Difficulties in emotion regulation and impulse control during cocaine abstinence.

RATIONALE: Prior research has shown that cocaine dependence is associated with dysfunction of brain systems involved in emotions and motivational states. OBJECTIVES: To examine whether difficulties in emotion regulation are associated with early cocaine abstinence using the recently validated Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). METHOD: Recently abstinent treatment-seeking cocaine patients (n=60) completed the DERS during their first week of inpatient treatment and at discharge (3-4 weeks later), and scores were compared with community controls (n=50). RESULTS: Compared with controls, cocaine-dependent individuals reported difficulties relating to understanding emotions, managing emotions and impulse control in the first week of abstinence. With continued abstinence, cocaine-dependent individuals showed continued difficulties only in impulse control. CONCLUSION: Cocaine-dependent individuals report emotion regulation difficulties, particularly during early abstinence. Additionally, protracted distress-related impulse control problems suggest potential relapse vulnerability.

Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief: factor structure and convergent validity in inpatient adolescents.

We examined the internal consistency, factor structure, and validity of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief (SPQ-B). Two hundred thirty-seven psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents were administered the SPQ-B and a battery of well-established self-report instruments. The SPQ-B demonstrated adequate internal consistency. Exploratory factor analysis provided mixed support for the SPQ-B 3-factor structure of interpersonal deficits, cognitive-perceptual deficits, and disorganization. The Interpersonal and Cognitive-Perceptual subscales demonstrated convergent and discriminant relationships with other measures of interpersonal impairment and cognitive abnormalities. We concluded that the SPQ-B is a promising measure for evaluating schizotypal personality disorder features, specifically interpersonal and cognitive-perceptual deficits, with adolescent psychiatric inpatients.

A comparison of the effectiveness of brief versus traditional functional analyses.

The study compared a brief and an extended (i.e., traditional) functional analyses with three adults with serious developmental disabilities. Two of the subjects exhibited high levels of aggressive behavior, whereas the third engaged in self-injury. Both analyses examined conditions such as tangible reinforcement, attention, demand, alone and play (i.e., baseline). The brief functional analysis also included functional communication training in which the subjects learned a relevant mand. The brief and extended functional analyses revealed the same controlling variables in all cases, but the brief functional analyses took less than 20% of the time in analog conditions as the extended analyses. These results further the case for the utility of brief functional analyses. We caution, however, that behavior analysts should not generalize from a study that involved only three subjects and that brief functional analyses may be particularly sensitive to establishing operations.

The impact of functional analysis methodology on treatment choice for self-injurious and aggressive behavior.

Self-injurious behavior (SIB) and aggression have been the concern of researchers because of the serious impact these behaviors have on individuals' lives. Despite the plethora of research on the treatment of SIB and aggressive behavior, the reported findings have been inconsistent regarding the effectiveness of reinforcement-based versus punishment-based procedures. We conducted a literature review to determine whether a trend could be detected in researchers' selection of reinforcement-based procedures versus punishment-based procedures, particularly since the introduction of functional analysis to behavioral assessment. The data are consistent with predictions made in the past regarding the potential impact of functional analysis methodology. Specifically, the findings indicate that, once maintaining variables for problem behavior are identified, experimenters tend to choose reinforcement-based procedures rather than punishment-based procedures as treatment for both SIB and aggressive behavior. Results indicated an increased interest in studies on the treatment of SIB and aggressive behavior, particularly since 1988.

Matching training procedures to outcomes. A behavioral and quantitative analysis.

To analyze the effects of matching the prompting procedure used in training to the specific behavior chain to be taught, 3 students with mild to moderate retardation were taught four independent tasks: making a bagged lunch, playing a matching game with a peer, ordering food at a restaurant, and participating in a social conversation. Following baseline, all 3 students were exposed to one of two types of training procedures for each task: a least-to-most prompting procedure or a most-to-least prompting procedure. The type of training procedure was counter-balanced across students and tasks, whereas performance on the tasks was evaluated within a combination of a multiple-baseline design across participants and multiple-probe design across tasks. When the method of prompting was matched to the naturally occurring discriminative stimulus (SD) of the training stimulus, it greatly affected acquisition and maintenance of the skill in terms of differences in levels of and variability of performance. The most-to-least method of prompting, the matched method in these cases, was more efficient and effective for acquisition and generalization of the bagged-lunch and matching-game skills. The least-to-most method, the matched method in these cases, was more efficient and effective for social questions and ordering-food skills.

Relations of five-factor model antagonism facets with personality disorder symptomatology.

The Five-Factor Model of Personality (FFM) has been used to conceptualize personality disorders as maladaptive variants of normal personality traits. This study assessed the convergence of 6 lower order traits, or facets, of FFM agreeableness versus antagonism (trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness) with antisocial, borderline, narcissistic, paranoid, and passive-aggressive personality traits. Interview-based scores for all of the antagonism facets except compliance demonstrated the expected relations with these personality disorder traits. Results for self-reported facet scores were less clearly supportive, only yielding convergence for straightforwardness and altruism with respect to antisocial traits. It is suggested that future investigations of the FFM, or other normal personality trait models, and personality disorder symptomatology include analyses at the lower order trait level.

Septal lesions impair rats' Morris test performance but facilitate left-right response differentiation.

Lesions in the septum impaired performance on the Morris test, a task in which the rat locates a hidden escape platform by use of fixed landmarks, but facilitated a water maze-based left-right response differentiation, a task in which the rat finds a hidden escape ramp by means of its internal sense of direction. These results are interpreted as supporting an allocentric/egocentric dichotomy with respect to navigation, and support the notion that rats approach spatial problems with a hierarchy of potential solutions in which allocentric solutions take precedence over egocentric ones. The septal lesions are inferred to disrupt the allocentric mapping system.

Idiopathic renal infarction.

We describe the course of acute renal infarction, without a demonstrable cause, in an otherwise healthy young male. Renal function was not compromised, and the infarct failed to progress. Literature on relevant diagnostic and therapeutic modalities is reviewed.

Memory. When less is more.

Loss of memory for the characteristics of stimuli (i.e., forgetting of stimulus attributes) can lead to increases in behavior, a consequence quite different from the impairments associated with the forgetting of responses. Evidence from animal and human research for the forgetting of stimuli as a distinct memory principle is presented, and the methodological and conceptual implications of this pervasive type of memory loss are considered. Malleability of eyewitness memory, cognitive confusions, sleeper and familiarity effects, and temporal distortions in inferences and attributions are among the varied behavioral phenomena that can be accounted for in terms of forgetting of stimulus attributes.

Evaluation of a new mechanical atherectomy system (TRAC) in normal canine coronary arteries. Transluminal Rotary Atherectomy System.

BACKGROUND: The feasibility and safety of a new mechanical atherectomy device, the Transluminal Rotary Atherectomy System (TRAC), for coronary application was examined in vivo in eight dogs. The system operates over a standard balloon coronary guide wire and excises and removes the atherosclerotic material in a single application. METHODS: The TRAC was introduced percutaneously using routine cardiac catheterization technique in four open-chest dogs (acute experiments) and in four closed-chest dogs (chronic experiments). RESULTS: Coronary angiography at the end of the procedure and 1-3 days later demonstrated normal coronary arteries without evidence of dissection, perforation, spasm, or thrombus formation. Macroscopic examination revealed perivascular bleeding along the treated coronary arteries in two out of eight dogs. Microscopic examination of these arteries demonstrated minimal endothelial peeling. Histology of the other coronary arteries demonstrated normal intact blood vessels without evidence for thrombus formation. CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that it is feasible and relatively safe to introduce and operate the new TRAC mechanical atherectomy system in the normal coronary arteries of a beating dog heart.

Partial callosotomy and left-right response differentiation in the rat: separate anterior and posterior facilitatory effects.

Earlier research demonstrated that complete section of the corpus callosum in the rat reduced the number of trials required to acquire a left-right response differentiation (LRRD). This study was designed to investigate whether the facilitatory effect on LRRD could be produced by section of an anatomical subdivision of the callosum. Rats with sections of the anterior or posterior corpus callosum mastered the LRRD task faster than sham subjects, but more slowly than rats with total callosal section; section of the middle portion of the callosum had no such effect. The partial facilitatory effects of anterior and posterior callosotomy appear to be independent, and suggest that the callosal intermixing of lateral information, which contributes to left-right confusion, occurs at both the sensory and motor levels of processing.

Improved acquisition of left-right response differentiation in the rat following section of the corpus callosum.

Split-brained rats learned a left-right response differentiation in a water maze significantly faster than rats with sham surgery. It is unlikely that this superiority resulted from improvement in performance variables since callosotomized rats did not differ significantly from sham operates in speed of acquisition of a brightness discrimination in the same apparatus. Additionally, callosotomy likewise had no effect on the acquisition of a water-maze task requiring consistent unilateral responses. The superiority of the callosotomized animals in forming the left-right response differentiation supports a hypothesis implicating the forebrain commissures in left-right confusion.

Eosinophilic cystitis in children.

Eosinophilic cystitis is an uncommon inflammatory disorder of the urinary bladder which causes irritative voiding symptoms and may mimic rhabdomyosarcoma radiographically. In children, eosinophilic cystitis has been previously reported to be self-limiting and requires no specific therapy. Reported herein is a case of a nine-year-old girl in whom eosinophilic cystitis recurred following antireflux surgery, raising the question of an association of eosinophilic cystitis with local trauma such as bladder surgery. Consideration should be given to pretreatment with steroids and antihistamines prior to surgery in these patients.

Bladder outlet obstruction versus impaired detrusor contractility: the role of outflow.

The uroflow curves of 45 men with either bladder outlet obstruction or impaired detrusor contractility were retrospectively reviewed. The definitive diagnoses were attained by clinical and video-urodynamic studies with simultaneous detrusor pressure and uroflow measurements. Eight parameters were analyzed to determine if uroflow can differentiate obstruction from impaired contractility. There were no differences between the 2 groups in any of the parameters. This finding suggests that uroflowmetry as a single examination cannot distinguish between bladder outlet obstruction and impaired detrusor contractility.