Neurosciences

Adolescence is a critical period for maturation of neurobiological processes that underlie higher cognitive functions and social and emotional behavior. Recent studies have applied new advances in magnetic resonance imaging to increase understanding of the neurobiological changes that occur during the transition from childhood to early adulthood. Structural imaging data indicate progressive and regressive changes in the relative volumes of specific brain regions, although total brain volume is not significantly altered. The prefrontal cortex matures later than other regions and its development is paralleled by increased abilities in abstract reasoning, attentional shifting, response inhibition and processing speed. Changes in emotional capacity, including improvements in affective modulation and discrimination of emotional cues, are also seen during adolescence. Functional imaging studies using cognitive and affective challenges have shown that frontal cortical networks undergo developmental changes in processing. In summary, brain regions that underlie attention, reward evaluation, affective discrimination, response inhibition and goal-directed behavior undergo structural and functional re-organization throughout late childhood and early adulthood. Evidence from recent imaging studies supports a model by which the frontal cortex adopts an increasingly regulatory role. These neurobiological changes are believed to contribute, in part, to the range in cognitive and affective behavior seen during adolescence.

In this tome of wide ranging scope the authors continue to be interested in the philosophical analysis of non-philosophical disciplines. Some of the topics discussed technically in Max Bennett's 1997 book The idea of consciousness are now philosophically situated. For Peter Hacker, the present volume is the second comprehensive critique of a whole field of inquiry, after Language, sense and nonsense published in 1985 with Gordon Baker. Two decades ago intellectual opportunism was seen as pervasive in the modern theories of language; today transgressions of the bounds of sense are found to be ubiquitous in the theories of mind inspired by neuroscience.

BACKGROUND: Co-morbidity of mood and anxiety disorders is common and often associated with greater illness severity. This study investigates clinical correlates and familiality of four anxiety disorders in a large sample of bipolar disorder (BP) and major depressive disorder (MDD) pedigrees.MethodThe sample comprised 566 BP families with 1416 affected subjects and 675 MDD families with 1726 affected subjects. Clinical characteristics and familiality of panic disorder, social phobia, specific phobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were examined in BP and MDD pedigrees with multivariate modeling using generalized estimating equations. RESULTS: Co-morbidity between mood and anxiety disorders was associated with several markers of clinical severity, including earlier age of onset, greater number of depressive episodes and higher prevalence of attempted suicide, when compared with mood disorder without co-morbid anxiety. Familial aggregation was found with co-morbid panic and OCD...

Study Design. The Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) has become one of the principal condition-specific outcome measures used in the management of spinal disorders. This review is based on publications using the ODI identified from the authors' personal databases, the Science Citation Index, and hand searches of Spine and current textbooks of spinal disorders.

Background. Empathy plays a key role in social understanding, but its empirical measurement has proved difficult. The Empathy Quotient (EQ) is a self-report scale designed to do just that. This series of four studies examined the reliability and validity of the EQ and determined its factor structure.

The findings and conclusions represent the consensus views of its 15 authors, none of whom received either direct or indirect support for their participation from the sponsoring organizations or any other organization that might represent a conflict of interest.

Self-efficacy beliefs in people with chronic pain have been assessed either by reference to confidence in ability to perform specific tasks or to confidence in performing more generalised constructs like coping with pain. Both approaches reflect aspects of the original conceptualisations of self-efficacy and both have proved useful, but it is noteworthy that confidence in performing activities in the context of pain is rarely addressed. An important element in the original formulations of self-efficacy referred to persistence in the face of obstacles and aversive experiences. In this context, self-efficacy beliefs for people experiencing chronic pain might be expected to incorporate not just the expectation that a person could perform a particular behaviour or task, but also their confidence in being able to do it despite their pain. This aspect of the self-efficacy construct has been included in a measure for people with chronic pain, the Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (PSEQ). The accumulated evidence from a number of published studies and a confirmatory analysis with a large cohort of heterogeneous chronic pain patients attending a pain management program provide support for the PSEQ's original psychometric properties developed with a sample of chronic low back pain patients. The importance of taking the context of pain into account in the assessment of self-efficacy beliefs in pain populations and the ways in which this measure can be used to improve the assessment of people experiencing chronic pain, before and after treatment, are examined.

Resumen:
El presente artículo se propone dar cuenta del elusivo fenómeno de la conciencia desde la original perspectiva de la neurofenomenología de Francisco Varela, quien a partir de nociones tales como neuroplasticidad, enacción y emergencia, explica, cómo ocurren los procesos cerebrales que fundan la conciencia y la “unidad” de la vivencia. Describiendo como la conciencia aparece en el vivir encarnado: en la regulación con el cuerpo entero; en sus relaciones sensorio-motoras con el mundo y en una red ínter-subjetiva de acciones y de lenguaje.
Palabras clave: Neurociencias, biología cultural, ciencias cognitivas, cuerpo, mundo, ética, enacción, saber-cómo.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca

Our understanding of social anxiety disorder (also known as social phobia) has moved from rudimentary awareness that it is not merely shyness to a much more sophisticated appreciation of its prevalence, its chronic and pernicious nature, and its neurobiological underpinnings. Social anxiety disorder is the most common anxiety disorder; it has an early age of onset-by age 11 years in about 50% and by age 20 years in about 80% of individuals-and it is a risk factor for subsequent depressive illness and substance abuse. Functional neuroimaging studies point to increased activity in amygdala and insula in patients with social anxiety disorder, and genetic studies are increasingly focusing on this and other (eg, personality trait neuroticism) core phenotypes to identify risk loci. A range of eff ective cognitive behavioural and pharmacological treatments for children and adults now exists; the challenges lie in optimum integration and dissemination of these treatments, and learning how to help the 30-40% of patients for whom treatment does not work.

The first part of the paper develops the argument that geographers should learn to decompose human memory into its constituent parts because then and then alone will we become attuned to the full range of ways in which we incorporate places into our beings. The second part of the paper articulates Stephen Hill's comments on episodic memory with my recent work on wisdom.

Recent years have seen advances in neuroimaging to such an extent that neuroscientists are able to directly study the frequency, location, and timing of neuronal activity to an unprecedented degree. However, marketing science has remained largely unaware of such advances and their huge potential. In fact, the application of neuroimaging to market research -what has come to be called 'neuromarketing' -has caused considerable controversy within neuroscience circles in recent times. This paper is an attempt to widen the scope of neuromarketing beyond commercial brand and consumer behaviour applications, to include a wider conceptualisation of marketing science. Drawing from general neuroscience and neuroeconomics, neuromarketing as a field of study is defined, and some future research directions are suggested.

Background. The clinician-administered version of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS-CA) is a commonly used assessment device for the evaluation of social anxiety disorder and has been shown to have strong psychometric characteristics. Because of its apparently straightforward rating format and potential savings in time and effort, interest in the use of the LSAS as a self-report (LSAS-SR) measure has increased, and the LSAS-SR has been used in a number of studies. However, the psychometric properties of the LSAS-SR have not been well established.

In this review, we report on studies that have assessed the effects of exogenous and endogenous increases in stress hormones on human cognitive performance. We first describe the history of the studies on the effects of using exogenous stress hormones such as glucocorticoids as anti-inflammatory medications on human cognition and mental health. Here, we summarize the cases that led to the diagnosis of glucocorticoid-induced 'steroid psychosis' in human populations and which demonstrated that these stress hormones could thus cross the blood-brain barrier and access the brain where they could influence cognition and mental health. We then summarize studies that assessed the effects of the exogenous administration of glucocorticoids on cognitive performance supported by the hippocampus, the frontal lobes and amygdala. In the second section of the paper, we summarize the effects of the endogenous release of glucocorticoids induced by exposure to a stressful situation on human cognition and we further dissociate the effects of emotion from those of stress on human learning and memory. Finally, in the last section of the paper, we discuss the potential impact that the environmental context to which we expose participants when assessing their memory could have on their reactivity to stress and subsequent cognitive performance. In order to make our point, we discuss the field of memory and aging and we suggest that some of the 'age-related memory impairments' observed in the literature could be partly due to increased stress reactivity in older adults to the environmental context of testing. We also discuss the inverse negative correlations reported between hippocampal volume and memory for young and older adults and suggest that these inverse correlations could be partly due to the effects of contextual stress in young and older adults, as a function of age-related differences in hippocampal volume.

Background. Very few longitudinal studies have evaluated prospective neurodevelopmental and psychosocial risk factors for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Furthermore, despite the heterogeneous nature of OCD, no research has examined risk factors for its primary symptom dimensions, such as contamination/washing.

La OMS (1994) define la "calidad de vida" como la percepción del individuo sobre su posición en la vida dentro del contexto cultural y el sistema de valores en el que vive y con respecto a sus metas, expectativas, normas y preocupaciones. Es un concepto multidimensional y complejo que incluye aspectos personales como salud, autonomía, independencia, satisfacción con la vida y aspectos ambientales como redes de apoyo y servicios sociales, entre otros. Las redes de apoyo social con las que cuenta el adulto mayor son de naturaleza formal cuando están asociadas a lo institucional, y las informales están constituidas por la familia, familiares, los vecinos y los amigos. Las redes de apoyo primarias son de vital importancia como parte de la estructura funcional, afectiva y social. Para efectos de este análisis, se ha definido el concepto de calidad de vida relacionada con la salud como la capacidad que tiene el individuo para realizar aquellas actividades importantes relativas al componente funcional, afectivo y social, los cuales están influenciadas por la percepción subjetiva. El proceso de envejecimiento genera cambios importantes en el estilo de vida de la población y tiene repercusiones significativas en el volumen y distribución de la carga social de la enfermedad y en la calidad de vida. En Colombia el grupo de mayores de 60 años representa ya un alto porcentaje de AVPP (años de vida perdidos), del mismo modo el problema de la población envejeciente no se limita sólo a analizar la morbilidad y la mortalidad, sino también a determinar las condiciones de vida y de la protección social. Estas situaciones se impondrán rápidamente al SGSS (Sistema General de Seguridad Social), que deberá estar preparado para enfrentarlas; sin embargo, no se dispone de información suficiente que dé cuenta de las características de la calidad de vida relacionadas con la salud en la población de la tercera edad de ciudades intermedias colombianas, mientras que en las grandes ciudades ya ha sido abordado. Mientras más se demore el SGSS para caracterizar la problemática de la tercera edad, más costosa e ineficiente será su gestión, porque varios de los problemas que están apareciendo podrían ser susceptibles de intervención rápida. La construcción de una política de desarrollo social para la población adulta mayor debe partir de la investigación, en este sentido se considera pertinente, hoy más que nunca, estudiar y describir las características de la calidad de vida relacionada con la salud y algunos de los recursos o soportes sociales de esta población, con el fin de orientar a las autoridades sanitarias hacia la definición de políticas públicas, estrategias, diseño de normas, programas de atención y acciones de intervención, que favorezcan el bienestar y la dignidad de las personas en esta etapa de la vida.

Stimulus substitution models posit that placebo responses are due to pairings of conditional and unconditional stimuli. Expectancy theory maintains that conditioning trials produce placebo response expectancies, rather than placebo responses, and that the expectancies elicit the responses. We tested these opposing models by providing some participants with information intended to impede the formation of placebo expectancies during conditioning trials and by assessing placebo expectancies. Although conditioning trials significantly enhanced placebo responding, this effect was eliminated by adding expectancies to the regression equation, indicating that the effect of pairing trials on placebo response was mediated completely by expectancy. Verbal information reversed the effect of conditioning trials on both placebo expectancies and placebo responses, and the magnitude of the placebo effect increased significantly over 10 extinction trials. These data disconfirm a stimulus substitution explanation and provide strong support for an expectancy interpretation of the conditioned placebo enhancement produced by these methods. © 1997 International Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

The moral enhancement (or bioenhancement) debate seems stuck in a dilemma. On the one hand, the more radical proposals, while certainly novel and interesting, seem unlikely to be feasible in practice, or if technically feasible then most likely imprudent. But on the other hand, the more “sensible” proposals – sensible in the sense of being both practically achievable and more plausibly ethically justifiable – can be rather hard to distinguish from both “traditional” forms of moral enhancement, such as non-drug-mediated social or moral education, and non-moral forms of bioenhancement, such as “smart drug” style cognitive enhancement. In this essay, I argue that bioethicists have paid insufficient attention to an alternative form of moral bioenhancement—or at least a likely candidate—that falls somewhere between these two extremes, namely the (appropriately qualified) use of certain psychedelic drugs.

Recibido el 26-4-07 Aceptado el 29-5-07 Introducción. El Test de las Fotos (Fototest) es un test recientemente descrito, fácil, simple y muy breve (<3 min), con ventajas teóricas sobre los tests de cribado de demencia disponibles. Nuestro objetivo es evaluar su utilidad diagnóstica en condiciones de práctica clínica habitual.

s Abstract Background While there is ample evidence that the prevalence rates for major depressive disorder (MDD) in the general population are higher in women than in men, there is little data on gender differences as regard to symptoms, causal attribution, help-seeking, coping, or the consequences of depression. Method The large DEPRES Study dataset covering representative population samples of six European countries (wave I: 38,434 men and 40,024 women; wave II: 563 men and 1321 women treated for depression) was analyzed for gender differences. Results In wave I marked gender differences were found in the six-month prevalence rate for major depression but less so for minor depression; the gender differences for major depression persisted across all age groups. Even after stratification by clinically significant impairment and paid employment status, men reported fewer symptoms than women; as a consequence, men reached the diagnostic threshold less often. In wave II there were clear gender differences in causal attribution and in coping. Men coped by increasing their sports activity and consumption of alcohol and women through emotional release and religion. Women felt the effects of depression in their quality of sleep and general health, whereas men felt it more in their ability to work. Limitations The second wave of the study comprises treated depressives only and may be less representative than the first wave. s

Background. There are ongoing questions about whether unemployment has causal effects on suicide as this relationship may be confounded by past experiences of mental illness. The present review quantified the effects of adjustment for mental health on the relationship between unemployment and suicide. Findings were used to develop and interpret likely causal models of unemployment, mental health and suicide.

Amaç: Çocukluk çağında yaşanan stres verici yaşantılar, özellikle cinsel istismar, çocuğun psikolojisine ve yaşam kalitesine zarar vermektedir. Adli psikiyatrik değerlendirme, mahkeme karar süreci için bilgi sağlama ve bilirkişiliği içerdiği gibi, çocuktaki olası psikiyatrik bozukluğun saptanması ve çocuğun korunabilmesi açısından da önemlidir. Bu nedenle polikliniğimize adli makamlarca rapor düzenlenmesi amacıyla yönlendirilen çocukların incelenmesi amaçlanmıştır. Yöntem: Adli makamlarca Ocak 2007-Aralık 2009 tarihleri arasında haklarında rapor düzenlenmesi amacıyla hastanemizin çocuk psikiyatrisi polikliniğine yönlendirilen 4-18 yaşları arasındaki 73 olgunun (45 kız, 28 erkek) dosya bilgileri geriye dönük olarak incelenmiştir. Sosyodemografik özellikler, psikopatoloji, zeka düzeyi, doğum yeri, adli istekler ve zanlının özellikleri her olgu için ayrı bir kayıt formu tutularak değerlendirilmiştir. Sonuçlar: Olguların 65'i (%89) cinsel istismar sonrası değerlendirilmek üzere gönderilmiştir. Olguların %61.6'sı, cinsel istismar grubunun %66.2'si kızdır. Mahkeme isteklerinin %86.3'ü çocuğun ruhsal durumunun değerlendirilmesidir. Cinsel istismara uğramış çocuklarda saptanan psikiyatrik tanılar travma sonrası stres bozukluğu (%32.3), uyum bozukluğu (%20), akut stres bozukluğu (%16.9), depresif bozukluklardır (%13.8). Olguların %16.9'unda aktif psikiyatrik bozukluk saptanmamıştır. Zeka düzeyi 42 (%64.6) olguda normaldir. Cinsel istismar zanlılarının %20.4'ü 18 yaşından küçük, %26.4'ü yabancı, %56.6'sı tanıdık (9 olgu ensest mağduru-%13.8) ve %17'si arkadaşlarının aracılığı ile tanışılan kişilerdir. Tartışma: Mahkemenin en sık isteği cinsel istismarın ardın-dan ruhsal durumun değerlendirilmesi olarak saptanmıştır. Cinsel istismar ardından değerlendirilen çocukların %83.1'inde aktif psikiyatrik bozukluk saptanmıştır. En sık saptanan tanı travma sonrası stres bozukluğudur ve bu bulgu literatür bilgileri ile tutarlıdır. Özellikle cinsel istismar gibi stres verici yaşam olaylarının çocukların ruh sağlığını olumsuz etkilediği açıktır. (Anadolu Psikiyatri Dergisi 2011; 12:221-225) Anahtar sözcükler: Çocukluk çağı cinsel istismarı, adli değerlendirme, psikiyatrik tanı The forensic cases applied to an education and research hospital's child psychiatry department ABSTRACT Objective: The stressful experiences, especially sexual abuse, damage the child's psychology, mental health and quality of life. Forensic psychiatric evaluation includes the expertness, provides information for judicial decision and also is important to diagnose the psychiatric disorder of the child and protect him. Because of these reasons we were aimed to examine the characteristics of children applied to our department for criminal report. Methods: The files of 73 cases aged 4-18 years have been examined retrospectively who referred to Erenkoy Psychiatry ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 Uzm.Dr., Ege Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi, Çocuk ve Ergen Psikiyatrisi ABD, İzmir 2 Uzm.Dr., 4 Psikolog, Erenköy Ruh ve Sinir Hastalıkları Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, Çocuk ve Ergen Psikiyatrisi, İstanbul 3 Uzm.Dr., Göztepe Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, Çocuk ve Ergen Psikiyatrisi, İstanbul 5 Doç.Dr., 6 Prof.Dr., Erenköy Ruh ve Sinir Hastalıkları Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, İstanbul

A model is proposed for integrating the neural and cognitive aspects of the positive symptoms of acute schizophrenia, using evidence from postmortem neuropathology and neurochemistry, clinical and preclinical studies of dopaminergic neurotransmission, anatomical connections between the limbic system and basal ganglia, attentional and other cognitive abnormalities underlying the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, specific animal models of some of these abnormalities, and previous attempts to model the cognitive functions of the septohippocampal system and the motor functions of the basal ganglia. Anatomically, the model emphasises the projections from the septohippocampal system, via the subiculum, and the amygdala to nucleus accumbens, and their interaction with the ascending dopaminergic projection to the accumbens. Psychologically, the model emphasises a failure in acute schizophrenia to integrate stored memories of past regularities of perceptual input with ongoing motor programs in the control of current perception. A number of recent experiments that offer support for the model are briefly described, including anatomical studies of limbic-striatal connections, studies in the rat of the effects of damage to these connections, and of the effects of amphetamine and neuroleptics, on the partial reinforcement extinction effect, latent inhibition and the Kamin blocking effect; and studies of the latter two phenomena in acute and chronic schizophrenics.

Here we report that increased pup licking and grooming (LG) and arched-back nursing (ABN) by rat mothers altered the offspring epigenome at a glucocorticoid receptor (GR) gene promoter in the hippocampus. Offspring of mothers that showed high levels of LG and ABN were found to have differences in DNA methylation, as compared to offspring of 'low-LG-ABN' mothers. These differences emerged over the first week of life, were reversed with cross-fostering, persisted into adulthood and were associated with altered histone acetylation and transcription factor (NGFI-A) binding to the GR promoter. Central infusion of a histone deacetylase inhibitor removed the group differences in histone acetylation, DNA methylation, NGFI-A binding, GR expression and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) responses to stress, suggesting a causal relation among epigenomic state, GR expression and the maternal effect on stress responses in the offspring. Thus we show that an epigenomic state of a gene can be established through behavioral programming, and it is potentially reversible.

The phenomenon of pareidolia, of experiencing meaningful patterns in random stimuli, is explained in neurophysiological and neuropsychological terms, before its roles in rock art interpretation are considered. A case of group pareidolia in Inner Mongolia is reported in detail, and analysed together with other examples of imagined or pareidolically misinterpreted palaeoart and other phenomena. The process of etic interpretation of rock art is explained neurologically and epistemologically. It is described as a function of the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus yielding to the internal model of the visual cortex in the occipital lobe. This strategy favours incorrect causal associations to be made. It is inherent in the visual system, deriving from its efficacy in natural selection, but its application in rock art interpretation is an impediment to veracity in rock art research. Unless ethnographic information about the meaning of rock art is accessible, rock markings created by humans whose mental and cognitive world is entirely unknown cannot be interpreted with scientific credibility. In such endeavours, meaning is created purely within the brain of the 'interpreter'.

Background and Purpose-Occupational therapy (OT) is an important aspect of stroke rehabilitation. The objective of this study was to determine from the available literature whether OT interventions improve outcome for stroke patients. Methods-An extensive search in MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, AMED, and SCISEARCH was performed. Studies with controlled and uncontrolled designs were included. Seven intervention categories were distinguished and separately analyzed. If a quantitative approach (meta-analysis) of data analysis was not appropriate, a qualitative approach (best-evidence synthesis), based on the type of design, methodological quality, and significant findings of outcome and/or process measures, was performed. Results-Thirty-two studies were included in this review, of which 18 were randomized controlled trials. Ten randomized controlled trials had a high methodological quality. For the comprehensive OT intervention, the pooled standardized mean difference for primary activities of daily living (ADL) (0.46; CI, 0.04 to 0.88), extended ADL (0.32; CI, 0.00 to 0.64), and social participation (0.33; CI, 0.03 to 0.62) favored treatment. For the training of skills intervention, some evidence for improvement in primary ADL was found. Insufficient evidence was found to indicate that the provision of splints is effective in decreasing muscle tone. Conclusions-This review identified small but significant effect sizes for the efficacy of comprehensive OT on primary ADL, extended ADL, and social participation. These results correspond to the outcome of a systematic review of intensified rehabilitation for stroke patients. The amount of evidence with respect to specific interventions, however, is limited. More research is needed to enable evidence-based OT for stroke patients. (Stroke. 2003;34:676-687.)

Research indicates that people value music primarily because of the emotions it evokes. Yet, the notion of musical emotions remains controversial, and researchers have so far been unable to offer a satisfactory account of such emotions. We argue that the study of musical emotions has suffered from a neglect of underlying mechanisms. Specifically, researchers have studied musical emotions without regard to how they were evoked, or have assumed that the emotions must be based on the "default" mechanism for emotion induction, a cognitive appraisal. Here, we present a novel theoretical framework featuring six additional mechanisms through which music listening may induce emotions: (1) brain stem reflexes, (2) evaluative conditioning, (3) emotional contagion, (4) visual imagery, (5) episodic memory, and (6) musical expectancy. We propose that these mechanisms differ regarding such characteristics as their information focus, ontogenetic development, key brain regions, cultural impact, induction speed, degree of volitional influence, modularity, and dependence on musical structure. By synthesizing theory and findings from different domains, we are able to provide the first set of hypotheses that can help researchers to distinguish among the mechanisms. We show that failure to control for the underlying mechanism may lead to inconsistent or non-interpretable findings. Thus, we argue that the new framework may guide future research and help to resolve previous disagreements in the field. We conclude that music evokes emotions through mechanisms that are not unique to music, and that the study of musical emotions could benefit the emotion field as a whole by providing novel paradigms for emotion induction.

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an alternative to the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl's phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called 'immanent association'.

Background. Summarizing the epidemiology of major depressive disorder (MDD) at a global level is complicated by significant heterogeneity in the data. The aim of this study is to present a global summary of the prevalence and incidence of MDD, accounting for sources of bias, and dealing with heterogeneity. Findings are informing MDD burden quantification in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 Study.

A growing body of research suggests that momentary assessment technologies that sample experiences in the context of daily life constitute a useful and productive approach in the study of behavioural phenotypes and a powerful addition to mainstream cross-sectional research paradigms. Momentary assessment strategies for psychopathology are described, together with a comprehensive review of research findings illustrating the added value of daily life research for the study of (1) phenomenology, (2) aetiology, (3) psychological models, (4) biological mechanisms, (5) treatment and (6) gene-environment interactions in psychopathology. Overall, this review shows that variability over time and dynamic patterns of reactivity to the environment are essential features of psychopathological experiences that need to be captured for a better understanding of their phenomenology and underlying mechanisms. The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) allows us to capture the film rather than a snapshot of daily life reality of patients, fuelling new research into the gene-environment-experience interplay underlying psychopathology and its treatment.

Mirror neurons HMOSAIC model of action control a b s t r a c t Evolution and the brain have done a marvelous job solving many tricky problems in action control, including problems of learning, hierarchical control over serial behavior, continuous recalibration, and fluency in the face of slow feedback. Given that evolution tends to be conservative, it should not be surprising that these solutions are exploited to solve other tricky problems, such as the design of a communication system. We propose that a mechanism of motor control, paired controller/predictor models, has been exploited for language learning, comprehension, and production. Our account addresses the development of grammatical regularities and perspective, as well as how linguistic symbols become meaningful through grounding in perception, action, and emotional systems. ª

The Morris water maze (MWM) was described 20 years ago as a device to investigate spatial learning and memory in laboratory rats. In the meanwhile, it has become one of the most frequently used laboratory tools in behavioral neuroscience. Many methodological variations of the MWM task have been and are being used by research groups in many different applications. However, researchers have become increasingly aware that MWM performance is influenced by factors such as apparatus or training procedure as well as by the characteristics of the experimental animals (sex, species / strain, age, nutritional state, exposure to stress or infection). Lesions in distinct brain regions like hippocampus, striatum, basal forebrain, cerebellum and cerebral cortex were shown to impair MWM performance, but disconnecting rather than destroying brain regions relevant for spatial learning may impair MWM performance as well. Spatial learning in general and MWM performance in particular appear to depend upon the coordinated action of different brain regions and neurotransmitter systems constituting a functionally integrated neural network. Finally, the MWM task has often been used in the validation of rodent models for neurocognitive disorders and the evaluation of possible neurocognitive treatments. Through its many applications, MWM testing gained a position at the very core of contemporary neuroscience research.

Depression is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, and its treatment includes a high percentage of the medications prescribed by physicians. Available antidepressant drugs are safe and effective, but less than half of all patients attain complete remission after therapy with a single antidepressant. Others exhibit partial, refractory or intolerant responses to treatment, emphasizing the need to discover new antidepressants. The mechanisms of action of available medications are directing the field toward new research avenues. This review highlights those areas we believe will influence the field and soon lead to better treatment.