Biomedical subjects

Stefanie Kalb

Publications and source records attributed to Stefanie Kalb.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Opposite effects of depression and antidepressants on processing speed and error rate.

Depressions increase reaction times and antidepressant treatment decreases them. Is it possible to get information, how these two conditions affect the stimulus-response pathway? Therefore, auditory and visual, left-hand and right-hand, simple and choice reaction times were measured in 38 patients with depression and 30 healthy control subjects. From these data, the minimal reaction times and the error rates were calculated. In the first study, the reaction times and error rates of patients with depression were correlated with the antidepressant doses. In the second study, the differences between medicated, depressive patients and healthy control subjects were investigated. The result of the first study was that antidepressant doses correlated negatively with reaction times but positively with error rates. In the second study, the patients with depression showed increased reaction times but reduced error rates compared to healthy control subjects. The auditory tasks were more affected than the visual tasks and the minimal reaction times more than the median reaction times. Therefore, we concluded that depression and antidepressant treatment had opposite effects on reaction times and error rates. The findings in minimal reaction times and auditory tasks suggest a special involvement of early cortical auditory processing in depression and antidepressant treatment.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2004

Sex differences in simple reaction tasks.

Many anatomical and brain mapping studies show a higher bilateral symmetry of female brains and a higher asymmetry of male brains so correlations between simple visual and auditory, left- and right-hand reaction times were examined for such sex differences. 20 healthy women and 20 men were tested in two sessions. For women all six response times correlated with each other significantly in Session A, but in Session B there were only two significant interhemispheric correlations. This represented different changes in visual and auditory reaction times between Sessions A and B. Men showed the same pattern in both sessions: a significant correlation between the interhemispheric visual reaction times and one between auditory reaction times. Women showed a total correlation pattern in Session A and an interhemispheric correlation pattern in Session B. This was interpreted as a transition between a holistic information-processing strategy in Session A and an analytic strategy in Session B. Men showed an analytic strategy in both sessions.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

[Influence of pharmaceutical advertising on the physician. A contribution to ethics in medicine].

Physicians who prescribe medicaments to patients are the preferred target group of sales promotion by pharmaceutical industry. As studies show, pharmaceutical advertising actually exerts some influence on a physician's knowledge and habit of prescribing medicine, to the point of even inducing him to give preference to a special drug. Information on pharmaceuticals given by advertisements may contain some potential of bias, instead of offering the physician a chance of objectives additional training. Free gifts from the pharmaceutical industry may easily plunge a physician into a conflict of interest while giving therapy with drugs. The gift relationship established between him and pharmaceutical enterprises is apt to mutate to some sort of commitment he owes to the givers. Favouring a drug which has come about through he influence of advertising, can thus violate the principles of "good prescribing". For a treatment which contains potential for bias and a conflict of interest cannot possibly match the profession's principles of responsibility, fostering informed choice (autonomy), protecting the patient from harm (nonmaleficence), acting in a patient's best interest (beneficence), and promoting equity in health care (justice). Each physician should therefore be aware of possibly belonging to a preferred target group pharmaceutical sales promotion is aiming at. He should take an independent attitude while acquiring knowledge, and critically view the adequateness of free gifts he is offered. Even students of medicine should be encouraged to critically reflect on the necessary and essential relationship to pharmaceutical industries so that it may be moulded according to the benefit of the patients.

Advertising↗