• Archives of Pharmacal Research
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.555-559
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• 1997

The three different batches of an oral sustained release melatonin (MT) delivery system were prepared by aqueous-based fluid-bed coating of the sugar spheres for the evaluation of in vitro release characteristics and plasma concentration profiles in human subjects. The MT contents in 20% coated sugar spheres of three batches (B1, B2 and B3) were $3.3{\pm}0.08$, $2.4{\pm}0.1$ and $2.5{\pm}0.13$ mg per gram of coated sugar spheres, respectively. The release profiles of three different batches had a very similar fashion. However, the release profiles of three different batches had a very similar fashion. However, the release half-lives $(T_{50%})$ of MT from B1, B2 and B3 was $3.70{\pm}0.2$, $5.2{\pm}0.2$ and $4.9{\pm}0.07h$, respectively. Plasma concentration profiles of sustained release 0.2mg melatonin-loaded sugar spheres containing 10% immediate release melatonin in gelatin capsules (B1 and B2) were then evaluated in human subjects. The in vivo plasma concentration profies of the two batches (B1 and B2) were very similar each other and located between the physiological endogenous ranges. The time to reach the peak concentration $(T_max)$ was more advanced in case of B1 when compared to B2. However, there was no statistically significant difference in the maximum concentration $(C_max)$ and the area under the curve (AUC) between B1 and B2. The AUC of melatonin-loaded sugar spheres containing 10% and 20% immediate release MT in human subjects had a good linearity between dose and AUC, regardless of the fraction of immediate release MT, indicating the first order elimination process of MT within these doses. The current oral sustained release MT delivery system may be utilized to treat circadian rhythm disorders if it is proven to be more clinically useful when compared to immediate release MT.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.43
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• pp.177-204
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• 2015

The Korean Criminal Code ${\S}10$ (1) provides that "The act of a person who, because of mental disorder, is unable to make discriminations or to control one's will, shall not be punished". Therefore, it'll not be able to be given criminal punishment if a mentally defective person is determined to lack the criminal liability. The problem about judging the criminal liability for the mentally defective person exists in areas where the criminal law intersects with psychiatry. Although the supreme court ultimately judges whether the criminal liability by mental defectiveness exists or not, the judgment of mental defectiveness, which is biological element, needs psychiatric knowledge and it is no wonder to rely on this. In particular, a change is required in the procedure and contents of mental examination for a mentally defective person as implementation of the Civil Participation in Criminal Jury Trial. It is needed the improvement of procedure to submit more accurate mental examination and the result of it in order that jurors are able to understand the result of mental examination and make an decision. This is because jurors consisting of ordinary citizens take part in trial. For guaranteeing the precise result of mental examination in the criminal justice procedure, it is necessary to establish the pool of manpower consisting of psychiatrists or psychologists who have completed the specific educational programs about the criminal justice and legal psychiatry, and it is desired to carry out the psychiatric test with selecting appraisers who belong to a pool of manpower. Furthermore, it is required to draw up and submit the written appraisal of mental examination which is easy to be known because of considering the nonprofessional of jurors consisting of ordinary citizens in the Civil Participation in Criminal Jury Trial. In order to gain a fair verdict of the jury about whether mental defectiveness exists or not, it is recommended the prompt submission of the written appraisal of mental examination, the presentation of the written appraisal of mental examination summarizing the important contents, and making out the written appraisal of mental examination for jurors to understand it easily.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.70-81
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• 2006

Objective : The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences of the cognitive performance, emotional and behavioral problems among the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) groups that show the difference between visual and auditory attention. Method : Using 'ADHD Diagnostic System(ADS)', visual attention and auditory attention of 98 children diagnosed as ADHD were measured. According to the omission and commission error of ADS, they were divided into three groups ; 1) the group whose each visual omission and commission error scores were higher than each auditory omission and commission error scores(VV group), 2) the group whose each auditory omission and commission error scores were higher than each visual omission and commission error scores(AA group), 3) the group that was the rest of VV and AA group(M group). And the results of both the subscales of Korean Educational Development Institute-Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children(KEDI-WISC) and the subscales of Korean Child Behavior Checklist(K-CBCL) among three groups were compared. Finally, the correlation between the visual omission, visual commission, auditory omission, auditory commission error and the results of KEDI-WISC, K-CBCL were investigated. Results : The results were as follows ; 1) In 98 ADHD children, the number of VV group(N=56) was higher than that of AA (N=10) and M group (N=32). 2) All mean scores of the subscales of KEDI-WISC of VV group were higher than those of M and AA group. The score of verbal IQ(p=.039) of VV group was significantly higher than that of AA group and the scores of block design(p=.015), Kaufman's factor 2(p=.045), performance IQ(p=.004) were significantly higher than those of M group. The score of full IQ(p=.004) were significantly higher than that of M and AA group. 3) The mean scores of all K-CBCL subscales of VV group were higher than those of M and AA group, except the score of Somatic complaint subscale. The score of Social subscale(p=.041) of VV group was significantly higher than that of AA group. The score of Withdrawn subscale(p=.021) of AA group was significantly higher than that of VV group. 4) There were no significant correlation between the scores of visual omission/commission error and those of each subscale of KEDI-WISC. But, there were many significant correlations between the scores of auditory omission/commission error and those of each subscale of KEDI-WISC. 5) There were significant correlation between the score of the visual omission error and that of Thought problem subscale(r=.205, p=.043) of K-CBCL. There were significant correlation between the scores of the auditory omission error and those of Social subscale(r=-.319, p=.001), Social problems subscale(r=.206, p=.042), Thought problem subscale(r=.235, p=.021). Finally, there were significant correlation between the scores of auditory commission error and those of Social subscale(r=-.241, p=.017), Thought problem subscale(r=.235, p=.020). Conclusion : The ADHD children whose auditory attention ability were higher than visual attention ability had relatively better cognitive performance and less emotional/behavioral problems than the others. The more comprehensive experiment will be needed about the cognitive performance, emotion and behavior problems of the ADHD children showing the difference between visual and auditory attention.

• The Korean Journal of Pharmacology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.343-349
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• 1994

A number of neurological syndromes(e.g. tardive dyskinesia) are developed as a consequence of chronic treatment with neuroleptics or antipsychotic agents. Despite the long and succesful use of phenothiazine derivatives and related agents in the treatment of certain states of mental disease, the mechanisms of these drugs are still poorly understood. One current hypothesis from extensive reviews is that these compounds might significantly interfere with the cyclic nucleotide system in brain (Levin and Weiss, 1977; Nowicki et al., 1991; Haley et al., 1992). Nitric oxide (NO), one of an interesting messenger molecule and aberrant transmitter, is believed to play a important role in biological functions of cyclic nucleotides in nervous system. It has been reported that calcium-dependent NO synthesis in endothelial cytosol is mediated by calmodulin which is supposed to be tightly related to pharmacological actions of antipsychotic agents. In the present study, the effect of several antipsychotic agents on the activity of NO synthesis and formation of cyclic GMP were investigated. These agents inhibited both the formation of $[^3H]L-citrulline$ and that of $[^3H]cyclic$ GMP by concentration-dependent manner, and their inhibiting patterns are so similar to that of calmodulin antagonist.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.323-328
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• 2004

The development of group-specific tissue probability maps (TPM) provides a priori knowledge for better result of cerebral tissue classification with regard to the inter-ethnic differences of inter-subject variability. We present sequential procedures of group-specific TPM and evaluate the age effects in the structural differences of TPM. We investigated 100 healthy volunteers with high resolution MRI scalming. The subjects were classified into young (60, 25.92+4.58) and old groups (40, 58.83${\pm}$8.10) according to the age. To avoid any bias from random selected single subject and improve registration robustness, average atlas as target for TPM was constructed from skull-stripped whole data using linear and nonlinear registration of AIR. Each subject was segmented into binary images of gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid using fuzzy clustering and normalized into the space of average atlas. The probability images were the means of these binary images, and contained values in the range of zero to one. A TPM of a given tissue is a spatial probability distribution representing a certain subject population. In the spatial distribution of tissue probability according to the threshold of probability, the old group exhibited enlarged ventricles and overall GM atrophy as age-specific changes, compared to the young group. Our results are generally consistent with the few published studies on age differences in the brain morphology. The more similar the morphology of the subject is to the average of the population represented by the TPM, the better the entire classification procedure should work. Therefore, we suggest that group-specific TPM should be used as a priori information for the cerebral tissue classification.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.9-19
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• 2016

Many patients with dizziness present with a symptom pattern that does not reveal the cause by neurotologic diagnostic approaches. In such cases, the physician frequently diagnoses psychogenic dizziness. Psychogenic dizziness is not characterized by true vertigo, and occurs in combination with other psychiatric symptom cluster. One out of two to four patients with dizziness are psychogenic dizziness. But there are few concern about this including clinical practice and study in Korea. I wrote this paper to increase concerning and attending to this for psychiatrists in Korea. I reviewed etiology including biological and psychological relations between dizziness and psychiatric disorder(especially anxiety), diagnostic approaches of, characteristics of dizziness of various psychiatric disorders related to, and the treatment of psychogenic dizziness. I also briefly reviewed the central and peripheral dizziness for psychiatrists. I suggest psychiatrists and clinicians in the psychosomatic field in Korea to acknowledge, concern, and attend to psychogenic dizziness. In turn, it will be helpful to well treat the patients with psychogenic dizziness.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.15-21
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• 2006

Introduction: The objective of the present study was to investigate bedtime, rise time and time-in-bed of Korean college students, separately on weekday and on weekend and to compare them. In addition, this study also aimed to evaluate the influence of gender, age and grade on the above sleep parmeters in Korean college students. Methods: Information regarding bedtime and rise time, separately on weekday and on weekend, of Korean college students were obtained by self-administered questionnaire. Questionnaires of 1,825 students (1,416 females and 409 males, age 18-30；mean age $21.1{\pm}2.2$) were used for statistical analyses. Results: Korean college students retired to bed 50 minutes later (00：49 on weekday；01：40 on weekend；t=39.67, p<0.001), rose 1 hour 58 minutes later (07：52 on weekday；09：50 on weekend；t=39.46, p<0.001), and slept 1 hour 8 minutes longer (t=13.33, p<0.001) on weekend. Compared to male students, female students had earlier rise time (t=8.96, p<0.01；t=3.89, p<0.01) and earlier bedtime both on weekday and weekend (t=7.10, p<0.01；t=6.04, p<0.01), and shorter time-in-bed on weekday (t=1.99, p<0.01). In addition, rise time delay and time-in-bed increase on weekend were more prominent in female students than in male students (t=3.41, p<0.01; t=3.68, p<0.01). Grade was correlated with bedtime and rise time on weekday (${\beta}=0.1022$, p<0.01；${\beta}=0.1009$, p<0.01), bedtime and time-in-bed on weekend (${\beta}=0.1096$, p<0.01；${\beta}=-0.0990$, p<0.01), and differences between week-day and weekend of the rise time and the time-in-bed (${\beta}=-0.0906$, p<0.01；${\beta}=-0.1115$, p=0.02). Conclusions: In this study, Korean college students had earlier bedtime/rise time and shorter time-in-bed on weekday than on weekend. These findings suggest that weekday sleep-wake schedule of Korean college students may be advanced relative to their biological sleep-wake cycle and that this discrepancy may be associated with weekday sleep deprivation. In addition, differences of sleep patterns between weekday and weekend were more prominent in female students and students with lower grade. Therefore, discrepancy between weekday sleep-wake schedule and biological sleep-wake cycle, as well as weekday sleep deprivation, might be more serious in female or lower-grade students.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.153-164
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• 2010

To determine the clinical target volumes considering vascularity and cellularity of tumors, the software was developed for mapping of the analyzed biological clinical target volumes on anatomical images using regional cerebral blood volume (rCBV) maps and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps. The program provides the functions for integrated registrations using mutual information, affine transform and non-rigid registration. The registration accuracy is evaluated by the calculation of the overlapped ratio of segmented bone regions and average distance difference of contours between reference and registered images. The performance of the developed software was tested using multimodal images of a patient who has the residual tumor of high grade gliomas. Registration accuracy of about 74% and average 2.3 mm distance difference were calculated by the evaluation method of bone segmentation and contour extraction. The registration accuracy can be improved as higher as 4% by the manual adjustment functions. Advanced MR images are analyzed using color maps for rCBV maps and quantitative calculation based on region of interest (ROI) for ADC maps. Then, multi-parameters on the same voxels are plotted on plane and constitute the multi-functional parametric maps of which x and y axis representing rCBV and ADC values. According to the distributions of functional parameters, tumor regions showing the higher vascularity and cellularity are categorized according to the criteria corresponding malignant gliomas. Determined volumes reflecting pathological and physiological characteristics of tumors are marked on anatomical images. By applying the multi-functional images, errors arising from using one type of image would be reduced and local regions representing higher probability as tumor cells would be determined for radiation treatment plan. Biological tumor characteristics can be expressed using image registration and multi-functional parametric maps in the developed software. The software can be considered to delineate clinical target volumes using advanced MR images with anatomical images.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.501-539
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• 2016

The human mind is a self-evolving system that develops along a multidimensional hierarchical pathway in response to traumatic stimulus. In absence of trauma, a mind integrated in conflict-free state is called monistic. When the monistic mind responses to a traumatic stimulus, a response polarity forms toward stimulus polarity within the mind, turning it into a bipartite structure. Dialectical interaction between the two opposites, originating from their incompatibility, creates a new third polarity in the upper dimension. Thereby, the mind turns into a trinity structure. When the interaction among the three polarities becomes optimized, the plasticity of the mind gets maximized into the "far-from-equilibrium state," and the function of three polarities is synchronized. Through this recalibration, the mind returns back to its monistic structure. If the mind with the recurred monistic structure responds to another traumatic stimulus, this cycle of hierarchical transformation repeats itself in this cyclical and fractal growth process through synchronization of basic trinity system. Applying this concept to the process of post-traumatic growth (PTG), this paper explores how the mind transforms traumatic experiences into PTG and proposes a 'PTG Clock' that shows a fundamental sequence in the development of the human mind. The PTG Clock consists of seven hierarchical phases, and each of the first six phases has two opposite sub-phases: shocked/numbed, feared/intrusive, paranoid/avoidant, obsessional/explosive, dependent/depressive, and meaningless/searching for meaning. The seventh, the synchronization phase, completes one cycle of the mind's transformation, realizing a grand trinity system, where the mind synchronizes its biological, social, and existential dimensions. At that point, the mind becomes more susceptible to not only the stimulus of its own traumatic experience but also the pain of others. Thereby, the PTG Clock sets out on a journey to another cycle of transformation in higher dimensions. The validity of this transformational process for the PTG Clock will be examined by comparing it to Horowitz's theory of stress response syndrome.