Clinical outcome after orbital floor fracture reduction with special regard to patient's satisfaction

Purpose: Primary reconstruction via transconjunctival approach is a standardized treatment option for orbital floor fractures. The aim of this study was to compare the findings of specific ophthalmologic assessment with the patient''s complaints after fracture reduction. Methods: A retrospective medical chart analysis was performed on patients who had undergone transconjunctival orbital floor fracture reduction for fracture therapy with resorbable foil (ethisorb sheet or polydioxanone foil). A follow-up assessment including ophthalmological evaluation regarding visual acuity (eye chart projector), binocular visual field screening (Bagolini striated glasses test) and diplopia (cover test, Hess screen test) was conducted. Additionally, a questionnaire was performed to assess patients'' satisfaction. Results: A total of 53 patients with a mean follow-up of 23 months (ranging from 11 to 72) after surgical therapy were included. Diplopia was present preoperatively in 23 (43.4%) and reduced in follow-up examination (n=12, 22.6%). Limitations in ocular motility reduced from 37.7% to 7.5%. The questionnaire about the patient''s satisfaction revealed excellent outcomes in relation to the functional and esthetical parameters. Conclusion: Transconjunctival approach is a safe approach for orbital fracture therapy. Postoperative diplopia is nearly never perceptible for the individual and differs to pathologic findings in the ophthalmic assessment.     

Frontofacial advancement by internal distraction devices. A technical modification for the management of craniofacial dysostosis in early childhood

Normal craniofacial growth is characterized by a different growth pattern of neuro- and viscerocranium. In craniofacial dysostosis (CFD) syndromes there is complex disturbance of this physiological growth pattern. Modern surgical management of CFD is staged with respect to the severity of the deformity, the age and the development of the patient. Early single stage management of anterior cranial vault deformity and midfacial retrusion in children affected by syndromic craniosynostosis is possible when anterior cranial vault remodelling is performed together with gradual Le Fort III midfacial advancement. One pair of internal distraction devices, placed in accordance with the midfacial growth vector after initial cranial vault remodelling, can be sufficient for this purpose. Technical aspects of this modified frontofacial advancement procedure are presented and discussed based on a case report with a postoperative follow up time of 50 months.     

Amygdala damage impairs emotional memory for gist but not details of complex stimuli

Neurobiological studies demonstrate the amygdala's role in emotional memory, and psychological studies suggest a particular pattern: enhanced memory for the gist but not the details of complex stimuli. We hypothesized that these two findings are related. Whereas normal (n = 52) and brain-damaged (n = 22) controls showed the expected enhancement of gist memory when the encoding context was emotional, persons with unilateral damage to the medial temporal lobe including the amygdala (n = 16) did not show this pattern. Furthermore, amygdala volume showed a significant positive correlation with gist memory but not with overall memory. A further study in four subjects with selective medial temporal damage sparing the amygdala, and one with selective damage confined to the amygdala, confirmed the specificity of this effect to the amygdala. The data support a model whereby the amygdala focuses processing resources on gist, possibly accounting for features of traumatic memories and eyewitness testimony in real life.     

Perception of socially relevant stimuli in schizophrenia

To examine whether patients with schizophrenia have deficits in the appraisal of socially relevant stimuli, we tested 20 patients and 14 healthy volunteers equated for parental socioeconomic status on recognition of gender stimuli, emotional people stimuli, and emotional scenes. Patients with schizophrenia showed deficits in discrimination of subtle gender differences and in the identification of emotion from human shapes and body motion. Patients showed no impairment on measures of hedonic appraisal of emotional scenes and recognition of emotional expression in human face stimuli. Across tasks, subjects with schizophrenia showed poorer identification of happiness, anger, and fear. The findings point towards circumscribed domains of impaired social cognition in schizophrenia and suggest specific further hypotheses about the neural dysfunction that may underlie them.     

Facial emotion recognition in agenesis of the corpus callosum

Background

Impaired social functioning is a common symptom of individuals with developmental disruptions in callosal connectivity. Among these developmental conditions, agenesis of the corpus callosum provides the most extreme and clearly identifiable example of callosal disconnection. To date, deficits in nonliteral language comprehension, humor, theory of mind, and social reasoning have been documented in agenesis of the corpus callosum. Here, we examined a basic social ability as yet not investigated in this population: recognition of facial emotion and its association with social gaze.

Methods

Nine individuals with callosal agenesis and nine matched controls completed four tasks involving emotional faces: emotion recognition from upright and inverted faces, gender recognition, and passive viewing. Eye-tracking data were collected concurrently on all four tasks and analyzed according to designated facial regions of interest.

Results

Individuals with callosal agenesis exhibited impairments in recognizing emotions from upright faces, in particular lower accuracy for fear and anger, and these impairments were directly associated with diminished attention to the eye region. The callosal agenesis group exhibited greater consistency in emotion recognition across conditions (upright vs. inverted), with poorest performance for fear identification in both conditions. The callosal agenesis group also had atypical facial scanning (lower fractional dwell time in the eye region) during gender naming and passive viewing of faces, but they did not differ from controls on gender naming performance. The pattern of results did not differ when taking into account full-scale intelligence quotient or presence of autism spectrum symptoms.

Conclusions

Agenesis of the corpus callosum results in a pattern of atypical facial scanning characterized by diminished attention to the eyes. This pattern suggests that reduced callosal connectivity may contribute to the development and maintenance of emotion processing deficits involving reduced attention to others'' eyes.     

A specific hypoactivation of right temporo-parietal junction/posterior superior temporal sulcus in response to socially awkward situations in autism

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulty comprehending social situations in the complex, dynamic contexts encountered in the real world. To study the social brain under conditions which approximate naturalistic situations, we measured brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants watched a full-length episode of the sitcom The Office. Having quantified the degree of social awkwardness at each moment of the episode, as judged by an independent sample of controls, we found that both individuals with ASD and control participants showed reliable activation of several brain regions commonly associated with social perception and cognition (e.g. those comprising the ‘mentalizing network’) during the more awkward moments. However, individuals with ASD showed less activity than controls in a region near right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) extending into the posterior end of the right superior temporal sulcus (RSTS). Further analyses suggested that, despite the free-form nature of the experimental design, this group difference was specific to this RTPJ/RSTS area of the mentalizing network; other regions of interest showed similar activity across groups with respect to both location and magnitude. These findings add support to a body of evidence suggesting that RTPJ/RSTS plays a special role in social processes across modalities and may function atypically in individuals with ASD navigating the social world.     

Investigating the cognitive neuroscience of social behavior

Social cognitive neuroscience is a fledgling discipline that has already accrued an impressive body of data, but important questions remain regarding the theoretical constructs and methodological approaches that it utilizes. An overview of the papers in this special issue points to several key issues facing the field. We need a theoretical vocabulary that bridges three domains: our intuitive "folk" conceptions of other people, the explanations offered by social psychology, and the explanations offered by cognitive neuroscience. And we need a method that can extract common patterns across multiple studies, to complement strict hypothesis testing of individual studies. These issues can be addressed, in part, by giving theory and experiment equal time, and by fostering an interdisciplinary approach that includes neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, anthropology and allied disciplines.     

II. Hypersociability in Williams Syndrome

Studies of abnormal populations provide a rare opportunity for examining relationships between cognition, genotype and brain neurobiology, permitting comparisons across these different levels of analysis. In our studies, we investigate individuals with a rare, genetically based disorder called Williams syndrome (WMS) to draw links among these levels. A critical component of such a cross-domain undertaking is the clear delineation of the phenotype of the disorder in question. Of special interest in this paper is a relatively unexplored unusual social phenotype in WMS that includes an overfriendly and engaging personality. Four studies measuring distinct aspects of hypersocial behavior in WMS are presented, each probing specific aspects in WMS infants, toddlers, school age children, and adults. The abnormal profile of excessively social behavior represents an important component of the phenotype that may distinguish WMS from other developmental disorders. Furthermore, the studies show that the profile is observed across a wide range of ages, and emerges consistently across multiple experimental paradigms. These studies of hypersocial behavior in WMS promise to provide the groundwork for crossdisciplinary analyses of gene-brain-behavior relationships.     

Induction of transitional cell carcinoma of the urinary bladder in rats by feeding N-[4-(5-nitro-2-furyl)-2-thiazolyl] formamide

Summary After feeding with 0.188% N-[4-(5-nitro-2 furyl)-2-thiazolyl] formamide (FANFT), transitional cell carcinoma of the urinary bladder was induced in all female Wistar rats tested. Histological changes of the urothelium consisted of various degrees of hyperplasia and dysplasia. An infiltrating transitional cell carcinoma first appeared after 8 months. These results are compared with the findings of other authors, and divergencies of the tumour induction rates are discussed with respect to strain, sex and weight of experimental animals as well as concentration and amount of ingested carcinogen. Electron microscopy shows microvillous transformation of the luminal plasma membrane and appearance of a thick fluffy cell coat (glycocalyx). These changes are explained by an altered function of the Golgi complex occurring during malignancy and leading to a loss of the specific discoid vesicles of the urothelial cells.