Life Goals Increase Self-regulation among Male Patients with Alcohol Use Disorder.

BACKGROUND: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been conceptualized as a chronic self-regulation failure. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to examine the most probable pathways related to self-regulation among patients with AUD. In this study, a hypothetical model was proposed that focused on the relationship between risk factors (extrinsic life goals, emotion dysregulation) and protective factors (intrinsic life goals, self-control, and abstinence self-efficacy). METHODS: Male patients with AUD (N = 188) were recruited from alcohol centers of four psychiatric hospitals between March 2015 and September 2015. All participants completed psychological assessments, including the Future Oriented Goals Scale (FOGS), the Alcohol Abstinence Self-Efficacy Scale (AASE), the Brief Self-Control Scale (BSCS), and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) as well as sociodemographic characteristics. RESULTS: The final model was found to be a good fit to data. In testing indirect effects, it was shown that intrinsic life goals via emotion dysregulation, self-control, and alcohol abstinence self-efficacy decreased alcohol self-regulation failure. On the other hand, extrinsic life goals via these factors increased alcohol self-regulation failure. Conclusions/Importance: These results suggest that intrinsic goals might indirectly be the important and protective factors for AUD. Moreover, the findings implicate that self-regulation through goal setting may be necessary to alleviate symptoms and improve function among patients with AUD.

Prodromal dementia with lewy bodies manifesting as sertraline-induced parkinsonism: a case report.

OBJECTIVE: To describe a patient with prodromal dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) manifesting as sertraline-induced parkinsonism. DESIGN: Case report. SETTING: Tertiary referral center. PATIENT: A 75-year-old man who initially presented with anxiety and depression along with mild cognitive impairment, later developed drug-induced parkinsonism because of sertraline treatment, and eventually showed symptoms and signs of probable DLB. INTERVENTIONS: Sertraline treatment for depression. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: : Clinical examination, magnetic resonance imaging, neuropsychologic test, and cardiac I-metaiodobenzylguanidine scintigraphy. RESULTS: His parkinsonian symptoms, which became apparent after sertraline therapy, improved markedly after the discontinuation of the drug. When he started taking sertraline, he had no dementia but had mild cognitive impairment. However, he eventually showed most of the symptoms and signs to indicate probable DLB. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, there has been no report of sertraline-induced or aggravated parkinsonian motor symptoms in DLB patients. Our patient had a short period with neither dementia nor parkinsonism during the early stage of his illness, and this period might have been regarded as the preclinical stage of DLB in the natural course of his illness.

Association analysis of G72/G30 polymorphisms with schizophrenia in the Korean population.

Several studies examining the association between G72/G30 polymorphisms and schizophrenia in cohorts of various ethnic origins have recently been reported. The aim of the current study was to examine the genetic influence of the G72/G30 polymorphisms in the Korean population. Nine G72/G30 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped in 388 patients with schizophrenia and 367 normal controls from the Korean population. Based on statistical analyses, the positive associations of previous studies of other populations were not replicated in the present study. However, 2 of the 9 tested SNPs, rs778294 and rs947267, were found to be associated with the risk of schizophrenia after correction for multiple testing (P(cor)=0.03 and P(cor)=0.04, respectively). The rs778294 SNP, taken singly, had not been found to be associated with schizophrenia in previous studies, and the second SNP, rs947267, showed an opposite direction of genetic effect on schizophrenia risk here than in a previous study. Our association results were not consistent with those found in other populations, and, thus could be chance findings. Therefore, further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to confirm a risk allele for this gene if it exists.

Gender difference in event related potentials to masked emotional stimuli in the oddball task.

OBJECTIVE: We investigated gender differences in event-related potential (ERP) responses to subliminally presented threat-related stimuli. METHODS: Twenty-four participants were presented with threat-related and neutral pictures for a very brief period of time (17 ms). To explore gender differences in ERP responses to subliminally presented stimuli, we examined six ERP components [P1, N170, N250, P300, Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) and Late Positive Potential (LPP)]. RESULTS: The result revealed that only female participants showed significant increases in the N170 and the EPN in response to subliminally presented threat-related stimuli compared to neutral stimuli. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that female participants exhibit greater cortical processing of subliminally presented threat-related stimuli than male participants.