Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed in 30 patients with first-episode schizophrenia – all treated with atypical neuroleptics – and 21 healthy controls. NSS were rated on the Heidelberg Scale. By manual tracing, the cerebellum was divided into the following subregions bilaterally: anterior lobe, superior posterior lobe, inferior posterior lobe, and Blasticidin S corpus medullare,

respectively. Volumetric measures were compared between the two groups and related to NSS scores. NSS scores were significantly higher in patients than in controls. Cerebella of patients were significantly smaller with atrophy pronounced in the corpus medullare bilaterally. In the patients’ group, higher NSS scores were found to be related to reduced volumes of the posterior lobes of the cerebellum. In contrast, no significant associations between NSS scores and cerebellar subregions in healthy subjects arose. Our findings support the hypothesis of cerebellar involvement in schizophrenia and indicate that alterations in distinct cerebellar regions are related to NSS. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“A significant problem in the study of Pavlovian conditioning is characterizing the nature of the representations of events that enter into learning. This

issue has been explored extensively with regard to the question of what features of the unconditioned stimulus enter into learning, but considerably Combretastatin A4 mouse less work has been directed to the question Sclareol of characterizing the nature of the conditioned stimulus. This article introduces a multilayered connectionist network approach to understanding how “”perceptual”" or “”conceptual”" representations of the conditioned stimulus might emerge from conditioning and participate in various learning phenomena. The

model is applied to acquired equivalence/distinctiveness of cue effects, as well as a variety of conditional discrimination learning tasks (patterning, biconditional, ambiguous occasion setting, feature discriminations). In addition, studies that have examined what aspects of the unconditioned stimulus enter into learning are also reviewed. Ultimately, it is concluded that adopting a multilayered connectionist network perspective of Pavlovian learning provides us with a richer way in which to view basic learning processes, but a number of key theoretical problems remain to be solved, particularly as they relate to the integration of what we know about the nature of the representations of conditioned and unconditioned stimuli.”
“Studies have demonstrated that AMPHs produce long-term damage to the brain dopaminergic, serotoninergic and glutamatergic regions. Prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus and striatum appear to be involved in the toxicity and behavioral changes induced by AMPHs. A single dose of AMPH causes mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress in rat brain.