PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

F Lolas

Publications and source records attributed to F Lolas.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

The measurement of quality of life through the content analysis of verbal behavior.

The 'quality of life' is a construct which many researchers are attempting to measure by means of self-rating procedures and by ratings from external observers. Another method of measuring this construct includes features of both the self-report method and the external observer rating method, and by doing so it minimizes some of the measurement errors inherent in the separate methods; this third method involves the content analysis of verbal behavior. This latter method preserves the reliability and validity of the scales that have been developed and tested for content analysis, while preserving the meanings intended by the subjects who are being assessed on this dimension, which meanings are often obscured or lost through self-report and ratings scales. A group of Content Scales especially applicable to assess the quality of life are reviewed and examples of their applicability are given. A discussion is provided dealing with special problems involving the assessment of this dimension, including cross-cultural issues and other factors that need consideration with respect to generalizability of the findings.

Communication↗
PubMed1992

Effects of stimulation intensity, gender and handedness upon auditory evoked potentials.

Left handers and women show less anatomical brain asymmetry, larger corpus callosum and more bilateral representation of specific functions. Sensory and cognitive components of cortical auditory evoked potentials (AEP) have been shown to be asymmetric in right handed males and to be influenced by stimulus intensity. In this study the influence of sex, handedness and stimulus intensity upon AEP components is investigated under basal conditions of passive attention. 14 right handed males, 14 right handed females, 14 left handed males, and 14 left handed females were studied while lying awake and paying passive attention to auditory stimulation (series of 100 binaural clicks, duration 1 msec, rate 1/sec, at four intensities). Cz, C3 and C4 referenced to linked mastoids and right EOG were recorded. Analysis time was 400 msec, average evoked potentials were based on 100 clicks. Stimulus intensity and gender affect early sensory components (P1N1 and N1P2) at central leads, asymmetry is influenced only by handedness, right handers showing larger P1N1 amplitudes over the right hemisphere.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1992

[Medicine as narrative].

This is and address delivered by the author on being elected Member of the Chilean Academy of Letters. It develops the notion of medicine as a metatext composed by different "texts": the physiological, the introspective and the behavioral. Each of these narratives derives its meaning from the "context" provided by the others and is articulated differently according to the social roles allotted to the participants in communicative transactions. Medicine, as communicative praxis, is a science of actions rather than objects which can be understood as process, procedure and product. In the light of these concept the distinction between illness, disease and sickness receives a new emphasis.

Philosophy, Medical↗
PubMed1991

[Relation between illness manifestations and personality structure].

Associations between various psychoneurotic or psychosomatic illnesses and personality structures are investigated empirically in this paper. The investigation is based on the diagnoses of 9377 patients who came to the Psychosomatic Clinic of the University of Heidelberg as outpatients in the decade from 1979-1988. The answer to the proposed question is attempted by means of a statistical analysis of the routinely documented diagnoses. The relation can therefore only be investigated to the extent allowed by the more or less theory-oriented view-point of the participating diagnostician. The results confirm in part clinically known relations between certain aspects of illness and personality structures. They point to an almost obvious asymmetry which has been disregarded up to now in the clinical-theoretical discussion: whereas "typical" personality structures are diagnosed increasingly more often in certain illnesses, none of the personality structures proved "supportive" in the occurrence of a certain illness. The altogether weak interdependence between illness and personality structure (diagnoses) demonstrates that both diagnoses represent--at least in part--different dimensions.

Humans↗
PubMed1990

Verbal affective expression during group and individual psychotherapy. Towards a description of therapist- and setting-related variables.

The paper deals with a comparison between verbal affective interventions by the same psychoanalyst in different therapeutic settings, individual and group therapy. Since the same therapist is involved, an exploration of interactional aspects of his therapeutic style becomes possible, taking into consideration his theoretical allegiance and his hypotheses about the structure and development of the psychotherapeutic milieu. The conformation of therapist-group and therapist-individual dyads shows a high thematic concordance across both settings, particularly with regard to separation anxiety, but also to a significant degree in relation to other verbally expressed affects. However similar the correlations do appear, there remain certain differences in the affective interactions between group or individual patients and the therapist that are due to developmental aspects of the therapeutic relationship in either setting.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Bioethics in Chile: present and future status.

Chile's health system has been evolving rapidly in recent years. Among other things, profit-making enterprises have assumed a growing role, medical care has become increasingly technical, and the importance of less highly trained health workers has grown. Also, the assigned role of the Chilean Medical Association in deciding matters of medical misconduct has diminished, while that of the courts has grown; the nature of the doctor-patient relationship has changed; and clear divergences between medical ethics codes, laws, and prevailing social practices have emerged. Within this context, bioethics has come to be regarded as a necessary element in the teaching and practice of medicine. So while this discipline has not yet become fully institutionalized in Chile, it seems likely to play a growing role in dealing with the aforementioned changes and could make a substantial contribution toward solution of associated problems in the future.

Bioethical Issues↗
PubMed1990

ARIMA modelling of chronospsychometric self-evaluation of drive and mood.

The expanding study of biological rhythms requires the use of refined methods of time series analysis. We propose the use of ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Averages) model, a powerful statistical tool of relatively recent development. A group of 5 patients with Affective Disorders (2 bipolars, 3 unipolars) and 1 patient with Adjustment Disorder self-assessed their AS every 8 hours for about a month. The affective state (AS) was estimated for 4 indicators: the two main constructs (Mood and Drive) of the segmented Visual Scale ESTA III and two bipolar items (Anxiety and Drowsiness). Mood and Drive are continuous variables, while Anxiety and Drowsiness are ordinal ones. Strictly speaking, ARIMA modelling is not valid with ordinal data. However, comparison of models of the two kinds of variables reveals no significant differences. This points out to a certain robustness of the method. Most of the series were non-stationary but could be transformed taking no more than two differences. The models made a very good fit of the data. Statistically significant coefficients on different lags may indicate the presence of circadian and infradian periodicities in the series. Further applications of ARIMA models to biological and psychological rhythmometry may be quite useful.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

[The integration of the behavioral sciences and biomedicine: the need for a metatheory].

Theoretical tensions and difficulties in the implementation of the biopsychosocial approach in health care uncover a problematic relationship between biomedicine and the behavioral sciences. The different professionals involved (e.g., psychologists and physicians) can interact through competition, collaboration, and integration and may be considered to represent health care subsystems, defined by profiles of their access to primary and secondary resources. Traditional institutionalization assigns the physician the hegemony in the system. Current challenges to this view underscore the need for a conceptual reformulation which should not only integrate--in a dialectical and complementary way--the contribution of physicians and other professionals, but also explicitly incorporate ethical and epistemological aspects derived from their relationship. Along with indications about the roles of metatheory, its relevance in the Latin American context is indicated.

Behavioral Sciences↗
PubMed1990

[Biomedicine and the quality of life. A theoretical analysis].

The notions of illness (subjective feeling), disease (technical labeling) and sickness (societal evaluation) are used for highlighting the fact that they constitute semantic spaces which may not coincide. Several factors explain the predominance of biomedical thinking, which must be construed as a cultural system in order to permit an appraisal of its strengths and weakness in relation to others (popular and folk). Quality of life, as a research area, emphasizes the illness side of the health care system, and may be defined as the tension between expectations and results. It is pointed out that a sound health-care system should strive for a comprehensive multidimensionality integrating technical, personal and societal points of view.

Culture↗
PubMed1990

[Correspondence theory: an empirical scientific position in relation to mind-body relations in psychosomatic medicine].

This paper presents a proposal regarding a concept of mind-body relationships which can be employed in clinical psychosomatics. Taking into account advances in the empirical sciences, it is termed nominalistic or constructivistic correspondence theory. Arguments are developed on the basis of several assertions: a) The "problem" has shifted from an ontologic to an epistemologic one; b) Psychical and somatic spheres are ways of dealing with experiences of an observer-agent which constitute "theories" to account for them; c) Both domains exhibit causal regularities, albeit of a different nature, and their elements show a "semiotic correspondence", not a material interaction. Their bonds stem from relational constructs developed in action, interaction and reflection. The discourses so created can be integrated into theories dealing with clinical phenomena. Differences between the outlined approach and others are pointed out, along with some of its advantages, shortcomings, and applications.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1989

Communication of emotional meaning, alexithymia, and somatoform disorders: a proposal for a diagnostic axis.

In this paper, a plea is made for establishing the dimension communication of emotional meaning as a descriptive axis in biopsychosocial diagnosis. Studies on alexithymia and somatic illness suggest that this dimension possesses not only diagnostic implications but also prognostic and therapeutic ones. A transactional viewpoint considering the definitions and expectations of patients, professionals and society would convert multiaxial into multidimensional diagnosis adapted to a given culture. Somatoform disorders are taken as illustration of the usefulness of the proposed dimension for further research and theorizing.

Affective Symptoms↗
PubMed1979

Interhemispheric and sex differences in the visual evoked response recovery cycle.

The recovery cycle of the flash-evoked response was studied in 6 female and 6 male right-handed subjects of comparable age. The aim of the study was to evidence possible interhemispheric differences between occipital leads. Two flashes, presented at graded time intervals between 20 and 150 msec, allowed the computation of an amplitude ratio between the second and the first evoked response, considering the III--IV peak-to-peak amplitude. A faster recovery was found for the left hemisphere, with more pronounced interhemispheric differences in male than in female subjects. Women showed a more reduced amplitude recovery than men and a somewhat different time-course of the recovery function. Women also showed less waveshape similarity between evoked responses elicited by the second of a pair of flashes in the right and left hemisphere. These findings are discussed in terms of differences in speed of information processing by both cerebral hemispheres. It is suggested that recovery cycle studies may contribute to brain laterality research and be of particular relevance to psychiatric studies involving assumptions about differential hemispheric excitability.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Alexithymia: anxiety and hostility in psychosomatic and psychoneurotic patients.

Verbal samples obtained from 40 psychoneurotic and 40 psychosomatic patients, matched with respect to age, sex, intelligence and some social indicators, were examined using different methods of content analysis. According to the concept of 'alexithymia' it was postulated that the restricted fantasy life and difficulty in expressing feelings attributed to psychosomatic patients would be reflected at the speech level (psycho-analytic interviews). The measurement of anxiety and hostility using the Gottschalk-Gleser scales gave the following results: with total anxiety in particular, and its subscales guilt, shame, separation and diffuse anxiety, and with hostility, the psychosomatic patients showed lower values than the neurotic patients, which were in part highly significant. The results confirm the existence of the 'psychosomatic phenomenon' but they do not permit statements concerning its etiology.

Anxiety↗
PubMed1979

The BAER profile: a method for reporting electrophysiologic brainstem examinations in clinical practice.

We present a method for graphically reporting the results of brainstem auditory evoked response examinations on the basis of multiple parameters. The method is based on a transform that normalizes the many latency and amplitude measures obtained from the averaged evoked responses of normal subjects tested under standardized conditions. Among the advantages of the method are the simplicity of its use, the identification of disease profiles, and the isolation of relevant parameters for research and diagnosis.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

[Event-related cerebral potentials. Classification and clinical use].

Event-related potentials (ERP) constitute an heterogeneous group of brain electrical signals time-locked to sensory stimulation, motor responses, and associative processes, recorded using computer averaging. Several kinds of brain electric activity are encompassed by the generic term "event related potentials": sensory evoked potentials, time-coherent cerebral events related to motor acta, long-latency potentials associated with psychological variables, slow potential shifts linked to psychological constructs, and "emitted" cerebral events of endogenous origin. Shortcomings of this classification are pointed out and a simpler one is proposed, distinguishing between sensory, motor, and associative time-locked potentials. Their clinical use is illustrated under six major headings: testing of sensory function, localization of lesions, maturation of the central nervous system, genetic markers, evaluation of pharmacologic agents, and indicators of cognitive processes. Some methodological issues relevant to the clinical use of ERP are discussed.

Association↗
PubMed1979

[Psychiatric perspectives of ethological anthropology].

Ethological anthropology is characterized as a biologically-based discipline aimed at the study of overt behaviour. Two of its main features are presented and discussed: its historical character and its protective nature. The first is a direct result of its being based upon evolutionary principles, emphasizing the adaptive character of behaviour and tracing back its origins and causation to phylogenetic adaptation and ontogenetic modification. The protective aspect is contrasted with other approaches--reflective theories--which adding a predominant role in the causation of behaviour to environmental influences. Within ethological theory the distinction is made between peristolabile and peristostable behaviours on the basis of their liability to environmental modification during individual development. For psychiatric research, ethological concepts are relevant both from a methodological and a theoretical standpoint. Their usefulness in comparative, transcultural and psychophysiologic studies is pointed out, as well as their applicability to research on human non-verbal communication and implicit behaviour. The contention is advanced that they provide an integrative framework of reference which combined with other approaches may permit the development of a comprehensive theory of human behaviour.

Anthropology, Cultural↗