1,720,977 research outputs found
The impact of mood episodes and duration of illness on cognition in bipolar disorder
No full textObjective: A number of studies showed cognitive impairment in bipolar patients but few researches have studied the impact of mood episodes or duration of illness on neuropsychological functioning.
Methods: Cognitive functioning was examined in 110 bipolar 1 outpatients with different mood state (mania, major depression, mixed episode and euthymia). The neuropsychological battery included The Visual Search Test, Trail Making Test, Corsi Test, Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB), Cognitive Estimation Task (CET) and Tower of London and it assessed attention, memory and executive/planning functions. Failures in the different cognitive tests were compared between groups using chi(2) tests with Bonferroni's corrections. Finally a binary logistic regression was performed in order to find an eventual association between age and duration of illness and CET bizarreness.
Results: All the symptomatic patients (manic, depressed, mixed) failed more frequently The Visual Search Test in comparison with euthymics (chi(2) = 9.882, df = 3, p = 0.017, phi = 0.30; rate of failures: manic patients 32.2%, depressed patients 30.6%, euthymics 0%, mixed patients 18.2%). CET was performed worse by manic and euthymic patients (chi(2) = 10.086, df = 3, p 0.015, phi = 0.31; rate of failures: manic patients 46.4%, depressed patients 22.9%, euthymics 52.1%, mixed patients 18.2%). Finally, a longer duration of illness was found to be predictive of more bizarreness at CET (OR = 1.06, p = 0.01).
Conclusions: Bipolar patients present impairment in different cognitive domains even in euthymic phases. Frontal dysfunction might be associated with a long duration of illness as shown by number of bizarreness at CET in chronic bipolar patients
New approaches to the pharmacological management of generalized anxiety disorder
No full textIntroduction: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonine reuptake Inhibitors (SNRIs) together with pregabalin are actually considered by international guidelines as the first-line choice for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) treatment. However, 50% of GAD patients have poor response to first-line treatments and different molecules, such as atypical antipsychotics and mood stabilizers, have been used for treating this condition. Purpose of the present article is to provide an overview of the most recent pharmacological approaches for the treatment of GAD and the rationale for their use. Areas covered: A research in the main database sources has been conducted to obtain an overview of the new pharmacological approaches in GAD (anticonvulsants, atypical antipsychotics, agomelatine, memantine, ondansetron and riluzole). Expert opinion: Among unlabelled molecules, quetiapine seems to have the most robust evidence of efficacy in GAD. Valproic acid and agomelatine appear to be effective in GAD patients, but the data are preliminary and need to be confirmed by future studies. Quetiapine is a promising molecule for GAD treatment but its use would be complicated by long-term metabolic side effects. Future research will have the objective to find more targeted molecules for the treatment of this disorder in light of its specific etiology
Age at Onset and Social Cognitive Impairment in Clinically Stabilized Patients with Schizophrenia : An Ecological Cross-Sectional Study
Full text linkObjective: Purposes of the present study were to assess the social cognitive impairment in schizophrenia and to detect if some clinical variables (particularly age at onset) are predictive of general/social cognitive deficit in schizophrenia patients.
Method: Thirty-five clinically stabilized schizophrenia outpatients were assessed by the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS) and by Torralva’s social cognition battery. Binary logistic models were performed to find an eventual association between continuous clinical variables and cognitive test failures. The total sample was divided in groups according to dichotomous variables (gender, diagnostic subtypes and type of abuse) and the presence of cognitive deficits was compared between groups by χ2 tests.
Results: An earlier age at onset was found to be predictive of frontal cognitive impairment (Tower of London p=0.038, OR=0.702). Female gender was more probably associated with mistakes at MET-HV (χ2= 4.80, p=0.05, phi=0.40) and HOTEL tests (χ2= 5.25, p=0.04, phi=0.4) than male one. Cannabis abusers showed more frequently deficits on verbal fluency (χ2= 9.35, p=0.04, phi=0.52) and executive functioning (Tower of London) (χ2= 11.67, p=0.02, phi=0.58) than alcohol/cocaine ones.
Conclusion: Female patients with an early age at onset and cannabis abuse seem to have the worst general and social cognitive profile among patients suffering from schizophrenia
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
- …
