Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Hisato Matsunaga.
Specific phobia is the most prevalent of the anxiety disorders. Although there have been relatively few studies of its psychobiology and pharmacotherapy, there is a rich laboratory of literature on fear conditioning and extinction and a clear evolutionary perspective. Advances in the cognitive-affective neuroscience of fear processing may ultimately lead to new approaches to the clinical management of phobias.
The efficacy of paroxetine in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder in Western populations is well established. The present study compares the efficacy and safety of paroxetine with placebo in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder in Japanese patients. Patients aged 16 years or older who met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edn; DSM-IV) criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder and had a Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) score of >/=16 were randomized to receive 12 weeks' therapy in a double-blind manner. Paroxetine 20-50 mg/day or placebo was administered following a 1 week, placebo run-in phase. One hundred and ninety-one patients were randomized to either paroxetine or placebo, 188 patients were assessed as the full analysis set (FAS) and 144 patients completed the 12 week study. After adjustment for the Y-BOCS total score at baseline, reductions in obsessive-compulsive total score at week 6 and at the end of therapy were significantly greater in the paroxetine group than the placebo group. Most of the adverse events that occurred during the study were of mild to moderate intensity. Paroxetine is effective and well tolerated in Japanese adult patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
OBJECTIVE: Decreased pain sensitivity is found in individuals who are ill with bulimia nervosa (BN). The purpose of this study is to determine whether altered pain perception persists after recovery from bulimia nervosa (RBN). METHODS: Eleven women who were recovered from BN for more than 1 year were compared with 15 healthy volunteer women. The participants received two pain evaluations--thermal pain stimulation (TPS), which evaluates threshold and tolerance to heat, and the submaximal effort tourniquet test (SETT), which assesses threshold and tolerance to ischemic pain induced by inflation of a blood pressure cuff. RESULTS: Compared with the controls, the RBN women showed elevated pain threshold as measured with the SETT and a tendency to elevated pain threshold on the TPS. DISCUSSION: Decreased pain sensitivity persists after recovery from BN and may reflect altered modulatory function in this illness.
Clinical features in two cases with musical obsessions are presented to discuss phenomenological and psychopharmacological differences from those in patients with musical hallucinations. The present patients commonly experienced music as an internally generated cognitive product accompanied by full insight into the senselessness of the symptoms. They also attempted to suppress the musical symptoms or to neutralize them with other thoughts. Thus, despite no covert or systematic compulsive behaviors, the musical symptoms of the present cases are consistent with the phenomenological nature of obsessive-compulsive disorder defined in DSM-IV. In addition, in contrast to previous case reports of musical hallucinations, the present patients failed to respond to neuroleptics, but showed significant response to an adequate trial of clomipramine. Thus, their symptoms appear to be phenomenologically and biologically distinct from musical hallucinations, especially those characteristic of schizophrenia.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
In this study, we sought to characterize obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients with impulsive features, and to determine whether they constitute a distinct subtype of OCD. Therefore we systematically assessed impulse control disorders and other impulsive conditions categorized as obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders (OCSDs) in 153 Japanese adult patients with OCD. Forty-five subjects (29%) had concurrent impulsive disorders, and they were differentiated from other OCD patients on a range of demographic features (e.g., younger age at onset), and clinical features (e.g., pervasive and severe psychopathology, and poor treatment outcome). However, on logistic regression, none of these variables predicted comorbid impulsivity. The findings appear to support the argument that OCD patients with impulsive features constitute a subtype of OCD. However, further research is necessary to determine whether impulsivity should be conceptualized as lying on a spectrum with compulsivity or as a dimension that is orthogonal to compulsivity.