We begin 2011 with a question for debate, namely, the link between diet and mood and whether the latter is predicated on the former alone. Soh and Walter (Reference Soh and Walter1) provide an erudite exposition of this issue that is then promptly juxtaposed by an original article by Feng and colleagues (Reference Feng, Fang, Zou, Li, Tian, Pan and Huang2) that examines a gene polymorphism association across mood disorders by way of meta-analysis.
The affective theme continues with Li and colleagues (Reference Li, Yuan, Hou and Zhang3) who report on the dose-related effects of an antidepressant in the hippocampus in the context of chronic stress. Brain Bytes also examines mood, more specifically bipolar disorder, and succinctly ties together the findings from psychiatric and genetic studies of bipolar binocular rivalry (Reference Tt, Mitchell, Martin and Miller4).
Intertwined amongst these ‘emotional' papers are a suite of articles that focus on aspects of schizophrenia. Schuster and colleagues provide a wonderful insight into Benedict Augustin Morel (Reference Schuster, Le Strat, Krichevski, Bardikoff and Limosin5) the “pre-emptor” of schizophrenia with his coinage of dementia praecox. Yamada et al. (Reference Yamada, Yukawa, Taketani, Matsuura and Hara6) report on multifocal visual-evoked potentials in schizophrenia and the effects of treatment whilst Chang et al. (Reference Chang, Hsu, Huang, Chiu and Liao7), describe an augmentation strategy to treat treatment-resistant schizophrenia.
In addition to all this wonderfulness this issue's Intervention Insights section introduces the concept of ‘mind-emptiness' as part of meditation and its relation to mindfulness (Reference Manocha8). However, if all of this proves too much to swallow then you will be reassured by our final Comment and Critique (Reference Wang and Tzeng9) that provides a practical solution for dysphagia, albeit in the context of neuropsychiatry.
