Evaluation of a virtual agent to train medical students conducting psychiatric interviews for diagnosing major depressive disorders.

Background: A psychiatric diagnosis involves the physician's ability to create an empathic interaction with the patient in order to accurately extract semiology (i.e., clinical manifestations).

A systematic review of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia implemented in primary care and community settings.

The advent of stepped-care and the need to disseminate cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) has led to novel interventions, which capitalize on non-specialist venues and/or health personnel. However, the translatability of these CBT-I programs into practice is unknown. This review evaluates the current state of CBT-I programs that are directly implemented in primary care and/or community settings.

The central chemosensitivity is not altered by cerebral erythropoietin.

The stimulation of central chemoreceptors by CO2 is considered essential for breathing. The supporting evidence include the fact that central apnea in neonates correlates with immaturity of the CO2-sensing mechanism, and that congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (CCHS) is characterized by the absence of a ventilatory response to elevated PCO2. We reported previously that cerebral erythropoietin (Epo) is a potent respiratory stimulant upon normoxia and hypoxia.

Chronic overexpression of cerebral Epo improves the ventilatory response to acute hypoxia during the postnatal development.

Clinicians observed that the treatment of premature human newborns for anemia with erythropoietin (Epo) also improved their respiratory autonomy. This observation is in line with our previous in vitro studies showing that acute and chronic Epo stimulation enhances fictive breathing of brainstem-spinal cord preparations of postnatal day 3-4 mice during hypoxia. Furthermore, we recently reported that the antagonization of the cerebral Epo (by using the soluble Epo receptor; sEpoR) significantly reduced the basal ventilation and the hypoxic ventilatory response of 10 days old mice.

Endogenous brain erythropoietin is a potent sex-specific respiratory stimulant in adult and newborn mice.

We tested the hypothesis that endogenous brain Epo is a respiratory stimulant. Adult (3 mo) and newborn (10 days) male and female mice received an intracisternal (cisterna magna) injection of soluble Epo receptor (sEpoR; competes with EpoR to bind Epo; 50 μg/ml) or vehicle (0.1% BSA in PBS).