Psychological Normality or Abnormality: A Case Study on Salafi-Jihadists in the Middle-East.

The present study investigated Salafi-Jihadists in terms of mental health. The participants included 12 Salafi-Jihadists living in border areas of Iran, Kurdistan, selected using a purposeful sampling method. This primarily phenomenological case study gathered data, using open-ended interviews, field observations and in-depth clinical interviews.

Recruitment Process in Salafi-Jihadist Groups in the Middle East (A Qualitative Study).

Studies on the psychology of terrorism and fundamentalism place great importance on the role of groups, with a central concept of "us" versus "them." The present study examines how and why Salafi-jihadist groups in the Middle East have attracted typical citizens. The participants in this qualitative study were unremarkable Kurdish people living near the western borders of Iran with an allegiance toward Salafi-jihadist groups.

The influence of trait empathy on reactive aggression: An ERP study.

This study mainly investigated the electrophysiological mechanism underlying the effect of trait empathy on reactive aggression using event-related potentials (ERPs). Firstly, we computed the correlation between trait empathy and trait aggression in 413 male undergraduates. The trait empathy was positively correlated with trait aggression, whereas the perspective taking (cognitive empathy) and the empathic concern (affective empathy) dimensions of trait empathy were negatively correlated with physical aggression.

Supply/Demand in Radiology: A Historical Perspective and Comparison to other Labor Markets.

Rationale And Objectives: There has been attention on the job market recently and on radiology's supply/demand calculus. Supply is influenced by the number of trained radiologists, while demand is driven by demographics and technological innovation. We analyze the supply of radiologists historically and compare to other labor markets-medical and non-medical, domestic and foreign.

Deflecting the trajectory and changing the narrative: how self-affirmation affects academic performance and motivation under identity threat.

To the extent that stereotype and identity threat undermine academic performance, social psychological interventions that lessen threat could buffer threatened students and improve performance. Two studies, each featuring a longitudinal field experiment in a mixed-ethnicity middle school, examined whether a values affirmation writing exercise could attenuate the achievement gap between Latino American and European American students. In Study 1, students completed multiple self-affirmation (or control) activities as part of their regular class assignments.

Ecologically valid assessment of executive dysfunction using a novel virtual reality task in patients with acquired brain injury.

The current investigation sought to further establish the psychometric properties and ecological validity of the Multitasking in the City Test (MCT) in a clinical population. Ecological validity was addressed via correlational analyses between performance on this test and a subjective measure of everyday executive functioning (Frontal Systems Behavior Scale; FrSBe). The sample was composed of 13 individuals (11 males) who suffered a stroke or traumatic brain injury.

Development of a novel, ecologically oriented virtual reality measure of executive function: the Multitasking in the City Test.

A novel virtual reality executive function task (Multitasking in the City Test [MCT]) was developed with the aim of investigating planning and multitasking with ecological validity in mind in a normal population. Thirty healthy participants (21 females) completed a neuropsychological test battery that included the MCT along with standardized tests of executive and other cognitive functions. The sample performed within normal limits on the standardized tests.

Neuronal function is necessary but not sufficient for consciousness: consciousness is necessary for will.

Behavioral neuroscience has presented philosophers with the task of clarifying the relationship between neural determinism and free will. If neural functions encode information and govern decision-making, are the constructs of will, agency and indeed morality illusions of pre-scientific ignorance? This article will argue that neuronal function is necessary for representing distinct sensory-perceptual, cognitive, motivational, emotional states, and motor functions. However, neural transmission and action potentials are simply chemical-physical representations of these informational states but are not the embodiment of consciousness itself.

Predoctoral prescriptive authority curricula: a training option.

The purpose of the current article is to encourage discussion among stakeholders about the viability and benefits of predoctoral prescriptive authority (RxP) training. The existing APA model curriculum for RxP training requires that such training is postdoctoral. However, predoctoral models are potentially viable and offer several distinct advantages: reducing the time and financial costs of training, attracting more applicants with a biopsychosocial orientation, and, as more individuals complete this training, enlarging the constituency for state prescriptive authority initiatives.

Tarlov cysts: an overlooked clinical problem.

Symptomatic Tarlov cysts typically cause chronic pelvic and lower extremity pain and sacral nerve root radiculopathy. Historically, open surgical treatment involved significant patient morbidity, particularly postoperative cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaks and infection. These CSF leaks often required multiple surgical procedures to seal.

An eight component decision-making model for problem gambling: a systems approach to stimulate integrative research.

Problem Gambling (PG) represents a serious problem for affected individuals, their families and society in general. Previous approaches to understanding PG have been confined to only a subset of the psychobiological factors influencing PG. We present a model that attempts to integrate potential causal factors across levels of organization, providing empirical evidence from the vast literature on PG and complimentary literatures in decision-making and addiction.

Affirmed yet unaware: exploring the role of awareness in the process of self-affirmation.

Three studies investigated whether self-affirmation can proceed without awareness, whether people are aware of the influence of experimental self-affirmations, and whether such awareness facilitates or undermines the self-affirmation process. The authors found that self-affirmation effects could proceed without awareness, as implicit self-affirming primes (utilizing sentence-unscrambling procedures) produced standard self-affirmation effects (Studies 1 and 3). People were generally unaware of self-affirmation's influence, and self-reported awareness was associated with decreased impact of the affirmation (Studies 1 and 2).

Defensiveness versus remediation: self-theories and modes of self-esteem maintenance.

How people maintain and repair their self-esteem has been a topic of widespread interest. In this article, the authors ask, What determines whether people will use direct, remedial actions, or defensive actions? In three studies, they tested the hypothesis that a belief in fixed intelligence (entity theory) would produce defensiveness, whereas a belief in improvable intelligence (incremental theory) would foster remediation. In each study, participants assigned to the entity condition opted for defensive self-esteem repair (downward comparison in Studies 1 and 3; a tutorial on already mastered material in Study 2), but those in the incremental condition opted for self-improvement (upward comparison in Studies 1 and 3; a tutorial on unmastered material in Study 2).

Potential moral stigma and reactions to sexually transmitted diseases: evidence for a disjunction fallacy.

Five experiments demonstrate how potential moral stigma leads people to underplay their susceptibility to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and dampens their interest in getting tested. After adding unprotected sex to a list of otherwise innocuous possible vectors for a disease, the authors found that infected people were perceived to be less moral (Experiment 1a), and individuals believed that if they had the disease, others would see them as less moral too (Experiment 1b). Adding this stigmatized vector also reduced reported testing intentions (Experiment 2) and perceived risk of exposure (Experiment 3)--a disjunction fallacy because adding a potential cause reduced estimated likelihood, in violation of basic probability rules.

CT fluoroscopy: novel application for the treatment of ventricular pathologies.

Introduction: Recent advances in multidetector CT imaging (MDCT) provide real-time "fluoroscopic-like" capabilities with excellent spatial resolution. MDCT fluoroscopy expands our ability to perform image-guided interventions in anatomically complex locations. Although MDCT fluoroscopy is currently used at our institution for a variety of procedures ranging from spinal nerve blocks to RFA ablation, we believe these same techniques can be used to navigate within the ventricles of the central nervous system to treat conditions requiring placement of intraventricular catheters, depth electrodes, or potentially stents for the relief of CSF outlet obstruction.

A review of complications associated with vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty as reported to the Food and Drug Administration medical device related web site.

In 2002, approximately 38,000 vertebroplasties and 16,000 kyphoplasties were performed in the United States. As the use of both modalities for the treatment of vertebral compression fractures has increased, so have questions regarding safety and efficacy. The authors addressed this by reviewing both the current literature and complications data reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health through the on-line database (http://www.

Treatment considerations for vertebroplasty in men.

Background And Purpose: Vertebroplasty is now a widely accepted image-guided intervention in patients with compression fracture. The purpose of this report is to look specifically at the male population undergoing vertebroplasty and identfy the management considerations distinct to men.

Methods: The hospital medical records and radiographic studies of 24 men treated with vertebroplasty between February 1999 and November 2000 were retrospectively reviewed.

The chemistry of acrylic bone cements and implications for clinical use in image-guided therapy.

Advances in image-guided therapy for vertebral fractures and other bone-related disorders have made acrylic bone cement an integral part of the interventional armamentarium. Unfortunately, information on the properties and chemistry of these compounds is mostly published in the biomaterial sciences literature, a source with which the interventional community is generally unfamiliar. This review focuses on the chemistry of bone cement polymerization and the properties of components in polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA)-based polymers, the most commonly used bone cements in interventional procedures such as percutaneous vertebroplasty.

A randomized treatment study to compare the efficacy of repeated nerve blocks with cognitive therapy for control of chronic head and neck pain.

This prospective study compared the efficacy of two antinociceptive modalities: nerve blocks and cognitive therapy. A consecutive series of patients receiving nerve block therapy was invited to take part in a six-week randomized comparison of nerve blocks and cognitive therapy. Sixty-eight of 102 patients approached by telephone agreed to participate.

Age as a differential characteristic of rapists, pedophiles, and sexual sadists.

In this study, we investigated the role of age in three categories of 168 sex offenders, including 53 rapists, 62 pedophiles, and 53 sadists. On the basis of the match between requisites of completing each type of sexual offense, we hypothesized that rapists would be less represented in the older age group, whereas pedophilic and sexually sadistic offenders would show a more muted decline with age. This hypothesis was supported by the data, clearly a showing smaller number of rapists in the over 40 group relative to the number of pedophiles and sadists (p = 0.

[Detection of Cryptosporidium oocysts in goat kid faeces: comparison of a latex agglutination test with three other conventional techniques].

Detection of Cryptosporidium oocysts from goat kid faeces: comparison of a latex agglutination test with three other conventional techniques. A quantitative latex agglutination test (QLAT) with monoclonal antibodies for the detection of Cryptosporidium oocysts in faeces was compared with 3 other conventional techniques: Heine staining on faecal smears (HS) giving semi-quantitative results (scores from 1 to 5), sucrose flotation on diluted faeces (SF) with results expressed in oocysts/g of faeces (opg), direct ELISA (DE) giving qualitative results. Goat kid unconcentrated faecal samples (234) from 8 farms were processed according to the 4 techniques.