A 36 month ethnographic study of a research clinic with a combined role of disease management, included non participant observation of clinic routines, neurological consultations, motor and cognitive research testing of patients, plus interviews with patients, carers, clinicians, researchers and others associated with the clinic. A 'shift' of Huntington's disease into neurology was observed plus standardisation of research activities on an international scale. The clinic acts as a recruitment site for other experimental research. Research questions were - does a neurological instead of genetic framework make a difference to how the disease is regarded, and, what does research participation mean for patients and clinicians A neurological framework appeared to encourage research participation because patients and carers considered it an opportunity for experimental treatment, including stem cell transplantation to the brain. Three analytic themes revealed: 'blurring' in operation of research and care, performances by all clinic actors linked to social and research expectations, plus the neurology framework increased patients' hopes in research aims. Sub themes included biomedicalisation, research translation, emotional work, research limitations, social benefits and transplant hope. Clinic researchers noticed tension in their dual research/care role, patients and carers noticed they were given time but little practical care.

The <italic>Tackling Traumatic Stress</italic> programme was available online and in hardcopy. It consisted of 11 modules, some being mandatory and others optional, allowing tailoring of the intervention to meet an individual&rsquo;s needs. Mandatory modules included psycho-education, grounding techniques, relaxation, cognitive restructuring, in vivo and imaginal exposure, and relapse prevention. Optional modules provided advice on behavioural activation, sleep hygiene, anger management and substance use. The intervention showed promise in terms of reducing traumatic stress symptoms, supporting the feasibility of a phase II Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT).

The systems for prediction of epileptic seizure investigated in recent years mainly rely on the traditional nonlinear analysis of the brain signals from intracranial electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings. The overall objective of this work focuses on investigation of the predictability of seizure from the scalp signals by applying effective blind source separation (BSS) techniques to scalp EEGs, in which the epileptic seizures are considered as independent components of the scalp EEGs. The ultimate goal of the work is to pave the way for epileptic seizure prediction from the scalp EEG. The main contributions of this research are summarized as follows. Firstly, a novel constrained topographic independent component analysis (CTICA) algorithm is developed for the improved separation of the epileptic seizure signals. The related CTICA model is more suitable for brain signal separation due to the relaxation of the independence assumption, as the source signals geometrically close to each other are assumed to have some dependencies. By incorporating the spatial and frequency information of seizure signals as the constraint, CTICA achieves a better performance in separating the seizure signals in comparison with other conventional ICA methods. Secondly, the predictability of seizure is investigated. The traditional method for quantification of the nonlinear dynamics of time series is employed to quantify the level of chaos of the estimated sources. The simultaneously recorded intracranial and scalp EEGs are used for the comparison of the results. The experiment results demonstrate that the separated seizure sources have a similar transition trend as those achieved from the intracranial EEGs. Thirdly, simultaneously recorded EEG and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is studied in order to validate the activated area of the brain related to the seizure sources. An effective method to remove the fMRI scanner artifacts from the scalp EEG is established by applying the blind source extraction (BSE) algorithm. The results show that the effect of fMRI scanner artifacts has been reduced in scalp EEG recordings. Finally, a data driven model, spatial ICA (SICA) subject to EEG as the temporal constraint is proposed in order to detect the Blood Oxygen-Level Dependence (BOLD) from the seizure fMRI. In contrast to the popular model driven method General Linear Model (GLM), SICA does not rely on any predefined hemodynamic response function. It is based on the fact that brain areas executing different tasks are spatially independent. Therefore SICA works perfectly for non-event-related fMRI analysis such as seizure fMRI. By incorporating the temporal information existing within the EEG as the constraint, the superiority of the proposed constrained SICA is validated in terms of better algorithm convergence and a higher correlation between the time courses of the component and the seizure EEG signals as compared to SICA.

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder with a lifetime risk of about 1%. It affects almost all domains of mental function, including perception, emotion, cognition and social performance. Evidence from family, twin and adoption studies has shown the disorder to have a high genetic component. The aetiology of schizophrenia remains obscure but over the last decade there has been increasing evidence that abnormal oligodendrocyte function and/or myelination might play a part. The main strands of evidence that provide support for this hypothesis have been compiled from neuropathological studies, brain imaging, symptom overlap with demyelinating diseases, age related changes in myelin and evidence from micro-array studies. In this thesis, I investigated several genes of importance to oligodendrocyte function and/or myelination as candidate genes for influencing susceptibility to schizophrenia. Genes were primarily selected for study based upon their reports of altered expression in micro-array studies of post-mortem schizophrenic brain. In many cases, their potential involvement was supported by positional evidence from linkage studies and a putative functional role in the neurobiology of schizophrenia. In total thirteen genes were studied: CNP, NOGO, NgR, OMG, NGFR, GFAP, MOG, SOX 10 and APOL 1-5. During my studies I detected, modest evidence for association with three genes (CNP, NOGO and MOG). I also showed that the expression of these genes is under the influence of cis-acting polymorphisms. Whilst, the results for these genes are modest and require independent replication, they do provide some support for the general hypothesis that oligodendrocyte and/or myelination abnormalities play a role in schizophrenia aetiology.

In the metacognitive model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (Wells, 1997, 2000), two domains of beliefs are considered central to the pathogenesis of the disorder: (1) metacognitive beliefs about the meaning and danger of thoughts and feelings and (2) beliefs about the advantages and disadvantages of performing rituals. Previous research has demonstrated that metacognitive beliefs about thoughts/feelings make a unique contribution to obsessive-compulsive symptoms. However, the role of beliefs about rituals has not been systematically investigated. This study had three primary aims: (1) to undertake a preliminary exploration of the psychometric properties of a new self-report measure, the Beliefs about Rituals Inventory (BARI); (2) to replicate previous studies, which have demonstrated that metacognitive beliefs about thoughts/feelings contribute to the prediction of obsessive-compulsive symptoms; and (3) to determine whether beliefs about rituals contribute to symptoms beyond the contribution made by metacognitive beliefs about thoughts/feelings. A sample of university students (n = 177) completed five self-report measures: the BARI; the Thought Fusion Instrument, which assesses three subtypes of thought-fusion beliefs (thought-action fusion, thought event fusion and thought-object fusion); three measures of obsessive compulsive symptoms (Padua Inventory-Washington State University Revision, Frequency and Distress scales of the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory); and a measure of worry proneness (Penn State Worry Questionnaire). Factor analysis of the BARI demonstrated that it is composed of three domains of beliefs about rituals: (1) beliefs that rituals prevent unwanted behaviour and character change; (2) beliefs that rituals prevent guilt and loss of function; and (3) beliefs that rituals prevent anxiety. The BARI had adequate internal consistency, modest stability and preliminary evidence supported its discriminant validity. The results of the analyses supported Wells' (1997, 2000) assertion that metacognitive beliefs about thoughts/feelings and beliefs about rituals each make a unique contribution to obsessive-compulsive symptoms. In addition, the results of exploratory regression analyses, conducted to determine the best individual metacognitive predictors of obsessive compulsive symptoms, indicated that subtypes of thought-fusion beliefs and beliefs about rituals predicted symptoms. Two subscales, BARI 'Anxiety' and TFI 'Thought-Action Fusion', were reliable predictors in all the equations. Implications of the results for theory, practice and future research are discussed, as well as the limitations of the study.

No description available.

The current project provides a novel perspective on sentence comprehension in Broca’s aphasia by expanding the empirical domain both within and beyond narrow syntax. Further, we take a comparative approach to this investigation by comparing the perfor­mance of a group of individuals with Broca’s aphasia with a group of typical adults on the one hand and a group of typically developing children on the other. In particular, we focus on three key linguistic phenomena that arguably involve different language domains, get passive constructions (narrow syntax), ambiguous sentences involving the nominal quantifier every and negation (syntax-semantics interface) and finally prag­matic inferences, namely, scalar implicatures, presuppositions and multiplicity inferences (semantic-pragmatic interface). Traditionally, Broca’s aphasia has been defined as a dis­order mainly affecting syntax however recent evidence for non-linguistic deficits in this population poses the question as to whether it should be defined more generally. The current study adds to this debate by providing a broader view of language processing in Broca’s aphasia. Further, this project shows the value of the comparative approach in helping to constrain and refine theories of language acquisition and linguistic theories. The findings of this project support the hypothesis that individuals with Broca’s aphasia suffer from a specific impairment affecting processing of narrow syntax and the relative sparing of non-syntactic phenomena. Additionally, the findings indicate that despite su­perficial similarities, individuals with Broca’s aphasia and typically developing children show clear differences in how they engage with core linguistic phenomena.

The aim of this study is to explore the subjective experience of what are the help-seeking behaviours and coping strategies of international students from non-European backgrounds. Eighteen students from eleven non-European countries on three sites were interviewed. Using a phenomenological approach, the study seeks to capture the knowledge of the experiential experts, i.e., the students themselves, with the hope that it can be used to enhance provision for this client group in university counselling services. The study was motivated by the distinct under-use and under-representation of such students using traditional counselling services. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was employed to address the research questions from a first-person-perspective, helping to shed light on the sense making of international Students of non-European backgrounds, when confronted with challenge. Themes such as culture shock, culture, family, spirituality/religion, identity, sense of justice, resistance, perceived barriers and reflections on how to improve transition were categorised, with impact of transition, living with challenge – coping, living with challenge – seeking help; shifting identities and enhancing cultural engagement as superordinate themes emerging. The study revealed that patterns of help-seeking typically followed preferential relationships, called here hierarchy of helping. The findings are discussed with regard to implications for individual practice and staff training in transcultural work to enhance cultural engagement in educational settings.

This thesis describes a study designed to investigate the mechanisms of Attention Training Treatment (ATT; Wells, 1990), a cognitive therapy tool designed to reverse the "cognitive-attentional syndrome" responsible for emotional disturbance in the model of Wells and Matthews (1994). Individuals reporting high levels of worry were randomly allocated to one of three treatment conditions: ATT, guided relaxation training (GRT) or no intervention (NI). Participants completed measures of worry and self-focus and three measures of executive attention before and after a two-week period during which the procedures were practised. Skin conductance and heart rate were also measured during the training procedures in each session. Significant decreases in trait worry and self› focus over time were found for the ATT and GRT groups but not the NI group, although there were no significant group by session interactions on these measures due to the small sample size. No evidence was found for a specific improvement in executive attention for the ATT group, contrary to expectation. Both ATT and GRT were associated with significant decreases in skin conductance in session one, although only ATT produced a significant decrease in session two. A significant reduction in heart rate was found for AT T in session two for those participants who reported the expected decrease in self-focus during the procedure. The findings offered some support for the clinical efficacy of AT T and suggested that a reduction in arousal may be an important component of this treatment. Replication of these findings using a larger sample is warranted.

No description available.