Citation

van Heeringen CK. Psychiatr. Danub. 2006; 18(Suppl 1): 31.

Affiliation

Medical Psychology, Unit for Suicide Research University Hospital, De Pintelaan 185, B-9000 Gent, Belgium. (cornelis.vanheeringen@UGent.be)

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Facultas Universitatis Studiorum Zagrabiensis - Danube Symposion of Psychiatry)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

16963881

Abstract

The last decades bore witness to an explosion of research regarding the psychological and biological nature of individual differences in human behaviour. In addition, there is increasing insight in specific biological pathways that contribute to complex cognitive and emotional characteristics and in the ways such differences might confer vulnerability to psychiatric disorder. A very limited proportion of this research using sophisticated techniques of functional brain imaging, neuropsychology and genetics has addressed suicidal behaviour. It is now becoming clear where and how decisions about the self are made relying on autobiographical memory, the cognitive regulation of emotion, affective responses to environmental stimuli including anguish and mental pain, and the perception of the future. Individual variations in the reactivity of different parts of the prefrontal cortex thus play a key role in shaping the cognitions and emotions, and thus the mind that determines human behaviour including suicide and self harm.

Language: en