The role of 'shared representations' in social perception and empathy: an fMRI study.

Evidence suggests that we use the same mechanisms for both producing and perceiving actions. Such 'shared representations' may also underlie social perception and empathy. However, this idea raises some important and as yet unresolved questions: (i) how do we distinguish other-orientated empathic responses from a self-orientated reactions such as personal distress and (ii) what are the neural substrates underpinning these processes? We employed event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore whether 'shared representations' were recruited to decode dynamic social stimuli in 12 healthy volunteers.

Depot perphenazine decanoate and enanthate for schizophrenia.

Background: Antipsychotic drugs are usually given orally but compliance with medication given by this route may be difficult to quantify. The development of depot injections in the 1960s gave rise to extensive use of depots as a means of long-term maintenance treatment. Perphenazine decanoate and enanthate are depot antipsychotics that belong to the phenothiazine family and have a piperazine ethanol side chain.

Emotional memory: separating content and context.

It is now well established that emotion enhances episodic memory. However, it remains unclear whether the same neural processes underlie enhancement of memory for both emotional stimuli and neutral stimuli encoded in an emotive context. We designed an experiment that specifically attempted to separate these effects and that was validated on 30 participants.

Antipsychotic depot medication and attitudes of community psychiatric nurses.

Utilization of long-acting antipsychotic injections (depots) shows wide regional variation. In many countries, community psychiatric nurses (CPNs) administer depots but their concerns and attitudes regarding these drugs are seldom considered. We aimed to investigate attitudes and knowledge towards depots in a cross-sectional survey of CPNs in London, and compare them with those of psychiatrists obtained in a previous study.

Depot fluphenazine decanoate and enanthate for schizophrenia.

Background: Intramuscular injections (depot preparations) offer an advantage over oral medication for treating schizophrenia by reducing poor compliance. The benefits gained by long acting preparations, however, may be offset by a higher incidence of adverse effects.

Objectives: To investigate the clinical effects of fluphenazine decanoate and enanthate.

Prognostic indicators for early discontinuation of risperidone long-acting injection.

Although efficacy trials have been conducted on risperidone long-acting injection (RLAI), its most appropriate utilization in clinical practice remains unclear. This 6-month, follow-up study investigated prognostic indicators for early discontinuation of RLAI. Consecutive sampling was conducted for adult patients with a psychotic disorder commenced on RLAI, whose injection was dispensed by one of three South London psychiatric hospital pharmacies.

Emotional memory and perception in temporal lobectomy patients with amygdala damage.

Background: The human amygdala is implicated in the formation of emotional memories and the perception of emotional stimuli--particularly fear--across various modalities.

Objectives: To discern the extent to which these functions are related.

Methods: 28 patients who had anterior temporal lobectomy (13 left and 15 right) for intractable epilepsy were recruited.

Chronic fatigue syndrome in children: a cross sectional survey.

Background: Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in children is a controversial diagnosis with unclear aetiology, ill defined but likely increasing incidence, and debatable clinical management options. However these children experience real and considerable suffering. Appropriate research in this clinical population is sparse and usually occurs in tertiary referral units.

A differential neural response in obsessive-compulsive disorder patients with washing compared with checking symptoms to disgust.

Background: Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have symptoms that predominantly concern washing (washers) or checking (checkers), or both. Functional neuroimaging has been used to identify the neural correlates of the urge to ritualize but has not distinguished between washing and checking symptoms in OCD. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the neural response to emotive pictures in washers and checkers.

Seizures, hormones and sexuality.

Sexual disorders (both hyposexuality and sexual dysfunction) are common in people with epilepsy, occurring in up to two-thirds of patients. However, characteristically, patients do not spontaneously report these problems. Nocturnal penile tumescence testing suggests that the erectile dysfunction has a neurophysiological component.

Corpus callosum area and functioning in schizophrenic patients with auditory--verbal hallucinations.

Auditory--verbal hallucinations (AVH) are a characteristic feature of schizophrenia. Patients with AVHs have been found to differ from non-hallucinating patients in volumes of certain asymmetrical brain structures on MRI, and on certain neuropsychological measures. There is also evidence of corpus callosum (CC) abnormalities in schizophrenia, and it has been proposed that abnormalities of inter-hemispheric transmission may underlie hallucinations and other symptoms.

Are auditory hallucinations the consequence of abnormal cerebral lateralization? A morphometric MRI study of the sylvian fissure and planum temporale.

Background: Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are a characteristic feature of schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia have been found to have reduced volumes of a variety of brain structures as well as a reduction in right-left asymmetries, using postmortem and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures. There is also evidence that patients with AVHs differ in these structural asymmetries, relative to those patients who do not hallucinate.

A functional study of auditory verbal imagery.

Background: We used functional MRI to examine the functional anatomy of inner speech and different forms of auditory verbal imagery (imagining speech) in normal volunteers. We hypothesized that generating inner speech and auditory verbal imagery would be associated with left inferior frontal activation, and that generating auditory verbal imagery would involve additional activation in the lateral temporal cortices.

Methods: Subjects were scanned, while performing inner speech and auditory verbal imagery tasks, using a 1.

Audio-visual speech perception in schizophrenia: an fMRI study.

Abnormalities in the integration of auditory and visual language inputs could underlie many core psychotic features. Perceptual confusion may arise because of the normal propensity of visual speech perception to evoke auditory percepts. Recent functional neuroimaging studies of normal subjects have demonstrated activation in auditory-linguistic brain areas in response to silent lip-reading.

Depersonalization in cyberspace.

We explored the possibility of carrying out clinical research on the Internet. To do so, we compared psychometric and demographic variables between two groups of sufferers of depersonalization disorder, one recruited via the Internet, the other from outpatients attending the Depersonalization Research Unit. No differences were found in demographics or features of depersonalization.

Towards a functional neuroanatomy of self processing: effects of faces and words.

We studied the neural correlates of self vs. non-self judgements using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Individually tailored faces and personality trait words were used as stimuli in three experiments (exp.

Long term psychiatric and cognitive effects of MDMA use.

Clinical case reports suggest that regular MDMA use can be associated with chronic psychiatric symptoms which persist after the cessation of drug use. Neuropsychological comparisons of regular MDMA users and controls also suggest that MDMA use may lead to memory deficits, with other cognitive processes relatively unaffected. This paper reviews these studies and discusses a number of methodological issues that impact on the interpretation of the findings.

A differential neural response to threatening and non-threatening negative facial expressions in paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenics.

Several studies have demonstrated impaired facial expression recognition in schizophrenia. Few have examined the neural basis for this; none have compared the neural correlates of facial expression perception in different schizophrenic patient subgroups. We compared neural responses to facial expressions in 10 right-handed schizophrenic patients (five paranoid and five non-paranoid) and five normal volunteers using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).

The functional neuroanatomy of implicit-motion perception or representational momentum.

Background: When we view static scenes that imply motion - such as an object dropping off a shelf - recognition memory for the position of the object is extrapolated forward. It is as if the object in our mind's eye comes alive and continues on its course. This phenomenon is known as representational momentum and results in a distortion of recognition memory in the implied direction of motion.

Depression in epilepsy: etiology, phenomenology, and treatment.

A history of depression or depressive symptomatology has been reported in up to two-thirds of patients with medically intractable epilepsy, whereas community studies have demonstrated affective disorder only in a quarter of these patients. Depression has been reported peri- and interictally. However, differentiation may be difficult in patients with frequent seizures.