[Role of music activities in psychiatric rehabilitation].

INTRODUCTION: In Hungary, the use of music in rehabilitation is a scarcely researched area. In this study we aimed to examine the structure, purpose, and role of music activities conducted at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Szeged. We studied the rehabilitation programs of psychiatric patients and the role of music activities in healing and reintegration. All of this has been compared to the structure, timing and effectiveness of music therapy methods used worldwide. METHODS: The 10-person sample consisted of patients participating in the rehabilitation program of the department, who agreed to attend music sessions there over a two-week interval. During the first and last interventions, we mea - sured patient satisfaction with life, perceived social support, and levels of depression and trait anxiety. In addition, we measured changes in anxiety during a single music session, and a short structured interview was completed with each patient at the time of the last session. RESULTS: Our results show that patients' perceived social support increased (t[9]=-3,61, p< 0,01) during the intervention period - especially regarding the family dimension (t[9]=-2,57 , p=0,03). The level of anxiety decreased (t[9]=2,42, p=0,03), and the level of depression also showed a marginally significant decrease (t[9]=2,11, p= 0,06). No significant differences were found in the changes of life satisfaction and the immediate anxiety-relieving effect of music practice. The content of the interviews however confirmed that there is indeed an immediate anxiety-relieving effect of a single music session. DISCUSSION: To summarise the quantitative and qualitative data, it can be stated that the music activities of the department are several points in line with the international practice, and operate with low risk and high efficiency. The work done here has confirmed that music activities can be an effective method along with the clinical treatments and play an important role in the rehabilitation process.

Hypnosis Attenuates Executive Cost of Prospective Memory.

Prospective memory is the ability to formulate and carry out actions at the appropriate time or in the appropriate context. This study aimed to identify the effect of hypnosis on prospective memory performance and to analyze the involvement of executive control processes in intention realization in a hypnotically altered state of consciousness. In 1 experiment, manipulating hypnotic instruction in a within-subject fashion, the authors explored the event-based prospective memory performance of 23 volunteers in 3 conditions: baseline, expectation, and execution. The primary result was that executing prospective memory responses, at the same accuracy rate, produced a significantly lower cost of ongoing responses in terms of response latency in the hypnotic state than in wake condition.

Different patterns of auditory information processing deficits in chronic schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with psychotic features.

With the development of DSM-V and ICD-11 the definitions of psychiatric disorders are under re-evaluation. The emphasis is shifted from distinct disorders to clusters defined not only by symptomatology, but also by underlying neurobiology and cognitive deficits. Bipolar disorder I (BD-I) and schizophrenia (SZ) are of special interest since their differential diagnosis is often problematic and they partially overlap in measures ranging from genetics to neurophysiology. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are one of the most studied factors but the results are still controversial, primarily in BD-I, where ERPs reflecting different stages of auditory information processing have been much less investigated. In this study, we aimed at investigating the changes of five auditory event-related potentials (P50 and N100 suppression, duration and pitch deviant mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3b) in 20 SZ and 20 BD-I patients with a history of psychosis and 21 healthy control subjects. Our data revealed substantial differences between the two patient groups. Only patients with SZ demonstrated impaired N100 suppression, shorter duration deviant MMN latency and attenuated P3b amplitude, while prolonged pitch deviant MMN latency was found to be characteristic of the BD-I group. No shared ERP abnormalities were observed among the patient groups. Our results indicate that SZ and BD-I are characterized by highly different neurophysiological profiles when measured in the same laboratory setting.

Two subgroups of schizophrenia identified by systematic cognitive neuropsychiatric mapping.

The description of the heterogeneous phenomenological, pathophysiological, and etiological nature of schizophrenia is under way; however, the relationships between heterogeneity levels are still unclear. We performed a robust cross-sectional study, including a systematic neuropsychological battery, assessment of clinical symptoms, neurological soft signs, morphogenetic anomalies and smell identification, and measurement of event-related potentials on 50 outpatients with schizophrenia in their compensated states. An explorative fuzzy cluster analysis revealed two subgroups in this sample that could be distinguished from each other on symptomatological, cognitive and neurological levels. The patterns of cognitive dysfunctions and neurological developmental anomalies equally indicate that there may be hemispherical differences between the patients belonging to the different clusters.

Effects of a hypnotically altered state of consciousness on intensification of semantic processing.

In a study of the linguistic processes involved in hypnosis, 22 volunteer medical students performed semantic and phonologic fluency tasks and then associative priming tests with 2 delay-lengths in waking alert and hypnotic conditions as well. The participants performed better during semantic than phonological fluency tests in alert and also in hypnotic states, and this difference was significantly greater in hypnosis. The increased semantic performance in hypnosis was accompanied by a decrease of the rule-offending errors. Significant semantic priming effects were detected in both states of consciousness in direct and indirect relations as well as in the automatic, intralexical level, and also when the extralexical control processes were activated. Overall, the results appear to show that the hypnotically altered state of consciousness produces significantly better performance in semantic information processing than can be elicited in alert waking conditions.