Partial Quenching of Parametrical Tetragonality of a Chromium(III) Complex by Pressure Tuning.

The ligand-field spectrum of [Cr(NH(3))(4)F(2)]AsF(6) has been pressure-tuned up to 100 kbar. The parametrical analysis shows that the absolute values of the two independent tetragonalities of the chromophoric ion both decrease with increasing isotropic pressure so that the molecular ion becomes more isotropic. Moreover, the Cr-N single bonds appear to be more compressible than the Cr-F bonds, for which it is parametrically clear that they have a partial multiple-bond character. While the spectrochemical parameter for F(-), Delta(F), increases with pressure, its two components Delta(sigma)(F) and Delta(pi)(F) decrease. It is confirmed that nephelauxetism increases with pressure.

DSM-III-R Axis IV: clinician reliability and comparability to patients' reports of stressor severity.

Stress has long been considered an important precipitant to the development or exacerbation of psychopathology (Selye 1980). However, it has been difficult to reach agreement on how to measure stressors reliably, and whether stressors should be assessed using an objective clinical rating or a subjective appraisal (Mazure and Druss 1995). When the DSM-III multiaxial diagnostic system was derived, Axis IV was designed to provide a mechanism for objectively rating the severity of psychosocial stressors that contributed to the development or exacerbation of psychiatric disorders (Williams 1985). With the continued use of this nosological system, DSM-III-R Axis IV has become the most commonly used assessment of stressors in clinical settings today. The current work focuses on whether DSM-III-R Axis IV can be used reliably by clinicians generating objective ratings, and on whether these objective ratings reflect patients' appraisals of the severity of their psychosocial stressors. Based on this work, options for future use of Axis IV are discussed.

Psychometric properties of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire for adolescents.

Items of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ) were rephrased and simplified to make them appropriate for younger subjects. This adolescent form of the DEQ (DEQ-A) was administered to high school students; a factor analysis revealed three factors that were highly congruent in female and male students and with the three factors of the original DEQ. Internal consistency as well as short- and long-term reliability for each of the 3 DEQ-A factors were at acceptable levels. Each factor correlated highly with its counterpart factor in the original DEQ, especially the Dependency and Self-Criticism factors. Correlations of the DEQ-A factors with other measures of depression essentially replicate relationships found between these measures of depression and the original DEQ for adults. The reliability, internal consistency, and validity of the DEQ-A indicate that it could be useful in studying depressive experiences in younger adolescents.

Ratings of emotion in faces are influenced by the visual field to which stimuli are presented.

This experiment was designed to assess the differential impact of initially presenting affective information to the left versus right hemisphere on both the perception of and response to the input. Nineteen right-handed subjects were presented with faces expressing happiness and sadness. Each face was presented twice to each visual field for an 8-sec duration. The electro-oculogram (EOG) was monitored and fed back to subjects to train them to keep their eyes focused on the central fixation point as well as to eliminate trials confounded by eye movement artifact. Following each slide presentation, subjects rated the intensity of the emotional expression depicted in the face and their emotional reaction to the face on a series of 7-point rating scales. Subjects reported perceiving more happiness in response to stimuli initially presented to the left hemisphere (right visual field) compared to presentations of the identical faces to the right hemisphere (left visual field). This effect was predominantly a function of ratings on sad faces. A similar, albeit less robust, effect was found on self-ratings of happiness (the degree to which the face elicited the emotion in the viewer). These data challenge the view that the right hemisphere is uniquely involved in all emotional behavior. The implications of these findings for theories concerning the lateralization of emotional behavior are discussed.

Frontal and parietal electroencephalogram asymmetry in depressed and nondepressed subjects.

High vs. low scorers on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were compared on measures of resting EEG activation asymmetry from frontal and parietal brain regions. Depressed subjects showed greater relative right frontal activation compared with nondepressed subjects. Parietal asymmetry did not distinguish between the groups. These data support the hypothesis of right hemisphere hyperactivation in the frontal region of depressed individuals and are consistent with the growing body of literature which suggests that the left and right frontal regions may be differentially specialized for particular positive and negative affects.