Patients' sense of relationship with breast cancer surgeons: the relative importance of surgeon and patient variability and the influence of patients' attachment style.

Objective: We examined to what extent variability in breast cancer patients' sense of relationship with their surgeons was attributable to patient vs surgeon variation and we examined the role of one patient characteristic: attachment style.

Methods: Women (N=133) due to undergo surgery for breast cancer with one of six surgeons self-rated their relationship with the surgeon, using the Working Alliance Inventory, and indicated their adult attachment style (secure vs insecure). Multilevel analysis of alliance scores quantified variance components at patient and surgeon levels and tested the relationship with attachment.

Specialization in the medial temporal lobe for processing of objects and scenes.

There has been considerable debate as to whether the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex may subserve both memory and perception. We administered a series of oddity tasks, in which subjects selected the odd stimulus from a visual array, to amnesic patients with either selective hippocampal damage (HC group) or more extensive medial temporal damage, including the perirhinal cortex (MTL group). All patients performed normally when the stimuli could be discriminated using simple visual features, even if faces or complex virtual reality scenes were presented.