Background:Clinically significant anxiety and depression are common in patients with cancer, and are associated with poor psychiatric and medical outcomes. Historical and recent research suggests a role for psilocybin to treat cancer-related anxiety and depression.Methods:In this double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial, 29 patients with cancer-related anxiety and depression were randomly assigned and received treatment with single-dose psilocybin (0.3 mg/kg) or niacin, both in conjunction with psychotherapy. The primary outcomes were anxiety and depression assessed between groups prior to the crossover at 7 weeks.Results:Prior to the crossover, psilocybin produced immediate, substantial, and sustained improvements in anxiety and depression and led to decreases in cancer-related demoralization and hopelessness, improved spiritual wellbeing, and increased quality of life. At the 6.5-month follow-up, psilocybin was associated with enduring anxiolytic and anti-depressant effects (approximately 60–80% of participants continued with clinically significant reductions in depression or anxiety), sustained benefits in existential distress and quality of life, as well as improved attitudes towards death. The psilocybin-induced mystical experience mediated the therapeutic effect of psilocybin on anxiety and depression.Conclusions:In conjunction with psychotherapy, single moderate-dose psilocybin produced rapid, robust and enduring anxiolytic and anti-depressant effects in patients with cancer-related psychological distress.Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00957359

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Tactile sensing is a key sensor modality for robots interacting with their surroundings. These sensors provide a rich and diverse set of data signals that contain detailed information collected from contacts between the robot and its environment. The data is however not limited to individual contacts and can be used to extract a wide range of information about the objects in the robots environment as well as the robots own actions during the interactions.In this paper, we provide an overview of tactile information and its applications in robotics. We present a hierarchy consisting of raw, contact, object, and action levels to structure the tactile information, with higher-level information often building upon lower-level information. We discuss different types of information that can be extracted at each level of the hierarchy. The paper also includes an overview of different types of robot applications and the types of tactile information that they employ.The paper concludes with a discussion of tactile-based computational framework and future tactile applications which are still beyond current robot's capabilities.

Humans have been shown to be good at using active touch to perceive subtle differences in compliance. They tend to use highly stereotypical exploratory strategies, such as applying normal force to a surface. We developed similar exploratory and perceptual algorithms for a mechatronic robotic system (Barrett arm/hand system) equipped with liquid-filled, biomimetic tactile sensors (BioTac® from SynTouch LLC). The distribution of force on the fingertip was measured by the electrical resistance of the conductive liquid trapped between the elastomeric skin and a cluster of four electrodes on the flat fingertip surface of the rigid core of the BioTac. These signals provided closed-loop control of exploratory movements, while the distribution of skin deformations, measured by more lateral electrodes and by the hydraulic pressure, were used to estimate material properties of objects. With this control algorithm, the robot plus tactile sensor was able to discriminate the relative compliance of various rubber samples.

BackgroundPost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) psychotherapy research has failed to identify patient characteristics that consistently predict differential outcome.AimsTo identify patient characteristics associated with differential outcome via a statistically generated composite moderator among women with childhood abuse-related PTSD in a randomised controlled trial comparing exposure therapy, skills training and their combination.MethodSix baseline patient characteristics were combined in a composite moderator of treatment effects for PTSD symptoms across the three treatment conditions through a 6-month follow-up.ResultsThe optimal moderator was the combined burden of all symptoms and emotion regulation strength. Those with high moderator scores, reflecting high symptom load relative to emotion regulation, did least well in exposure, moderately well in skills and best in the combination.ConclusionsA clinically meaningful moderator, which combines patient symptom burden and strengths, was identified. Assessment at follow-up may provide a more accurate indicator of variability in outcome than that obtained immediately post-treatment.Declaration of interestNone.Copyright and usage© The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2016. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.