Regarding the notion of putative best practices in social neuroscience and science in general, we contend that following established procedures has advantages, but prescriptive uniformity in methodology can obscure flaws, bias thinking, stifle creativity, and restrict exploration. Generating hypotheses is at least as important as testing hypotheses. To illustrate this process, we describe the following exploratory study. Psychiatric patients have difficulties with social functioning that affect their quality of life adversely. To investigate these impediments, we compared the performances of patients with schizophrenia and those with bipolar disorder to healthy controls on a task that involved matching photographs of facial expressions to a faceless protagonist in each of a series of drawn cartoon emotion-related situations. These scenarios involved either a single character (Nonsocial) or multiple characters (Social). The Social scenarios were also Congruent, with everyone in the cartoon displaying the same emotion, or Noncongruent (with everyone displaying a different emotion than the protagonist should). In this preliminary study, both patient groups produced lower scores than controls (p < 0.001), but did not perform differently from each other. All groups performed best on the social-congruent items and worst on the social-noncongruent items (p < 0.001). Performance varied inversely with illness duration, but not symptom severity. Complete emotional, social, cognitive, or perceptual inability is unlikely because these patient groups could still do this task. Nevertheless, the differences we saw could be meaningful functionally and clinically significant and deserve further exploration. Therefore, we stress the need to continue developing novel, alternative ways to explore social cognition in patients with psychiatric disorders and to clarify which elements of the multidimensional process contribute to difficulties in daily functioning.

Our purpose in undertaking the present study was to examine the hypotheses proposed for explaining the frequent comorbidity of bipolar disorder and multiple sclerosis. One hypothesis posits that, when there is comorbidity. MS plays a causal role in psychiatric manifestations. Another suggests that both disorders have a common underlying physiological process that increases the likelihood of their co-occurrence. We examined two adult siblings with comorbidity and their relatives, including three generations of family members with psychiatric morbidity. We found an extensive multigenerational history of bipolar disorder in this family. This history would seem to support the hypothesis of a common underlying brain process (potentially genetically-based) to explain the comorbidity of BD and MS, but cannot clarify whether this comorbidity implies a relationship between the two disorders or merely reflects parallel processes of brain deterioration. We cannot, however, rule out the possibility of a subclinical MS-related process leading to the early manifestation of BD. with MS appearing much later in time, or even a third, undetermined factor, leading to familial comorbidity. Although we have insufficient information to support either hypothesis definitively, we present the familial cases as a springboard for a discussion of dilemmas related to teasing apart MS and BD comorbidity. Further observation of the clinical course of the younger family members, who have not yet shown any neurological signs, over the next few years may elucidate the current picture further.

Amygdala lesions result in emotional deficits, such as facial affect recognition, that occurs also in schizophrenic patients, especially paranoid, compared to non-paranoid. The volume of amygdala may be inversely correlated with the number of X chromosomes. Hippocampus lesions can produce symptoms that resemble both the positive and the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. However those volume reductions are not specific findings of schizophrenia, since they are also found in bipolar patients and even in normal elderly persons.

Previous research has suggested that a failure in processing contextual information may account for the heterogeneous clinical manifestations and cognitive impairments observed in schizophrenia. In the domain of language, context processing in schizophrenia has been investigated mostly with single-word semantic priming paradigms; however, natural language comprehension depends on more than semantic relations between words. The present study aimed to systematically assess sentence context effects in homonym meaning activation in patients with schizophrenia. Fourteen patients with schizophrenia and 14 normal controls matched to the patients on sex, age, education and parental education, were examined using a cross-modal priming paradigm. Primes were sentences biasing the first, second, or neither meaning of a sentence-final equibiased homonym; targets were related to either the first or the second meaning of the homonym and appeared after an interstimulus interval (ISI) of 0 ms or 750 ms. Patients with schizophrenia exhibited a trend towards facilitation of both target types following unbiased sentences at ISI = 0 ms, similar to controls. However, in contrast to the pattern of selective target facilitation exhibited by control subjects following first- or second meaning-biased sentences, no significant target facilitation was observed in patients in the same condition. At ISI = 750 ms, patients did no longer exhibit significant target facilitation in any sentence context condition. This pattern of results is compatible with the assumption of a combined impairment in lexical (automatic spreading of activation within the semantic network) and extralexical (working memory) processes in patients with schizophrenia.

Bone loss in women accelerates during perimenopause, and continues into old age. To-date, there has been little progress made in stratifying for fracture risk in premenopausal and early postmenopausal women. Epidemiologic data suggests that changes in serum FSH could predict decrements in bone mass during peri- and postmenopause. In bone, FSH stimulates osteoclast formation by releasing osteoclastogenic cytokines. Here, we address the evidence for bone loss across the menopausal transition, discuss strategies for detection and treatment of early postmenopausal osteoporosis, and describe the role FSH plays in physiology and likely in pathophysiology of early postmenopausal bone loss.

Objective: The Scale for the Assessment of Thought, Language and Communication (TLC) is a widely used instrument for the assessment of formal thought disorder. TLC disorders were initially conceptualized as having only two underlying dimensions, a negative and a positive one. But studies of the factorial structure of the TLC have not provided confirmation for the positive-versus-negative distinction. The aim of the present study was to assess the factorial structure of the Greek translation of the TLC. Method: Subjects were 103 patients (69 male, 34 female) with psychotic disorders randomly recruited from both inpatient and outpatient facilities. The TLC was assessed by two raters based on a 20 min clinical interview. Results: Principal component analysis with varimax rotation yielded a three-factor structure; the three factors consisted off items reflecting (i) disorganization of speech; (ii) peculiarities of speech; and (iii) verbosity. The disorganization factor could be further divided into two dimensions reflecting disturbances in the flow of ideas and in the structure of speech. Conclusion: The investigation of the factorial structure of the Greek translation of the TLC scale found no support for the positive-versus-negative distinction of TLC disorders. Three factors (disorganization, speech peculiarities, and verbal productivity) were found to underlie the variance of the scale.

AIM:To culturally adapt the diabetes- specific quality of life (QOL) instrument PedsQL 3.0 Diabetes Module (DM) and the generic QOL instrument PedsQL 4.0 Generic Core Scales (GCS) to the population of Greek diabetic children. Also, to evaluate QOL in youths with type 1 diabetes, compare it with that of healthy youths, and identify relationships between QOL and metabolic control and intensity of treatment.PATIENTS AND METHODS:Eighty nine (89) children and adolescents with type I diabetes and 89 without diabetes, all with their parents (2-18 years of age, diabetes duration>6 months) completed the Greek GCS. Those with diabetes also completed the Greek DM.RESULTS:Cronbach alpha coefficient of child and parent report of both instruments, in general approached 0.70, indicating their internal consistency reliability. Both instruments demonstrated positive intercorrelations with their total scores and subscales of DM demonstrated positive intercorrelations with total score of the generic instrument, supporting the validity of both instruments for the evaluation of QOL of Greek diabetic children. No statistically important differences were found among patient and parent report of diabetes and control group in both instruments. Exception was "Social functioning" in which children with diabetes reported better QOL. Growing age, female gender, large BMI, poor metabolic control and intensity of treatment did not influence QOL of children with diabetes.CONCLUSIONS:Greek PedsQL GCS and DM have sufficient acceptability, reliability and validity so as to be used for the purposes of a comparative study. Youth with diabetes reported similar QOL with non-diabetic youth of the same age and socioeconomic status.

There are several reports of periodic psychotic disorders that appear in connection with the various phases of the menstrual cycle. Although the pathogenesis of menstrual psychosis has not been systematically investigated, it appears that it might be linked to an estrogen cascade that follows a period of sustained high estrogen levels, as in the case in anovulatory cycles. We present a case of psychosis associated with the menstrual cycle in a patient with polycystic ovary syndrome, a disorder typically characterized by anovulatory cycles, in whom the restoration of normal menstruation with use of metformine led to significant improvement of psychotic symptoms.

Background It has been suggested that several of the heterogeneous manifestations of schizophrenia could be dependent on a specific impairment in the representation and maintenance of context information. In the domain of language, a number of studies have shown disordered use of singleword contexts in patients with schizophrenia; however, natural language comprehension generally involves longer sequences of words, such as sentences. The aim of the present study was to review findings regarding the use of sentence context in schizophrenia.

Our purpose in undertaking the present study was to develop norms for the Greek population for the Clock Drawing Test (CDT), using a systematic scoring procedure, and to explore the influence of demographic factors on the performance of healthy individuals. We administered the CDT to 223 healthy adults and scored it according to the method of Freedman et al. (1994). In 136 of the participants, we also measured global cognitive status with the Mini-Mental State Examination. We found that both age and level of education contributed to CDT performance. Interestingly, CDT performance was relatively consistent across the ages between 14-59 years, showing a marked decline after 60 and another decline after 70. Therefore, we concluded that CDT performance is relatively resistant to the effects of age for those below 60 years old. We present preliminary normative data for the Greek population stratified by age and level of education. Further research should include more extensive sampling of elderly participants (>60 years old) with varying levels of education, in order to establish more reliable norms for the elderly.

The purpose in undertaking the present study was to investigate humor appreciation in patients with schizophrenia. Moreover, we sought to explore the potential relationship of humor appreciation with measures of psychopathology and cognitive functioning among the patients. Thirty-six patients with schizophrenia were compared with 31 normal controls matched for age, sex, and education on a computerized test comprising captionless cartoons: Penn's Humor Appreciation Test (PHAT). The patients were also evaluated on the symptom dimensions derived from the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (positive symptoms, negative symptoms, cognitive symptoms, depression, and excitement), as well as a battery of neuropsychological tests measuring executive functions, attention, working memory, verbal and visual memory, visuospatial ability, and psychomotor speed. Patients with schizophrenia had significantly lower scores on the PHAT than normal controls. The patients' performance on the PHAT correlated with scores on Penn's Continuous Performance Test, the Stroop Color-Word Test, and the phonological subscale of the Greek Verbal Fluency Test. Our findings indicated impaired humor appreciation among patients with schizophrenia. The relationship found between the appreciation of captionless cartoons involved an incongruous detail and performance on a broad neuropsychological battery suggested that the deficit in humor appreciation in schizophrenia could be attributed to impairment in more basic neurocognitive domains, namely, selective and sustained attention as well as phonological word fluency.

We investigated previously reported contradictory findings regarding the nature of deficits in emotion perception among patients with schizophrenia. Some studies have concluded that such deficits are due to a generalized impairment in visual processing of faces, while others have found it to be restricted to facial emotional expressions. We examined 37 patients and 32 healthy controls, matched on age and education, using three computerized tests: matching facial identity, matching facial emotional expressions, and discrimination of subtle differences in the valence of facial emotional expressions. Our results showed impaired matching of emotions in patients with schizophrenia. This impairment did not manifest on tasks that depended on perceiving the identity of faces or cues of the relative valence of facial emotional expressions. Our findings support the differential deficit hypothesis of emotion perception in schizophrenia.

Patients with bipolar disorder present deficits in facial emotion perception, both during a manic episode as well as upon recovery. Our goal in the present study was to investigate the ability of remitted patients with bipolar disorder to perceive affective prosody and to explore potential differences in the specific emotions that are troublesome for them. Participants included 19 patients with bipolar disorder I, currently in remission, and 22 healthy comparison subjects, matched on age, education, and gender. An affective prosody test (APT) was administered to all participants. Bipolar patients had significantly lower overall scores on the APT than healthy individuals. This impairment was specific to female patients and certain emotions (e.g., fear and surprise).

The purpose of the present study was to investigate humor appreciation in a group of remitted patients with bipolar disorder. We examined 19 patients (8 men) with bipolar disorder I, currently remitted, and 22 (9 men) healthy controls, matched on age, education, and gender, on a computerized test comprising captionless cartoons, the Penn's Humor Appreciation Test (PHAT). Residual manic symptoms were evaluated with the Young Mania Rating Scale and residual depressive symptoms with the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale. Patients with bipolar disorder performed worse than the healthy group on the PHAT, but this difference was not statistically significant. Performance on the PHAT did not significantly correlate with age of onset and duration of illness, or with residual manic or depressive symptoms measured by Young Mania Rating Scale and Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale, respectively. Humor appreciation, based on captionless cartoons, in bipolar disorder does not seem to be deficient at least during remission, suggesting that this high-order cognitive function may not be considered a trait deficit of the disorder.

Background Patients suffering end stage renal disease (ESRD) are vulnerable to exhibit cognitive deficits due to uremia or other medical parameters. Several studies demonstrated that hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis have beneficial effects on attention, psychomotor speed, memory and several cognitive domains. The purpose of this study was to investigate differences regarding cognitive functioning among patients suffering ESRD, comparing two treatment methods: hemodialysis vs. peritoneal dialysis.

Summary Component: role limitations-emotional, social functioning, and mental health] and the Health Status item from the EUROQoL-5D. Psychopathology was assessed with the five symptom dimensions from PANSS: positive, negative, cognitive, depression, and excitement symptoms. Results Significant intercorrelations were found among QLS subscales: IRP with IRF [r(38) = 0.65, p < 0.001], IF [r(38) = 0.85, p < 0.001], and COA [r(38) = 0.70, p <0.001]; IRF with IF [r(38) = 0.74, p < 0.001] and COA [r(40) = 0.62, p < 0.001]; IF with COA [r(38) = 0.74, p < 0.001]. Also, significant intercorrelations were found between subjective quality of life ratings: Physical Component-SF-36 with Mental Component-F-36 [r(38) = 0.76, p < 0.001] and Health Status [r(38) = 0.70, p = 0.001]; Mental Component-36 with Health Status [r(38) = 0.67, p = 0.001]. However, the four QLS subscales did not correlate with patient-reported quality of life ratings, except IRP with Mental Component-F-36 [r(38) = 0.42, p = 0.01]. Negative symptoms were significantly related with scores on the IPR [r(38) = -0.77, p = 0.001], IRF [r(38) = -0.46, p = 0.01], IF [r(38) = -0.70, p = 0.001], and COA [r(38) = 0.63, p = 0.001], whereas cognitive symptoms with scores on the IPR [r(38) = -0.37, p = 0.05] and IF [r(38) = -0.33, p = 0.05]. Mental Component was significantly correlated with positive symptoms [r(38) = -0.37, p = 0.05] and negative symptoms [r(38) = -0.39, p = 0.05], while Health Status was significantly associated with depression [r(38) = -0.32, p = 0.05]. No other significant relationships were found between quality of life scales and symptom ratings.