U Hegerl

..We present here the study protocol of a trial intended to study the efficacy and safety of methylphenidate in the initial treatment of acute mania...

..Main aims of the present study were to analyze long-term effects of this incidence and to compare them with overall national suicide data, as well as to investigate possible "anniversary effects"...

..We investigated whether under treatment with duloxetine pain improves earlier than mood...

..A mean difference of at least 3 points on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD-17) between active treatment and placebo has been proposed as cut-off score for clinical significance in antidepressant trials...

..We hypothesised that a low EEG-vigilance state immediately before a reaction task would entail a longer RT. Shorter RTs were expected for a high EEG-vigilance state...

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..To investigate the association of the change of painful physical symptoms (PPS) after 4 weeks, with the 6-month treatment outcomes of depressive symptoms in patients treated with duloxetine in clinical practice...

..The four-level intervention concept appears to be cost-effective and is presently implemented in many European regions...

..However, the evidence for effective preventive strategies is scarce. The protocol of a European research project to develop an optimized evidence based program for suicide prevention is presented...

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..Eight arguments are presented indicating that using this definition as a criterion for assessing the clinical utility of antidepressants in daily practice would risk erroneously discarding treatments with a clear benefit for patients...

..This raises the question concerning common neurobiological pathomechanisms and concerning common treatments...

..g., sleep spindles in EEG) under resting conditions with low external stimulation. The "paradoxical" antimanic effect of psychostimulants possibly results from their vigilance stabilizing properties...

..EAAD is mentioned by the European commission as a best practice example within the Green Paper 'Improving the mental health of the population: Towards a strategy on mental health for the European Union' (European Commission 2005)...

..On international level the European Alliance Against Depression (EAAD) was established 2004. Funded by the European Commission the four-level-programme is implemented in 17 European countries...

..psychiatriekonsil.de) available to physicians, psychotherapists and pharmacists, which provides advice, free of charge and anonymously, to all those seeking support on depressive or other psychiatric illnesses...

..The aim of this study was to analyze speed of onset of depressive episodes in patients with unipolar depression (UD) and bipolar affective disorders (BD)...

..Overall, sertraline is efficacious in primary-care patients with milder forms of depression. The superiority of cognitive-behavioural group therapy over guided self-help groups might partly be explained by 'nocebo' effects of the latter...

..Due to lacking clinical evidence, aspects of a pragmatic therapeutic approach in those patients are presented...

..Several countries have expanded their original model program into other regions or nationwide...

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..They are well proven for ADHD and have repeatedly been shown to have a paradoxical effect in manic patients. The proposed concept opens new approaches for the treatment of acute mania...

..Our findings show NSS in schizophrenic patients, independently of neuroleptics. Further, the hypothesis of lateralization of cerebral structures generating NSS towards the right hemisphere in schizophrenia is supported...

..These findings do not support the hypothesis of a serotonergic dysfunction in OCD patients...

..In animal and human data there is a growing amount of evidence that a strong loudness dependency of late auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP) is an indicator of low serotonergic activity and vice versa...

..Single-trial coupling might be a useful method in order to increase our knowledge about the functional neuroanatomy of "neural ensembles" coupled by 40 Hz oscillations...

..These findings indicate that schizophrenic patients with a reduced P3 have a higher risk of developing tardive dyskinesia and correspond clinically to a schizophrenic subgroup with a supposedly neurodevelopmental disturbance...

..The findings also support the concept that patients with OCD with early versus late age of onset differ in pathophysiological mechanisms and basal ganglia dysfunction...

..A novel technique for the kinematic analysis of emotionally induced facial expressions was applied to detect subtle mimic dysfunction in patients with depression...

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..The aim of the present study was to investigate this influence of skull and scalp thicknesses on event-related P300 potentials...

..This paper examines the efficacy of sertraline and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) among depressed patients with atypical features...

..In these selected regions, an analysis of the activation time-courses has been performed...

..The results are discussed in terms of the possibility that abnormalities in interhemispheric transfer may underlie the mechanisms of schizophrenia...

..Correlations between corpus callosum size and interhemispheric EEG coherence were investigated as measures of interhemispheric connectivity in patients with Alzheimer's disease...

..The rare cases of patients with 48-hour ultrarapid cycling allow close investigation of mood cycles in affective disorders, because rhythmic changes in psychopathologic state and biological parameters happen very precisely...

..We hypothesized that depressed patients draw and write significantly slower than controls and that motor disturbances become more pronounced under bi-manual demands...

..On the basis of this study, the authors propose to combine rTMS and facial expression analysis for further studies of the cortical modulation of emotions in humans...

..According to our results handedness should be assessed not only with the EHI, but also with the computer-aided analysis of hand-movements...

..SUMMARY: Our findings indicate that, while the thalamus might be involved in the pathogenesis of negative symptoms, thalamic volume reduction is not a required element in the pathophysiology of the schizophrenic phenotype...

..It is assumed that the P3 amplitude is related rather to abnormalities in the temporal lobe of schizophrenic patients...

..Therefore, it can be assumed that the handwriting skills reflect a state marker of the disease. Poorer handwriting skills on the manic days, as compared to the depressive ones, support the hypothesis of a low arousal in manic patients...

..A reduced P300 amplitude may characterize a subgroup of schizophrenic patients with a disposition to cognitive disturbances and incomplete remissions...

..The input-related processing stages (N100 and P200) were not altered, whereas later, the deviant and task-related processes (N200, frontal P300, parietal P300 and reaction time) were significantly prolonged in schizophrenia...

..In this prospective matched case-control study, hand movement analysis was conducted using a digitizing tablet (kinematical analysis)...

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..Taken together, the results indicate diminished neural responses in older compared to younger subjects especially in frontal, temporo-parietal and subcortical brain regions...

..Susceptibility of OCD patients with regard to emotional stimuli is less pronounced than in healthy subjects. This phenomenon is closely correlated to OCD symptoms and is state-dependent...

..Additionally, there is evidence from several studies with patients with affective disorders that a strong LDAEP predicts favourable response to a preventive lithium treatment...

..Since cognitive dysfunction can also be caused by ictal states, electroencephalography (EEG) is an essential tool for these conditions...

..Additionally, there is evidence from several studies with patients with affective disorders implicating a strong LDAEP as a predictor of favorable response to a preventive lithium treatment...

..The possible implications of the correlation between handedness and the extension of the right parietal PT are discussed and have to be elucidated by further studies...

..These results confirm assumptions that the current division between depression and anxiety might be debatable. Validity of screeners tested in our study was not affected by comorbid conditions (e.g., anxiety or somatoform disorders)...

..Attitude towards "suicide in old age" also changed significantly. The training program was effective in improving knowledge and attitudes of geriatric caregivers concerning depression and suicidality...

..Improving the care of affected persons requires a systematic research approach. The "Mental Health Research Network" contributes to research related to the optimisation of services for persons with mental disorders...

..A reduced amplitude of the auditory evoked P300 was interpreted as a trait marker of schizophrenia but reports about correlations between schizophrenic psychopathology and P300 amplitude indicate also a state character...

..Once again, our findings point to a hyperactivated cortical state also of temporo-parietal and hippocampal regions in OCD...

..This should be considered if routine depression screening should be widely introduced. Of course, the benefit of routine screening also depends on efforts made for treatment and monitoring of patients in whom depression was diagnosed...

..In a subgroup of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), motor soft signs, tics and other movement disorders can be observed, indicating a special pathogenetic involvement of basal ganglia...

..Therefore, the present study aimed at assessing accuracy of the unaided clinical diagnosis of the attending physicians, and the medical treatment situation in nursing home residents...

..Both patients with MCI and patients with probable AD exhibited loss of fine motor performance. Movements of AD patients were significantly less regular than those of healthy controls...

..It is not known how characteristics of suicide attempts vary with different forms of alcohol involvement. The aim of this study is to clarify the role of alcohol use disorder and acute alcohol consumption in suicide attempts...

..The limits of quantification were 5 and 2ng/ml for cotinine and nicotine, respectively. A simultaneous study was conducted to measure nicotine receptor availability and the vigilance in the same group of volunteers...

..Whereas seasonality was absent in male suicide attempters, the frequency of low-risk suicide attempts in females was 13.1% lower than expected in the spring...

..II: Computer-aided analysis of hand movements is a sensitive tool for the registration of differential pharmaceutical effects on hand-motor function in depression...

..For cognitive fMRI-research it therefore seems important to pay attention to vigilance switches in order to separate vigilance associated BOLD signal changes from those specifically related to cognition...

..The fact that many of the changes in the general population declined in the second year of the campaign, when activities were done with lower intensity, illustrates the need for permanent depression awareness action...

..The opposite correlations of neurophysiological data and clinical features, i.e. obsessions and compulsions, are suggestive of pathophysiological differences based on the presence of the respective cardinal symptoms of OCD...

..Movement disorders such as disturbances of fine motor co-ordination are a frequent phenomenon in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)...

..Especially pronounced effects were found for the attitudes towards depression and suicidality as well as treatability with antidepressants. These changes were stable, as indicated by the follow-up evaluation...

..Furthermore, the effects of participation in the forum on individual handling of the illness are examined...

..These findings indicate that in patients with mood cycles of 48h or less the switch process is closely linked to circadian aspects...

..ICA-based artefact correction already provides a powerful tool for muscle artefact rejection. More research is needed for determining reliable criteria to delineate myogenic from neurogenic components...

..In a pilot study it was investigated whether assessment of EEG-vigilance is useful for the prediction of treatment outcome in ADHD patients...

..We investigated whether better clinical outcome in depressed primary care patients is associated with receiving their preferred treatment...

..So far, LDAEP has been typically investigated with dipole source analysis, because with this method the primary and secondary auditory cortex (with a high versus low serotonergic innervation) can be separated at least in parts...

..Last but not least, the models are of high interest with respect to the theoretical background of important modules of cognitive-behavioural therapy and its acute and prophylactic effects...

..For a comprehensive understanding of the brain activity underlying the P300 paradigm, we have used a combination of EEG and fMRI to get a precise localization and a high-time resolution of the underlying brain activity...

..However, no effects were found with respect to the misconceptions about pharmacotherapy...

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..However, the effects of antidepressants on motor function in depression have rarely been analyzed systematically. Computerized methods allow the objective registration of drug-induced motor dysfunction and were applied in this study...

..The aim of the Nuremberg Alliance against Depression (NAD) is to establish and to assess the effectiveness of a four-level intervention program for improving the care of patients with depression...

..The aim of the current randomized prospective study was to investigate whether or not LDAEP also allows the differential prediction of treatment response to serotonergic versus noradrenergic antidepressants...

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..These results suggest that the loudness dependence of primary auditory cortex evoked activity is well suitable to assess serotonergic dysfunction in schizophrenia...

..CONCLUSIONS: The study provides evidence of a serotonergic dysfunction in patients with OCD and suggests a serotonergic component in the pathophysiology of the disorder...

..We speculate that the LD endophenotype depends more on genetic variations in components of the serotonergic system controlling release than on those controlling the uptake mechanism...

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..The available data are insufficient for a direct comparison between MAOIs and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors...

..In addition to major differences between responders and nonresponders in the rostral ACC, we have identified a nearby region in the midline orbito-frontal region...

..Here, a high LDAEP is supposed to reflect low central serotonergic activity. We present the first study comparing both approaches in the same group of patients...

..This review focuses on recent studies providing evidence for the validity of LD as an indirect serotonergic marker and highlights data on the clinical application in terms of prediction of treatment response in patients with depression...

..These results provide direct evidence for a close relationship between conscious effort and ACC activity and suggest the usefulness of the applied effort-self-rating...

..No associations between the electrophysiological and structural measurements could be detected. There were also no significant reductions of ERP and MRI measurements within the subgroup of patients with pronounced negative symptoms...

..The aim of our analysis was to investigate potential changes of white matter in schizophrenic patients compared to controls, and the relationship to clinical characteristics...

..4). These findings suggest a role of early ACC activation in effort-related decision making and provide a direct link between the N1 component and its corresponding BOLD signal...

..For the first time, in the present study hcrt levels were investigated in patients with a manic episode and compared with age-matched patients with MDD and controls...

..To our knowledge, this is the first electrophysiological investigation comparing the new atypical antipsychotics quetiapine, haloperidol, olanzapine with healthy subjects...

..In future, this approach can be used to differentiate specific and non-specific reward-related effects of rTMS on dopaminergic neurotransmission...