Imagery re-scripting for PTSD: session content and its relation to symptom improvement.

Imagery rescripting (ImRs) is a therapy technique that, unlike traditional re-living techniques, focuses less on exposure and verbal challenging of cognitions and instead encourages patients to directly transform the intrusive imagery to change the depicted course of events in a more desired direction. However, a comprehensive account of how and in what circumstances ImRs brings about therapeutic change is required if treatment is to be optimised, and this is yet to be developed. The present study reports on the development of a coding scheme of ImRs psychotherapy elements identified in the literature as potential ImRs mechanisms. The codes were assessed in relation to short-term outcomes of 27 individuals undergoing ImRs for post-traumatic stress disorder. The timing of the change in the image, degree of activation of the new image and associated cognitive, emotional and physiological processes, self-guided rescripting, rescript believability, narrative coherence and cognitive and emotional shift were identified as being related to symptom change and so are potentially important factors for the re-scripting process.

Obsessive compulsive symptoms and the simulation of future negative events.

OBJECTIVES: To explore whether Kahneman and Tversky's (1982) simulation heuristic might help account for why the obsessions of people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) are so compelling to them. It was predicted that participants would be better able to simulate a scenario relevant to a central OCD fear than they would scenarios related to other OCD and non-OCD fears and that how well participants simulated feared scenarios would be associated with higher ratings of subjective probability for that outcome and consequently greater worry. DESIGN: Individuals with obsessive compulsive symptoms mentally simulated hypothetical scenarios so as to enable comparison of a personally relevant to less relevant scenarios. METHODS: Thirty participants recruited from OCD support groups simulated four scenarios each and completed symptom and relevant construct measures. RESULTS: Personally relevant scenarios were better simulated than less relevant scenarios. 'Goodness of simulation' (GOS) was related to worry about the feared outcome, but this was not mediated by raised subjective probabilities. GOS correlated with OCD symptomatology, anxiety, and depression but not with cognitive variables thought to be related to OCD phenomenology. CONCLUSION: The overall findings converge with recent literature (O'Connor, 2002) emphasizing the importance of imagination and imaginary narratives in fuelling OCD symptoms.

A turbulent wake as a tracer of 30,000 years of Mira's mass loss history.

Mira is one of the first variable stars ever discovered and it is the prototype (and also the nearest example) of a class of low-to-intermediate-mass stars in the late stages of stellar evolution. These stars are relatively common and they return a large fraction of their original mass to the interstellar medium (ISM) (ref. 2) through a processed, dusty, molecular wind. Thus stars in Mira's stage of evolution have a direct impact on subsequent star and planet formation in their host galaxy. Previously, the only direct observation of the interaction between Mira-type stellar winds and the ISM was in the infrared. Here we report the discovery of an ultraviolet-emitting bow shock and turbulent wake extending over 2 degrees on the sky, arising from Mira's large space velocity and the interaction between its wind and the ISM. The wake is visible only in the far ultraviolet and is consistent with an unusual emission mechanism whereby molecular hydrogen is excited by turbulent mixing of cool molecular gas and shock-heated gas. This wind wake is a tracer of the past 30,000 years of Mira's mass-loss history and provides an excellent laboratory for studying turbulent stellar wind-ISM interactions.