《中华精神科杂志》第六届编辑委员会成立大会会议纪要

本文对《中华精神科杂志》第六届编辑委员会成立大会进行了介绍,会上宣读了中华医学会关于第六届编辑委员会组成的批复文件,并为新一届编委颁发聘书,总结了第五届编辑委员会4年期间的工作,介绍了第六届编辑委员会的工作计划和展望并针对期刊如何更好地发展进行讨论。     

2nd Asia-Pacific regional meeting of the International Working Group on Harmonization of Dementia Drug Guidelines: meeting report

The 2nd Asia-Pacific regional meeting of the International Working Group on Harmonization of Dementia Drug Guidelines (IWGH) was held in Beijing, China in late 2002. Representatives from over a dozen countries convened to present data on dementia within the region and to share information on locally adapted outcome measures for use in dementia clinical trials. The IWGH recognized the competency and capability of many Asian sites and endorsed their inclusion in future multicenter clinical dementia research activities.     

Evaluation of abstracts submitted for the annual meeting of the German Neurosurgical Society 1999--unravelling a mystery

The evaluation for the abstracts submitted for the annual meeting of the German Neurosurgical Society together with the Swiss Neurosurgical Society in Munich 1999, is presented as it has developed during the meetings of the last years. 597 abstracts were reviewed by the 30 members of the review committee according to a 5 point grading system. Cut off for acceptance was a mean grading of 2.7 points. Abstracts better than 2.4 were accepted, abstracts worse than 2.7 were rejected. Experimental studies were judged slightly better than clinical studies: the mean grading of clinical and experimental studies was 2.55 +/- 0.5 vs. 2.72 +/- 0.6 (p < 0.02). All abstracts with a mean grading of 2.4-2.7 and a standard deviation > 1.0 were discussed in a meeting of the review committee. 353 abstracts were accepted. Some of the abstracts submitted for oral presentation had to be converted to poster presentations. Among others the decision was based on the grading of the abstract.     

Behavioral and psychological symptoms in dementia: description and management

Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms in Dementia (BPSD) are, beside cognitive disorders, major features of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. Diagnosis is important to enhance our knowledge of the pathophysiology of dementia and of their functional consequences for patients and caregivers. Pharmacological and non-pharmacological management of dementia depends to a large extent on the presence of BPSD. A committee of geriatricians, neurologists and psychiatrists specialized in dementia (THEMA 2) has promoted an epidemiological, diagnostic and therapeutic update in this field. This work was based on the BPSD Consensus Conference Report edited in 2000 by the International Psychogeriatric Association. This report was updated with the most recent literature reports, and was adapted to the French environment. This paper is a synthesis of this meeting, validated and corrected by the entire Thema 2 group.     

Analysis of the dementia profile on The Medical Symptom Validity Test

The Medical Symptom Validity Test (MSVT) was administered as part of a neuropsychological battery to a mixed clinical sample of 286 consecutively referred individuals. Of the 47% of the sample who failed in the easy subtests, 48% were considered to have the “dementia profile.” The remaining 52% of individuals failing the easy subtests were considered by the task to have “poor effort.” Comparing the neuropsychological test performance among these three groups (Pass, Dementia Profile, Poor Effort) found that on most tasks those individuals passing the easy subtests of the MSVT perform significantly better than the other two groups, which did not differ from each other. Individuals meeting criteria for the Dementia Profile performed worse on tasks of motor functioning and list learning in comparison to the Poor Effort group. The results suggest that the algorithm creating a Dementia Profile does not effectively differentiate groups of individuals who fail the easy subtests of the MSVT. Consideration of a more liberal cutoff score for the easy subtests is offered.     

Contributions of Persons Living With Dementia to Scientific Research Meetings. Results From the National Research Summit on Care,Services, and Supports for Persons With Dementia and Their Caregivers

ObjectiveInclusion of patients in research activities has increased in the United States but no guidelines for inclusion of individuals with cognitive impairment exist. The experiences from the Persons Living with Dementia (PLWD) Stakeholder Group that formed to support the first National Research Summit on Care, Services, and Supports for Persons with Dementia and Their Caregivers provided a test of feasibility of this type of participation for a major research meeting and an opportunity to understand specific contributions of the Group.MethodsThe PLWD Stakeholder Group was formed by Summit co-chairs as one of six stakeholder groups charged with providing input into the Summit agenda and meeting recommendations. Members were recruited through clinician/researchers with personal knowledge of potential members. Following the Summit, Group members convened to review Group contributions to the Summit agenda, list of speakers, and Summit research recommendations.ResultsThe PLWD Group influenced the content of the Summit agenda and some Group members were invited to contribute through Summit presentations. The Group influenced Summit outcomes: of the 58 research recommendations that emerged, 30 express ideas contributed by the PLWD.ConclusionsThe Stakeholder Group for PLWD proved feasible to implement and impacted the agenda and output of a major national research meeting on dementia.     

Asia regional meeting of the International Working Group for the Harmonization of Dementia Drug Guidelines: meeting report

This meeting successfully catalyzed the establishment of a new working alliance between clinical dementia researches in Asia and identified common goals for the group to attain. The progress toward achieving these goals will be examined at the next Asia regional meeting, which is being planned for October 2002 in Beijing, China. This new regional working group will work with the IWG to overcome the existing methodological and regulatory obstacles impeding dementia treatment trials in Asia.     

ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE INTERNATIONAL

Editors Note: This editorial and the subsequent three papers, ‘Alzheimer's Disease in Poland’, ‘Sexual Expression and Dementia’ and ‘Prevalence of Dementia in a Rural Setting: A Report from India’, reflect the output of the 1994 Xth Alzheimer's Disease International meeting in Edinburgh in 1994, emphasizing the international experience of the disorder in self-help groups in Eastern Europe, difficulties of epidemiological studies in India and the complex interplay between staff attitude and residents' sexuality in nursing homes in the USA. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Anti-therapeutic dimensions of a community meeting in a therapeutic milieu

A central feature of many inpatient settings, especially those that attempt to be “therapeutic communities,” is the community meeting. Such meetings are often quite large and difficult to manage, and therefore susceptible to confusion and chaos. The present article documents the difficulties associated with a community meeting in a particular hospital setting, which is often psychonoxious for patients and debilitating of staff morale. The need to define achievable tasks that are commonly understood and agreed upon is addressed. The confusion and paralysis that results when roles are not clearly delineated is described, as is the destructive potential of not carefully managing the various boundaries that define the relationship between the community meeting and the context in which it is conducted. Finally, the danger of insufficient structure in a community meeting is illustrated. Suggestions for conducting successful meetings are offered.     

Staff and patients evaluate their therapeutic community.

A committee of staff and patients conducted an informal evaluation of a therapeutic community on a 16-bed psychiatric unit. The committee reviewed the history, original intent, current purpose, and effectiveness of meetings held on the unit; when problems were identified, suggestions for change were formulated. The evaluation served to increase the efficiency of meetings and to counteract what the authors termed the "drift phenomenon," or the tendency of the original purpose or structure of a meeting to change over time. The process also fostered an atmosphere of mutual respect and an enhanced sense of purpose among the patients and staff who worked on the committee.     

Structural neuroimaging in the diagnosis of dementia

This article reviews recent use of structural imaging in the diagnosis of dementia and presents evidence-based recommendations approved at the meeting of the Third Canadian Consensus Conference on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Dementia held in Montreal in March, 2006. Although the consensus group concurs that it is possible to specify circumstances in which structural imaging has a role to rule out pathology, it also has a role in ruling in concomitant cerebrovascular disease for patient management.     

International science at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology

The annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) is a major venue for presentation of the latest disease-related clinical and basic neurologic research and is attended by a large number of neurologists from countries outside the United States and Canada. One-third of annual meeting attendees and abstract submissions are international in origin, with wide variations between countries and world regions, and this proportion has remained stable for the past 5 years. By comparison, international neurologists constitute 12% (n = 2,485) of AAN membership, and international membership has declined slightly over the past 5 years compared to a 15% increase from the United States and Canada. The scientific topics covered by international abstracts are similar to those from the United States and Canada. Abstract acceptance rates are 15% lower for international submissions than for those from the United States and Canada although variations between countries are seen. Three times more European neurologists attend the annual meeting than are AAN members whereas Asian neurologists are more likely to be AAN members than to attend the annual meeting. The AAN is working to understand and address the issues that affect international physicians' decisions to participate in the annual meeting.     

FENS 2000 - Federation of European Neuroscience Societies millennium meeting.

In two articles by Wolf Singer, published in TINS in 1994 and 1997, brief analyses were presented of the problems faced by the European neuroscience community in its attempt to provide a cohesive response to meet the challenge of the proclamation of the 'Decade of the Brain'. One of the most-important decisions was to promote a forum for European neuroscience that, among other activities, would hold bi-annual meetings, alternating with meetings of partner European neuroscience societies in the intervening year. The first fruit of this was the enormously successful meeting held in Berlin in June 1998. The next meeting, the FENS millennium meeting, will be held in Brighton, UK (24-28 June 2000).     

Neurological update: dementia

Dementia continues to enjoy a high public and political profile, the latter exemplified by the recent G8 summit meeting declaration to develop a cure or treatment by 2025. This is only likely to be achieved by a deeper understanding of the clinical and pathophysiological phenomena of dementia disorders, many examples of which have appeared in the Journal of Neurology in 2013 and which are reviewed here.     

A summary and conclusions from the meeting

The Wenner-Gren meeting in Stockholm saw the arrival of a new era in the field of heptaspanning receptor oligomerization. The concept of direct physical and functionally relevant interactions between multiple seven transmembrane (7TMs) was considered by many to be an artifact of the experimental systems or techniques used for analysis. However, during the course of the meeting at Stockholm, we were presented with an overwhelming set of evidence ranging from actual photographs of receptor dimers, through biochemical and cellular evidence, up to physiologically relevant data in animal models and human cells. We agreed that the "hypothesis" of receptor oligomerization has come of age and can now essentially be considered an established "fact." Those of us submitting papers in the area no longer expect to get the same level of skepticism from referees (well, one can always hope!). The symposium began with an energizing talk from Lefkowitz, describing the early work in his lab leading to the cloning of the first 7TM the beta2AR, followed up with the many important discoveries on the mechanisms of receptor signaling and desensitization. We were brought right up to date on the current state of thinking on receptor signaling, much of which occurs not only through G proteins but through beta-arrestin and GRKs. The meeting was organized by those who laid the foundations of our current understanding of receptor-receptor interactions. As long ago as the early 1980s, Agnati and Fuxe demonstrated that receptor-receptor interactions occurred between neuropeptides and monoamine receptors in the CNS and proposed the idea of receptor mosaics made up of clusters of receptors (Agnati et al., 1982; Fuxe et al., 1983). During the 1990s, biochemical evidence suggesting dimerization of receptors was accumulating, particularly in the lab of one of the other meeting organizers, Michel Bouvier. Bouvier was the first to provide direct biochemical evidence for 7TM homodimers using coimmunoprecipitation of differentially tagged receptors (Hebert et al., 1996).     

Proceedings of the Society of British Neurological Surgeons: 68th meeting

The 68th meeting of the Society was held in London from 27 to 29 June 1963 as a combined meeting with the Neurosurgical Society of America. Meetings were held at the National Hospital, Queen Square, and the Royal Society of Medicine. The Presidents, Mr. G. F. Rowbotham (Society of British Neurological Surgeons) and Dr. Claude Bertrand (Neurosurgical Society of America) occupied the Chair in rotation.     

ICAD 2010: Detection may hold the key to treatment. International Conference on Alzheimer Disease (ICAD) 2010 Honolulu, HI, USA, 10–15 July 2010

The Alzheimer's Association International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease was held on July 10-15 in Honolulu (HI, USA). Over 3800 attendees participated, attending sessions that included more than 1700 posters and 200 oral presentations. The meeting, first organized in 1988 by Khalid Iqbal and Bengt Winblad, became an annual event in 2009, and under the current design includes not only well-established themes of interest, but investigator-initiated sessions also. The Alzheimer's Association started managing the conference in 2000 in partnership with the founders, and abstracts for the meeting are published in the association's journal, Alzheimer's & Dementia. Key themes of this year's conference included validation of biomarkers, drug development, the value of screening for cognitive loss and dementia and the proposal of a new criteria for Alzheimer's disease.     

Abstracts of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Psychogeriatric Society

Venue: Osaka International Convention centor (Osaka)
Date: 15–16 October 2007
President: Professor Yoshio Morita
(Department of Psychiatry, Hyogo College of Medicine)
The 22nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Psychogeriatric Society (JPS) was held in Osaka under Professor Yoshio Morita (Department of Psychiatry, Hyogo College of Medicine). This Meeting was co-organized with the 13th Congress of International Psychogeriatric Association chaired by Professor Masatoshi Takeda (Department of Psychiatry, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine) and the 26th Meeting of the Japanese Society for Dementia Research chaired by Professor Akira Honma (Depaartment of Dementia Intervention, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology). The total program included eight plenary lectures, 38 symposia and approximately 700 oral and poster presentations. The JPS program had two symposia and four educational lectures. More than 2000 participants had the opportunity to discuss multidisciplinary and comprehensive strategies for the mental health of the elderly. Mutual understanding of the recent situation of dementia care all over the world and the progress of dementia research was facilitated by this meeting.
In the JPS program, Symposium I entitled "Behavioral and psychological symptoms with dementia and its related problems", was chaired by Professor Takashi Asada (Tsukuba University), and serious problems induced by demented patients were reviewed and discussed. Symposium II entitled "Mood disorder in late life", was chaired by Professor Kiyoshi Maeda (Kobe University), and its causes and risk factors were reviewed and points of pharmacotherapy to notice were discussed.
The next annual meeting will be held on 27–28 June 2008 in Kobe and will be chaired by Professor Kiyoshi Maeda (Department of Psychiatry, Kobe University).     

Clinical and pathological diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia: report of the Work Group on Frontotemporal Dementia and Pick's Disease.

An international group of clinical and basic scientists participated in the Frontotemporal Dementia and Pick's Disease Criteria Conference at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md, on July 7, 2000, to reassess clinical and neuropathological criteria for the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Previous criteria for FTD have primarily been designed for research purposes. The goal of this meeting was to propose guidelines that would enable clinicians (particularly neurologists, psychiatrists, and neuropsychologists) to recognize patients with FTD and, if appropriate, to expedite their referral to a diagnostic center. In addition, recommendations for the neuropathological criteria of FTD were reviewed, relative to classical neuropathology and modern molecular biology.     

Neurocognitive differential diagnosis of dementing diseases: Alzheimer's Dementia, Vascular Dementia, Frontotemporal Dementia, and Major Depressive Disorder

Similarities in presentation of Dementia of Alzheimer's Type, Vascular Dementia, Frontotemporal Dementia, and Major Depressive Disorder, pose differential diagnosis challenges. The current study identifies specific neuropsychological patterns of scores for Dementia of Alzheimer's Type, Vascular Dementia, Frontotemporal Dementia, and Major Depressive Disorder. Neuropsychological domains directly assessed in the study included: immediate memory, delayed memory, confrontational naming, verbal fluency, attention, concentration, and executive functioning. The results reveal specific neuropsychological comparative profiles for Dementia of Alzheimer's Type, Vascular Dementia, Frontotemporal Dementia, and Major Depressive Disorder. The identification of these profiles will assist in the differential diagnosis of these disorders and aid in patient treatment.