Insight in schizophrenia spectrum disorders: relationship with behavior, mood and perceived quality of life, underlying causes and emerging treatments.

Poor insight in schizophrenia is prevalent across cultures and phases of illness. In this review, we examine the recent research on the relationship of insight with behavior, mood and perceived quality of life, on its complex roots, and on the effects of existing and emerging treatments. This research indicates that poor insight predicts poorer treatment adherence and therapeutic alliance, higher symptom severity and more impaired community function, while good insight predicts a higher frequency of depression and demoralization, especially when coupled with stigma and social disadvantage.

Brain Ways: Meynert, Bachelard and the Material Imagination of the Inner Life.

The Austrian psychiatrist Theodor Meynert's anatomical theories of the brain and nerves are laden with metaphorical imagery, ranging from the colonies of empire to the tentacles of jellyfish. This paper analyses among Meynert's earliest works a different set of less obvious metaphors, namely, the fibres, threads, branches and paths used to elaborate the brain's interior. I argue that these metaphors of material, or what the philosopher Gaston Bachelard called 'material images', helped Meynert not only to imaginatively extend the tracts of fibrous tissue inside the brain but to insinuate their function as pathways co-extensive with the mind.

The small GTPase RhoA has greater expression in small cell lung carcinoma than in non-small cell lung carcinoma and contributes to their unique morphologies.

The two major forms of lung carcinoma, small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) and non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC), are clinically distinct, and are also differentiated by morphology and behavior in culture. SCLC cells have a greater metastatic potential than NSCLC cells in vivo, and exhibit a unique spherical morphology in culture due to their inability to adhere and spread on the substratum. Because the small GTPase RhoA affects metastatic properties and regulates cell morphology, we examined whether differences in RhoA expression and activity contribute to the distinct SCLC and NSCLC phenotypes.