Neophobia and conditioned taste aversion deficits in the rat produced by undercutting temporal cortex

Adult male hooded rats with parasagittal knife-cuts between the amygdala and temporal cortex (n = 8), with electrolytic basolateral amygdala lesions (n = 8), and sham-operated controls (n = 8), were tested for neophobia and LiCl-induced aversion to a 0.1% saccharin solution in a one-bottle forced choice paradigm. Both types of lesion produced equal deficits in neophobia and conditioned aversion. It was concluded that severing the connections between the amygdala and the temporal cortex produces the same deficits as basolateral amygdala damage. Possible anatomical substrates for these effects are discussed.     

Adaptive behavioral responses to potential infertility among survivors of testis cancer

In a retrospective study of 153 testis cancer survivors, we examined the sociodemographic and clinical determinants of attitudes and behaviors toward illness-induced infertility. Five fertility adjustment responses were identified: sperm-banking awareness (SBA); adoption awareness (AA); fertility testing (FT); trying to father children (TFC); and fertility distress (FD). Although responses to infertility are multidetermined, these data demonstrate there is a distinct sociodemographic and clinical profile for the subgroups of men who engage in different fertility-related behaviors. Multivariate analysis results show that men most likely to be concerned with banking sperm are those who at diagnosis are younger (less than 35 years), childless, college educated, and whose relationships have become strained. Men who sought fertility tests were childless, college graduates, and able to ejaculate. The only factor predicting adoption was childlessness. Those married men attempting to father children were also less than 35 years of age at diagnosis and without ejaculatory dysfunction. The men at greatest risk for continued distress about infertility were those who remained childless and had posttreatment ejaculatory dysfunction. Residual infertility distress also was significantly associated with treatments that included extensive retroperitoneal lymph node dissection (RPLND) surgery, indicating that the latter is a "risk factor" in survivors' long-term distress. These data, while not definitive, show that the prerogative to have children is very important to men and that losing it sets into motion a range of both adverse emotions and adaptive responses. Adjustment to infertility is a complex process that begins at diagnosis and extends long after treatment is completed.     

Clinical and genetic features of variegate porphyria in a Chinese patient

Acute porphyria is rare in orientals. We describe a Chinese woman with recurrent generalised tonic-clonic seizures and abdominal pain. Genomic DNA studies identified a heterozygous base substitution from guanine to adenine at nucleotide position 503, resulting in substitution of arginine by histidine at position 168 of the protein (R168H). This genetic abnormality is similar to the mutation reported in Caucasians with variegate porphyria. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report in the English literature a Chinese patient with variegate porphyria with an identifiable mutation. A brief review of porphyria is presented.