557 research outputs found
Is psychosis a multisystem disorder? A meta-review of central nervous system, immune, cardiometabolic, and endocrine alterations in first-episode psychosis and perspective on potential models
Full text linkPeople with psychotic disorders show abnormalities in several organ systems in addition to the central nervous system (CNS); and this contributes to excess mortality. However, it is unclear how strong the evidence is for alterations in non-CNS systems at the onset of psychosis, how the alterations in non-CNS systems compare to those in the CNS, or how they relate to symptoms. Here, we consider these questions, and suggest potential models to account for findings. We conducted a systematic meta-review to summarize effect sizes for both CNS (focusing on brain structural, neurophysiological, and neurochemical parameters) and non-CNS dysfunction (focusing on immune, cardiometabolic, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) systems) in first-episode psychosis (FEP). Relevant meta-analyses were identified in a systematic search of Pubmed and the methodological quality of these was assessed using the AMSTAR checklist (A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews). Case-control data were extracted from studies included in these meta-analyses. Random effects meta-analyses were re-run and effect size magnitudes for individual parameters were calculated, as were summary effect sizes for each CNS and non-CNS system. We also grouped studies to obtain overall effect sizes for non-CNS and CNS alterations. Robustness of data for non-CNS and CNS parameters was assessed using Rosenthal's fail-safe N. We next statistically compared summary effect size for overall CNSand overall non-CNS alterations, as well as for each organ system separately. We also examined how non-CNS alterations correlate CNS alterations, and with psychopathological symptoms. Case-control data were extracted for 165 studies comprising a total sample size of 13,440. For people with first episode psychosis compared with healthy controls, we observed alterations in immune parameters (summary effect size: g = 1.19), cardiometabolic parameters (g = 0.23); HPA parameters (g = 0.68); brain structure (g = 0.40); neurophysiology (g = 0.80); and neurochemistry (g = 0.43). Grouping non-CNS organ systems together provided an effect size for overall non-CNS alterations in patients compared with controls (g = 0.58), which was not significantly different from the overall CNS alterations effect size (g = 0.50). However, the summary effect size for immune alterations was significantly greater than that for brain structural (P < 0.001) and neurochemical alterations (P < 0.001), while the summary effect size for cardiometabolic alterations was significantly lower than neurochemical (P = 0.04), neurophysiological (P < 0.001), and brain structural alterations (P = 0.001). The summary effect size for HPA alterations was not significantly different from brain structural (P = 0.14), neurophysiological (P = 0.54), or neurochemical alterations (P = 0.22). These outcomes remained similar in antipsychotic naive sensitivity analyses. We found some, but limited and inconsistent, evidence that non-CNS alterations were associated with CNS changes and symptoms in first episode psychosis. Our findings indicate that there are robust alterations in non-CNS systems in psychosis, and that these are broadly similar in magnitude to a range of CNS alterations. We consider models that could account for these findings and discuss implications for future research and treatment
Toby Miller on Games
No full textToby Miller is Professor of English, Sociology, and Women's Studies and Director of the Program in Film & Visual Culture at the University of California, Riverside. His teaching and research cover the media, sport, labor, gender, race, citizenship, politics, and cultural policy. Toby is the author and editor of over 20 books, and has published essays in more than 30 journals and 50 volumes. His current research covers the success of Hollywood overseas, the links between culture and citizenship, and anti-Americanism. His forthcoming book is Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.\ud
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This interview was conducted during Toby's recent stint at QUT as a visiting fellow of the Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation. Toby delivered a lecture on the games industry in which he directed attention both to the production cycle of games hardware and software, and to the historical context of moral panics about new media, where games can be viewed as the latest in a long line of new media to generate anxiety within a culture.\ud
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In this interview we canvass the directions that games studies might take, and the issues of production, particularly as they relate to the role of players as producers, and the politics of labour in this new model of networked production
Brain glucose metabolism in schizophrenia
Full text linkBACKGROUND: Impaired brain metabolism may be central to schizophrenia pathophysiology, but the magnitude and consistency of metabolic dysfunction is unknown.METHODS: We searched MEDLINE, PsychINFO and EMBASE between 01/01/1980 and 13/05/2021 for studies comparing regional brain glucose metabolism using 18FDG-PET, in schizophrenia/first-episode psychosis v. controls. Effect sizes (Hedges g) were pooled using a random-effects model. Primary measures were regional absolute and relative CMRGlu in frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital lobes, basal ganglia and thalamus.RESULTS: Thirty-six studies (1335 subjects) were included. Frontal absolute glucose metabolism (Hedge's g = -0.74 ± 0.54, p = 0.01; I2 = 67%) and metabolism relative to whole brain (g = -0.44 ± 0.34, p = 0.01; I2 = 55%) were lower in schizophrenia v. controls with moderate heterogeneity. Absolute frontal metabolism was lower in chronic (g = -1.18 ± 0.73) v. first-episode patients (g = -0.09 ± 0.88) and controls. Medicated patients showed frontal hypometabolism relative to controls (-1.04 ± 0.26) while metabolism in drug-free patients did not differ significantly from controls. There were no differences in parietal, temporal or occipital lobe or thalamic metabolism in schizophrenia v. controls. Excluding outliers, absolute basal ganglia metabolism was lower in schizophrenia v. controls (-0.25 ± 0.24, p = 0.049; I2 = 5%). Studies identified reporting voxel-based morphometry measures of absolute 18FDG uptake (eight studies) were also analysed using signed differential mapping analysis, finding lower 18FDG uptake in the left anterior cingulate gyrus (Z = -4.143; p = 0.007) and the left inferior orbital frontal gyrus (Z = -4.239; p = 0.02) in schizophrenia.CONCLUSIONS: We report evidence for hypometabolism with large effect sizes in the frontal cortex in schizophrenia without consistent evidence for alterations in other brain regions. Our findings support the hypothesis of hypofrontality in schizophrenia
Toby Tortoise and the Hare
No full textI am glad at last to have some original Disney fable work. The presentation is surprising. It assumes the race. During it, Max shows off for the little-girl rabbits at Miss Cottontail's Boarding School. (They can be recognized by their huge eyelashes!) All laugh meanwhile at Toby as he goes on at a snail's pace. Then, surprisingly, a different story begins: Max and Toby wage a prize fight. The experience of the first story repeats itself. Toby trains and knocks out lazy Max with one punch. Because both copies have flaws, I will keep both in the collection
LGBTI variations in crime reporting: how sexual identity influences decisions to call the cops
Full text linkResearch shows that people vary in their willingness to report crime to police depending on the type of crime experienced, their gender, age, and their race or ethnicity. Whether or not lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) and heterosexual people vary in their willingness to report crime to the police is not well understood in the extant literature. In this article, I examine variations in LGBTI respondents' attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control on their intentions to report crimes to the police. Drawing on a survey of LGBTI individuals sampled from a Gay Pride community event and online LGBTI community forums (N = 329), I use quantitative statistical methods to examine whether LGBTI people's beliefs in police homophobia are also directly associated with the behavioral intention to report crime. Overall, the results indicate that LGBTI and heterosexual people differ significantly in their intention to report crime to the police, and that a belief in police homophobia strongly influences LGBTI people's intention to underreport crime to the police
Ep. #011 - Toby Jones
No full textThis recording and transcript form part of a collection of podcasts conducted by the Cultures of Energy at Rice University. Cultures of Energy brings writers, artists and scholars together to talk, think and feel their way into the Anthropocene. We cover serious issues like climate change, species extinction and energy transition. But we also try to confront seemingly huge and insurmountable problems with insight, creativity and laughter.This week’s Cultures of Energy podcast turns toward the Middle East as Dominic and Cymene speak (8:35) with Rutgers historian Toby Jones, author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (Harvard University Press, 2010) and Running Dry: Essays on Energy, Water and Environmental Crisis (Rutgers University Press, 2015). The conversation reveals the knotted history of energy, water, security and infrastructure that has led to a seemingly endless war machine in the region. We talk about how the politics of water in the making of the Saudi Arabian state, how American energy and military agendas became fused together in the Gulf, the relationship between sovereignty and shipping and how to use seawater as a theory machine. Toby encourages us all to acknowledge energy’s place in the war machine and to commit ourselves to ending war for energy
Let students drop out -- and back in
No full textIn 1922 Yale Prof. George S. Counts published one of the first scholarly studies of youngsters who Left high school without graduating. He referred to them as "children of high school age not in school" because the word "dropout" had not yet been coined
Pay isn't foremost of teacher tribulations
No full textJust before adjourning last year, Congress attached to the Head Start financing bill the provisions of what had passed the House as the "Talented Teachers Act." The bill will offer 2,500 college scholarships of as much as $5,000 a year each to highschool seniors in the top 10% of their class in exchange for a pledge to teach in a public or nonprofit private school for two years for each year of college aid
College students are a poor investment
No full textDuring a speech on March 1 at the Rutgers Athletic Center to an enthusiastic New Jersey audience, including 9,000 students, President Clinton returned to his campaign theme of "investment" in education. In return for tuition loans to make college attendance more affordable, "we'll ask you to..
America works despite all the odds
No full textOur American society is an implausible reality. E pluribus unum may be written on our money, but it takes more than a slogan to unify 235 million individuals: adolescents and adults, men and women, whites and blacks, city dwellers and farmers, radicals and conservatives, egocentrics and altruists. Why don't the chronic disagreements in Congress, in the press, in families, in schools, in the economy prevent even a precarious unity
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