Rune Andersen

Decreased Frontal Serotonin2A Receptor Binding in Antipsychotic-Naive Patients With First-Episode Schizophrenia

CONTEXT Postmortem investigations and the receptor affinity profile of atypical antipsychotics have implicated the participation of serotonin(2A) receptors in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Most postmortem studies point toward lower cortical serotonin(2A) binding in schizophrenic patients. However, in vivo studies of serotonin(2A) binding report conflicting results, presumably because sample sizes have been small or because schizophrenic patients who were not antipsychotic-naive were included. Furthermore, the relationships between serotonin(2A) binding, psychopathology, and central neurocognitive deficits in schizophrenia are unclear. OBJECTIVES To assess in vivo brain serotonin(2A) binding potentials in a large sample of antipsychotic-naive schizophrenic patients and matched healthy controls, and to examine possible associations with psychopathology, memory, attention, and executive functions. DESIGN Case-control study. SETTING University hospital, Denmark. PARTICIPANTS A sample of 30 first-episode, antipsychotic-naive schizophrenic patients, 23 males and 7 females, and 30 matched healthy control subjects. INTERVENTIONS Positron emission tomography with the serotonin(2A)-specific radioligand fluorine 18-labeled altanserin and administration of a neuropsychological test battery. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Binding potential of specific tracer binding, scores on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, and results of neuropsychological testing. RESULTS Schizophrenic patients had significantly lower serotonin(2A) binding in the frontal cortex than did control subjects. A significant negative correlation was observed between frontal cortical serotonin(2A) binding and positive psychotic symptoms in the male patients. No correlations were found between cognitive functions and serotonin(2A) binding. CONCLUSION The results suggest that frontal cortical serotonin(2A) receptors are involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. TRIAL REGISTRATION clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00207064.

The influence of impaired processing speed on cognition in first-episode antipsychotic-naïve schizophrenic patients.

BACKGROUND Impaired cognition is a prominent feature of schizophrenia. To what extent the heterogeneous cognitive impairments can be accounted for by considering only a single underlying impairment or a small number of core impairments remains elusive. This study examined whether cognitive impairments in antipsychotic-naïve, first-episode schizophrenia patients may be determined by a relative slower speed of information processing. METHOD Forty-eight antipsychotic-naïve patients with first-episode schizophrenia and 48 matched healthy controls were administered a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests to assess domains of cognitive impairments in schizophrenia. Composite scores were calculated, grouping tests into cognitive domains. RESULTS There were significant differences between patients and healthy controls on global cognition and all cognitive domains, including verbal intelligence, processing speed, sustained attention, working memory, reasoning and problem solving, verbal learning and memory, visual learning and memory, and reaction time. All these significant differences, except for verbal intelligence and global cognition, disappeared when processing speed was included as a covariate. CONCLUSION At the first stage of illness, antipsychotic-naïve patients with schizophrenia display moderate/severe impairments in all the cognitive domains assessed. The results support the contention of a global cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia that to some extent may be determined by impaired processing speed.

Engaging the limits of visibility: Photography, security and surveillance

In this article, we introduce selected photographs in order to engage with their capability for questioning the representational codes dominant in the visualization of security policy and surveillance. We argue that the intangible, abstract workings of state power in connection with security, surveillance and current forms of warfare can aptly be represented and challenged by means of photography. By engaging the limits of visibility, the selected photographs explore the limits of photojournalism and security alike. First, they operate by making visible what is normally invisible, though they also blur the boundaries of the seen and the unseen. Second, they function outside the discursive-representational regime within which photojournalism, based on a powerful tradition, operates, and within which media and security professionals visualize security. By so doing, they avoid involuntary incorporation into and support of this very regime that simultaneously they help understand. Third, they visualize structures and institutions rather than people, thus avoiding ethical dilemmas in connection with representations of people in pain. Discussing selected photographs by Trevor Paglen and Simon Norfolk, we show what these photographs do to alter the discursive frame within which the politics of security is understood. Such alteration facilitates understanding of the extent to which current societies are penetrated by the ideas and practices of security and surveillance, and furthers investigation of the discursive structures that enable such penetration.

Cognitive effects of six months of treatment with quetiapine in antipsychotic-naïve first-episode schizophrenia.

Effects of quetiapine on cognition were assessed in a group of first-episode antipsychotic-naïve patients with schizophrenia (N=24). A comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests was administered at baseline and after 6 months of treatment with quetiapine. In order to examine retest effects, a matched healthy control group (N=24) was also tested at baseline and after 6 months. Only few differential changes were observed between patients and healthy controls. Of 8 cognitive domains examined, only significant changes in executive function suggested possible ameliorating effects of quetiapine. Patients also improved on speed of processing; however, this was parallel to the retest effects found in healthy controls. When covaried for differences at baseline, patients showed smaller improvements in speed of processing than the retest effects found in controls, as well as a lack of retest effects on sustained attention and working memory that were found in healthy controls. The main result of the study is that there was very little evidence of efficacy of quetiapine on cognition. The study also indicated a lack of normal retest effects in patients compared to controls.

Chromatology of security: Introducing colours to visual security studies

The agenda of this article is to highlight how security becomes intelligible, is enacted, contested and (re)appropriated in part through colour use. Even though colours are a natural phenomenon, their meanings are societal products, and part of our constructed visibilities. These can be investigated through chromatology, the study of colour in relation to people. We illustrate this by applying multimodal social semiotics to view highly securitized sites, those of concentration and enemy-combatant camps. We show that the colour uses instituted to classify and govern prisoners not only structure the inmates socially, but also become vehicles for resisting the security discourses associated with them. The aim of the article is to highlight how security and international relations are intersemiotic relations, and to open up the study of security to an expanded range of semiotic modalities and methods of inquiry.

Paint it Black: Colours and the Social Meaning of the Battlefield

The modern battlefield is a judicial and social space as well as a spatio-temporal designation that has evolved through time. In this article, we argue that the shifts in the social meaning of what the battlefield is — from a ‘deeply social marker of war’s limitation’ (Mégret, 2011: 133) to a hunting ground of a party over its game — can be seen in the colour-use on the battlefield. More specifically, we argue that the shift in the use of colours in military battlefield uniforms, from conspicuously colourful to camouflaged and blending in or disrupting shapes, can be seen to work as a semiotic vehicle to understand societal meanings attached to the battlefield. This builds on the idea that ‘what soldiers wear is central to the public image of the military’ (Tynan, 2013a: 27), to their own modes of being and action, and to the meaning of the battlefield itself. The most evident reading of this development in colour-use tends to be a functionalist one, where the development of toned-down colours and camouflage goes along with technological advances and needs in the face of more and more powerful observation and targeting tools. We offer another reading. Arguing through a semiotic analysis of colour-use, we examine colour-use on military battlefield uniforms in light of how imaginaries and practices of the battlefield evolve.

Video, algorithms and security: How digital video platforms produce post-sovereign security articulations:

Digital videos increasingly sustain new and older imagined communities (and enmities), and make battlefields, unfolding terror plots and emergencies public. Yet digital videos mediate security articulations following logics that are radically different from those of journalistically edited media, with consequences for how we should think of security articulation in new visual media. This article analyses how, in digital video, the combination of visible facts and the remediation logics of algorithmically governed video platforms – such as YouTube and Facebook – allow for new types of security articulations. It argues that digital video can be understood as a semiotic composite where the material semiotics of media technologies, calculated publics and spectators combines with the political semiotics of audio-visual media to condition how video articulations work as political agency. A powerful video-mediated security articulation, the #neda videos from the 2009 Iranian post-election crisis, illustrates how security articulation in digital video is not tied to the authority of a speaker and does not contain the promise of an immediate, illocutionary security effect. Drawing on securitization theory and Butler’s critique of speech act theory, this article understands such video articulations as post-sovereign security articulations.Digital videos increasingly sustain new and older imagined communities (and enmities), and make battlefields, unfolding terror plots and emergencies public. Yet digital videos mediate security arti...