PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

J Nurnberger

Publications and source records attributed to J Nurnberger.

31 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1987

Eye-tracking, attention and amphetamine challenge.

Smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM) performance has been linked to nonvoluntary attentional processes. Amphetamine is a psychotropic drug with documented effects on attentional performance. In order to evaluate the relationship between SPEM performance and amphetamine's attentional effects, SPEM performance was measured prior to and following amphetamine administration in five bipolar patients and eight obsessive-compulsive patients. In these 13 patients, amphetamine did not significantly alter the accuracy of SPEM in the two patient groups. However, significant negative correlations were observed in the obsessive-compulsive patients and in the combined patient groups between baseline SPEM impairment and changes in eye-tracking accuracy following amphetamine, i.e. individuals with poorer SPEM accuracy improved while better SPEM performers deteriorated in tracking accuracy during amphetamine treatment.

Attention↗
PubMed1987

Mood-independent aberrancies of word responses and action of lithium on their repetition in manic depressed illness.

Following a preceding study, two samples of patients, one French (N = 20) and one American (N = 29), from two affective disorders clinics, were given free word-association tests consisting of two successive presentations of the same list of stimulus words separated by a 15 minute interval. On the one hand, commonness of word responses was not affected by changes of mood, and consequently aberrancies in associative processes may be a trait of persons with bipolar affective disorders. On the other hand, repetition of responses was directly correlated with lithium concentration in plasma, which allowed a prediction of the success of lithium therapy.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Potentiation of antidepressant medications by phase advance of the sleep-wake cycle.

Four patients with major depression who were unresponsive to antidepressant medications rapidly improved and remained euthymic after an advance of the sleep-wake cycle. Phase advance of the sleep-wake cycle and antidepressant treatment may have complementary effects on the circadian system. The authors suggest that the combination may be useful in treating drug nonresponders and in hastening response to antidepressant drugs.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Transient sensory, cognitive and affective phenomena in affective illness. A comparison with complex partial epilepsy.

Behavioural changes have often been noted in patients with epilepsy. This study investigated the converse phenomenon--the occurrence of transient sensory, cognitive and affective changes resembling those described by epileptics, in affectively ill patients. Forty-four patients with affective illness, 37 with complex partial seizures, and 30 hypertensive controls were interviewed to determine the lifetime occurrence of these phenomena. Such symptoms occurred frequently in association with episodes of affective illness and epilepsy, but were rare in controls. Visual, auditory, olfactory and epigastric symptoms, illusions, jumbled thoughts and amnesia were common to both epilepsy and affective illness. Greater numbers of symptoms were associated with better response to lithium and tricyclic antidepressants. Transient sensory, cognitive, and affective phenomena may be more common in affective illness and other psychiatric conditions than is generally recognised, and may be clues to the underlying pathophysiology of these conditions.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Effects of injected sympathomimetic amines on plasma catecholamines and circulatory variables in man.

We measured blood pressure, heart rate (HR), and plasma catecholamine responses to a 5-minute infusion of 0.3 mg/kg d-amphetamine (d-A) and to graded bolus injections of tyramine (Tyr) to a similar increment in systolic pressure (BPs), in 9 and 7 healthy people, respectively. Both sympathomimetic agents dramatically increased BPs (mean increases peaking at 39 and 36 mm Hg for d-A and Tyr), associated with increased plasma norepinephrine (NE) (224 and 149 pg/ml) but unassociated with changes in plasma epinephrine or HR. The time course of BPs and NE responses to Tyr was much shorter than to d-A, but the pattern was similar. The results are consistent with the hypotheses that both agents increase BPs via increased synaptic cleft NE, and that circulating plasma NE reflects "spillover" from the cleft into the general circulation.

Blood Pressure↗
PubMed1983

A twin study of cholinergic REM induction.

Seven monozygotic twin pairs were found to display concordance for sensitivity to REM sleep induction by arecoline (intraclass correlation (ri) of 0.69, F = 5.35, p less than 0.02). The REM1-REM2 interval on the placebo night did not show significant concordance (ri = 0.05, F = 1.11, p = 0.44). Our previous study suggested that increased sensitivity to the muscarinic agonist arecoline, as measured by time to onset of the second REM period during sleep, may be an indicator of vulnerability to affective disorder. The present finding of twin concordance in response to arecoline suggests genetic variation in sensitivity of CNS muscarinic cholinergic receptors. Such increased sensitivity may play an etiologic role in affective disorder.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1982

Red cell ouabain-sensitive Na+-K+-adenosine triphosphatase: a state marker in affective disorder inversely related to plasma cortisol.

Ouabain-sensitive Na+-K+-stimulated ATPase was measured in red cell membranes using a spectrophotometric assay. The mean enzyme level in patients in the depressed state (1.2 nM/mg protein per min +/- 0.18 SEM) was lower lower than that in well-state patients (2.0 +/- 0.26) and hypomanic patients (2.4 +/- 0.31). Lithium treatment itself did not alter ATPase levels. Levels in patients in the well state were not significantly different from controls and thus ATPase does not constitute a "trait" marker for affective illness. Plasma cortisol level was higher in well-state patients (15.9 micrograms/dl +/- 1.46) than in controls (11.5 +/- 0.75). There were no significant differences in cortisol in these single morning samples during different mood states. Cortisol level correlated negatively with ATPase level in the total group of patients (r = 0.42, p less than 0.005), especially in those who were euthymic. These data indicate a relationship between cortisol and ATPase levels in affectively ill patients. Ouabain-sensitive NaK ATPase may be useful as an indicator of state in affective illness; plasma cortisol may be continuously elevated in some individuals with affective disorder.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Unipolar mania: a distinct clinical entity?

Of the 241 lithium clinic patients at the New York State Psychiatric Institute with bipolar I affective disorder, 38 (15.7%) had never been hospitalized or somatically treated for depression. These "unipolar manic" patients had a significantly lower incidence of rapid cycling and suicide attempts than other bipolar I patients. No differences were found, however, in risk of illness in first-degree relatives. Lithium was an effective prophylactic agent in these patients. Some patients originally classified as "unipolar manic" were found to have depressive episodes with additional information and clinical observation. "Unipolar mania" appears to be a subgroup of bipolar I illness, but there are no data to support the hypothesis that it is a separate entity.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A family study of rapid-cycling bipolar illness.

Twenty-nine out of 195 bipolar/episodic schizoaffective patients were judged to be rapid-cyclers (15%). Twenty-five of the 29 were female (86%). The age-corrected morbid risk for major affective disorder was 23.5% in 179 relatives of rapid-cyclers and 31.0% in 189 relatives of matched non-rapid cyclers (chi 2 = 2.6, NS). The prevalence of rapid-cycling itself was also not different in the two groups of relatives. Rapid-cycling thus appears to arise from factors which are separable from the genetic vulnerability to bipolar illness and which do not lead to aggregation within families.

Bipolar Disorder↗