Montreal Cross-Training Program: The contribution of positional clarification activities to help bridge fragmented prevention and treatment services for co-occurring disorders.

Co-occurring disorders in mental health and addiction present a high prevalence, but services available to prevent and treat them are often fragmented. Cross-training activities have been used to help minimise breaks in service continuity. This study assesses to what extent positional clarification (a specific type of cross-training activity) can help bridge fragmented services for co-occurring disorders by providing information and promoting interactions to help professionals better orient and treat their clientele.

Publisher Correction: Maintenance, reserve and compensation: the cognitive neuroscience of healthy ageing.

In Figure 3b of the originally published article, the colours of the bars were incorrectly reversed. The bars shown in green should have been shown in blue to represent the findings from older adults, whereas the bars shown in blue should have been shown in green to represent the findings from young adults. This has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

Differential genome-wide DNA methylation patterns in childhood obesity.

Objective: Exposure to stress during pregnancy may program susceptibility to the development of obesity in offspring. Our goal was to determine whether prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) due to a natural disaster was associated with child obesity, and to compare the DNA methylation profiles in obese versus non-obese children at age 13½ years. Women and their children were involved in the longitudinal natural disaster study-Project Ice Strom, which served as a human model to study PNMS.

Author Correction: Maintenance, reserve and compensation: the cognitive neuroscience of healthy ageing.

In the originally published version of article, there were two errors in the references. The reference "Nilsson, J. & Lövdén, M.

Maintenance, reserve and compensation: the cognitive neuroscience of healthy ageing.

Cognitive ageing research examines the cognitive abilities that are preserved and/or those that decline with advanced age. There is great individual variability in cognitive ageing trajectories. Some older adults show little decline in cognitive ability compared with young adults and are thus termed 'optimally ageing'.

DNA methylation mediates the effect of maternal cognitive appraisal of a disaster in pregnancy on the child's C-peptide secretion in adolescence: Project Ice Storm.

Animal and human studies suggest that prenatal exposure to stress is associated with adverse health outcomes such as type 2 diabetes. Epigenetic modification, such as DNA methylation, is considered one possible underlying mechanism. The 1998 Quebec ice storm provides a unique opportunity to study an independent prenatal stressor on child outcomes.

DNA methylation mediates the effect of exposure to prenatal maternal stress on cytokine production in children at age 13½ years: Project Ice Storm.

Background: Prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) is an important programming factor of postnatal immunity. We tested here the hypothesis that DNA methylation of genes in the NF-κB signaling pathway in T cells mediates the effect of objective PNMS on Th1 and Th2 cytokine production in blood from 13½ year olds who were exposed in utero to the 1998 Quebec ice storm.

Results: Bootstrapping analyses were performed with 47 CpGs across a selection of 20 genes for Th1-type cytokines (IFN-γ and IL-2) and Th2-type cytokines (IL-4 and IL-13).

Psychiatric advance directives and the right to refuse treatment in Canada.

Objective: To provide a Canadian perspective on psychiatric advance directives (PADs) and assess whether these documents can be implemented as an adjunct to mental health services to empower people with mental illness.

Method: We reviewed Canadian jurisprudence over the past 15 years related to people with mental illness and the right to refuse medical treatment. Provincial mental health legislation is explained to discern PADs' possible effect in Canada.

Functional Play at 2 Years of Age: Effects of Prenatal Maternal Stress.

Toddler toy play evolves in a predictable manner and provides a valid, nonverbal measure of cognitive function unbiased by social behaviors. Research on prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) indicates that exposure to stress in utero results in developmental deficits. We hypothesized that children exposed to high objective PNMS from a natural disaster early in pregnancy would exhibit higher rates of stereotypical play and lower rates of mature functional play than their low-stress counterparts would.

Dopamine transporter 3'-UTR VNTR genotype and ADHD: a pharmaco-behavioural genetic study with methylphenidate.

We sought to test the hypothesis that the variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) polymorphism in the 3'-untranslated region (3'-UTR) of the SLC6A3 gene modulates behavior in children with ADHD and/or behavioral response to methylphenidate (MPH). One hundred and fifty-nine children with AHDH (6-12 years) were assessed with regard to the Conners' Global Index for parents (CGI-Parents) and teachers (CGI-Teachers) and the response of these behaviors to MPH (0.5 mg/kg/day) using a 2-week prospective within-subject (crossover) trial.

Neural correlates of memory for items and for associations: an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Although results from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and behavioral neuroscience clearly suggest that item and associative information in memory rely on partly different brain regions, little is known concerning the differences and similarities that exist between these two types of information as a function of memory stage (i.e., encoding and retrieval).

Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val108/158 Met polymorphism does not modulate executive function in children with ADHD.

Background: An association has been observed between the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, the predominant means of catecholamine catabolism within the prefrontal cortex (PFC), and neuropsychological task performance in healthy and schizophrenic adults. Since several of the cognitive functions typically deficient in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are mediated by prefrontal dopamine (DA) mechanisms, we investigated the relationship between a functional polymorphism of the COMT gene and neuropsychological task performance in these children.

Methods: The Val108/158 Met polymorphism of the COMT gene was genotyped in 118 children with ADHD (DSM-IV).

Secretion of melatonin in healthy elderly subjects: a longitudinal study.

Unlabelled: We report on a 10-year longitudinal study on 24-h serum melatonin secretion (AUC) in healthy human subjects. Fifty women and 53 men (aged 42-83 yr) participated in the study initially. Of these, 18 women and 15 men were followed for 6 consecutive years.

Effects of clozapine on behavioral and metabolic traits relevant for schizophrenia in two mouse strains.

Rationale: Schizophrenia is a heterogeneous syndrome both at the etiological and clinical levels. In particular, patients with schizophrenia exhibit important variability in their therapeutic and metabolic responses to clozapine, an antipsychotic medication.

Objective: Here, we determine whether two mouse strains show differing clozapine responses with respect to weight gain, enhancement of prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle, and reversal of amphetamine-induced locomotion.

Validation of a French version of the impact of event scale-revised.

Objective: This report presents a French translation and validation of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) in a population of women exposed to a natural disaster during or preceding pregnancy.

Method: A total of 223 francophone women who were either pregnant at the time of the 1998 ice storm or who became pregnant shortly thereafter completed the IES-R and other questionnaires 6 months after the disaster.

Results: The French IES-R has good internal consistency, with alpha coefficients ranging from 0.

Genetics of schizophrenia: from animal models to clinical studies.

Genetic epidemiological studies strongly suggest that additive and interactive genes, each with small effects, mediate the genetic vulnerability for schizophrenia. With the human genome working draft at hand, candidate gene (and ultimately large-scale genome-wide) association studies are gaining renewed interest in the effort to unravel the complex genetics of schizophrenia. In the absence of an unequivocally established biological theory for schizophrenia, identifying candidate genes to be tested in an association paradigm remains a challenging task.

Ontogenesis of proopiomelanocortin and its processing to beta-endorphin by the fetal and neonatal rat brain.

A number of reports suggest that beta-endorphin (beta-END) may play an important role in the regulation of cell proliferation and neuronal differentiation. Proopiomelanocortin (POMC), the common precursor ofadrenocorticotropic hormone and beta-END, is detected very early in embryonic life in hypothalamic neurons of the developing rat. However, very little is known about the degree to which POMC is processed to beta-END during fetal and early postnatal life.