Relying on evidence for the functional, neurochemical, and spectral parallelism between the late ... more Relying on evidence for the functional, neurochemical, and spectral parallelism between the late event-related potentials, delta oscillatory brain responses, and the skin conductance response (SCR) system the hypotheses about the existence of the SCR-related brain oscillations and their connectivity with the SCR system have been here suggested. In contrast to classical approach to event-related oscillations which relies on either stimulus-or response-locked time reference, an approach assigned as "oscillatory process-related oscillations" has been introduced. The method enables us to overcome the variability of latency period of the SCR. The hypothesis about the existence of the SCR-related brain oscillations and their delta nature has been confirmed through the grand averaging method. An unexpected finding was the complex nature of the SCR-related oscillations: in addition to the two second EEG segment which was correlated with the SCR system signals they also comprised an initial 200 ms segment uncorrelated with the SCR. The hypothesis about the connectivity between the SCR system and the respective delta brain oscillatory response has been operationalized through a multiple time series regression model. The predictor set consists of the SCR, its first three derivatives, and their mutual interactions. The Monte Carlo test of the causal link between the SCR system signals and the related delta EEG signal demonstrated significance in more than half of the participants. The findings have been considered from the standpoints of the segmental structure of the EEG, monoaminergic signaling and recently emerged the "brain-body dynamic syncytium" hypothesis.
In this paper we analysed the concept of motivation pointing to the two broader conceptual frames... more In this paper we analysed the concept of motivation pointing to the two broader conceptual frames that can comprise it and enable us to understand its theoretical meaning. Two paradigms of scientific reasoning--the dynamic conceptualization of the world and the theory of evolution--have been used in the explanation of human behavior since the very beginning of the scientific dealing with the problem. The difference between these two metatheoretical positions is rich in consequences. The object of research of the same problem--the reason (cause) of human behavior--in the two metatheoretical conceptualizations is situated at adjacent but completely different strata of reality. The object of research of motivation as a dynamic explanation of behavior is contained in the psychic layer of reality. On the other hand, the conception of behavior as an adaptation to the biological heritage understands investigations of the objects situated at the organic or biological stratum. We also pointe...
Choice of antidepressant is a daily problem in clinical work. Clinical predictors of therapeutic ... more Choice of antidepressant is a daily problem in clinical work. Clinical predictors of therapeutic response to antidepressants are not yet available. We explored the possibility of using a signal analysis of skin conductance response (SCR) in specifying the imbalances of the neurotransmitter systems in the brain. The method consists in application of the system identification theory in analyzing the regulation of SCR. Eleven short stories from the contemporary literature have been used to elicit emotional arousal in subjects. Participants were divided into two groups, a group of depressed patients (n=57), and a healthy control group (n=52). The resulting mathematical model of SCR revealed two feedback loops. Significant differences have been found between depressed patients and healthy subjects in the sense of stronger signals in both identified feedback loops in depression. We considered these results in the context of the data regarding: (i) the functional neuroanatomy of SCR, and (...
Medication non-adherence is a great challenge in the treatment of psychotic disorders. Several fa... more Medication non-adherence is a great challenge in the treatment of psychotic disorders. Several factors leading to medication non-adherence in schizophrenia have been identified: drug side-effects, lack of illness insight, negative attitude of the patient and friends/relatives toward medication, stigma of mental illness and taking medication, poor therapeutic alliance, substance abuse, and role of the illness in maintaining the family system. In this work I propose a new vista on the phenomenon of medication non-adherence in psychosis. Rather rule than exception, non-adherence is to be expected in psychosis, it can be considered as a symptom of psychosis similarly as substance craving and use are symptoms of the substance use disorders. Relying on the last refinements of the concepts of boredom, anticipatory anhedonia, intrinsic motivation, and thrill I assume that there is a lure of psychotic episode. In order to escape an extremely unpleasant and distressing experience of boredom a...
What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communic... more What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communication and dealing with art, science, and philosophy - this is what the theory of informational needs (TIN) suggested eleven years ago is about. At the same time, at the beginning of this century, several lines of research have emerged. Neuroaesthetics has been established; the discovery of the mirror neuron system and theories about its function have appeared; a growing interest in positive affect and pleasure has developed in psychiatry and medicine. The purpose of the present paper is to reconsider the TIN (Branković 2001) in the context of the advance in neuroscience during the last decade and to show how much conceptual clarity is gained when the recent empirical and theoretical findings are viewed from the standpoint of the TIN. A computational model of the aesthetic response based on the TIN's two-factor model of hedonic value of stimuli is delineated.
Medication non-adherence is a great challenge in the treatment of psychotic disorders. Several fa... more Medication non-adherence is a great challenge in the treatment of psychotic disorders. Several factors leading to medication
non-adherence in schizophrenia have been identified: drug side-effects, lack of illness insight, negative attitude of the patient and
friends/relatives toward medication, stigma of mental illness and taking medication, poor therapeutic alliance, substance abuse, and
role of the illness in maintaining the family system.
In this work I propose a new vista on the phenomenon of medication non-adherence in psychosis. Rather rule than exception,
non-adherence is to be expected in psychosis, it can be considered as a symptom of psychosis similarly as substance craving and use
are symptoms of the substance use disorders. Relying on the last refinements of the concepts of boredom, anticipatory anhedonia,
intrinsic motivation, and thrill I assume that there is a lure of psychotic episode. In order to escape an extremely unpleasant and
distressing experience of boredom and to experience the thrill of psychosis, the patients are prone to quit antipsychotic therapy.
The phenomena of boredom and the thrill of psychosis are evident but unexploited for strengthening the therapeutic adherence.
Making the lure of psychosis an explicit reason for medication non-adherence would bring to the awareness a personal choice
between short-term pleasure of the psychotic thrill and prevention of long-term losses due to a psychotic episode. Neurobiological
and psychobiological underpinning of the psychotic thrill has been suggested. An explanation of the pleasure of psychosis and
substance use, which overcomes the circular explanation of reward in which dopamine appears as the cause and consequence of
reward, has been proposed.
The present synthesis can be regarded as a contribution to the field of theoretical psychiatry. It points to a chance for psychiatry
to do more for patients’ wellbeing and treatment adherence performing in a new key – dealing with boredom and pleasure in
patients’ everyday life.
What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communic... more What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communication and dealing with art, science, and philosophy -this is what the theory of informational needs (TIN) suggested eleven years ago is about. At the same time, at the beginning of this century, several lines of research have emerged. Neuroaesthetics has been established; the discovery of the mirror neuron system and theories about its function have appeared; a growing interest in positive affect and pleasure has developed in psychiatry and medicine. The purpose of the present paper is to reconsider the TIN (Branković 2001) in the context of the advance in neuroscience during the last decade and to show how much conceptual clarity is gained when the recent empirical and theoretical findings are viewed from the standpoint of the TIN. A computational model of the aesthetic response based on the TIN's two-factor model of hedonic value of stimuli is delineated.
What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communic... more What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communication and dealing with art, science, and philosophy -this is what the theory of informational needs (TIN) suggested eleven years ago is about. At the same time, at the beginning of this century, several lines of research have emerged. Neuroaesthetics has been established; the discovery of the mirror neuron system and theories about its function have appeared; a growing interest in positive affect and pleasure has developed in psychiatry and medicine. The purpose of the present paper is to reconsider the TIN (Branković 2001) in the context of the advance in neuroscience during the last decade and to show how much conceptual clarity is gained when the recent empirical and theoretical findings are viewed from the standpoint of the TIN. A computational model of the aesthetic response based on the TIN's two-factor model of hedonic value of stimuli is delineated.
The stereotyped nature of the skin conductance response (SCR) waveform has recently inspired seve... more The stereotyped nature of the skin conductance response (SCR) waveform has recently inspired several dynamic modeling approaches to the process of SCR. The suggested models differ: (i) in the order of the linear differential equation representing the process, and (ii) the neurobiological interpretation of the system parameters. While several research groups consider the sympathetic sudomotor nerve activity as the input signal in their models of the SCR, we assume that the initial neural event and feedback regulatory mechanisms that we can comprise with our models take place in the central brain structures. Here we demonstrate a refinement of the system identification procedure with skin conductance response signal, in order to test the thesis of the central meaning of the model's parameters.
Objective: Choice of antidepressant is a daily problem in clinical work. Clinical predictors of t... more Objective: Choice of antidepressant is a daily problem in clinical work. Clinical predictors of therapeutic response to antidepressants are not yet available. We explored the possibility of using a signal analysis of skin conductance response (SCR) in specifying the imbalances of the neurotransmitter systems in the brain.
Relying on evidence for the functional, neurochemical, and spectral parallelism between the late ... more Relying on evidence for the functional, neurochemical, and spectral parallelism between the late event-related potentials, delta oscillatory brain responses, and the skin conductance response (SCR) system the hypotheses about the existence of the SCR-related brain oscillations and their connectivity with the SCR system have been here suggested. In contrast to classical approach to event-related oscillations which relies on either stimulus-or response-locked time reference, an approach assigned as "oscillatory process-related oscillations" has been introduced. The method enables us to overcome the variability of latency period of the SCR. The hypothesis about the existence of the SCR-related brain oscillations and their delta nature has been confirmed through the grand averaging method. An unexpected finding was the complex nature of the SCR-related oscillations: in addition to the two second EEG segment which was correlated with the SCR system signals they also comprised an initial 200 ms segment uncorrelated with the SCR. The hypothesis about the connectivity between the SCR system and the respective delta brain oscillatory response has been operationalized through a multiple time series regression model. The predictor set consists of the SCR, its first three derivatives, and their mutual interactions. The Monte Carlo test of the causal link between the SCR system signals and the related delta EEG signal demonstrated significance in more than half of the participants. The findings have been considered from the standpoints of the segmental structure of the EEG, monoaminergic signaling and recently emerged the "brain-body dynamic syncytium" hypothesis.
In this paper we analysed the concept of motivation pointing to the two broader conceptual frames... more In this paper we analysed the concept of motivation pointing to the two broader conceptual frames that can comprise it and enable us to understand its theoretical meaning. Two paradigms of scientific reasoning--the dynamic conceptualization of the world and the theory of evolution--have been used in the explanation of human behavior since the very beginning of the scientific dealing with the problem. The difference between these two metatheoretical positions is rich in consequences. The object of research of the same problem--the reason (cause) of human behavior--in the two metatheoretical conceptualizations is situated at adjacent but completely different strata of reality. The object of research of motivation as a dynamic explanation of behavior is contained in the psychic layer of reality. On the other hand, the conception of behavior as an adaptation to the biological heritage understands investigations of the objects situated at the organic or biological stratum. We also pointe...
Choice of antidepressant is a daily problem in clinical work. Clinical predictors of therapeutic ... more Choice of antidepressant is a daily problem in clinical work. Clinical predictors of therapeutic response to antidepressants are not yet available. We explored the possibility of using a signal analysis of skin conductance response (SCR) in specifying the imbalances of the neurotransmitter systems in the brain. The method consists in application of the system identification theory in analyzing the regulation of SCR. Eleven short stories from the contemporary literature have been used to elicit emotional arousal in subjects. Participants were divided into two groups, a group of depressed patients (n=57), and a healthy control group (n=52). The resulting mathematical model of SCR revealed two feedback loops. Significant differences have been found between depressed patients and healthy subjects in the sense of stronger signals in both identified feedback loops in depression. We considered these results in the context of the data regarding: (i) the functional neuroanatomy of SCR, and (...
Medication non-adherence is a great challenge in the treatment of psychotic disorders. Several fa... more Medication non-adherence is a great challenge in the treatment of psychotic disorders. Several factors leading to medication non-adherence in schizophrenia have been identified: drug side-effects, lack of illness insight, negative attitude of the patient and friends/relatives toward medication, stigma of mental illness and taking medication, poor therapeutic alliance, substance abuse, and role of the illness in maintaining the family system. In this work I propose a new vista on the phenomenon of medication non-adherence in psychosis. Rather rule than exception, non-adherence is to be expected in psychosis, it can be considered as a symptom of psychosis similarly as substance craving and use are symptoms of the substance use disorders. Relying on the last refinements of the concepts of boredom, anticipatory anhedonia, intrinsic motivation, and thrill I assume that there is a lure of psychotic episode. In order to escape an extremely unpleasant and distressing experience of boredom a...
What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communic... more What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communication and dealing with art, science, and philosophy - this is what the theory of informational needs (TIN) suggested eleven years ago is about. At the same time, at the beginning of this century, several lines of research have emerged. Neuroaesthetics has been established; the discovery of the mirror neuron system and theories about its function have appeared; a growing interest in positive affect and pleasure has developed in psychiatry and medicine. The purpose of the present paper is to reconsider the TIN (Branković 2001) in the context of the advance in neuroscience during the last decade and to show how much conceptual clarity is gained when the recent empirical and theoretical findings are viewed from the standpoint of the TIN. A computational model of the aesthetic response based on the TIN's two-factor model of hedonic value of stimuli is delineated.
Medication non-adherence is a great challenge in the treatment of psychotic disorders. Several fa... more Medication non-adherence is a great challenge in the treatment of psychotic disorders. Several factors leading to medication
non-adherence in schizophrenia have been identified: drug side-effects, lack of illness insight, negative attitude of the patient and
friends/relatives toward medication, stigma of mental illness and taking medication, poor therapeutic alliance, substance abuse, and
role of the illness in maintaining the family system.
In this work I propose a new vista on the phenomenon of medication non-adherence in psychosis. Rather rule than exception,
non-adherence is to be expected in psychosis, it can be considered as a symptom of psychosis similarly as substance craving and use
are symptoms of the substance use disorders. Relying on the last refinements of the concepts of boredom, anticipatory anhedonia,
intrinsic motivation, and thrill I assume that there is a lure of psychotic episode. In order to escape an extremely unpleasant and
distressing experience of boredom and to experience the thrill of psychosis, the patients are prone to quit antipsychotic therapy.
The phenomena of boredom and the thrill of psychosis are evident but unexploited for strengthening the therapeutic adherence.
Making the lure of psychosis an explicit reason for medication non-adherence would bring to the awareness a personal choice
between short-term pleasure of the psychotic thrill and prevention of long-term losses due to a psychotic episode. Neurobiological
and psychobiological underpinning of the psychotic thrill has been suggested. An explanation of the pleasure of psychosis and
substance use, which overcomes the circular explanation of reward in which dopamine appears as the cause and consequence of
reward, has been proposed.
The present synthesis can be regarded as a contribution to the field of theoretical psychiatry. It points to a chance for psychiatry
to do more for patients’ wellbeing and treatment adherence performing in a new key – dealing with boredom and pleasure in
patients’ everyday life.
What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communic... more What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communication and dealing with art, science, and philosophy -this is what the theory of informational needs (TIN) suggested eleven years ago is about. At the same time, at the beginning of this century, several lines of research have emerged. Neuroaesthetics has been established; the discovery of the mirror neuron system and theories about its function have appeared; a growing interest in positive affect and pleasure has developed in psychiatry and medicine. The purpose of the present paper is to reconsider the TIN (Branković 2001) in the context of the advance in neuroscience during the last decade and to show how much conceptual clarity is gained when the recent empirical and theoretical findings are viewed from the standpoint of the TIN. A computational model of the aesthetic response based on the TIN's two-factor model of hedonic value of stimuli is delineated.
What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communic... more What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to experience pleasure in interpersonal communication and dealing with art, science, and philosophy -this is what the theory of informational needs (TIN) suggested eleven years ago is about. At the same time, at the beginning of this century, several lines of research have emerged. Neuroaesthetics has been established; the discovery of the mirror neuron system and theories about its function have appeared; a growing interest in positive affect and pleasure has developed in psychiatry and medicine. The purpose of the present paper is to reconsider the TIN (Branković 2001) in the context of the advance in neuroscience during the last decade and to show how much conceptual clarity is gained when the recent empirical and theoretical findings are viewed from the standpoint of the TIN. A computational model of the aesthetic response based on the TIN's two-factor model of hedonic value of stimuli is delineated.
The stereotyped nature of the skin conductance response (SCR) waveform has recently inspired seve... more The stereotyped nature of the skin conductance response (SCR) waveform has recently inspired several dynamic modeling approaches to the process of SCR. The suggested models differ: (i) in the order of the linear differential equation representing the process, and (ii) the neurobiological interpretation of the system parameters. While several research groups consider the sympathetic sudomotor nerve activity as the input signal in their models of the SCR, we assume that the initial neural event and feedback regulatory mechanisms that we can comprise with our models take place in the central brain structures. Here we demonstrate a refinement of the system identification procedure with skin conductance response signal, in order to test the thesis of the central meaning of the model's parameters.
Objective: Choice of antidepressant is a daily problem in clinical work. Clinical predictors of t... more Objective: Choice of antidepressant is a daily problem in clinical work. Clinical predictors of therapeutic response to antidepressants are not yet available. We explored the possibility of using a signal analysis of skin conductance response (SCR) in specifying the imbalances of the neurotransmitter systems in the brain.
Relying on evidence for the functional, neurochemical, and spectral parallelism between the late ... more Relying on evidence for the functional, neurochemical, and spectral parallelism between the late event-related potentials, delta oscillatory brain responses, and the skin conductance response (SCR) system the hypotheses about the existence of the SCR-related brain oscillations and their connectivity with the SCR system have been here suggested. In contrast to classical approach to event-related oscillations which relies on either stimulus-or response-locked time reference, an approach assigned as "oscillatory process-related oscillations" has been introduced. The method enables us to overcome the variability of latency period of the SCR. The hypothesis about the existence of the SCR-related brain oscillations and their delta nature has been confirmed through the grand averaging method. An unexpected finding was the complex nature of the SCR-related oscillations: in addition to the two second EEG segment which was correlated with the SCR system signals they also comprised an initial 200 ms segment uncorrelated with the SCR. The hypothesis about the connectivity between the SCR system and the respective delta brain oscillatory response has been operationalized through a multiple time series regression model. The predictor set consists of the SCR, its first three derivatives, and their mutual interactions. The Monte Carlo test of the causal link between the SCR system signals and the related delta EEG signal demonstrated significance in more than half of the participants. The findings have been considered from the standpoints of the segmental structure of the EEG, monoaminergic signaling and recently emerged the "brain-body dynamic syncytium" hypothesis.
11th Congress of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP), Kyoto, Japan, 2013
OBJECTIVES: We have recently developed a method for assessment of brain monoaminergic signaling t... more OBJECTIVES: We have recently developed a method for assessment of brain monoaminergic signaling through mathematical modeling of the skin conductance response (SCR). Herein the SCR system is viewed as a linear neurochemical oscillator with three feedback loops. Through the modeling two kinds of the SCR metrics emerge. One of them refers to the features of the hidden neural input (count of pulses, amplitude, and duration of the hidden input) and the other metrics specifies the regulatory (control system) aspect of the SCR process (input gain and feedback loops’ gains). In this study we aimed to investigate the both metrics in patients with panic disorder.
METHODS: Eleven short stories from the contemporary literature have been used to elicit pleasant emotional arousal in subjects. Participants were divided into two groups, a group of 29 patients with panic disorder (9 men) and a group of 27 healthy participants (11 men). During reading the stories skin conductance, heart rate, and respiration of subjects were recorded. The analysis of SCR relies on the system identification theory and technique in the MATLAB software environment.
RESULTS: An unexpected finding of the study was heterogeneity of the group of patients with panic disorder regarding the two SCR metrics. Cluster analysis suggests four types of panic disorder patients: (1) with higher amplitude of the neural input; (2) with greater number of impulses in a hidden input; (3) with stronger input gain; and (4) with stronger feedback loops in the SCR process.
CONCLUSION: Although panic disorder is considered as a neurobiologically homogenous entity in the current biological psychiatry our results do not support such a view. The data suggest that it is possible to differentiate four types of patients with panic disorder according to the characteristics of the hidden neural input and the control system parameters of the SCR process.
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Papers by Sasa Brankovic
non-adherence in schizophrenia have been identified: drug side-effects, lack of illness insight, negative attitude of the patient and
friends/relatives toward medication, stigma of mental illness and taking medication, poor therapeutic alliance, substance abuse, and
role of the illness in maintaining the family system.
In this work I propose a new vista on the phenomenon of medication non-adherence in psychosis. Rather rule than exception,
non-adherence is to be expected in psychosis, it can be considered as a symptom of psychosis similarly as substance craving and use
are symptoms of the substance use disorders. Relying on the last refinements of the concepts of boredom, anticipatory anhedonia,
intrinsic motivation, and thrill I assume that there is a lure of psychotic episode. In order to escape an extremely unpleasant and
distressing experience of boredom and to experience the thrill of psychosis, the patients are prone to quit antipsychotic therapy.
The phenomena of boredom and the thrill of psychosis are evident but unexploited for strengthening the therapeutic adherence.
Making the lure of psychosis an explicit reason for medication non-adherence would bring to the awareness a personal choice
between short-term pleasure of the psychotic thrill and prevention of long-term losses due to a psychotic episode. Neurobiological
and psychobiological underpinning of the psychotic thrill has been suggested. An explanation of the pleasure of psychosis and
substance use, which overcomes the circular explanation of reward in which dopamine appears as the cause and consequence of
reward, has been proposed.
The present synthesis can be regarded as a contribution to the field of theoretical psychiatry. It points to a chance for psychiatry
to do more for patients’ wellbeing and treatment adherence performing in a new key – dealing with boredom and pleasure in
patients’ everyday life.
non-adherence in schizophrenia have been identified: drug side-effects, lack of illness insight, negative attitude of the patient and
friends/relatives toward medication, stigma of mental illness and taking medication, poor therapeutic alliance, substance abuse, and
role of the illness in maintaining the family system.
In this work I propose a new vista on the phenomenon of medication non-adherence in psychosis. Rather rule than exception,
non-adherence is to be expected in psychosis, it can be considered as a symptom of psychosis similarly as substance craving and use
are symptoms of the substance use disorders. Relying on the last refinements of the concepts of boredom, anticipatory anhedonia,
intrinsic motivation, and thrill I assume that there is a lure of psychotic episode. In order to escape an extremely unpleasant and
distressing experience of boredom and to experience the thrill of psychosis, the patients are prone to quit antipsychotic therapy.
The phenomena of boredom and the thrill of psychosis are evident but unexploited for strengthening the therapeutic adherence.
Making the lure of psychosis an explicit reason for medication non-adherence would bring to the awareness a personal choice
between short-term pleasure of the psychotic thrill and prevention of long-term losses due to a psychotic episode. Neurobiological
and psychobiological underpinning of the psychotic thrill has been suggested. An explanation of the pleasure of psychosis and
substance use, which overcomes the circular explanation of reward in which dopamine appears as the cause and consequence of
reward, has been proposed.
The present synthesis can be regarded as a contribution to the field of theoretical psychiatry. It points to a chance for psychiatry
to do more for patients’ wellbeing and treatment adherence performing in a new key – dealing with boredom and pleasure in
patients’ everyday life.
METHODS: Eleven short stories from the contemporary literature have been used to elicit pleasant emotional arousal in subjects. Participants were divided into two groups, a group of 29 patients with panic disorder (9 men) and a group of 27 healthy participants (11 men). During reading the stories skin conductance, heart rate, and respiration of subjects were recorded. The analysis of SCR relies on the system identification theory and technique in the MATLAB software environment.
RESULTS: An unexpected finding of the study was heterogeneity of the group of patients with panic disorder regarding the two SCR metrics. Cluster analysis suggests four types of panic disorder patients: (1) with higher amplitude of the neural input; (2) with greater number of impulses in a hidden input; (3) with stronger input gain; and (4) with stronger feedback loops in the SCR process.
CONCLUSION: Although panic disorder is considered as a neurobiologically homogenous entity in the current biological psychiatry our results do not support such a view. The data suggest that it is possible to differentiate four types of patients with panic disorder according to the characteristics of the hidden neural input and the control system parameters of the SCR process.