Neuroscience has been a growing revolutionary field of scientific knowledge. The increasing recognition of the importance of emotional processes and subjective experience in several aspects of human behaviour parallel the growing amount of research in the field of affective neuroscience. Affective neuroscience studies the brain mechanisms subjacent to emotional behaviour.

To discuss the relevance of affective neuroscience research in social and biological sciences, namely within psychiatric and psychological researches.

Review of the literature. MEDLINE and PubMed databases searches for peer-reviewed studies, published between 1994 and 2008, using combinations of the Medline Subject Heading terms affective neuroscience, emotions, affective sciences and psychiatry, psychology, biological sciences, social sciences.

Several studies addresses brain functions and how emotions relate to genetics, learning, primary motivations, stress response and human behaviour. Some actual areas of research within affective neuroscience include: emotional learning, affective behaviour, emotional empathy, psychosomatic medicine, functional and structural biomarkers, emotional disorders and stress response, among others.

In Psychiatry, affective neurosciences find application in understanding the neurobiology of mood disorders, the neural control of interpersonal and social behaviour and the emotional systems that underlie psychopathology. Affective neuroscience reflects the integration of knowledge across disciplines allowing a broader understanding of human functioning. The field of affective neuroscience is an exciting field of future psychiatric research and it provides an investigational framework for studying psychiatric morbidity.

Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, and is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism and inefficacy. Resident physicians have intense work demands, limited control and high responsibilities in the workplace, making them more vulnerable to job burnout.

To review studies in the medical literature that address the theme of burnout in residents and discuss relevant resources and interventions for residents with burnout.

MEDLINE and PubMed databases searches for peer-reviewed studies, published between 1990 and 2008, using combinations of the Medline Subject Heading terms professional burnout and internship and residency.

The studies report high levels of burnout among residents. The reported residents’ strategies for coping with stress are diverse and include talking with family, significant others or other residents and practicing physical activity. Some studies investigated the role of stress management workshops for residents, reporting decline of emotional exhaustion levels in residents after the workshops.

The literature on resident burnout is still sparse. The reviewed studies suggest that residents from various specialties, internationally, experience burnout. Understanding resident burnout can be enhanced by more rigorous research, studying different intervention strategies. Burnout prevention and management can contribute to better personal outcomes and ultimately provide better patient care.

The Psychiatric Emergency Service (PES) is an important part of the mental health care system for the management of acute conditions requiring prompt intervention representing also a significant part of workload of specialists and trainees. The objective of this study was to characterize the clinical features of patients observed in PES of Coimbra University Hospitals.

During the first 6 months of 2008, demographic and clinical data were obtained for all patients observed by the first author of the study, together with a specialist in Psychiatry.

The sample consisted of 159 patients, 103 females and 56 males. Mean age was 45,9 ± 18,367 years. The majority of patients presented in the emergency room either alone (56,6%) or with a first degree relative (34,6%) by self-initiative and having a past psychiatric history (71,1%). Disturbing mood symptoms (depression, anxiety or both) were the motive of assessment in 58% of patients but several other causes were reported including behavioural symptoms, agitation, psychosis, drug or alcohol related disorders, sleep and cognitive disorders. Average Clinical Global Impression was 4,12 ± 1,177. After the psychiatric assessment, several diagnosis were made namely Major Depressive Episode (14,5%), Adaptation Disorders (13,9%), Schizophrenia and related disorders (13,8%), Anxiety Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (11,9%) and Drug or Alcohol related disorders (8,2%). Most patients were discharged without referral (50,3%).

A significant percentage of patients went to the PES for conditions that could have been treated by a primary care physician or in an outpatient clinic setting.

Chronic pain irrespective of its origin can be a major factor of significant distress inducing high levels of anxiety, depression and sleep disturbance. These symptoms can, by their turn, aggravate the perception of pain. The objective of this study is to characterize mood, anxiety and sleep pattern in patients with chronic rheumatic pain.

Patients observed in the Psychosomatic Consultation of Coimbra University Hospitals from January 2008 with chronic rheumatologic pain were included in the study. They were prospectively assessed (twice in average) by a Psychiatrist for mood, anxiety, sleep, general status and levels of pain with standardized rating scales.

Thirty-two female patients were included in the study. Mean age was 51,22±7,37 years. Depression and levels of anxiety both correlated positively with Clinical Global Impression Scale but not with the level of pain reported by the patient. Moreover, although a significant proportion of the patients reported sleep disturbance, especially in the beginning and in the middle of the night, this was not correlated with levels of pain.

This study suggests that chronic pain is not a predictor of depression and anxiety and does not fully explain the distress reported by patients with chronic rheumatic disorders. Assessment of other factors such as personality traits, coping styles and maladaptative health behaviours should be part of the routine intervention in these subjects.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common cause of neurological disability in young adults and is frequently accompanied by symptoms of depression and anxiety. The aim of this study was to explore the association of depression and anxiety with health status in younger and older MS patients.

223 MS patients (67.3% female; mean age 38.9±10.8 years; mean disease duration 5.8±5.2 years) were divided into younger and older age groups (< 45 and ≥45 years). They completed questionnaires focusing on sociodemographic data, depression and anxiety (HADS), and physical and mental health status (SF-36). Functional disability (EDSS) was assessed by a neurologist. To analyse the data, a U-test and multiple linear regression analyses were performed.

A model consisting of age, gender, marital status, EDSS, depression and anxiety explained 46.6% of the variance in physical health status and 60.8% of the variance in mental health status (p≤.001). Depression was a significant predictor of physical health status in older MS patients and was associated with mental health status in both age groups (p≤0.001). Anxiety was related to worse physical and mental health status in younger MS patients, but not in the older ones.

Depression in MS patients is associated with mental health status and with physical health status only in the older group; anxiety is associated only in younger MS patients with regard to their health status. Psychiatric diagnostics focusing on depression and anxiety might be important for treatment of MS patients in order to contribute to improving a patient's health status.

Due to the implementation of the DRGs (Diagnosis Related Groups) in the somatic departments of general hospitals, an elevated demand for psychiatric consultations can be anticipated. It is a moot question whether psychiatric consultation services are adequate for such a surplus load. We investigated whether the proportion of psychiatric consultation requests for patient's capacity to consent and for guardianship is rising.

The DRGs were implemented in the somatic departments of the Ev. Krankenhaus Königin Elisabeth Herzberge (KEH) at the end of 2003. We compared consultation requests with the keywords “capacity to consent”, “capacity to enter contracts” and “need for guardianship” in the year 2002 with 2004.

Significantly more consultations with the keyword “guardianship” were requested in 2004 compared to 2002 (p=0.019). 56% concerned medical questions regarding capacity of consent. There was a slight, but increase in the requests social reasons.

The confirmation of the indication for the appointment of a guardian decreased inversely without statistical significance (80% in 2002 and 64% in 2004; Chi-Square p=0.058).

The increasing demand of the consiliary-liason-service was confirmed in our investigation. It is possible that the implementation of the DRGs plays a role in the increase of psychiatric consultation request. As a trial to ease the growing burden, we developed a form which also enables colleagues from the somatic departments to apply for guardianship of their patients without psychiatric assistance.

To evaluate of cerebellum role in cognitive and social organization also during development.

We report 25 children with different kinds of acquired cerebellar lesions (12 with hemispheric astrocytoma, 12 with vermis medulloblastoma, and 1 with hemispheric stroke) who showed different clinical patterns according to the lesion localization. All subject were studied by neurological examination and MRI. Neuropsychological assessment included:

• • observation of spontaneous behaviour;

• • Recording of spontaneous language;

• • Intelligence evaluation (WISC-test);

• • Language evaluation;

• • Memory evaluation;

• • Assessment of frontal lobe functions (categorical memory, sequential memory, language fluency, design fluency, flexibility of reasoning and problem solving).

These data confirm that the connections from the cerebellum to the associative cortical areas are operative very early and that the cerebellum has an essential role in cognitive and social organization also during development.

Happiness has been associated with a number of individual and societal factors, but much of the individual-to-individual variation in happiness remains unexplained. The purpose of this paper is to examine a broad range of social and psychological correlates of self-rated happiness in Europe.

We used data from the European Social Survey to determine levels of happiness in individuals (n=30,816) from seventeen European countries and to identify associations between happiness and age, gender, family relationships, satisfaction with income, employment status, community trust, satisfaction with health, satisfaction with democracy, religious belief and country of residence.

Self-rated happiness varies significantly between European countries, with individuals in Denmark reporting the highest levels of happiness and individuals in Bulgaria reporting the lowest levels. On multi-variable analysis, happiness is positively correlated with younger age, satisfaction with household income, being employed, high community trust and religious belief. Overall, these factors account for 22.5% of the individual-to-individual variation in happiness in Europe.

For the individual, this study highlights the strength of association between happiness and the individual's attitudes towards various aspects of their personal, household and societal circumstances. For social policy-makers, this study confirms the potential usefulness of civic measures to increase community trust and social capital. Further studies of the inter-relationships between individual and community-level variables would assist in further explaining the variance in happiness between individuals and countries.

Small number of prestigious scientific journals publishes most of the world's scientific information. Although scientists in developing countries represent 25% of the world's scientific community national journals from this 'scientific periphery' are poorly visible: the Science Citation Index (SCI) included less than 2% of these journals in 1995.

A vicious cycle of inadequacy for these journals: small number and poor quality of manuscripts submitted, inadequate review process, and imperfect English prevents them from reaching higher visibility and eventually escaping form anonymity. Key problems seem to be poorly designed and unoriginal research, lack of knowledge of research methods and data presentation.

1. 1. Teaching principles of scientific research in medical schools.

2. 2. Author-friendly editorial policy - a procedure where most of the articles received are pre-reviewed intramurally and improved by providing guidance to the authors, before being sent out for extramural review.

3. 3. Proactive board of editors - who seek interesting research and encourage researchers to communicate their results.

4. 3. Networking regional collaboration.

In the case of Croatian Medical Journal (CMJ) that followed and partly developed the 'treatment' described, such policy resulted in significant formal success - inclusion of CMJ in the most selective international indexing databases (MEDLINE, Current Contents and Web of Science), open access status, decent visibility and attention of researches (impact factor 1.2). The original, active and efficacious approach of the editors of CMJ will be analyzed in this presentation.

Ramón y Cajal Hospital is the reference centre for Madrid-Barajas airport. Passengers at the airport who need medical assistance are brought to this hospital. A percentage of these passengers require psychiatric evaluation and frequently need to stay inward for a certain term.

Calculate the approximate costs derived from the inward stay at the Psychiatry ward of patients referred from Madrid-Barajas airport.

Revise retrospectively clinical histories of inward psychiatric patients referred from Barajas airport in the last 5 years. The Department of Economic management of the hospital has provided the costs of stay at the Psychiatry ward for the year 2007 (395 euros per day). Data is analyzed using the SPSS software 15.0 version.

The average stay of these patients is 13.96 days. Then, the average cost is 5514.2 euros. Extrapolating these data to our sample, we notice that being the reference centre for an international airport supposes an estimated cost of 545.905.8 euros (109181.16 per year) due to inward stay of psychiatric patients.

The psychiatric attention to the airport population represents an economic extra charge that has an impact on the hospital and the National Health System. We only expose the charge derived from inward stay. To obtain a more realistic overall result we should add the costs of the attention at the emergency room to the result above.

Latency period between brain damage and the beginning of the psychotic symptoms is a very controversial remark, when we are trying to sharpen in the etiology of a postraumatic psychosis.

Our work is based on a systemic review of the articles published related to TBI and psychosis.

The average latency period is between 4 and 5 years, including a wide range of time from days to years.

Results may not be very accurate because in some articles any psychotic sympton is included even if there is not a complete psychotic disorder as described in DSM-IV.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) cause a wide range of after-effects, including psychiatric disorders. Psychosis although uncommon is a very serious consequences with important functional, therapeutical and legal implications.

Our work is based on a systemic review of the articles published related to TBI and psychosis.

Delirious psychosis are twice more common than schizophrenia-like psychosis (28% to 14%).

Delusions and hallucinations are predominant over passive phenomena or negative symptoms.

Evolution and chronicity of postraumatic psychosis depends on the severity of the TBI and on the psychiatric and neurological previous conditions.

Treatment is the same as used for typical psychosis, even though side effects are more frequent.

Bipolar disorder (BD) is characterised by emotional dysregulation; abnormal emotional information processing is likely to be a component of genetic predisposition to BD.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging data was collected during an event-related facial affect recognition task (fearful, angry, sad expressions), from: 41 BDI patients, 22 of their unaffected siblings, and 51 controls. A random effects analysis was implemented using SPM5.

Patients, relative to controls had significantly:

1. a. reduced activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus and middle occipital gyrus and,

2. b. enhanced activation bilaterally in the posterior cingulate and in the left postcentral gyrus; in the temporal lobe, increased activation was seen in the hippocampus and amygdale bilaterally and in the middle and inferior temporal gyri.

In BD patients there is evidence of increased limbic activation and decreased cortical efficiency during facial affect processing; increased ventral PFC activation in siblings, in the presence of increased limbic activation, may serve as a compensatory mechanism mediating resilience to disease expression.