Yuliya Zaytseva | Charles University, Prague (original) (raw)

Papers by Yuliya Zaytseva

PsyCh Journal, 2020

Advertising slogans serve the function of persuasive communication by presenting catchy phrases. ... more Advertising slogans serve the function of persuasive communication by presenting catchy phrases. To decide whether a slogan is convincing or not, cognitive reasoning is assumed to be complemented by a more implicit and intuitive route of information processing, presumably similar to evaluating normative judgments in moral statements. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while Western male subjects judged advertising slogans and moral statements as another decision task with subjective nature. Compared to a neutral control condition that targeted declarative memory and to an aesthetic-related condition, the evaluation processes in both domains engaged the anterior medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is associated with decision-making incorporating personal value. Conjoint activations were also observed in the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ) when compared to the aesthetics condition. Results are discussed with reference to domain-independence, a suspected difference to aesthetic-like appreciations, and functional organization in the mPFC and the TPJ.

PsyCh journal, Jun 1, 2017

PsyCh Journal, 2016

Single cases may lead to unexpected hypotheses in psychology. We retrospectively analyzed single ... more Single cases may lead to unexpected hypotheses in psychology. We retrospectively analyzed single case studies that suggested organizational principles along the early visual pathway, which have remained unanswered until now. First case: In spite of the inhomogeneity of sensitivity, paradoxically the visual field on the subjective level appears to be homogeneous; constancy of brightness of suprathreshold stimuli throughout the visual field is claimed to be responsible for homogeneity; specific summation properties of retinal ganglion cells are hypothesized to guarantee this effect. Second case: With a brain-injured patient having suffered a partial visual field loss it can be shown that color induction is a retinal phenomenon; lateral inhibitory processes at the level of amacrine cells are hypothesized as neural network. Third case: In a patient having suffered a bilateral occipital lobe infarction, some functional recovery has been demonstrated; divergence and convergence of projection in the ascending neural pathway are suggested as a structural basis for recovery. Slowed down binocular rivalry discloses a sequential mechanism in the construction of a visual percept. Fourth case: The pre-wired projection of the retina to the visual cortex in spite of a severe squint of one eye is confirmed, but paradoxically some local neuroplasticity is also suggested. Fifth case: Using habituation of local sensitivity in the visual field and its resetting by interhemispheric interactions as an experimental paradigm, it is suggested that spatial attention is controlled at the midbrain level. Sixth case: Observations on residual vision or "blindsight" support the hypothesis that the visual cortex is the one and only structure responsible for visual perception on a conscious level. The unifying principle of these retrospective analyses is that subjective visual phenomena can lead to unexpected but testable hypotheses of neural processing on the structural and functional level in the early visual pathway.

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013

Artworks provide sets of sensory stimuli that allow special insights into cognitive processes com... more Artworks provide sets of sensory stimuli that allow special insights into cognitive processes complementing results obtained with other experimental paradigms. Examples are given from visual art and music using behavioral measures and neuroimaging technology (fMRI). The following topics are addressed: creation and maintenance of personal identity, difference or equivalence of aesthetic and moral judgments, appreciation of Eastern and Western visual art, differences in sensory processing of naturalistic and surrealistic art, importance and traps of mental frames and prejudices, effect of emotional priming on the central representation of sensory stimuli, value of single case studies, personality characteristics as predictors, and usefulness of controlled introspection in analyzing contents of episodic memory, in particular with respect to aesthetic and health-promoting appreciation of environments. Furthermore, the necessary distinction between anthropological universals and cultural or individual specifics is stressed in sensory processing of artworks.

Neuroscience Letters, 2014

h i g h l i g h t s • Musicians rate "negative" emotions expressed in music as more arousing. • F... more h i g h l i g h t s • Musicians rate "negative" emotions expressed in music as more arousing. • For sadness, musicians show higher activation in the right prefrontal cortex. • For fear, musicians show higher activation in the right parietal cortex. • No specific modulations were observed in response to happiness.

Brain and Cognition, 2014

Understanding the mechanisms involved in perception and conception of oneself is a fundamental ps... more Understanding the mechanisms involved in perception and conception of oneself is a fundamental psychological topic with high relevance for psychiatric and neurological issues, and it is one of the great challenges in neuroscientific research. The paradigmatic single-case study presented here aimed to investigate different components of self-and other-processes and to elucidate corresponding neurobiological underpinnings. An eminent professional opera singer with profound performance experience has undergone functional magnetic resonance imaging and was exposed to excerpts of Mozart arias, sung by herself or another singer. The results indicate a distinction between self-and other conditions in cortical midline structures, differentially involved in self-related and self-referential processing. This lends further support to the assumption of cortical midline structures being involved in the neural processing of self-specific stimuli and also confirms the power of single case studies as a research tool.

Psychiatria Danubina, 2015

The recovery model of schizophrenia is central to the devlopment of community services for patien... more The recovery model of schizophrenia is central to the devlopment of community services for patients with schizophrenia. However often when applying the recovery model of psychosis, often formal identification of cognitive imparements is not carried out, nor are interventions to improve cognitive functioning offered in a targeted way. Here we discuss how these issues relate to each other and argue for the use of cognitive testing in order to elp recovery in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2015

The phenomenology of the clinical symptoms indicates that disturbance of the sense of self be a c... more The phenomenology of the clinical symptoms indicates that disturbance of the sense of self be a core marker of schizophrenia. To compare neural activity related to the self/other-agency judgment in patients with first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (FES, n = 35) and healthy controls (HC, n = 35). A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using motor task with temporal distortion of the visual feedback was employed. A task-related functional connectivity was analyzed with the use of independent component analysis (ICA). (1) During self-agency experience, FES showed a deficit in cortical activation in medial frontal gyrus (BA 10) and posterior cingulate gyrus, (BA 31; P < .05, Family-Wise Error [FWE] corrected). (2) Pooled-sample task-related ICA revealed that the self/other-agency judgment was dependent upon anti-correlated default mode and central-executive networks (DMN/CEN) dynamic switching. This antagonistic mechanism was substantially impaired in FES during the task. During self-agency experience, FES demonstrate deficit in engagement of cortical midline structures along with substantial attenuation of anti-correlated DMN/CEN activity underlying normal self/other-agency discriminative processes.

PsyCh journal, 2015

Does a religion shape belief-related decisions and influence neural processing? We investigated a... more Does a religion shape belief-related decisions and influence neural processing? We investigated an eminent bishop of the Catholic Church in Germany by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess neural processing while he was responding to short sentences of the Christian Bible, the Islamic Quran, and the Daodejing ascribed to Laozi in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, continuous praying was further compared to the resting state activity. In contrast to explicit statements of agreeing or not agreeing to different statements from the Bible and the Quran, we found in Experiment 1 no difference in neural activation when the bishop was reading these statements from the two religions. However, compared to reading statements from the Bible, reading statements from the Daodejing resulted in significantly higher activation in the left inferior and middle frontal cortices and the left middle temporal gyrus, although he equally agreed to both statements explicitly. In Experiment...

PsyCh journal, 2015

Synchronizing neural processes, mental activities, and social interactions is considered to be fu... more Synchronizing neural processes, mental activities, and social interactions is considered to be fundamental for the creation of temporal order on the personal and interpersonal level. Several different types of synchronization are distinguished, and for each of them examples are given: self-organized synchronizations on the neural level giving rise to pre-semantically defined time windows of some tens of milliseconds and of approximately 3 s; time windows that are created by synchronizing different neural representations, as for instance in aesthetic appreciations or moral judgments; and synchronization of biological rhythms with geophysical cycles, like the circadian clock with the 24-hr rhythm of day and night. For the latter type of synchronization, an experiment is described that shows the importance of social interactions for sharing or avoiding common time. In a group study with four subjects being completely isolated together for 3 weeks from the external world, social interac...

PsyCh journal, 2015

In the general concept of self-disturbances in schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders... more In the general concept of self-disturbances in schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders, somatopsychic depersonalization (SPD) occupies a special place as it constitutes a syndrome that comprises feelings of detachment from one's own body and mental processes. However, apart from clinical descriptions, to date the pathophysiology of SPD is not fully understood due to the rareness of the syndrome and a lack of experimental studies. In a case study of one patient with schizotypal disorder, we applied a multimodal approach to understanding the SPD phenomena. The patient's clinical profile was identified as disruption of implicit bodily function, accompanied by depressive symptoms. On a neuropsychological level, the patient exhibited impairment in executive functioning, intact tactile perception and kinesthetic praxis. Behavioral tests revealed an altered sense of time but unimpaired self-agency. Furthermore, the patient exhibited a lack of empathy and he had autistic ...

Psychiatria Danubina, 2015

It has been repeatedly shown that schizophrenia patients have immense alterations in goal-directe... more It has been repeatedly shown that schizophrenia patients have immense alterations in goal-directed behaviour, social cognition, and social interactions, cognitive abilities that are presumably driven by the mirror neurons system (MNS). However, the neural bases of these deficits still remain unclear. Along with the task-related fMRI and EEG research tapping into the mirror neuron system, the characteristics of the resting state activity in the particular areas that encompass mirror neurons might be of interest as they obviously determine the baseline of the neuronal activity. Using resting state fMRI, we investigated resting state functional connectivity (FC) in four predefined brain structures, ROIs (inferior frontal gyrus, superior parietal lobule, premotor cortex and superior temporal gyrus), known for their mirror neurons activity, in 12 patients with first psychotic episode and 12 matched healthy individuals. As a specific hypothesis, based on the knowledge of the anatomical in...

Psychiatria Danubina, 2013

In the present study we evaluated attributional style which refers to how individuals explain the... more In the present study we evaluated attributional style which refers to how individuals explain the causes for positive and negative events in their lives in patients with first episode of schizophrenia with and without paranoid ideation. 43 patients with first episode of psychosis and 37 matched normal controls completed Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ) (Combs et al. 2007). Between group comparison of AIHQ scores showed a notable tendency to show aggressive response in overall patients group. We obtained significant elevation of hostility and blame biases scores in intentional and accidental situations in patients with paranoid ideation while the patients with non-paranoid ideation showed greater hostility and blame biases only in accidental situations as compared to controls. Correlations with positive and negative symptoms were obtained. Our findings suggest that patients with first episode of psychosis exhibit difficulties of the attribution biases which are int...

Clinical Neurophysiology, 2015

Please cite this article in press as: Garakh Z et al. EEG correlates of a mental arithmetic task ... more Please cite this article in press as: Garakh Z et al. EEG correlates of a mental arithmetic task in patients with first episode schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Clin Neurophysiol (2015), http://dx.

European Psychiatry, 2014

Alpha activity in the EEG is dominant in normal individuals during eyes-closed resting condition ... more Alpha activity in the EEG is dominant in normal individuals during eyes-closed resting condition and is suppressed by visual stimulation (alphablockade). The differences in alpha band activity between the eyes-closed and eyes-open resting conditions are used as a measure of resting state arousal. It's known that alpha-blockade in patients with schizophrenia is less pronounced than in healthy individuals; no studies exist in schizoaffective disorder. The objective of this study was to evaluate the contribution of EEG alpha reactivity on opening the eyes, to the neurophysiology of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. In total 64 patients with first episode of schizophrenia(SCH; n=32) and schizoaffective disorder (SAD; n=32) and 40 controls were enrolled into the study. All participants were assessed with EEG and alpha reactivity was computed using the logarithms of spectral power of alpha band in two experimental conditions (with eyes-closed and eyes-open). In eyesopen condition there was a significant reduction in absolute alpha power in all electrodes in schizoaffective patients and controls, indicating a similar increase in the arousal level in these groups . However, the alpha reactivity index was greater, corresponding to less reactivity, in the all regions in patients with schizophrenia (P < .05) as compared to controls. Our findings suggest distinct alterations in arousal mechanisms in patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.

European Psychiatry, 2012

ABSTRACT

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013

Artworks provide sets of sensory stimuli that allow special insights into cognitive processes com... more Artworks provide sets of sensory stimuli that allow special insights into cognitive processes complementing results obtained with other experimental paradigms. Examples are given from visual art and music using behavioral measures and neuroimaging technology (fMRI). The following topics are addressed: creation and maintenance of personal identity, difference or equivalence of aesthetic and moral judgments, appreciation of Eastern and Western visual art, differences in sensory processing of naturalistic and surrealistic art, importance and traps of mental frames and prejudices, effect of emotional priming on the central representation of sensory stimuli, value of single case studies, personality characteristics as predictors, and usefulness of controlled introspection in analyzing contents of episodic memory, in particular with respect to aesthetic and health-promoting appreciation of environments. Furthermore, the necessary distinction between anthropological universals and cultural or individual specifics is stressed in sensory processing of artworks.

Schizophrenia research, 2014

The 4th Schizophrenia International Research Society Conference was held in Florence, Italy, Apri... more The 4th Schizophrenia International Research Society Conference was held in Florence, Italy, April 5-9, 2014 and this year had as its emphasis, "Fostering Collaboration in Schizophrenia Research". Student travel awardees served as rapporteurs for each oral session, summarized the important contributions of each session and then each report was integrated into a final summary of data discussed at the entire conference by topic. It is hoped that by combining data from different presentations, patterns of interest will emerge and thus lead to new progress for the future. In addition, the following report provides an overview of the conference for those who were present, but could not participate in all sessions, and those who did not have the opportunity to attend, but who would be interested in an update on current investigations ongoing in the field of schizophrenia research.

Philosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM, 2015

Contemporary psychiatry is becoming more biologically oriented in the attempt to elicit a biologi... more Contemporary psychiatry is becoming more biologically oriented in the attempt to elicit a biological rationale of mental diseases. Although mental disorders comprise mostly functional abnormalities, there is a substantial overlap between neurology and psychiatry in addressing cognitive disturbances. In schizophrenia, the presence of cognitive impairment prior to the onset of psychosis and early after its manifestation suggests that some neurocognitive abnormalities precede the onset of psychosis and may represent a trait marker. These cognitive alterations may arise from functional disconnectivity, as no significant brain damage has been found. In this review we aim to revise A.R. Luria's systematic approach used in the neuropsychological evaluation of cognitive functions, which was primarily applied in patients with neurological disorders and in the cognitive evaluation in schizophrenia and other related disorders. As proposed by Luria, cognitive processes, associated with high...

PsyCh Journal, 2020

Advertising slogans serve the function of persuasive communication by presenting catchy phrases. ... more Advertising slogans serve the function of persuasive communication by presenting catchy phrases. To decide whether a slogan is convincing or not, cognitive reasoning is assumed to be complemented by a more implicit and intuitive route of information processing, presumably similar to evaluating normative judgments in moral statements. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while Western male subjects judged advertising slogans and moral statements as another decision task with subjective nature. Compared to a neutral control condition that targeted declarative memory and to an aesthetic-related condition, the evaluation processes in both domains engaged the anterior medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is associated with decision-making incorporating personal value. Conjoint activations were also observed in the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ) when compared to the aesthetics condition. Results are discussed with reference to domain-independence, a suspected difference to aesthetic-like appreciations, and functional organization in the mPFC and the TPJ.

PsyCh journal, Jun 1, 2017

PsyCh Journal, 2016

Single cases may lead to unexpected hypotheses in psychology. We retrospectively analyzed single ... more Single cases may lead to unexpected hypotheses in psychology. We retrospectively analyzed single case studies that suggested organizational principles along the early visual pathway, which have remained unanswered until now. First case: In spite of the inhomogeneity of sensitivity, paradoxically the visual field on the subjective level appears to be homogeneous; constancy of brightness of suprathreshold stimuli throughout the visual field is claimed to be responsible for homogeneity; specific summation properties of retinal ganglion cells are hypothesized to guarantee this effect. Second case: With a brain-injured patient having suffered a partial visual field loss it can be shown that color induction is a retinal phenomenon; lateral inhibitory processes at the level of amacrine cells are hypothesized as neural network. Third case: In a patient having suffered a bilateral occipital lobe infarction, some functional recovery has been demonstrated; divergence and convergence of projection in the ascending neural pathway are suggested as a structural basis for recovery. Slowed down binocular rivalry discloses a sequential mechanism in the construction of a visual percept. Fourth case: The pre-wired projection of the retina to the visual cortex in spite of a severe squint of one eye is confirmed, but paradoxically some local neuroplasticity is also suggested. Fifth case: Using habituation of local sensitivity in the visual field and its resetting by interhemispheric interactions as an experimental paradigm, it is suggested that spatial attention is controlled at the midbrain level. Sixth case: Observations on residual vision or "blindsight" support the hypothesis that the visual cortex is the one and only structure responsible for visual perception on a conscious level. The unifying principle of these retrospective analyses is that subjective visual phenomena can lead to unexpected but testable hypotheses of neural processing on the structural and functional level in the early visual pathway.

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013

Artworks provide sets of sensory stimuli that allow special insights into cognitive processes com... more Artworks provide sets of sensory stimuli that allow special insights into cognitive processes complementing results obtained with other experimental paradigms. Examples are given from visual art and music using behavioral measures and neuroimaging technology (fMRI). The following topics are addressed: creation and maintenance of personal identity, difference or equivalence of aesthetic and moral judgments, appreciation of Eastern and Western visual art, differences in sensory processing of naturalistic and surrealistic art, importance and traps of mental frames and prejudices, effect of emotional priming on the central representation of sensory stimuli, value of single case studies, personality characteristics as predictors, and usefulness of controlled introspection in analyzing contents of episodic memory, in particular with respect to aesthetic and health-promoting appreciation of environments. Furthermore, the necessary distinction between anthropological universals and cultural or individual specifics is stressed in sensory processing of artworks.

Neuroscience Letters, 2014

h i g h l i g h t s • Musicians rate "negative" emotions expressed in music as more arousing. • F... more h i g h l i g h t s • Musicians rate "negative" emotions expressed in music as more arousing. • For sadness, musicians show higher activation in the right prefrontal cortex. • For fear, musicians show higher activation in the right parietal cortex. • No specific modulations were observed in response to happiness.

Brain and Cognition, 2014

Understanding the mechanisms involved in perception and conception of oneself is a fundamental ps... more Understanding the mechanisms involved in perception and conception of oneself is a fundamental psychological topic with high relevance for psychiatric and neurological issues, and it is one of the great challenges in neuroscientific research. The paradigmatic single-case study presented here aimed to investigate different components of self-and other-processes and to elucidate corresponding neurobiological underpinnings. An eminent professional opera singer with profound performance experience has undergone functional magnetic resonance imaging and was exposed to excerpts of Mozart arias, sung by herself or another singer. The results indicate a distinction between self-and other conditions in cortical midline structures, differentially involved in self-related and self-referential processing. This lends further support to the assumption of cortical midline structures being involved in the neural processing of self-specific stimuli and also confirms the power of single case studies as a research tool.

Psychiatria Danubina, 2015

The recovery model of schizophrenia is central to the devlopment of community services for patien... more The recovery model of schizophrenia is central to the devlopment of community services for patients with schizophrenia. However often when applying the recovery model of psychosis, often formal identification of cognitive imparements is not carried out, nor are interventions to improve cognitive functioning offered in a targeted way. Here we discuss how these issues relate to each other and argue for the use of cognitive testing in order to elp recovery in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2015

The phenomenology of the clinical symptoms indicates that disturbance of the sense of self be a c... more The phenomenology of the clinical symptoms indicates that disturbance of the sense of self be a core marker of schizophrenia. To compare neural activity related to the self/other-agency judgment in patients with first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (FES, n = 35) and healthy controls (HC, n = 35). A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using motor task with temporal distortion of the visual feedback was employed. A task-related functional connectivity was analyzed with the use of independent component analysis (ICA). (1) During self-agency experience, FES showed a deficit in cortical activation in medial frontal gyrus (BA 10) and posterior cingulate gyrus, (BA 31; P &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt; .05, Family-Wise Error [FWE] corrected). (2) Pooled-sample task-related ICA revealed that the self/other-agency judgment was dependent upon anti-correlated default mode and central-executive networks (DMN/CEN) dynamic switching. This antagonistic mechanism was substantially impaired in FES during the task. During self-agency experience, FES demonstrate deficit in engagement of cortical midline structures along with substantial attenuation of anti-correlated DMN/CEN activity underlying normal self/other-agency discriminative processes.

PsyCh journal, 2015

Does a religion shape belief-related decisions and influence neural processing? We investigated a... more Does a religion shape belief-related decisions and influence neural processing? We investigated an eminent bishop of the Catholic Church in Germany by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess neural processing while he was responding to short sentences of the Christian Bible, the Islamic Quran, and the Daodejing ascribed to Laozi in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, continuous praying was further compared to the resting state activity. In contrast to explicit statements of agreeing or not agreeing to different statements from the Bible and the Quran, we found in Experiment 1 no difference in neural activation when the bishop was reading these statements from the two religions. However, compared to reading statements from the Bible, reading statements from the Daodejing resulted in significantly higher activation in the left inferior and middle frontal cortices and the left middle temporal gyrus, although he equally agreed to both statements explicitly. In Experiment...

PsyCh journal, 2015

Synchronizing neural processes, mental activities, and social interactions is considered to be fu... more Synchronizing neural processes, mental activities, and social interactions is considered to be fundamental for the creation of temporal order on the personal and interpersonal level. Several different types of synchronization are distinguished, and for each of them examples are given: self-organized synchronizations on the neural level giving rise to pre-semantically defined time windows of some tens of milliseconds and of approximately 3 s; time windows that are created by synchronizing different neural representations, as for instance in aesthetic appreciations or moral judgments; and synchronization of biological rhythms with geophysical cycles, like the circadian clock with the 24-hr rhythm of day and night. For the latter type of synchronization, an experiment is described that shows the importance of social interactions for sharing or avoiding common time. In a group study with four subjects being completely isolated together for 3 weeks from the external world, social interac...

PsyCh journal, 2015

In the general concept of self-disturbances in schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders... more In the general concept of self-disturbances in schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders, somatopsychic depersonalization (SPD) occupies a special place as it constitutes a syndrome that comprises feelings of detachment from one's own body and mental processes. However, apart from clinical descriptions, to date the pathophysiology of SPD is not fully understood due to the rareness of the syndrome and a lack of experimental studies. In a case study of one patient with schizotypal disorder, we applied a multimodal approach to understanding the SPD phenomena. The patient's clinical profile was identified as disruption of implicit bodily function, accompanied by depressive symptoms. On a neuropsychological level, the patient exhibited impairment in executive functioning, intact tactile perception and kinesthetic praxis. Behavioral tests revealed an altered sense of time but unimpaired self-agency. Furthermore, the patient exhibited a lack of empathy and he had autistic ...

Psychiatria Danubina, 2015

It has been repeatedly shown that schizophrenia patients have immense alterations in goal-directe... more It has been repeatedly shown that schizophrenia patients have immense alterations in goal-directed behaviour, social cognition, and social interactions, cognitive abilities that are presumably driven by the mirror neurons system (MNS). However, the neural bases of these deficits still remain unclear. Along with the task-related fMRI and EEG research tapping into the mirror neuron system, the characteristics of the resting state activity in the particular areas that encompass mirror neurons might be of interest as they obviously determine the baseline of the neuronal activity. Using resting state fMRI, we investigated resting state functional connectivity (FC) in four predefined brain structures, ROIs (inferior frontal gyrus, superior parietal lobule, premotor cortex and superior temporal gyrus), known for their mirror neurons activity, in 12 patients with first psychotic episode and 12 matched healthy individuals. As a specific hypothesis, based on the knowledge of the anatomical in...

Psychiatria Danubina, 2013

In the present study we evaluated attributional style which refers to how individuals explain the... more In the present study we evaluated attributional style which refers to how individuals explain the causes for positive and negative events in their lives in patients with first episode of schizophrenia with and without paranoid ideation. 43 patients with first episode of psychosis and 37 matched normal controls completed Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ) (Combs et al. 2007). Between group comparison of AIHQ scores showed a notable tendency to show aggressive response in overall patients group. We obtained significant elevation of hostility and blame biases scores in intentional and accidental situations in patients with paranoid ideation while the patients with non-paranoid ideation showed greater hostility and blame biases only in accidental situations as compared to controls. Correlations with positive and negative symptoms were obtained. Our findings suggest that patients with first episode of psychosis exhibit difficulties of the attribution biases which are int...

Clinical Neurophysiology, 2015

Please cite this article in press as: Garakh Z et al. EEG correlates of a mental arithmetic task ... more Please cite this article in press as: Garakh Z et al. EEG correlates of a mental arithmetic task in patients with first episode schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Clin Neurophysiol (2015), http://dx.

European Psychiatry, 2014

Alpha activity in the EEG is dominant in normal individuals during eyes-closed resting condition ... more Alpha activity in the EEG is dominant in normal individuals during eyes-closed resting condition and is suppressed by visual stimulation (alphablockade). The differences in alpha band activity between the eyes-closed and eyes-open resting conditions are used as a measure of resting state arousal. It's known that alpha-blockade in patients with schizophrenia is less pronounced than in healthy individuals; no studies exist in schizoaffective disorder. The objective of this study was to evaluate the contribution of EEG alpha reactivity on opening the eyes, to the neurophysiology of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. In total 64 patients with first episode of schizophrenia(SCH; n=32) and schizoaffective disorder (SAD; n=32) and 40 controls were enrolled into the study. All participants were assessed with EEG and alpha reactivity was computed using the logarithms of spectral power of alpha band in two experimental conditions (with eyes-closed and eyes-open). In eyesopen condition there was a significant reduction in absolute alpha power in all electrodes in schizoaffective patients and controls, indicating a similar increase in the arousal level in these groups . However, the alpha reactivity index was greater, corresponding to less reactivity, in the all regions in patients with schizophrenia (P < .05) as compared to controls. Our findings suggest distinct alterations in arousal mechanisms in patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.

European Psychiatry, 2012

ABSTRACT

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013

Artworks provide sets of sensory stimuli that allow special insights into cognitive processes com... more Artworks provide sets of sensory stimuli that allow special insights into cognitive processes complementing results obtained with other experimental paradigms. Examples are given from visual art and music using behavioral measures and neuroimaging technology (fMRI). The following topics are addressed: creation and maintenance of personal identity, difference or equivalence of aesthetic and moral judgments, appreciation of Eastern and Western visual art, differences in sensory processing of naturalistic and surrealistic art, importance and traps of mental frames and prejudices, effect of emotional priming on the central representation of sensory stimuli, value of single case studies, personality characteristics as predictors, and usefulness of controlled introspection in analyzing contents of episodic memory, in particular with respect to aesthetic and health-promoting appreciation of environments. Furthermore, the necessary distinction between anthropological universals and cultural or individual specifics is stressed in sensory processing of artworks.

Schizophrenia research, 2014

The 4th Schizophrenia International Research Society Conference was held in Florence, Italy, Apri... more The 4th Schizophrenia International Research Society Conference was held in Florence, Italy, April 5-9, 2014 and this year had as its emphasis, "Fostering Collaboration in Schizophrenia Research". Student travel awardees served as rapporteurs for each oral session, summarized the important contributions of each session and then each report was integrated into a final summary of data discussed at the entire conference by topic. It is hoped that by combining data from different presentations, patterns of interest will emerge and thus lead to new progress for the future. In addition, the following report provides an overview of the conference for those who were present, but could not participate in all sessions, and those who did not have the opportunity to attend, but who would be interested in an update on current investigations ongoing in the field of schizophrenia research.

Philosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM, 2015

Contemporary psychiatry is becoming more biologically oriented in the attempt to elicit a biologi... more Contemporary psychiatry is becoming more biologically oriented in the attempt to elicit a biological rationale of mental diseases. Although mental disorders comprise mostly functional abnormalities, there is a substantial overlap between neurology and psychiatry in addressing cognitive disturbances. In schizophrenia, the presence of cognitive impairment prior to the onset of psychosis and early after its manifestation suggests that some neurocognitive abnormalities precede the onset of psychosis and may represent a trait marker. These cognitive alterations may arise from functional disconnectivity, as no significant brain damage has been found. In this review we aim to revise A.R. Luria's systematic approach used in the neuropsychological evaluation of cognitive functions, which was primarily applied in patients with neurological disorders and in the cognitive evaluation in schizophrenia and other related disorders. As proposed by Luria, cognitive processes, associated with high...