[Imagery in psychosis: EMDR as a new intervention in the treatment of delusions and auditory hallucinations]. / Mentale beelden bij psychose: EMDR als een nieuwe interventie bij het behandelen van stemmen en wanen.

BACKGROUND: Historically, psychotherapy has focused on the treatment of patients' verbal representations (thoughts) and has proved particularly successful in the cognitive behavioural treatment of psychosis. However, there is mounting evidence that visual representations (imagery) play an important role in the onset and maintenance of psychiatric disorders, including psychotic symptoms. There are indications that heightened emotionality and vividness of visual representations are associated with severity of psychotic experiences. This may imply that a reduction in the vividness and emotionality of the psychosis-related imagery can lessen the suffering and stress, caused by the the psychotic symptoms. AIM: To introduce EMDR as a possible type of psychological treatment for patients suffering from psychosis-related imagery. METHOD: Three outpatients who had a psychotic disorder and suffered from auditory hallucinations and delusions were treated with EMDR in an average of six sessions. Treatment was performed by three therapists in different psychiatric institutions. All three were experienced in administrating CBT and EMDR. RESULTS: Treatment with EMDR reduced patients' level of anxiety, depression and the severity of psychotic symptoms. In addition, patients reported less avoidant behaviour and greater cognitive insight. CONCLUSION: The results of the study suggest that EMDR reduces the vividness and emotionality of imagery in psychosis which in turn alleviates the patients' psychotic symptoms. Further research into other possible types of interventions for the treatment of imagery in psychosis is recommended.

Identification and mapping of loci involved in motility, adsorption to wheat roots, colony morphology, and growth in minimal medium on the Azospirillum brasilense Sp7 90-MDa plasmid.

We have constructed a cosmid library of the Azospirillum brasilense Sp7 90-MDa plasmid (p90) and established the EcoRI restriction map of this plasmid. The central regions of cloned p90 DNA fragments from several recombinant cosmids were deleted by restriction endonuclease digestion and replaced by a DNA cassette encoding kanamycin resistance. Using these in vitro constructed deletions for marker exchange in Sp7, we made six different p90 deletion derivatives spanning all together 50% of the total length of p90. Comparison of the deletion derivatives with Sp7 for several properties revealed p90 loci involved in colony morphology, growth on minimal medium, motility, and adsorption to wheat roots. In analogy with the rhizobial symbiotic plasmids (pSym), we propose to denote the p90 plasmid as a rhizocoenotic plasmid (pRhico), carrying several genes involved in the A. brasilense-plant root interaction.

Construction of an Azospirillum brasilense Sp7 recA mutant.

Cosmid clones encoding the recA gene of Azospirillum brasilense were isolated by intergeneric complementation of an Escherichia coli recA mutant. Site-directed Tn5 mutagenesis and subcloning of one complementing cosmid clone allowed us to localize the A. brasilense recA gene on a 1.2 kb DNA fragment. One Tn5 insertion that inactivates the cloned recA gene was crossed into the chromosome of A. brasilense by marker exchange. The resulting A. brasilense recA mutant showed increased sensitivity to the DNA methylating agent methyl methanesulfonate and to ultraviolet light and had at least one hundredfold reduced recombinational activity compared to the parent strain.

Identification of insertion sequence element IS427 in pTiT37 plasmid DNA of an Agrobacterium tumefaciens T37 isolate.

The isolation and characterization of an insertion sequence (IS) element, IS427, from Agrobacterium tumefaciens T37 is described. IS427 is present in three nonidentical copies on the pTiT37 plasmid. The copy that was isolated through transposition on the entrapment vector pUCD800 contains at its ends a 16-bp imperfect inverted repeat and generates a 2-bp duplication of the target DNA. IS427 does not show homology with previously characterized IS elements of A. tumefaciens, based on hybridization experiments and/or sequence comparison.