Cognitive Function in Bipolar Different in Men and Women

Bipolar disorder may affect the brains of men and women in different ways. 

The effect of the illness on memory, according to one recent study, is more severe in men.

Dr. Sophia Frangou, of the section of Neurobiology of Psychosis, at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College in London, and her colleagues found that compared to women, men with bipolar disorder type I had more difficulty performing on tests of immediate memory, as well as auditory and visual memory.

Bipolar disorder is a serious mood disorder that affects nearly 5 million Americans.  In addition to the classic symptoms of cycling between periods of ‘low’ (depressed) mood and ‘high’ (manic or hypomanic) the illness can have severe effects on one’s personal life, family, career goals, physical health, overall life functioning, and survival.  More than 20 percent, according to some data, commit suicide.  Many studies have shown negative effects of the illness on cognition, and although the exact cause is difficult to ascertain, clearly untreated illness can cause cognitive defects, as can certain medications or treatments.

To analyze the effect of gender on cognition in bipolar patients, Frangou and her colleagues enrolled 132 patients in the study.  86 patients had bipolar I (a subtype of bipolar disorder characterized by more extreme mania); this group included 36 bipolar men and 50 women with the disorder.  46 healthy controls were included (21 men and 25 women.)  All of the patients with bipolar I disorder were similar in age of onset, duration of illness, number of episodes or hospitalizations, and global assessment of functioning (GAF) scores.

All study participants were asked to complete a variety of tests to assess cognitive function, including tasks to measure general intellectual ability, memory encoding, recognition, retrieval, response inhibition, and executive function (abstraction and perseveration). Bipolar illness’s effect on patients’ daily lives was assessed using the global assessment of functioning (GAF) scale.

The team found that there was a difference in the test results of the men compared both to the women with bipolar illness and to the healthy individuals.  The cognitive defects were noted particularly in the areas of immediate memory (similar to short-term memory), encoding, and retrieval processes.  (Memory encoding is the ability to store new memories.)

Furthermore, in the men, there was a statistically significant association between a decreased immediate memory function and an overall decreased global assessment of functioning score, which indicates that the more severely affected men with bipolar I would have a harder time in their daily function.

There were no apparent differences in general intellectual function, the ability to form concepts, perseverence, or the ability to appropriately inhibit a response.

“Our results support the notion that gender may modulate the degree of immediate memory dysfunction in bipolar disorder and its impact on overall level of function,” says Frangou.

Previous studies have shown that gender plays a role in the clinical course and severity of bipolar disorder, and these results shed some light on one pathway by which such a decline in function may occur.  In addition to deciphering why men are more severely affected in this area, with the ultimate goal of a novel therapy, future research may be able to help further define precisely where memory deficits occur, and allow for development of targeted  treatments.  Perhaps occupational or other therapy designed to improve memory function might result in improved global functional outcome in severely affected men.

Dr. Frangou’s results can be found in the journal Psychological Medicine

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How to diet: Help for dieters

Dieting isn't easy. You need some help? We're here to help you with your weight loss. One reason that many people have so much difficulty losing weight is that metabolic factors appear to play an important role in obesity. In fact, a good case can be made that obesity is most often not an eating disorder but rather a metabolic disorder. Metabolism refers to the physiological process, including the production of energy from nutrients that take place within an organism. Just as cars differ in their fuel efficiency, so do people. Rose and William studied pairs of people who were matched for weight, height, age and activity. Some of these matched pairs differed by a factor of two in the number of calories they eat each day. People with an efficient metabolism have calories left over to deposit in the long term nutrient reservoir; thus, they have difficulty keeping the reservoir from growing. In contract, people with an inefficient metabolism can eat large meals without getting fat. Thus, a fuel efficient automobile is desirable; a fuel efficient body runs the risk of becoming obese.

Many people don’t know how to diet, they diet and then they relapse, thus undergoing large changes in body weight. Some investigators have suggested that starvation causes the body’s metabolism to become more efficient. For example:

Browel research on how to diet

He fed rats a diet that made them become obese and then restricted their food intake until their body weights returned to normal. Then they made the rats fat again and reduced their intake again. The second time, the rats become fat much faster and lost their weight much more slowly. Clearly, the experience of gaining and losing large amounts of body weight altered the animal’s metabolic efficiency. They also obtained evidence that the same phenomenon (called the yo-yo effect) take place in human. They measure the resting metabolic rate in two groups of adolescent wrestlers: those who fasted just before a competition and binged afterwards and those who did not. The investigators found that wrestlers who fasted and binged developed more efficient metabolism. Possibly, those people will have difficulty maintaining body weight as they get older

Gaol setting

Goal setting theories argue that goals ( e.g losing weight) must be specific, challenging and attainable. These are the most probable results that you will get if you will start to pursue a weight loss program. So, can you lose 10 pounds in a week’s time? Chances are, you won’t be able to … at least not in a healthy way. Do you think you can shed 3 pounds in a matter of 7 days? Commit most of your day to weight loss activities and this is very much possible.

Most weight loss programs can guarantee this much of a result. However, we’re talking about sustainable weight loss not quick fixes to the problem of being overweight. Very difficult or impossible tasks have demotivating affects, even when the reward is high. For example; Most quick loss diets will promise up to 10lb in the first week, which is more often that not merely loss of fluid rather than fat. But then next week will be losing 0.8kg per week. Indeed, excessive rewards may over arouse individuals, increasing their sense of responsibility and making them choke under pressure.
Intergrating expectancy and goals theories, social cognitve approaches to motivation, such as Dweck have examined the self fulfilling and self defeating effects of overconfident or under confident cognitions in educational setting. For example, believing that intelligent is fixed or entity will lead to lower motivation and efforts, whereas believing it is malleable or incremental have motivating effects, and in turn improve performance, same applies to losing weight

Long-term steady weight loss is safer, and likely to be more permanent. It has been found that an average of 2lb or 0.8kg per week is the optimum weight loss that will encourage changes in metabolic rate that, crucial, can be sustained. And don’t forget losing large amount of body weight alter the metabolic efficiency.

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Audio Download : Dream Psychology

Dream psychology is the key to Freud’s works and to all modern psychology. With a simple, compact manual such as Dream Psychology there shall be no longer any excuse for ignorance of the most revolutionary psychological system of modern times.

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Audio Download : A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis

Self-hypnosis is used extensively in modern hypnotherapy. It can take the form either of hypnosis carried out by means of a learned routine, or by listening to a recording, e.g. a recording from a website or a self-hypnosis CD.

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Unconscious Childhood Sexuality

In classical Freudian theory the unconscious wishes were almost exclusively sexual, basic but unacceptable wishes of childhood get driven out of awareness. They become part of the active unconscious where, while out of awareness, they remain influential.
The active unconscious presses to find the expression in dreams, slips of speech, unconscious mannerisms, as well as socially approved behavior as artistic, literary, or scientific activity. One may say that it is difficult to treat Freud's influence because it is far-reaching in effect and extremely complex.
Freud believed that the sexual desire could be developed in individuals by sublimation. That pleasure could be derived from any object that, as humans develop become fixated on different and specific objects through their stages of personality development.
First in the oral stage, illustrated by an infant's pleasure in nursing, the mother's breast is the first object. Consistently, the first love object is the mother, a displacement of the earlier object of desire which is the breast.
Then in the anal stage by a toddler's pleasure in discharging bowels, the object is the rectal orifice. Then in the phallic stage, where children then passed through a stage in which they settled on the mother as a sexual object, known as the Oedipus complex, but that the child eventually overcame and repressed this desire because of its forbidden nature.
The repressive latency stage of psychosexual development comes before the final stage of psychosexual development when sexual urges are once again aroused. Adolescents direct their sexual urges to the opposite sex with the genitals as the primary focus of pleasure (Felluga, D. 2003).
Freud' theory of personality is the basis of psychoanalysis, which is one of the most important psychotherapeutic methods. Intensive sessions between the psychoanalyst and the patient are held an hour a day, four or five times a week, or more often depending on the nature and scope of the problem. If possible the psychoanalyst should spend more than enough time with the patient.
The psychoanalyst attempts to help the client reveal and resolve his emotional problems and conflicts and to determine his motives for repressing them. The psychoanalyst utilizes the person's refusal (resistance) and reveals foolish or embarrassing thoughts so that the basic unconscious feeling that underlies his problem may be uncovered.
Through dream analysis, the latent content of a dream (unpleasant or painful unconscious thoughts) based on knowledge of its manifest content (remembered portion of the dream as recalled by the person after awakening) may be uncovered by the psychoanalyst.
The object of psychoanalytic treatment is self-understanding of the conflict. The psychotherapist must facilitate the patient himself to be aware of the unresolved conflict entombed in the cryptical niches of the unconscious mind to face and pursue with them to effect healing. Therapists must learn and experience the techniques themselves as clients. The patient needs empathy that is discernment and getting into the feelings of the patient.
Suppression of the formerly repressed drives is another possibility to cure the patient. It means that, after the unconscious mind have been uncovered and understood by the patient; the conscious mind must exclude the unacceptable thoughts or desires and channel this repressed energy into sublimation which is achieving social, artistic, and other interests in life. What is important is the discharge of the repressed psychic energy, the coarctation of which was the primary reason of the neurotic indications.

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What Is Sports Psychology

 


Question: What Is Sports Psychology?
Answer:

Sports psychology is the study of how psychology influences sports, athletic performance, exercise and physical activity. Some sports psychologists work with professional athletes and coaches to improve performance and increase motivation. Other professionals utilize exercise and sports to enhance people’s lives and well-being throughout the entire lifespan.

History of Sports Psychology

Sports psychology is a relatively young discipline within psychology. In 1920, Carl Diem founded the world’s first sports psychology laboratory at the Deutsche Sporthochschule in Berlin, Germany. In 1925, two more sports psychology labs were established – one by A.Z. Puni at the Institute of Physical Culture in Leningrad and the other by Coleman Griffith at the University of Illinois.

Griffith began offering the first course in sports psychology in 1923, and later published the first book on the subject titled The Psychology of Coaching (1926). Unfortunately, Griffith’s lab was closed in 1932 due to lack of funds. After the lab was shut down, there was very little research on sports psychology until the subject experienced a revival of interest during the 1960s.

Ferruccio Antonelli established the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) in 1965 and by the 1970s sports psychology had been introduced to university course offerings throughout North America. The first academic journal, the International Journal of Sport Psychology, was introduced in 1970, which was then followed by the establishment of the Journal of Sport Psychology in 1979.

By the 1980s, sports psychology became the subject of a more rigorous scientific focus as researchers began to explore how psychology could be used to improve athletic performance, as well as how exercise could be utilized to improve mental well-being and lower stress levels.

Sports Psychology Today

Contemporary sports psychology is a diverse field. While finding ways to help athletes is certainly an important part of sports psychology, the application of exercise and physical activity for improving the lives of non-athletes is also a major focus.

Major Topics Within Sports Psychology

There are a number of different topics that are of special interest to sports psychologists. Some professionals focus on a specific area, while others study a wide range of techniques.

• Imagery: Involves visualizing performing a task, such as participating in an athletic event or successfully performing a particular skill.
• Motivation: A major subject within sports psychology, the study of motivation looks at both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators. Extrinsic motivators are external rewards, such as trophies, money, medals or social recognition. Intrinsic motivators arise from within, such as a personal desire to win or the sense of pride that comes from performing a skill.
• Attentional Focus: Involves the ability to tune out distractions, such as a crowd of screaming fans, and focus attention on the task at hand.

Careers in Sports Psychology

Becoming a sports psychologist could be an exciting career choice for many psychology students, especially those who have a strong interest in sports and physical activity. If you are interested in this career, learn more about the educational requirements, job duties, salaries and other considerations in this profile of careers in sports psychology

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