Background Impairments in emotional experience and expression have been observed in patients with schizophrenia. However, most previous studies have been limited to either emotional experience (especially anhedonia) or expression. Few studies have examined both the experience and expression of emotion in schizophrenia patients at the same time. Aims The present study aimed to examine pleasure...

Pleasure is mediated by well-developed mesocorticolimbic circuitry and serves adaptive functions. In affective disorders, anhedonia (lack of pleasure) or dysphoria (negative affect) can result from breakdowns of that hedonic system. Human neuroimaging studies indicate that surprisingly similar circuitry is activated by quite diverse pleasures, suggesting a common neural currency shared by all. ...

Objective: Various sources of evidence suggest that men and women differ in their experience sexual pleasure. Such gender differences have been attributed to men’s higher innate sex drive, supported by evolutionary psychology perspectives reproductive strategies.Method: This paper presents biopsychosocial for similarities the capacity pleasure, substantial opportunities pleasure.Results: We con...

money we had." The distinctive identity and qualities of the individual initiating the message evoke a mental image with a pattern of association that arouses corresponding expectation. In like manner, the growth of biographical writings to a recognised literary species in recent decades reflects the public's appetite for personal record. The brief snatches I present here reflect but the merest...

The test of a good book, said Lord Snow in a recent television programme, was whether you could remember its content a year later. I am an insatiable reader with a memory like a sieve, so that only the flavour remains-and perhaps a quotation or two in my diary. When I was a boy I used to write precis, but adult laziness has forced me to keep lists only. Why then do I read? It is an obsession, m...

Though common sense suggests that positive thinking shelters people from depression, the four studies reported here showed that this intuition needs to be qualified: Positive thinking in the form of fantasies about the future did indeed relate to decreased symptoms of depression when measured concurrently; however, positive fantasies predicted more depressive symptoms when measured longitudinal...

doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1002-0829.2012.06.010 Mental Health Center, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China *correspondence: [email protected] After a protracted 27-year process of formulation, revision and re-revision by numerous psychiatrists, jurists, government administrators and legislators, the Mental Health Law of the People’s Republic of China was finally pas...