24^th International Conference on Neuroscience and Neurochemistry July 23-24, 2018 Birmingham, UK

Linda Sage has her expertise and passion in improving personal psychological health and wellbeing. Her significant list of global clients, range from hospitals, educational institutions, prisons and corporate entities; throughout UK, US, Europe & Middle East. In all caring environments the professionals are less likely to care for themselves; changing that mindset is at the core of author’s message. It is possible to be, done and have everything you want, by helping others and looking after yourself. An international speaker, author, trainer and

mentor, with decades of experience and knowledge, energize any event and attendees. Her simplified message of self-worth, instantly effects all levels of personnel, to achieve, do and be more with a positive frame of mind; demolishing the irrational fears, phobias, beliefs and habits that compassion fatigue can compound. Building a more resilient person provides the individual, employer and patient/client a much more competent and confident professional.

Compassion fatigue puts healthcare workers and patients at risk. Everyday care workers struggle to function in care giving environments that present heart wrenching emotional challenges. Compassion fatigue (CF) the profound emotional and physical erosion takes place when helpers cannot refuel and regenerate. Helping professionals open their hearts and minds to clients/patients. This empathy makes helpers vulnerable to be profoundly affected and possibly damaged. Burnout physical and emotional exhaustion is experienced when there is low job satisfaction, feeling powerless and overwhelmed. Signs of CF and burnout: overtaxed by work, showing similar symptoms to traumatized clients; difficulty in concentrating, intrusive imagery, feeling discouraged, hopelessness, exhaustion, irritability, high attrition (helpers leaving) and negative, dispirited, cynical workers remaining in the field, boundary violations which affect the workplace and create a toxic environment. Factors in CF and burnout of the individual: Life circumstances, coping style, personality type. Life stressors i.e. taking care of both young children and aging parents, in addition to managing a heavy and complex workload. Helpers are not immune to pain in their own lives; they can be vulnerable to life changes such as divorce and addictions. Helpers often do work, others don’t want to hear about; spend time caring for people who are not valued or understood in society, homeless, abused, incarcerated or chronically ill. The working environment is often stressful and fraught. The work is very stressful, clients/patients who are experiencing chronic crises, difficulty in controlling their emotions, or who may not get better. What can be done? Working in a healthy organization; access to supportive; flexible management; reduction of trauma exposure; ongoing staff education; timely and good quality supervision and; reducing hours of working directly with traumatized individuals. Personal strategies are strong social support, home and work; increased self-awareness regular self-care. Making life changes, prioritize personal health/wellness develop stress resiliency skills.

Nikolaus Blatter Past Professional experience (2002-2015): Psychiatric-hospital Baumgarnter Höhe in Vienna; homeless-shelter in Vorarlberg; Supervisor of a small-care-unit for homeless clients with mental illness and drug diagnoses; Professional experience: Since 2015 he/she is working as Psychologist in the Government of Vorarlberg, Department for Community Psychiatry and Drug help. Working topics: individual case planning, detection from unmet-needs especially the support from severe mental ill clients in various treatment-sectors (homeless, community psychiatry, drug…); participation in the creation of the Vorarlbergerpsychiatric- report. His/her research topics: as a PhD Student since 2016 to evaluate the home-treatment support in the federal state Vorarlberg; Detection of over-, under- and lack of supply in community psychiatry, drug help and adjacent areas (homeless,

In Austria many service provider offers a home treatment service. However, in most concepts housing depends on treatment. The innovation of the home treatment service in Vorarlberg since 2015 is that the home treatment is separated from housing. The long term-study started in the year 2016 and includes 52 probands from four service providers which offer a hometreatment for people with mental or drug disorders and other social needs. Based on the theoretical foundation of Housing First and Treatment First we developed the C.O.M.E Program which contains Cooperation, Observation, Mutual-support and Evaluation. The focus of the study is to evaluate if the C.O.M.E Program supports the service provider in their (daily) carework and secondly, if it detects the individual-focused care supports the clients to gain a life with more autonomy, increase permanent housing, decrease stays in hospital, improve a long-term mental stability and encourage them in the development of alternative assistance for mutual support. To implement the program it was necessary to introduce the service provider into the theoretical, differences and practical aspects of Housing First, Treatment First and the purpose of the C.O.M.E Program. A crucial part of the data collection is done by the assessment sheet which is scored at least one time a week and correspond with the hometreatment basic learning skills which the caregiver try to convey the clients. For further analysis the items of the assessment sheet are combined to four dimensions: houshold management, personal hygiene, activity (social), psychosocialstability. Over a time-period of 40 weeks we found that continuous abstinence from drugs and alcohol is another important criterion for a better cooperation between client and caregiver, but it is not necessarily a requirement to get a care-giversupport. The execution is designed and conducted that the clients are demanded as much as possible and as less as necessary in their daily life. Finally, it is necessary to keep the contact, even if the client denies the contact.

Natasha Yasmin is a registered Clinical Psychologist from India currently working on her PhD research project at University of Birmingham, UK. She has both clinical and research experience in the field and has worked with a wide range of the population. She is particularly interested in cognitive neuropsychology and rehabilitation and is currently in the process of developing a novel clinical therapeutic intervention for a couple with brain injury. She wants to indulge her passion for research and implicate it in her clinical work.

Background & Aim: Prospective memory (PM) deficit have been well documented in schizophrenia so far, but there is a lack of research evidence of PM functioning in bipolar disorder and its relationship with frontal lobe functioning. Both group share similar clinical symptoms and cognitive profiles, depicting impairments in memory and frontal lobe functions like planning/

executive functioning and attention and concentration, and these aspects are found to be significantly related to aspects of PM functioning. The study therefore aimed to investigate event-based (EB) and time-based (TB) PM functioning in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and its association with frontal lobe functioning.

 

Methodology: To assess PM functioning, an experimental task incorporating both event- and time-based prospective memory was developed and administered on 30 schizophrenics and 30 bipolar patients, and on 30 non-psychiatric individuals (control group). To further examine the relationship of PM and frontal lobe functioning, participants were also assessed using

neuropsychological tools, viz, Tower of London(TOL), N-Back Test and Triads Test.

 

Findings: Patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder were found to have impaired PM functioning when compared to control group. The results also support the importance of frontal lobe process like planning, attention, and working memory in having a significant effect on prospective remembering.

Significance: Impairments in frontal lobe functioning is commonly found in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The current study showed that PM deficits are also found in the same population and it shares a significant relationship with frontal lobe impairments. This emphasizes the need to include assessment of PM functioning as a cognitive marker for these populations to prevent future cognitive and frontal lobe impairments. There is also a need for conducting additional research for developing rehabilitation methods for the same in these clinical populations to improve their quality of living and a better

rehabilitation prognosis.

Problem: All evidenced-based psychotherapeutic treatments rely on human interactions. However, the major reason for the disappointing progress in understanding human interactions is the lack of methods enable mechanistic inferences of how the behavior of one person (e.g., therapist) influences the internal state and behavioral response of the other person (e.g., patient). The current gold-standard method (i.e., observation technique) is not only expensive and time-consuming but provides such spares data that it forced the field to examine just how the frequency of behavior predicts later symptom changes (e.g., more alliance during a session predicts later symptom changes). This completely ignores the essence of psychotherapy – how patient and therapist influence each other moment-to-moment.

 

Solution: To overcome the current limitation, we test a novel method using engineering technology to extract behavior (i.e., para-verbal stress cues) in high temporal resolution. This intensive data enables us to test the co-regulation process using dynamical systems modeling. Design: In a patient-therapist sample (353 sessions) and a sample of couples (N=189), we found not only that people do coregulate each other during interactions but that these co-regulation process changes within an interaction.

 

Significance: The utilization of such a novel method has far-reaching implications. For example, a common problem is that in a psychotherapy study with 100 participants (each 20 sessions) not all interactions can be coded because of costs (e.g., 2,000 hours video, coding cost $120,000). Computational methods can extract behavior fast, reliable, and cheap from high-quality audio and video sources allow future research to scale up. This opens up new possibilities for interventions and training evaluations.

Doctor Robert Garsden MacDonald RIBA, ARB, PFRSA, is Reader in Architecture, LJMU. Rob researches and teaches Architecture and design for mental illness and dementia. He applies his lived experience of Mental Health Facilities to the future design of new spaces for health and wellbeing. He was presented with The Roscoe Citizenship Award by Lord David Alton for Life Long Services to Mental Health.

The most honest form of art is comedy.” Lennie Bruce. My name is Doctor Robert, who actually featured in The Beatles, Revolver Album. He was a Psychiatrist in New York City who prescribed uppers and downers to the stars. I have written two books “Design for Dementia.” and have contributed to “Essential Nursing for Mental Health Care and “Dementia Care a Practical Guild” My research Question is: Can comedy push the boundaries of mental health and challenge the stigma? Thank You for your kind invitation to your Birmingham conference. I am a mental patient and have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. This presentation is both tragic and comedic. It’s bi-polar…just like me. Its manic and depressive…most of all it’s my lived experience. I have been bi-polar since the age of 19. During this period I have experienced a number of episodes and I have been hospitalised under the Mental Health Acts. Normally, all my performances are for Mental Health Charities. I believe in the demystification of Mental Health. I have never addressed such a group of “Clinical Psychologists and Neuroscientist’s”. Whatever our discipline we all must talk about Mental Health and challenge the stigma that the 1.4 the population experience. Let’s put mental health under the spotlight because increasingly it affects young children and young people. It’s probably not really on the NHS radar? This presentation was first presented during World Mental Health Week 2017 for a Symposium of Psychologists, Mental Health Nurses, The International Day of Midwifes and The Laughter house Comedy Store. The highest, literary, was at Millbank Tower, 30 floors up in Westminister for the BRE (Building Research Establishment). For me the only way to survive mental illness is with humour and comedy. I am actually a fully qualified Architect and The Design Champion for MerseyCare NHS Foundation Trust. I intend to talk about my lived experience of my bi-polar disorder. I suggest that clinical professionals need to understand more deeply, the nature of the bi-polar condition and draw lessons for their practice. Many Thanks for listening to me.

Takaki Shimura worked in the field of Biomedical Engineering at Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., developing and researching ultrasound imaging, MRI, bio-magnetics measurement by SQUID, X-ray imaging by flat panel detector, remote health care system by TV telephone and so on from 1969 to 2000. He worked at Tokai University as a Professor, researching mainly BME on dementia, such as the prefrontal lobe imaging using infrared spectroscopy and neuropsychological tests for early stage of dementia from 2000 to 2007. He founds daycare service houses at Sosei Ltd to apply his inventions of the brain rehabilitation to the elderly by himself since 2009. He is the Engineering Fellow of the Japan Society of Ultrasound in Medicine, the President of Japan Society for Early Stage of Dementia formerly and the chairman of BME on Dementia Group of the Japanese Society for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Final goal of this research is to classify the levels of preclinical stage of dementia. A neuropsychological test named CKPT (color word pick-out test) was invented for the purpose under the consideration that the test should be able to detect the slight disorder of prefrontal lobe. The test was composed of two tasks. At the first task, a subject reads a story including color words which are printed by different color, picking-out them and checking if the meaning of the color and printed color is correspondent or not. It is an application of Stroop effect. For the second task the subject answers the questions about the episode of the story without seeing it. Namely he must pick-up color words and memorizes the episode of the story simultaneously. Prefrontal lobe measurements using near infrared spectroscopy recognize that CKPT activated prefrontal lobe more than Kawashima arithmetic drill, recalling 5 numbers in order and recalling 5 numbers in inverse order. Comparison of Ritchie check list, MMSE (mini mental state examination), FAB (frontal assessment battery), WCST (Wisconsin card sorting test) was done for the ordinary elderly as criterion-related validity of CKPT. Correlation between CKPT and WCST was recognized. And also the shape of the histograms of CKPT and WCST showed normal distribution. CKPT and MMSE were applied to the abnormal elderly whose MMSE was under 27. Their score of CKPT remained almost under the average-1.5SD. About 5000 elderly took CKPT and the results were used to make the criterion of CKPT. Now we would like to get some collaborating partners who want to translate CKPT in other language.

Owolabi Joshua Oladele has completed his PhD in the field of Anatomy and Neuroscience, with special research focus of toxicology and teratology associated

with psychoactive substances. He also has an MBA with specialisation in Clinical Research Management. He has more than 80 publications including articles in

reputed journals and books.

There are concerns over the consumption of caffeine during pregnancy and early years of life due to the susceptibility of the brain to the stimulant. The aim of this investigation is to assess the effects of pre and postnatal caffeine ingestion on the development of the frontal cortex of mice models. A total of 32 (n=32) adult mice (Mus musculus) were recruited primarily for the study. They were divided into four groups labelled A, B, C and D which include the Control, Low-Dose, Medium- Dose and High-Dose groups respectively. Treatment duration had Phase I and Phase II to assess pre and postnatal effects respectively. In Phase I, Groups B, C and D were given 10mg/kg, 50mg/kg 120 mg/kg body weight of water-dissolved caffeine respectively while Group A animals served as the control. Mating was allowed and the pregnant female mice were administered caffeine from the day 0 (E0) of pregnancy until parturition. Half of the offspring were sacrificed at birth. The remaining offspring from the Phase I experimental animals were recruited into the phase II for postnatal caffeine administration. Phase II [postnatal] treatment started from parturition until postnatal Day 35 marking the average age of puberty. Brain specimens were excised and processed at the end of Phase I and Phase II. Histo and immunochemical properties of the frontal cortex were demonstrated using the Feulgen DNA and GFAP techniques. High caffeine dosage administration during pregnancy produced general cytological and histoarchitectural disruptions and distortions that affected glia as well as other cell types. Cell staining patterns are largely heterogeneous as much as they are in morphological appearances. Astrocytes, staining positive for GFAP, had altered morphologies. Processes are quite sparse and hardly readily observable. These observations indicate possible limitations or retardations in astrocyte differentiation as a result of caffeine effects.

Achilleas Attilakos is a Pediatrician. He works as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at “Attikon” Hospital-National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He is a General Pediatrician, interested in childhood dyslipidemia, primary pediatric care and antiepileptic drug safety.

Statement of the Problem: Long-term treatment with some older antiepileptic drugs, including sodium valproate and carbamazepine, may lead to hyperhomocysteinemia or dyslipidemia. Levetiracetam (LEV), a newer broad spectrum antiepileptic agent, appears to be well tolerated with mild adverse effects. However, in contrast with the older antiepileptic drugs, the effect of LEV on cardiovascular risk factors is not yet sufficiently investigated. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate prospectively the short and long-term effect of LEV monotherapy on serum lipid profile, thyroid hormones levels and homocysteine metabolism in children with epilepsy. The study population consisted of 32 children (18 females, 14 males, mean age 5, 94±4, 1 year, and range 1-15 years) that were treated for new-onset epilepsy with Lev monotherapy. Serum total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), triglycerides (TGs), apolipoprotein A-I (apo A-I), apolipoprotein B (apo B), lipoprotein (a) [Lp(a)], free thyroxin (FT4), thyrotropin (TSH), folate (s-F), vitamin B-12 (s-B12) and plasma total homocysteine (p-tHcy), were evaluated before and at 2, 6 and 12 months of LEV monotherapy.

 

Findings: TGs were significantly decreased at 6 and 12 months of LEV treatment (p=0.030 and p=0.001, respectively). P-tHcy was significantly decreased at 2 months of treatment (p=0.031). There were no significant alterations in the other parameters during the study. Mean value of drug dosage (mg/Kg) was 18.1±7.1 at 2 months, 20.8±10.1 at 6 months and 19.8±11.2 at 12 months of LEV treatment.

 

Conclusion & Significance: In contrast with older antiepileptic drugs, long-term LEV monotherapy in children with epilepsy does not cause adverse alterations on serum lipids, homocysteine and thyroid hormones; therefore, LEV may be considered as a safer alternative drug for the prevention of cardiovascular complications in adult life.

Satish G. Patil is Assistant professor of Human Physiology in BLDE (Deemed to be University) Shri B. M. Patil Medical College, Hospital & Research Centre, India. He is Assistant Director of Central Research Laboratory of BLDE University, India. His field of research interest is “Integrative cardiovascular and yoga psychophysiology”. He has published about 21 papers in Medical journals of repute. He has contributed chapters for two books. He has presented research paper/talk in many scientific meetings such as AHA scientific meeting, Phoenix, USA; European Union Geriatric Medicine Society congress, Venice, Italy; Euro-India International conference, India; Tulane University, New Orleans, US; WHO workshop in Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga, New Delhi, India etc. He is recipient of Sri Ram Murthy Memorial Award (India); Young Scientist Award (India); Best paper award (Italy).

Yoga is an Indian ancient system of life-style having a psycho-somatic-spiritual discipline that helps to achieve a harmony between our mind, body and soul. Similar to the clinical psychology, yoga focuses on intellectual, emotional, social and behavioral aspects of human functioning. Its mind-body techniques relax mind and body, reduce stress and anxiety, and culminate happiness and well-being. Emotional disturbances, stress, anxiety, depression, sedentary life, lack of sleep, unhealthy diet contribute to the development of cardiovascular (CV) disease. Autonomic imbalance/dysfunction, impaired endothelial function/dysfunction and arterial stiffness are the emerging major mechanisms for CV morbidity and mortality. Though autonomic nervous system (ANS) plays a central role in maintaining CV homeostasis, but CV health is controlled and determined by both ANS and endothelial system. It has been shown that endothelial function and ANS are interrelated and involve complex interactions between two systems. Endothelial dysfunction with decreased bioavailability of nitric oxide and ANS imbalance/dysfunction (often co-exist) are the predisposing factors or early indicators and antecedents for the development of CV disease including metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Therefore, enhanced endothelial function and reduced sympathetic activity appears to be protective against CV disease. In this presentation, role of yoga as a mind-body medicine in cardiovascular prevention and rehabilitation (focusing mainly on non-traditional risk factors) will be discussed. We and other researchers have demonstrated that yoga practice can enhance bioavailability of nitric oxide and endothelial function; reduce arterial stiffness; and shift the autonomic balance towards parasympathetic dominance in subjects with CV risk. It reduces heart rate and myocardial work load, and improves diastolic function of heart in elderly individuals. Recently, in another study we observed a restoration of autonomic balance towards parasympathetic dominance and reduction in insulin resistance in non-diabetic and normotensive offspring of type-II diabetic parents, suggesting that regular practice of yoga may prevent the future development of diabetes or CV risk in children of diabetic parents. Oxidative stress being one of the major pathway for reduction of bioavailability of NO and endothelial dysfunction, effect of yoga program on oxidative stress was investigated to understand the mechanism of yoga on CV health. In this study, a significant reduction in oxidative stress and enhancement in antioxidant defense (superoxide dismutase, glutathione) was observed. An ongoing study has shown effectiveness of yoga on cardiac rehabilitation in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Available data shows that yoga is an effective mind-body medicine that can protect the CV system by enhancing endothelial function and optimizing autonomic balance. However, in future yoga based clinical trials are warranted for better understanding of yoga effects and its psychophysiological mechanism on CV health.