Robin M. Murray

Bio: Robin M. Murray is an academic researcher from King's College London. The author has contributed to research in topics: Psychosis & Schizophrenia. The author has an hindex of 171, co-authored 1539 publications receiving 116362 citations. Previous affiliations of Robin M. Murray include University of Cambridge & National Institutes of Health.

Psychosis in high-security and general psychiatric services: report from the UK700 and special hospitals' treatment resistant schizophrenia groups.

Abstract: Background Serious violence is an unusual but significant correlate of psychosis, and leads to the need for specialist secure psychiatric services. Most such service users have previously used general psychiatric services. Aims To examine diagnostic and socio-demographic differences between high-security psychiatric service users from their peers in community services. Method Two groups of patients with psychosis were compared: a national sample of high-security hospital residents, and a sample of patients in contact with general psychiatric services. Results Schizophrenia was the almost invariable diagnosis for all special hospital patients. White patients in the community sample were significantly more likely to have affective components to their illness compared with African—Caribbean patients; unlike those in special hospitals. There was a small excess in the proportion of African—Caribbean patients in the special hospital group, controlling for diagnosis, gender and locality. Men were overrepresented in this group. Conclusions Among patients with psychosis, having a diagnosis of schizophrenia and being male increase the likelihood of special hospital admission. Suggestions that ethnic minority patients are much more likely to have engaged in serious violence and need high-security placement were not borne out.

The effect of perinatal brain injury on dopaminergic function and hippocampal volume in adult life.

Abstract: Perinatal brain injuries, including hippocampal lesions, cause lasting changes in dopamine function in rodents, but it is not known if this occurs in humans. We compared adults who were born very preterm with perinatal brain injury to those born very preterm without perinatal brain injury, and age-matched controls born at full term using [18F]-DOPA PET and structural MRI. Dopamine synthesis capacity was reduced in the perinatal brain injury group relative to those without brain injury (Cohen's d = 1.36, p=0.02) and the control group (Cohen's d = 1.07, p=0.01). Hippocampal volume was reduced in the perinatal brain injury group relative to controls (Cohen's d = 1.17, p=0.01) and was positively correlated with striatal dopamine synthesis capacity (r = 0.344, p=0.03). This is the first evidence in humans linking neonatal hippocampal injury to adult dopamine dysfunction, and provides a potential mechanism linking early life risk factors to adult mental illness.

Machine learning

Abstract: Machine Learning is the study of methods for programming computers to learn. Computers are applied to a wide range of tasks, and for most of these it is relatively easy for programmers to design and implement the necessary software. However, there are many tasks for which this is difficult or impossible. These can be divided into four general categories. First, there are problems for which there exist no human experts. For example, in modern automated manufacturing facilities, there is a need to predict machine failures before they occur by analyzing sensor readings. Because the machines are new, there are no human experts who can be interviewed by a programmer to provide the knowledge necessary to build a computer system. A machine learning system can study recorded data and subsequent machine failures and learn prediction rules. Second, there are problems where human experts exist, but where they are unable to explain their expertise. This is the case in many perceptual tasks, such as speech recognition, hand-writing recognition, and natural language understanding. Virtually all humans exhibit expert-level abilities on these tasks, but none of them can describe the detailed steps that they follow as they perform them. Fortunately, humans can provide machines with examples of the inputs and correct outputs for these tasks, so machine learning algorithms can learn to map the inputs to the outputs. Third, there are problems where phenomena are changing rapidly. In finance, for example, people would like to predict the future behavior of the stock market, of consumer purchases, or of exchange rates. These behaviors change frequently, so that even if a programmer could construct a good predictive computer program, it would need to be rewritten frequently. A learning program can relieve the programmer of this burden by constantly modifying and tuning a set of learned prediction rules. Fourth, there are applications that need to be customized for each computer user separately. Consider, for example, a program to filter unwanted electronic mail messages. Different users will need different filters. It is unreasonable to expect each user to program his or her own rules, and it is infeasible to provide every user with a software engineer to keep the rules up-to-date. A machine learning system can learn which mail messages the user rejects and maintain the filtering rules automatically. Machine learning addresses many of the same research questions as the fields of statistics, data mining, and psychology, but with differences of emphasis. Statistics focuses on understanding the phenomena that have generated the data, often with the goal of testing different hypotheses about those phenomena. Data mining seeks to find patterns in the data that are understandable by people. Psychological studies of human learning aspire to understand the mechanisms underlying the various learning behaviors exhibited by people (concept learning, skill acquisition, strategy change, etc.).

Development of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT): WHO Collaborative Project on Early Detection of Persons with Harmful Alcohol Consumption-II

Abstract: The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) has been developed from a six-country WHO collaborative project as a screening instrument for hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption. It is a 10-item questionnaire which covers the domains of alcohol consumption, drinking behaviour, and alcohol-related problems. Questions were selected from a 150-item assessment schedule (which was administered to 1888 persons attending representative primary health care facilities) on the basis of their representativeness for these conceptual domains and their perceived usefulness for intervention. Responses to each question are scored from 0 to 4, giving a maximum possible score of 40. Among those diagnosed as having hazardous or harmful alcohol use, 92% had an AUDIT score of 8 or more, and 94% of those with non-hazardous consumption had a score of less than 8. AUDIT provides a simple method of early detection of hazardous and harmful alcohol use in primary health care settings and is the first instrument of its type to be derived on the basis of a cross-national study.

Human biochemical genetics

Abstract: So far in this course we have dealt entirely with the evolution of characters that are controlled by simple Mendelian inheritance at a single locus. There are notes on the course website about gametic disequilibrium and how allele frequencies change at two loci simultaneously, but we didn’t discuss them. In every example we’ve considered we’ve imagined that we could understand something about evolution by examining the evolution of a single gene. That’s the domain of classical population genetics. For the next few weeks we’re going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach we’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery. If you know a little about the history of evolutionary biology, you may know that after the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 there was a heated debate between the “biometricians” (e.g., Galton and Pearson) and the “Mendelians” (e.g., de Vries, Correns, Bateson, and Morgan). Biometricians asserted that the really important variation in evolution didn’t follow Mendelian rules. Height, weight, skin color, and similar traits seemed to

Complex brain networks: graph theoretical analysis of structural and functional systems

Abstract: Recent developments in the quantitative analysis of complex networks, based largely on graph theory, have been rapidly translated to studies of brain network organization. The brain's structural and functional systems have features of complex networks--such as small-world topology, highly connected hubs and modularity--both at the whole-brain scale of human neuroimaging and at a cellular scale in non-human animals. In this article, we review studies investigating complex brain networks in diverse experimental modalities (including structural and functional MRI, diffusion tensor imaging, magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography in humans) and provide an accessible introduction to the basic principles of graph theory. We also highlight some of the technical challenges and key questions to be addressed by future developments in this rapidly moving field.

Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes

Abstract: XI. STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING DIABETES CARE D iabetes is a chronic illness that requires continuing medical care and patient self-management education to prevent acute complications and to reduce the risk of long-term complications. Diabetes care is complex and requires that many issues, beyond glycemic control, be addressed. A large body of evidence exists that supports a range of interventions to improve diabetes outcomes. These standards of care are intended to provide clinicians, patients, researchers, payors, and other interested individuals with the components of diabetes care, treatment goals, and tools to evaluate the quality of care. While individual preferences, comorbidities, and other patient factors may require modification of goals, targets that are desirable for most patients with diabetes are provided. These standards are not intended to preclude more extensive evaluation and management of the patient by other specialists as needed. For more detailed information, refer to Bode (Ed.): Medical Management of Type 1 Diabetes (1), Burant (Ed): Medical Management of Type 2 Diabetes (2), and Klingensmith (Ed): Intensive Diabetes Management (3). The recommendations included are diagnostic and therapeutic actions that are known or believed to favorably affect health outcomes of patients with diabetes. A grading system (Table 1), developed by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and modeled after existing methods, was utilized to clarify and codify the evidence that forms the basis for the recommendations. The level of evidence that supports each recommendation is listed after each recommendation using the letters A, B, C, or E.