Treatment of sleep disorders in adults

One-third of our lives is spent asleep, but the reasons why we sleep are not yet fully understood. Sleep is a state of inactivity accompanied by a loss of awareness and a markedly reduced responsiveness to environmental stimuli. When a recording is made of an electroencephalogram (EEG) and other physiological variables such as muscle activity and eye movements during sleep (a technique called polysomnography) a pattern of sleep consisting of five different stages emerges. This pattern varies from person to person, but usually consists of four or five cycles of quiet sleep alternating with paradoxical (active) sleep, with longer periods of paradoxical sleep in the latter half of the night. A representation of these various stages over time is known as a hypnogram, and one of these derived from a normal control subject is shown in Figure 1. The quiet sleep is divided further into four stages, each with a characteristic EEG appearance, with progressive relaxation of the muscles and slower, more regular breathing as the deeper stages are reached. Most sleep in these deeper stages occurs in the first half of the night.

Electromyographic Assessment of Dimethylaminoethanol (Deanol) in Treatment of Tardive Dyskinesia

An ABAB reversal design with matched placebo was employed to assess the acetylcholine precursor, deanol, in the treatment of tardive dyskinesia. Oral dyskinesia was monitored by electromyography in four patients with tardive dyskinesia. A battery of psychological rating scales was also utilized to determine effects of deanol on psychological functioning. Improvement ranged from 35 to 70% dyskinetic symptom reduction in three patients given deanol. The decrease in symptomatology, however, did not reach the level of oral EMG activity observed in a normal control subject. Psychological functioning was generally unaffected, but slight improvement was seen in two subjects.

A Cineradiography Investigation of Children’s w/r Substitutions

Articulatory positioning and movement characteristics were compared between /w/ and intended /r/ productions in three children exhibiting w/r substitutions and one normal control subject. High-speed lateral-view cineradiography was utilized. It was found that only the control subject demonstrated significant differences in lip, jaw, and tongue positioning for /w/ compared to /r/. However, systematic patterns of articulatory variability within and between subjects suggested that the experimental subjects were possibly differentiating between /w/ and intended /r/ even though the articulatory target configuration appeared to be nondiscriminatory. Perceptual judgments of the tape-recorded utterances mirrored the physiological data in that only those intended /r/ productions involving articulatory positioning clearly different from that of /w/ were perceived as /r/.

Conceptual distance indices as measures of alienation in obsessional neurosis

SYNOPSISA new method for the measurement of alienation is proposed. It is based upon the conceptual distance between people. For each subject, the observed distances between all possible pairs of elements were calculated and compared with the expected distance between two elements drawn at random. The ratios derived in this way were used to examine intra-self alienation and actual self isolation. The obsessional patient is self alienated and isolated. The normal control subject is self and socially integrated.