Bailey, PE, Henry, JD & Varcin, KJ 2012, 'Right frontal cortical lesions disrupt anger mimicry', Neuropsychologia, vol. 50, no. 7, pp. 1632-1638.
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de Wit, S, Watson, P, Harsay, HA, Cohen, MX, van de Vijver, I & Ridderinkhof, KR 2012, 'Corticostriatal Connectivity Underlies Individual Differences in the Balance between Habitual and Goal-Directed Action Control', The Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 32, no. 35, pp. 12066-12075.
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Why are some individuals more susceptible to the formation of inflexible habits than others? In the present study, we used diffusion tensor imaging to demonstrate that brain connectivity predicts individual differences in relative goal-directed and habitual behavioral control in humans. Specifically, vulnerability to habitual “slips of action” toward no-longer-rewarding outcomes was predicted by estimated white matter tract strength in the premotor cortex seeded from the posterior putamen (as well as by gray matter density in the posterior putamen as determined with voxel-based morphometry). In contrast, flexible goal-directed action was predicted by estimated tract strength in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex seeded from the caudate. These findings suggest that integrity of dissociable corticostriatal pathways underlies individual differences in action control in the healthy population, which may ultimately mediate vulnerability to impulse control disorders.
Jones, M, Wootton, B & Vaccaro, L 2012, 'The efficacy of danger ideation reduction therapy for an 86-year old man with a 63-year history of obsessive-compulsive disorder - A case study'.
Jones, MK, Wootton, BM & Vaccaro, LD 2012, 'The Efficacy of Exposure and Response Prevention for Geriatric Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: A Clinical Case Illustration', Case Reports in Psychiatry, vol. 2012, pp. 1-5.
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Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is one of the most frequently occurring psychiatric conditions in older adults. While exposure and response prevention (ERP) is considered the most effective psychological treatment for children and adults with OCD, research investigating its effectiveness for older adults is scarce. This clinical case study investigates the effectiveness of ERP in an 80-year-old man with a 65-year history of OCD. The client received 14 individual, 50-minute ERP treatment sessions. Clinician-based Y-BOCS scores reduced by 65% from 20 (moderate) at pretreatment to 7 (subclinical) at 7-month posttreatment followup. OCI-R total scores reduced by 45% from 38 at baseline to 21 at 7-month follow-up. Despite his long history of the disorder, ERP was effective and well tolerated. The application of ERP for older adults with OCD, including age-specific modifications that may be required for this treatment approach, is discussed.
Jones, MK, Wootton, BM, Vaccaro, LD & Menzies, RG 2012, 'The impact of climate change on obsessive compulsive checking concerns', Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 265-270.
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Objective: To investigate whether climate change has impacted on the nature of the obsessions or compulsions experienced by patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Methods: The sample comprised 50 patients with OCD checking subtype who had presented at the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at The University of Sydney seeking treatment during the period March 2008 to November 2009. Details of the type of obsessions and compulsions directly related to climate change phenomena were identified. Results: Fourteen of the 50 participants (28%) were identified as having OCD concerns directly related to climate change. The most frequent concerns involved electricity, water and gas wastage. Less frequent concerns included pets dying of thirst and one participant was concerned about house damage due to floors cracking, pipes leaking; roof problems and white ant activity. Compulsions included checking and rechecking pet water bowls, light switches, taps, stoves, skirting boards, pipes, roofs and wooden structures. While these behaviours are not particularly unusual for people with this condition, it was the rationale they provided for carrying them out that was surprising. Instead of checking and rechecking so as to prevent fire or flood, the rituals were specifically performed so as to reduce their global footprint, or respond to climate change-induced negative events. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate that the types of obsessions and compulsions experienced by 28% of our sample were directly aligned with the current issue of climate change and the perceived dangers associated with this phenomenon. To our knowledge this represents the first documentation of the significant impact of climate change on the nature of the concerns experienced by people with OCD checking subtype. We suggest that mental health professionals need to be aware of, and assess for the presence of such concerns.
Mitchison, D, Butow, P, Sze, M, Aldridge, L, Hui, R, Vardy, J, Eisenbruch, M, Iedema, R & Goldstein, D 2012, 'Prognostic communication preferences of migrant patients and their relatives', Psycho-Oncology, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 496-504.
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AbstractObjectives: Migrant patients comprise a significant proportion of Western oncologists' clientele. Although previous research has found that barriers exist in the communication between ethnically diverse patients and health professionals, little is known about their personal preferences for communication and information, or the concordance of views held between patients and family members.Methods: Seventy‐three patients (31 Anglo‐Australians, and 20 Chinese, 11 Arabic and 11 Greek migrants) and 65 relatives (25 Anglo‐Australians, and 23 Chinese, 11 Arabic and 7 Greek migrants) were recruited through nine Sydney oncology clinics. Following prognostic consultations, participants were interviewed in their preferred language about their experiences and ideals regarding information and communication with oncologists. Interviews were audio‐taped, translated and transcribed, and then thematically analysed using N‐Vivo software.Results: Consistency was found in patient preferences, regardless of ethnicity, in that almost all patients preferred prognostic information to be delivered in a caring and personalised manner from an authoritative oncologist. Contrary to previous research, migrant patients often expressed a desire for prognostic disclosure. Discordance was found between migrant patients and their families. These families displayed traditional non‐Western preferences of non‐disclosure of prognosis and wanted to actively influence consultations by meeting with oncologists separately beforehand and directing the oncologists on what and how information should be conveyed to patients.Conclusions: Many of the communication issues facing patients in the metastatic cancer setting are shared amongst Anglo‐Australian and migrant patients alike. Understanding the dynam...
Seymour, KJ & Clifford, CWG 2012, 'Decoding conjunctions of direction-of-motion and binocular disparity from human visual cortex', Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 107, no. 9, pp. 2335-2341.
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Motion and binocular disparity are two features in our environment that share a common correspondence problem. Decades of psychophysical research dedicated to understanding stereopsis suggest that these features interact early in human visual processing to disambiguate depth. Single-unit recordings in the monkey also provide evidence for the joint encoding of motion and disparity across much of the dorsal visual stream. Here, we used functional MRI and multivariate pattern analysis to examine where in the human brain conjunctions of motion and disparity are encoded. Subjects sequentially viewed two stimuli that could be distinguished only by their conjunctions of motion and disparity. Specifically, each stimulus contained the same feature information (leftward and rightward motion and crossed and uncrossed disparity) but differed exclusively in the way these features were paired. Our results revealed that a linear classifier could accurately decode which stimulus a subject was viewing based on voxel activation patterns throughout the dorsal visual areas and as early as V2. This decoding success was conditional on some voxels being individually sensitive to the unique conjunctions comprising each stimulus, thus a classifier could not rely on independent information about motion and binocular disparity to distinguish these conjunctions. This study expands on evidence that disparity and motion interact at many levels of human visual processing, particularly within the dorsal stream. It also lends support to the idea that stereopsis is subserved by early mechanisms also tuned to direction of motion.
Liu, L & Kager, R 1970, 'Non-native tone perception from infant to adult: How consistent and flexible is it?', Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Speech Prosody, SP 2012, pp. 346-349.
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Dutch infants and adults are tested on their discrimination of a lexical tone contrast in Mandarin Chinese and a manipulated tone contrast differing solely in acoustic salience. Results show homogeneous tone discrimination pattern between adults and infants as early as 8-9 months. Specifically, Dutch infants and adults discriminate acoustic salient tonal contrast. When the salience is weakened, Dutch adults and infants after tonal perceptual reorganization phase fail to discriminate the non-native contrast. Their sensitivity is however enhanced with the help of statistical learning or training effect, showing the flexibility of non-native tone perception.
