Intranasally administered oxytocin gained popularity as a hormone facilitating trust, cooperation, and affiliation. However, the long-term consequences of oxytocin use are not known. Given that intensive media attention and advertisements of the “love hormone” might lead to a new form of misuse, we conducted an online survey and identified 41 individuals with oxytocin misuse. Misuse will be proposed throughout the manuscript instead of the more accurate “off-label use” for reasons of simplicity. We compared the social functions of oxytocin users with that of 41 matched control volunteers. We administered the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test” (RMET) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) Toolbox Adult Social Relationship Scales (NIH-ASRS) to delineate affective “theory of mind” and real-life social functions, respectively. Resting-state functional brain connectivity analyses were also carried out. Results revealed no significant differences between individuals with oxytocin misuse and control participants on the RMET and NIH-ASRS. However, individuals with oxytocin misuse showed an increased connectivity between the right amygdala and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex relative to the control group. Higher estimated cumulative doses of oxytocin were associated with enhanced amygdala-cingulate connectivity. These results show that individuals who have self-selected for and pursued oxytocin use have increased amygdala-cingulate resting connectivity, compared to individuals who have not used oxytocin, despite the lack of differences in RMET and NIH-ASRS scores. Further longitudinal studies are warranted to investigate the cause-effect relationship between oxytocin use and brain connectivity.

There has been considerable attention on Brazil’s experience in applying the right to the city, influencing the urban reform movement and subsequent legislation including the 1988 Constitution and the 2001 Statute of the City. While much is known about Brazil’s urban transformations, this article views this trajectory within debates on social citizenship, expanding the focus to show that property is integral to this debate. Through the lens of social citizenship, property rights and insurgency, this article traces Brazil’s right to the city debate through a focus on three issues: (1) the rights dimension of such debates; (2) the role of the social function of property in urban legislation; and (3) the role of insurgent planning evident in urban social movements. While property rights and land rights are often distanced from debates on social citizenship, the Brazil case provides evidence in which the two are clearly intertwined.

Our ability to interact appropriately in everyday interpersonal situations is fundamental to successful social integration. Impaired pragmatic competence correlates significantly and substantially with indices of social function across several domains for adults with acquired neurological disorders. In particular, evidence supports the negative impact of pragmatic impairments on the development and maintenance of relationships and community integration more generally.

Pragmatic language competence sits in a complex, multifactorial space characterised by interacting associations with cognitive and psychological functions and social and environmental parameters. This complexity is evident in much of the research seeking to unravel the nature and magnitude of interactions between pragmatic language competence and social outcomes in adults with acquired neurological disorders.

Over recent years our understanding of the impact of pragmatic impairments on social outcome has benefited substantially from inclusion of the insider's perspective in our research evidence base. Indeed, a methodological inclusion of constructivist paradigms has enabled the development of a rich understanding of the devastating social impact of impaired pragmatic competence.

The aim of this paper is to review pragmatic language impairment in the context of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and detail its impact on social functioning from the perspectives of people with TBI and their intimate partners/spouses and friends. With these perspectives as background, the paper concludes with consideration of therapeutic developments and a brief look at a novel intervention designed to reduce the negative impact of pragmatic deficits and improve functional language use following TBI.

Objectives: This study examined the current assessment practices of clinicians working with people with social cognition impairment following traumatic brain injury.

Method: Two hundred and sixty clinicians completed an on-line survey that was disseminated through professional brain injury organisations. Of respondents around 90% were allied health clinicians, with the remainder comprising medical, nursing and academia.

Main outcomes: The four areas of social cognition that were routinely assessed across the disciplines were insight, disinhibition, anger and social adjustment. The least routinely assessed areas were theory of mind and alexithymia. The test suggested most likely to identify social cognition impairments was The Awareness of Social Inference Test, although only 8% of clinicians responded to this question. Clinicians preferred informal assessment methods over standardised assessment methods for identifying social cognition rehabilitation goals. Higher levels of education were associated with greater use of standardised assessment modalities. Whilst there was paucity of responses overall, TBI Express was most commonly used for social cognition rehabilitation.

Conclusions: Considering the high prevalence of social cognition impairments in this population, formal assessment is extremely limited. The under-utilisation of assessment tools is problematic for the assessment and rehabilitation initiatives offered to people with TBI. These results have implications for the training of clinicians working in brain injury rehabilitation.

Takaki M, Okahisa Y, Kodama M, Mizuki Y, Sakamoto S, Ujike H, Uchitomi Y. Efficacy and tolerability of blonanserin in 48 patients with intractable schizophrenia.

Background: Blonanserin is effective for the treatment of schizophrenia in Korea and Japan.

Methods: We administered blonanserin to 48 Japanese patients with schizophrenia for whom other atypical antipsychotics were not sufficiently effective or tolerated.

Results: Previous antipsychotics were replaced with blonanserin because of its effectiveness (54.2%; 26/48) or tolerability (45.8%; 22/48). Blonanserin was more effective in 65.4% (17/26) of the and better tolerated in 95.5% (21/22) of the patients. Of 48 patients, 33 continued blonanserin for 1 year. The mean Clinical Global Impression of Severity scores improved from 4.60 to 2.48. The mean Global Assessment of Functioning score improved from 29.8 to 51.7. Nineteen patients (39.6%; 19/48) had a social role. The reasons for discontinuation of blonanserin were ineffectiveness against psychosis (27.1%; 13/48) or intolerability (4.2%; 2/48). The ratio of discontinuation for intolerability versus ineffectiveness was 0.15, which was the lowest among atypical psychotics.

Conclusions: Blonanserin may be effective and safe for the treatment of intractable schizophrenia.

Objectives: To investigate the relationship between psychiatric symptoms, personality disturbance, and social function.

Method: Longitudinal study of 100 psychiatric patients presenting as emergencies originally entered to a randomised trial of community and hospital-based treatment strategies. Ratings of social function using the Social Functioning Questionnaire, personality status using the Personality Assessment Schedule, and clinical symptomatology using the Comprehensive Psycho-pathological Rating Scale were recorded at baseline with assessment of social function repeated at two, four and 12 weeks. Correlation, regression, and path analysis were performed to test the hypothesis that personality status had more influence than clinical symptoms on social function.

Results: Path and regression analysis showed, that at baseline both psychopathology and personality pathology contributed to social dysfunction equally, but from two weeks onwards personality abnormality contributed to a greater degree than clinical psychopathology. Of the 100, 35 patients had a personality disorder and in these there was a strong correlation between social function scores at baseline and 12 weeks (48% of variation explained) whereas in those with no personality disorder the correlation was much weaker (14%); regression analyses confirmed this conclusion.

Conclusions: Psychopathology and personality status contribute to social dysfunction in patients presenting as emergencies but persistent social dysfunction is more likely to reflect personality pathology than other forms of mental disorder.