Recent advances in biological psychiatry 

About: Recent advances in biological psychiatry is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Electroencephalography & Psychophysiology. It has an ISSN identifier of 0376-2122. Over the lifetime, 122 publications have been published receiving 1514 citations.

Effects and interactions of imipramine, chlorpromazine, reserpine and amphetamine on self-stimulation: possible neurophysiological basis of depression.

Abstract: Neural theorizing about the affective disorders has been given substance by recent discoveries of brain systems for positive and negative reinforcement. Brain loci for negative motivation were demonstrated by Delgado, Roberts, and Miller [1] in experiments that followed up the early work of Hess [2]. These investigators showed that electrical stimulation of certain thalamic and hippocampal sites in the cat could be substituted for painful stimulation for the motivation of several forms of learning, including the conditioning of anxiety. Shortly thereafter, Olds and Milner [3] reported that electrical stimulation of the septal region and parts of the hypothalamus had the effect of a powerful reward. This was ingeniously demonstrated by a “self-stimulation” experiment in which rats with permanent electrodes were trained to stimulate their own brains thousands of times per hour by pressing a lever. These findings have been generalized to a number of species and have been extended even to man. In the human studies, subjective reports of pleasure and pain have been obtained after electrical stimulation of specific subcortical regions [4].

Hereditary Factors in Normal Personality Traits (as Measured by Inventories)

Abstract: In 1960 Gottschaldt [21] reviewed the evidence on hereditary factors in personality in Volume 4 of a ten-volume German handbook on psychology. He described his report as less a presentation of established findings than a critical listing of problems and research hypotheses. He touched on the difficulty of generalizing from separate studies because of the great variety of personality theories used in the various studies.

Ethological concepts and human development.

Abstract: In this paper I shall first present a general discussion of the relationship between ethology and human development, then describe a comparative psychophysiological approach, and finally give an account of some of my own research.

Sleep and Dream Patterns in Twins: Markov Analysis of a Genetic Trait

Abstract: As early as 1936, Davis and Davis [1] reported on the influence of heredity on electroencephalograms (EEGs) by the direct method of studying twins. The inheritance of monozygotic (MZ) twins would be similar while that of dizygotic (DZ) twins would have variable heredity the same as that of ordinary siblings. They found that the waking alpha rhythms from one MZ twin resembled those from the other as closely as the record of the same person on successive recordings. Raney [2] in studying lateral dominance of the EEG in MZ twins concluded that the EEGs of identical twins are more similar than those of unrelated children only when treated as a group. Lennox and Gibbs [3] studied EEGs of normal and epileptic twins and concluded that, although epilepsy per se was not hereditary, cerebral dysrhythmia was. They further suggested that the EEG could be used as evidence in decisions dealing with the zygosity of twins and in tracing the heredity of abnormal cerebral rhythms. Using the concept that characteristics which can be shown to appear regularly in MZ twins and irregularly in DZ twins as evidence of the hereditary nature of any given trait, Lennox, Gibbs, and Gibbs [4] studied the waking alpha tracings of MZ and DZ twins. The EEG records were judged identical in 85% of the cases in MZ twins and alike in only 5% of the DZ twin group. Vogel [5] analyzed various EEG traits in 208 pairs of twins and found good agreement in MZ twins. Tangheroni and Pardelli [6] reported complete identity of EEG tracings between MZ couples but rhythms of discordant frequency and morphology in DZ couples.