Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Inviting Hallucinatory Percepts During Speech-Listening To Detect Cognitive Changes In Early Psychosis, Ana-Bianca Popa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Treatment outcomes for people with schizophrenia are more favourable if treatment starts early in the course of the disorder. Current detection methods lack specificity and do not make use of cognitive markers. We presented individuals experiencing a first episode of psychosis (FEP) and matched control participants with acoustically degraded meaningful and matched nonsense sentences to examine the degree to which people reported words that were not actually presented. Intrusion errors were counted when reported words were unrelated to words in the original sentence. Intelligibility (measured as words reported correctly) did not differ between groups but intrusion errors were more frequent …

Association Between A Single Nucleotide Polymorphism In Neuregulin-1 And Schizophrenia In Pakistani Patients, Haider Ali Naqvi, Shafqat Huma, Hira Waseem, Kashaf Aqeel Zaidi, Hina Saeed Zuberi, Syed Hani Abidi

Department of Biological & Biomedical Sciences

Objective: To determine the association of single-nucleotide polymorphism8nrg433E1006 in the neuregulin-1 gene associated with schizophrenia.
Methods: This case-control study was conducted at the Fountain House, Lahore, and the psychiatric clinics at the Aga Khan University, Karachi, from 2010 to 2013.The total genomic deoxyribonucleic acid was isolated and single-nucleotide polymorphism8nrg433E1006 was screened by nested polymerase chain reaction followed by sequencing. These sequences, from patients and controls, were aligned with the human neuregulin-1-glial growth factor 2 gene sequence, which served as a reference sequence. The single nucleotide polymorphism genetic algorithm was characterised at position 433 in the neuregulin-1 gene by …

Insane: James Holmes, Clark V. Arizona, And America's Insanity Defense, Eric Collins

Journal of Law and Health

Insanity is a legal term of art that changes definitions depending on the legal standard in American jurisprudence, which explains why a man who mental health professionals described as having an uncontrollable obsession with killing people can be found not insane and guilty. This Note addresses the current state of the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 and its widespread implementation at the state level. Part II supplies background information on the history of the insanity defense and how it has transformed over the years in American jurisprudence. Part III provides an analysis of the of the insanity defense. Part …

Effort-Related Decision Making In Comt Variant Mice: Pharmacological Studies And Genetic Susceptibility To Motivational Dysfunction, Suzanne Cayer

Honors Scholar Theses

Effort-related decision making tasks in animals can model motivational symptoms in humans, which are a set of symptoms spanning a multitude of neuropsychiatric disorders, such as major depressive disorder and the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. The present studies aimed to evaluate the effort-related effects of the Val158Met polymorphism of human catechol-methyltransferase (COMT), by testing mice carrying either the human COMT Val (n=8) or Met allele (n=8) with Wild-Type control mice (n=15) by using concurrent FR2 and FR4/pellet choice tasks in a touchscreen operant conditioning apparatus. The Val158Met polymorphism has been repeatedly associated with neuropsychiatric disorders, and the Val allele has …

"My Bitterness Is Deeper Than The Ocean": Understanding Internalized Stigma From The Perspectives Of Persons With Schizophrenia And Their Family Caregivers., Yin-Ling Irene Wong, Dexia Kong, Lufei Tu, Rosemary Frasso Phd, Msc, Cph

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

Background: It is estimated that 8 million of the Chinese adult population had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Stigma associated with mental illness, which is pervasive in the Chinese cultural context, impacts both persons with schizophrenia and their family caregivers. However, a review of the literature found a dearth of research that explored internalized stigma from the perspectives of both patients and their caregivers.

Methods: We integrated data from standardized scales and narratives from semi-structured interviews obtained from eight family-dyads. Interview narratives about stigma were analyzed using directed content analysis and compared with responses from Chinese versions of the Internalized Stigma …

A Computational Assessment Of Target Engagement In The Treatment Of Auditory Hallucinations With Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, Won Hee Lee, Nigel I. Kennedy, Marom Bikson, Sophia Frangou

Publications and Research

We use auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) to illustrate the challenges in defining and assessing target engagement in the context of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for psychiatric disorders. We defined the target network as the cluster of regions of interest (ROIs) that are consistently implicated in AVH based on the conjunction of multimodal meta-analytic neuroimaging data. These were prescribed in the New York Head (a population derived model) and head models of four single individuals. We appraised two potential measures of target engagement, tDCS-induced peak electric field strength and tDCS-modulated volume defined as the percentage of the volume of the …

Sensory, Motor And Process Skills As Compared To Symptom Severity In Adult Patients With Schizophrenia, Lola Halperin

Occupational Therapy Faculty Publications

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness affecting millions of Americans. It is characterized by positive and negative symptoms; cognitive impairments; and sensory, motor, and process skill deficits; as well as compromised motor learning, functional difficulties, and diminished quality of life. Neuroscientists attribute the above deficits to abnormal brain development, exaggerated synaptic pruning, and neurodegenerative processes, causing disrupted connectivity and diminished plasticity in the brain, neurotransmitter dysfunction, and impaired sensory processing.

Presently, there is no cure for schizophrenia. Numerous medications and rehabilitation modalities exist; however, many of the affected individuals continue to struggle daily. Recovery of these individuals implies symptom management …

Direct And Indirect Influences Of Defendant Mental Illness On Jury Decision Making, Marie Sabbagh

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

It is a common misconception that individuals with schizophrenia are significantly more dangerous and violent than individuals free of mental illness. This stigmatization may lead to harsher sentences when people with schizophrenia are involved in criminal activities and sentenced by a jury. This study presented four conditions to which participants were randomly assigned, alone or in a group of three, and were asked to sentence a defendant, either with or without schizophrenia. It was hypothesized that group deliberations would result in more lenient sentences for defendants with schizophrenia as compared to individual deliberations. Furthermore, it was predicted that both group …