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Neuropsychology of Bipolar Disorder; assessment techniques
No full textIntroduzione. Il Disturbo Bipolare (BD) è una grave malattia mentale, con gravi conseguenze funzionali e sociali sia per i pazienti che per le loro famiglie (Geddes & Miklowitz, 2013). Nella maggior parte dei pazienti la disregolazione del tono timico è accompagnata anche da un significativo deterioramento cognitivo che persiste sia durante le fasi di acuzie che durante le fasi di eutimia (APA, 2002;. MacQueen et al, 2001;. Bora et al, 2009; Quraishi e Frangou, 2002). I pazienti con diagnosi di Disturbo Bipolare mostrano uno scarso rendimento nei test di velocità di elaborazione visuo-motoria, memoria verbale, attenzione sostenuta e funzionamento cognitivo (Bora et al, 2009;. Quraishi e Frangou, 2002;. Goldberg et al, 1993; Albus et al, 1996;. Martínez-Aran et al, 2004a.). In generale, i pazienti in fase maniacale performano peggio dei pazienti in fase eutimica o depressiva nelle prove su memoria verbale, fluenza verbale e nelle attività di valutazione cognitiva (Dixon et al, 2004; Aminoff et al, 2013). Inoltre, i pazienti con BD di tipo I mostrano deficit significativi nella fluenza fonetica, inibizione, spostamento e una maggiore velocità psicomotoria durante l’esecuzione di attività di pianificazione, rispetto a pazienti BD di tipo II e controlli sani, senza differenze significative, in termini di prestazioni cognitiva, tra pazienti BD di tipo I o II (Palsson et al., 2013). La persistenza delle alterazioni della memoria verbale attraverso le fasi del tono timico, suggerisce che questi deficit potrebbero essere un marker stabile di malattia per il DB (Gualtieri e Johnson, 2006 Tuba et al., 2015). Anche se il deterioramento cognitivo è una caratteristica fondamentale del disturbo bipolare, non c’è ancora alcun strumento ‘gold standard’ condiviso per la sua valutazione (Bauer et al., 2015). The Brief Assessment of Cognition in Affective Disorders (BAC-A) è uno strumento conoscitivo di nuova concezione sviluppato appositamente per BD (Keefe et al., 2014).Obiettivo. Lo scopo di questa tesi di dottorato è quello di valutare le prestazioni cognitive nei pazienti BD utilizzando il Brief Assessment of Cognition in Affective Disorders (BAC-A) confrontando le performance cognitive di pazienti con diagnosi DSM-IV BD di tipo I e tipo II e relativi soggetti sani di controllo (HC), e testare il ruolo dello stato timico dei pazienti, al momento della valutazione, sul loro stato cognitivo. Metodi. Il BAC-A è stato somministrato a 47 pazienti con DSM-IV BD tipo I, 23 pazienti con DSM-IV BD tipo II e 70 HC. I punteggi del BAC-A sono stati organizzati in sette domini: visuo-motorio, memoria affettiva e non-affettiva a breve termine, fluenza verbale, memoria affettiva posticipata, inibizione emotiva e problem solving.Risultati. Rispetto ai HC, i pazienti BD hanno mostrato un deterioramento significativo nella memoria a breve temine sia affettiva che non-affettiva, nel dominio visuo-motorio e nella fluenza verbale. Non sono emerse differenze statisticamente significative nei domini cognitivi valutati tra i pazienti BD tipo I e BD tipo II. Relativamente allo stato timico, il campione di pazienti con BD differisce rispetto ai punteggi alla BRMRS (p <0.01), mentre relativamente alla sfera cognitiva: i pazienti con BD in fase eutimica performano significativamente meglio dei pazienti con BD in fase maniacale sia nel dominio della memoria affettiva a breve termine (p=0.02) che in quello della memoria non-affettiva a breve termine (p= 0.01); mentre, pazienti con BD in fase depressiva performano statisticamente meglio dei pazienti BD in fase maniacale nella memoria affettiva a breve termine (p=0.02). Vi è inoltre una differenza significativa relativamente all’età di esordio tra pazienti BD in fase eutimica e pazienti BD in fase depressiva (p=0.03).Conclusioni. Il presente studio suggerisce che l’ alterazione cognitiva è simile sia in pazienti BD di tipo I e di tipo II; i pazienti con BD di tipo I e II, infatti, non hanno presentato differenze significative nei domini valutati dalla BAC-A. Relativamente al ruolo della fasi timiche della malattia, i risultati suggeriscono che la fase maniacale è associata ad un peggioramento nella memoria affettiva a breve termine e nella memoria non-affettiva a breve termine rispetto alla fase eutimica e depressiva.Background. Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness with serious functional and social consequences for both patients and their families (Geddes and Miklowitz, 2013). In most BD patients mood dysregulation is accompanied by significant cognitive impairment that persists during the euthymic and acute phases (APA, 2002; MacQueen et al., 2001; Bora et al., 2009; Quraishi and Frangou, 2002). BD patients perform poorly on tests of visuomotor processing speed, verbal memory, sustained attention and executive functioning. (Bora et al., 2009; Quraishi and Frangou, 2002; Goldberg et al., 1993; Albus et al., 1996; Martínez- Aran et al., 2004a). Overall manic patients perform worse than depressed and remitted BD on verbal memory, verbal fluency, and cognitive estimation tasks (Dixon et al., 2004; Aminoff et al., 2013). Moreover, BD I patients display significant deficits in phonetic fluency, inhibition and set shifting and increased psychomotor speed during the performance of planning tasks, compared to BD II and healthy controls, without significant differences in cognitive performance between BD I and BD II patients (Pålsson et al., 2013). The persistence of verbal memory impairments across mood phases suggests that these deficit may be a stable marker for BD (Gualtieri and Johnson, 2006, Tuba et al., 2015). Although cognitive impairment is a core feature of bipolar disorder (BD), there is not any gold standard instrument for the assessment (Bauer et al., 2015). The Brief Assessment of Cognition in Affective Disorders (BAC-A) is a newly developed cognitive instrument developed specifically for BD (Keefe et al., 2014). Aim. The aim of this PhD Thesis is to assess cognitive performance in BD patients using the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Affective Disorder (BAC-A) and to compare the cognitive performance between patients with DSM-IV bipolar disorder type I and bipolar disorder type II and matched healthy controls and to test the role on cognition of mood state at the time of cognitive assessment.Methods. The BAC-A was administered to 47 patients with DSM-IV BD type I, 23 patients with DSM-IV BD type II disorder BD patients and 70 healthy controls. The scores of the BAC-A were combined in seven summary scores: visuo-motor, immediate affective and non-affective memory, verbal fluency, delayed affective memory, inhibition, and problem solving. Results. Compared to HC, BD patients showed a significant impairment in the short-term affective and non-affective memory, visual motor domain and verbal fluency. There were no statistically significant differences between BD I and BD II patients in cognitive domains assessed. According to the mood state, the sample of patients with BD differ with respect to scores at BRMRS (p<0.01) and relative to cognition: BD patients in euthymic phase performed significantly better than BD patients in manic phase in short-term affective memory (p=0.02) and in in short-term non-affective memory (p= 0.01); while, BD patients in depressive phase performed significantly better than BD patients in manic phase in short-term affective memory (p=0.02).There is also a significant difference between BD patients in euthymic a and BD patients in depressive phase for the age of disease onset (p=0.03).Conclusions. The present study suggests that cognitive dysfunction is similar in both BD I and II; indeed, BD I and BD II patients did not present significant differences on BAC-A subdomains. On the the role of the phase of illness, the results suggest that manic phase is associated with a worse performance in short-term affective memory and short-term non affective memory compared to euthymic and depressive phase
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
More severe prefrontal abnormalities in poor outcome (Kraepelinian) schizophrenia
No full textMore severe prefrontal abnormalities in poor outcome (Kraepelinian) schizophreni
Increased hypothalamus and mammillary bodies volumes in chronic schizophrenia
No full textIncreased hypothalamus and mammillary bodies volumes in chronic schizophreni
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
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