Primary symptoms of psychosis may be evident in 12-year-olds

Children normally experience flights of fancy, including imaginary friends and conversations with stuffed animals, but some of them are also having hallucinations and delusions which might be the early signs of psychosis.

A study of British 12-year-olds that asked whether they had ever seen things or heard voices that weren't really there, and then asked careful follow-up questions, has found that nearly 6 percent may be showing at least one definite symptom of psychosis.

The children who exhibited these symptoms had many of the same risk factors that are known to correlate with adult schizophrenia, including genetic, social, neurodevelopmental, home-rearing and behavioral risks.

"We don't want to be unduly alarmist, but this is also not something to dismiss," said co-author Terrie Moffitt, the Knut Schmidt Nielsen professor of psychology and neuroscience and psychiatry & behavioral sciences at Duke University. The study appears in the April issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

The children were participants in the long-term Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study in Britain, which includes 2,232 children who have been tracked since age 5 and reassessed at 7, 10 and 12.

The British study is an outgrowth of research that the same group did earlier with a long-term cohort in Dunedin, New Zealand. At age 11, those children were asked about psychotic symptoms, but the researchers waited 15 years to see how, as adults, their symptoms matched what they reported at 11. By age 26, half of the people who self-reported symptoms at age 11 were found to be psychotic as adults.

"It looks like a non-trivial minority of children report these symptoms," said co-author Avshalom Caspi, the Edward M. Arnett professor of psychology and neuroscience and psychiatry & behavioral sciences at Duke.

The findings provide more clues to the development of schizophrenia, but don't solve any questions by themselves, said co-author Richard Keefe, director of the schizophrenia research group in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke.

Schizophrenia often goes undetected until adolescence, when the first overt symptoms -- antisocial behavior, self-harm, delusions -- begin to manifest in an obvious way. But nobody knows whether the disease is triggered by the process of adolescence itself, or brain development or hormone changes. "It's my impression that all of those things interact," Keefe said.

Psychotic symptoms in childhood also can be a marker of impaired developmental processes, and are something caregivers should look for, Moffitt said. "There is not much you can do except monitoring and surveillance," Moffitt said. "But we feel we should be alerting clinicians that there's a minority to pay attention to."

While the incidence of psychotic symptoms in this study was around 5 or 6 percent, the adult incidence of schizophrenia is believed to be about 1 percent, Keefe added. There are some recent findings however, that many more people experience hallucinations and delusions without being diagnosed as psychotic, he said.

The research was supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, UK Medical Research Council, The National Alliance of Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Health Research Board of Ireland and the William T. Grant Foundation.

Etiological and Clinical Features of Childhood Psychotic Symptoms, Guilherme Polanczyk et al, Archives of General Psychiatry, April 2010 http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/67/4/328

Link: http://www.duke.edu/

Differences in language circuits in the brain linked to dyslexia - VUCast: Vanderbilt University's News Network

Differences in language circuits in the brain linked to dyslexia - VUCast: Vanderbilt University's News Network

Children with dyslexia often struggle with reading, writing and spelling, despite getting an appropriate education and demonstrating intellectual ability in other areas. New neurological research from Vanderbilt University has found that these children’s difficulties with written language may be linked to structural differences within an important information highway in the brain known to play a role in oral language.

The findings were published in the June 2010 issue of Cortex.

Vanderbilt researchers Sheryl Rimrodt and Laurie Cutting and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and Kennedy Krieger Institute used an emerging MRI technique, called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), to discover evidence linking dyslexia to structural differences in an important bundle of white matter in the left-hemisphere language network. White matter is made up of fibers that can be thought of as the wiring that allows communication between brain cells; the left-hemisphere language network is made up of bundles of these fibers and contains branches that extend from the back of the brain (including vision cells) to the front parts that are responsible for articulation and speech.

“When you are reading, you are essentially saying things out loud in your head,” Cutting said. “If you have decreased white matter integrity in this area, the front and back part of your brain are not talking to one another. This would affect reading, because you need both to act as a cohesive unit.”

Rimrodt and Cutting used the DTI technique to map the course of an important white matter bundle in this network and discovered that it ran through a frontal brain region known to be less well-organized in the dyslexic brain. They also found that fibers in that frontal part of the tract were oriented differently in dyslexia.

“Finding a convergence of MRI evidence that goes beyond identifying a region of the brain that differs in dyslexia to linking that to an identifiable structure and beginning to explore physical characteristics of the region is very exciting,” Rimrodt said. “It brings us a little bit closer to understanding how dyslexia happens.”

Rimrodt is assistant professor of developmental medicine. Cutting is Patricia and Rodes Hart Chair at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development and an investigator in the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development. The researchers completed the work at the Kennedy Krieger Institute with their colleagues there before moving to Vanderbilt.

The research was funded by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine General Clinical Research Center, the Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Learning Disability Research Center and F.M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging, the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

For more information about Vanderbilt’s Peabody College, visit http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu

JISC TechDis Toolbar for Text to Speech, Spell Checking and Dictionary Functions

Here you can see the Demo page of the JISC Techdis Toolbar app developed by Southampton University to help students with Text to Speech, Spell Checking and Dictionary options on all web pages.

It is a downloadable shareware app that is available as an add-on for Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and the MAc OS systems.

Click on the picture or HERE to run the Demo.

The JISC website describes the Techdis Toolbar in this way;

"JISC Techdis Toolbar has been created as an open-source, cross-browser toolbar to help students customise the way they view and interact with web pages to help their study skills.

The concept behind JISC Techdis Toolbar is simple: One toolbar to provide all of the functionality you would usually get in many different products, and which will run in any desktop web browser. "

Got to the JISC Techdis website for more information on this Toolbar and other tools on offer.

NB: This blog does not recommend or endorse applications or products, it is simply here to provide information to the reader.

Inspiration 9 Software: Helps Note taking for Students

For visual mapping, outlining, writing and making presentations, the Inspiration® 9 tool claims to be the ultimate thinking and learning tool for students.

The marketing info on their site continues;

"Brainstorm ideas, structure your thoughts and visually communicate concepts to strengthen understanding with the Diagram and Map Views.

To take notes, organise information, and structure writing for plans, papers and reports, use the integrated Outline View to focus on main and supporting ideas and to clarify thinking in written form.

With Inspiration's Presentation Manager, transform your diagrams, mind maps and outlines into polished presentations that communicate ideas clearly and demonstrate understanding and knowledge. "

We do not endorse this application but simply provide it for your information and it is for you to decide it's usefulness.

If you wish to know more, the link for the website can be found here: http://www.inspiration.com/

Assess 2010 Presentation on Accessibility & Assistive Technology

Click on Link to Lexdis - eLearning

Supporting Accessibility Through Audio

Children's eBook Reader in Colour

To visit and explore the site, simply click on the link

Adult ADHD Research Breakthrough using MCT

Let's begin with a brief explanation about Meta-cognitive Therapy (MCT):
Meta-cognitive therapy is a therapy based on the principle that anxiety, worry and circular ruminations are universal processes that can lead to an emotional disorder.

These processes are linked to common but erroneous beliefs about thinking and unhelpful coping or self-regulation strategies. These are things we do to address the problem but they can be responsible for keeping it going.

Metacognitive therapy recognises this negative change in thinking patterns and believes it is very important. It gives it a name: the Cognitive-Attentional Syndrome (CAS).

Affected persons can suffer from repeated patterns of thinking that consist of worry, rumination, a fixation of attention on a threat, and they can develop coping behaviours that the person believes are helpful but in many cases they keep the emotional problems going.

So, successful use of meta-cognitive therapy can allow people to escape from, or break out of repetitive thinking patterns and therefroe the behavours that lead to prolonged psychological distress.

In this blog we will look at one team's research into it's effectiveness and use in addressing the needs of adults who suffer from ADHD - Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder.

Research
Mount Sinai researchers have learned that meta-cognitive therapy (MCT), a method of skills teaching by use of cognitive-behavioural principles, yielded significantly greater improvements in symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults than those that participate in supportive therapy.

The study, titled "Meta-Cognitive Therapy," is now published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Mary Solanto, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Center at The Mount Sinai Medical Center examined the effectiveness of a 12-week meta-cognitive therapy group. The intervention was intended to enhance time management, organisational, and planning skills/abilities in adults with ADHD.

"We observed adults with ADHD who were assigned randomly to receive either meta-cognitive therapy or a support group," said Dr. Solanto. "This is the first time we have demonstrated efficacy of a non-medication treatment for adult ADHD in a study that compared the active treatment against a control group that was equivalent in therapist time, attention, and support."

The study observed 88 adults with rigorously diagnosed ADHD, who were selected following structured diagnostic interviews and standardised questionnaires. Participants were randomly assigned to receive meta-cognitive therapy or supportive psychotherapy in a group setting. Groups were equated for ADHD medication use.

Participants were evaluated by an independent (blind) clinician using a standardised interview assessment of core inattentive symptoms and a subset of symptoms related to time-management and organisation.

After 12 weeks, the MCT group members were significantly more improved than those in the support group. The MCT group was also more improved on self-ratings and observer ratings of these symptoms.

Meta-cognitive therapy uses cognitive-behavioural principles and methods to teach skills and strategies in time management, organisation, and planning. Also targeted were depressed and anxious thoughts and ideas that undermine effective self-management.

The supportive therapy group matched the MCT group with respect to the nonspecific aspects of treatment, such as providing support for the participants, while avoiding discussion of time management, organization, and planning strategies.

In addition to Dr. Solanto, the research team included David Marks, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, and Jeanette Wasserstein, Ph.D., Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

If you would like to know more about MCT - Meta-cognitive Therapy, you can click on the link to go to the MCT Institute website.

NB: I have not examined this site at great length and see it only as a possible source of further information for the reader.

National Literacy Trust: State of the Nation (UK) Downlaod Report

Literacy is the combination of reading, writing, speaking and listening skills we all need to fulfil our potential. These life skills are essential to the happiness, health and wealth of individuals and society.

Literacy: State of the Nation provides a coherent picture of literacy in the UK today.

Literacy: State of the Nation reveals that:

• One in six people in the UK struggle with literacy. This means their literacy is below the level expected of an eleven year old
• A quarter of young people do not recognise a link between reading and success
• Men and women with poor literacy are least likely to be in full-time employment at the age of thirty
• 73% of parents and carers say their child often reads
• The number of children achieving the expected levels for reading at age eleven increased from 78% in 1999 to 86% in 2009
• The number of children achieving the expected levels for writing at age eleven increased from 54% to 67% in 2006, but this figure plateaued and remained the same (67%) three years later in 2009

Download Literacy: State of the Nation

17% of UK Adults have lowered Literacy Rate

One in six adults has lower literacy than the level expected of an 11-year-old, new research shows today.

It finds that only half of children enjoy reading, and that a quarter do not recognise any link between reading and success.

The report, Literacy: State of the Nation is the first coherent, national picture of reading and writing abilities, according to the National Literacy Trust.

It conducted a study of more than 17,000 pupils from 112 schools. Most read e-mails, blogs and websites more frequently than books, the survey suggests. However children who engage in technology are more likely to enjoy writing than their classmates.

Check out NLT's Reading for Life and Fun website

While literacy levels have risen among 11-year-olds in the past decade, they have plateaued in writing. Yet three-quarters of parents said their child often read for pleasure.

The report also analysed reading and writing in the workplace, and found widespread concerns.

Almost seven in ten retail firms and half of manufacturing companies reported problems with literacy among staff.

Check out the NLT's Reading for Younger Children website

Nearly two-thirds of men and three-quarters of women with very low literacy skills had never received a promotion, it found.

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, said the findings were “extremely worrying”.

“We believe this should be of great concern to all political parties as reading for pleasure helps to develop strong literacy skills and ultimately, supports academic and future success,” he said.

“The Treasury estimated the cider tax will bring in £30 million. For just a tenth of this money the Government could establish which adults are most in need of literacy support and run a year-long campaign to support children and adults who are struggling with literacy.

“It is estimated that poor literacy costs the economy £2.5bn a year.”