Prefrontal cortex connectivity dysfunction in performing the Fist-Edge-Palm task in patients with first-episode schizophrenia and non-psychotic first-degree relatives.

Neurological soft signs have been considered one of the promising neurological endophenotypes for schizophrenia. However, most previous studies have employed clinical rating data only. The present study aimed to examine the neurobiological basis of one of the typical motor coordination signs, the Fist-Edge-Palm (FEP) task, in patients with first-episode schizophrenia and their non-psychotic first degree relatives.

Distinguishing bipolar and major depressive disorders by brain structural morphometry: a pilot study.

Background: The clinical presentation of common symptoms during depressive episodes in bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) poses challenges for accurate diagnosis. Disorder-specific neuroanatomical features may aid the development of reliable discrimination between these two clinical conditions.

Methods: For our sample of 16 BD patients, 19 MDD patients and 29 healthy volunteers, we adopted vertex-wise cortical based brain imaging techniques to examine cortical thickness and surface area, two components of cortical volume with distinct genetic determinants.

A psychosocial analysis of parents' decisions for limiting their young child's screen time: An examination of attitudes, social norms and roles, and control perceptions.

Objectives: Preschool-aged children spend substantial amounts of time engaged in screen-based activities. As parents have considerable control over their child's health behaviours during the younger years, it is important to understand those influences that guide parents' decisions about their child's screen time behaviours.

Design: A prospective design with two waves of data collection, 1 week apart, was adopted.

Adolescent vulnerability and the distress of rejection: Associations of adjustment problems and gender with control, emotions, and coping.

We examined adjustment problems as risks for patterns of emotions, appraisals, and coping with rejection, and explored whether these processes could account for sex (boy/girl) differences in coping. Young adolescents (N = 669, grades 6-8) completed questionnaires, which assessed responses to peer rejection threat with two short scenarios. Using structural equation modeling to test a multivariate process model, adolescents with heightened social anxiety had the most maladaptive responses to rejection threat, including elevated emotional reactions, more self-blame, and coping using more social isolation, rumination and opposition.

Parents' Perceptions of Novel Treatments for Child and Adolescent Specific Phobia and Anxiety Disorders.

This study aimed to examine parents' perceptions of established treatments, including cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), relative to novel treatments of D-cycloserine (DCS) and attention bias modification (ABM) augmented CBT to determine if novel treatments are perceived as more or less favorable than established treatments. Participants included parents of children with a specific phobia, enrolled in one of two randomized controlled trials of either one-session augmented DCS (n = 38, Gold Coast) or ABM augmented one-session treatment (n = 34, Brisbane), as well as parents from a community sample (n = 38). Parents of children with a specific phobia perceived CBT most favorably.

One session treatment for pediatric blood-injection-injury phobia: A controlled multiple baseline trial.

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a modified One Session Treatment (OST), which included an e-therapy homework maintenance program over 4 weeks for Blood-Injection-Injury (BII) phobia in children and adolescents. Using a single case, non-concurrent multiple-baseline design, 24 children and adolescents (8-18 years; 7 males, 17 females) with a primary diagnosis of BII phobia were randomly assigned to a one, two or three week baseline prior to receiving OST. Primary outcome measures included diagnostic severity, diagnostic status, and child and parent fear ratings.

Don't stop till you get enough: Factors driving men towards muscularity.

This study tested a modified Tripartite Influence Model with 307 men (age M=27.05; SD=6.25).

Cognitive behavior therapy for comorbid migraine and/or tension-type headache and major depressive disorder: An exploratory randomized controlled trial.

Numerous studies have demonstrated comorbidity between migraine and tension-type headache on the one hand, and depression on the other. Presence of depression is a negative prognostic indicator for behavioral treatment of headaches. Despite the recognised comorbidity, there is a limited research literature evaluating interventions designed for comorbid headaches and depression.

Effective behavioural strategies for reducing disgust in contamination-related OCD: A review.

Disgust is an understudied but important emotion in various psychological disorders. Over the last decade, increasing evidence suggests that disgust is also present in various subtypes of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), especially in contamination-related OCD (C-OCD). The treatment of choice for C-OCD is exposure with response prevention, originally designed to reduce fear-associated emotions thought to be acquired through Pavlovian conditioning (PC).

The Impact of Traumatic Brain Injury on Self-Identity: A Systematic Review of the Evidence for Self-Concept Changes.

Objectives: This review systematically appraised the evidence for changes to self-identity after traumatic brain injury (TBI) in adults and investigated associations between self-concept changes and neurocognitive and psychosocial functioning.

Methods: Systematic searches of 4 databases (PsycINFO, PubMed, CINAHL, and Cochrane Systematic Review Database) were undertaken from January 1983 to July 2014. Empirical studies were included if they used a quantitative measure of pre-/postinjury changes in self-concept after TBI or compared levels of self-concept between TBI and control participants.

Evaluation of a newly developed measure of theory of mind: The virtual assessment of mentalising ability.

This study examined the reliability and validity of the Virtual Assessment of Mentalising Ability (VAMA). The VAMA consists of 12 video clips depicting a social drama imposed within an interactive virtual environment with questions assessing the mental states of virtual friends. Response options capture the continuum of ability (i.

Improving children's affective decision making in the Children's Gambling Task.

Affective decision making was examined in 108 children (3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) using the Children's Gambling Task (CGT). Children completed the CGT and then responded to awareness questions. Children in the binary_experience and binary_experience+awareness (not control) conditions first completed two simpler versions.

The neuroplastic effect of working memory training in healthy volunteers and patients with schizophrenia: Implications for cognitive rehabilitation.

We conducted an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis to quantitatively review the existing working memory (WM) training studies that investigated neural activation changes both in healthy individuals and patients with schizophrenia. ALE analysis of studies in healthy individuals indicates a widespread distribution of activation changes with WM training in the frontal and parietal regions, especially the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the medial frontal cortex and the precuneus, as well as subcortical regions such as the insula and the striatum. WM training is also accompanied by activation changes in patients with schizophrenia, mainly in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the precuneus and the fusiform gyrus.

Focus on perfectionism in female adolescent anorexia nervosa.

Objective: Maudsley Family-Based Treatment (FBT) for anorexia is successful for between 50 and 80% of adolescents. To improve this success rate, various approaches to augmenting the treatment have been proposed.

Method: In this study, we describe the treatment of three girls with FBTaugmented with a module focusing on perfectionism, defined as personally prescribed or socially derived irrational and rigid expectations and exceedingly high standards of self performance.

A transdiagnostic investigation of emotional distress after traumatic brain injury.

Emotional distress after traumatic brain injury (TBI) often presents as a range of neurobehavioural and emotional reactions rather than distinct disorders. This study adopted a transdiagnostic approach with the aim of identifying psychological processes common to depression, anxiety and global distress after TBI. Fifty participants with TBI (aged 19-66 years, 12-65 months post-injury) completed measures of threat appraisals and avoidance behaviour (Appraisal of Threat and Avoidance Questionnaire), self-discrepancy (Head Injury Semantic Differential Scale III), emotion dysregulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale), worry (Penn State Worry Questionnaire), negative self-focused attention (Self-Focus Sentence Completion) and emotional distress (Depression Anxiety Stress Scales and Brief Symptom Inventory).

Feasibility and utility of telephone-based psychological support for people with brain tumor: a single-case experimental study.

Rates of psychological distress are high following diagnosis and treatment of brain tumor. There can be multiple barriers to accessing psychological support, including physical and cognitive impairments and geographical limitations. Tele-based support could provide an effective and more flexible option for delivering psychological interventions.

Awareness Deficits in Children and Adolescents After Traumatic Brain Injury: A Systematic Review.

Objectives: To systematically review empirical research on awareness deficits in children and adolescents following traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Methods: PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), ERIC (Education Resources Information Centre), PsycBITE, and Web of Science were searched from inception to August 8, 2013, using key terms relating to awareness of deficits and brain injury in childhood/adolescence. Studies of children or adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI), systematic measurement of awareness of deficits, and reporting of quantitative data were included.

Threat Interpretation Bias in Children With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Examining Maternal Influences.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in children is a chronic and debilitating disorder. Cognitive theories propose that threat biases may play a role in the development and maintenance of various anxiety disorders, including OCD. Although there is a small body of research examining cognitive theories of OCD in samples of children and youth (e.

Enhancing cognitive-behavioural therapy for recurrent headache: design of a randomised controlled trial.

Background: We have argued against the traditional approach of counselling avoidance of all triggers of headaches and migraine. Problems with this approach include the impossibility of avoiding all triggers and the high costs associated with trying to do so, and that avoidance could lead to reduced tolerance for the triggers. We have developed an alternative approach called Learning to Cope with Triggers (LCT) that encourages avoidance of triggers that are detrimental to health and wellbeing, but uses exposure to other triggers to desensitise headache sufferers to the triggers.

Impact of rehabilitation on self-concept following traumatic brain injury: An exploratory systematic review of intervention methodology and efficacy.

To date, reviews of rehabilitation efficacy after traumatic brain injury (TBI) have overlooked the impact on sense of self, focusing instead on functional impairment and psychological distress. The present review sought to address this gap by critically appraising the methodology and efficacy of intervention studies that assess changes in self-concept. A systematic search of PsycINFO, Medline, CINAHL and PubMed was conducted from inception to September 2013 to identify studies reporting pre- and post-intervention changes on validated measures of self-esteem or self-concept in adults with TBI.

The association between obesity and fluid intelligence impairment is mediated by chronic low-grade inflammation.

Published evidence suggests that obesity impairs cognition. Development of chronic low-grade inflammation (CLGI) represents the earliest consequence of obesity. The present study investigated the association between obesity and fluid intelligence impairment and assessed the potential mediating role of CLGI and psychological (depression/anxiety symptoms), lifestyle (exercise) and physiological (metabolic dysfunction indices) factors in this association.

Evaluation of the making sense of brain tumor program: a randomized controlled trial of a home-based psychosocial intervention.

Objective: Despite significant psychosocial morbidity, there are few controlled trials of psychological support for people with brain tumor. This study evaluated the efficacy of the Making Sense of Brain Tumor (MSoBT) program, a home-based psychosocial intervention.

Design: A randomized controlled trial with a wait list condition

Methods: Fifty participants aged 17-82 years with brain tumor (54% benign) were randomly allocated to immediate treatment (n = 27) or a waitlist (n = 23).

The efficacy of a group-based, disorder-specific treatment program for childhood GAD--a randomized controlled trial.

The aim of this study was to provide a preliminary examination of a disorder-specific treatment program for children with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) that employed strategies targeting underlying cognitive factors. Forty-two children with a primary diagnosis of GAD, aged between 7 and 12 years, were randomly assigned to either a treatment (TX) or waitlist (WLC) condition. Clinical diagnostic interviews as well as parent and child questionnaires were completed at pre- and post-assessment for both conditions, and at 3-month follow-up for the TX group.

Development of self-awareness after severe traumatic brain injury through participation in occupation-based rehabilitation: mixed-methods analysis of a case series.

OBJECTIVE. We examined participation in goal planning and development of self-awareness for people with impaired self-awareness after traumatic brain injury. METHOD.