activity through comparison of intracranially recorded event-related local field potentials (ERPs) and blood-oxygenation level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI). We manipulated the duration of visual checkerboard stimuli across trials and measured stimulus-duration-related changes in ERP and BOLD activity in three brain regions: peri-calcarine cortex, the fusiform gyrus and lateral temporal-occipital (LTO) cortex. ERPs were recorded from patients who had indwelling subdural electrodes as part of presurgical testing, while BOLD responses were measured in similar brain regions in a second set of subjects.

Independent component analysis of functional MRI: what is signal and what is noise?

Many sources of fluctuation contribute to the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal, complicating attempts to infer those changes that are truly related to brain activation. Unlike methods of analysis of fMRI data that test the time course of each voxel against a hypothesized waveform, data-driven methods, such as independent component analysis and clustering, attempt to find common features within the data. This exploratory approach can be revealing when the brain activation is difficult to predict beforehand, such as with complex stimuli and internal shifts of activation that are not time-locked to an easily specified sensory or motor event.

Polysensory interactions along lateral temporal regions evoked by audiovisual speech.

Many socially significant biological stimuli are polymodal, and information processing is enhanced for polymodal over unimodal stimuli. The human superior temporal sulcus (STS) region has been implicated in processing socially relevant stimuli--particularly those derived from biological motion such as mouth movements. Single unit studies in monkeys have demonstrated that regions of STS are polysensory--responding to visual, auditory and somato-sensory stimuli, and human neuroimaging studies have shown that lip-reading activates auditory regions of the lateral temporal lobe.

Gender politics and secure services for women: reflections on a study of staff understandings of challenging behaviour.

This paper discusses the findings of a Q methodological study that investigated the complexity of professional understandings of (attitudes towards) residents in a secure unit for women with learning disabilities and challenging behaviours. Particular attention is afforded to the critical debate regarding women in psychiatric and secure care, including the significant contribution made to this literature by feminist perspectives. A multiprofessional group of staff (n = 38) participated in the study and nine distinct accounts of women's challenging behaviour are described.