Vulnerability to schizophrenia: neuropsychological performance and schizotypal personality traits]

Although some neuropsychological deficits and a high rate of schizotypal personality disorders have been found in the first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia, few studies have looked for a link between those two types of potential marker of vulnerability to this disease. The aims of this study were: 1) to confirm some executive/attentional deficits in a group of first-degree relatives including not only siblings but also parents; 2) to evaluate the schizotypal traits using the French version of 4 self-reporting scales proposed by Chapman and his colleagues; 3) to look for a dependence or independence between the neuropsychological performance and the scores on the scales of schizotypy. Twenty four patients with schizophrenia, 48 of their first-degree relatives and 31 controls were included in the study. Both attentional tests (a Digit Symbol Substitution Test and a Degraded Stimulus-Continuous Performance Test) confirmed a worse performance in the patient and in the first-degree relative groups than in the control group. On the opposite side, the executive performance assessed by the Wisconsin Sorting Card Test, was poorer in the patient group only. Scores of the first-degree relative group on the social anhedonia, physical anhedonia and perceptual aberrations scales were at an intermediate level between those of the patient and control groups; moreover, only scores on the social anhedonia scale tended to be significantly higher in the first-degree relative group than in the control group. Among the first-degree relative group, the only significant correlation found was between the number of perseverative errors on the WCST and the scores on the physical anhedonia scale.     

氧自由基与胃黏膜损伤

我们在概述了氧自由基的概念、来源和氧自由基反应的损伤作用后,综述了其在胃部疾病中的作用,提示氧自由基与急性胃黏膜损害、慢性胃炎、消化性溃疡和胃癌的发病密切相关,并阐述自由基清除剂对胃黏膜损伤的保护作用.     

Modality-Specific, Multitask Locomotor Deficits Persist Despite Good Recovery After a Traumatic Brain Injury

McFadyen BJ, Cantin J-F, Swaine B, Duchesneau G, Doyon J, Dumas D, Fait P. Modality-specific, multitask locomotor deficits persist despite good recovery after a traumatic brain injury.

Objective

To study the effects of sensory modality of simultaneous tasks during walking with and without obstacles after moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Design

Group comparison study.

Setting

Gait analysis laboratory within a postacute rehabilitation facility.

Participants

Volunteer sample (N=18). Persons with moderate to severe TBI (n=11) (9 men, 3 women; age, 37.56±13.79y) and a comparison group (n=7) of subjects without neurologic problems matched on average for body mass index and age (4 men, 3 women; age, 39.19±17.35y).

Interventions

Not applicable.

Main Outcome Measures

Magnitudes and variability for walking speeds, foot clearance margins (ratio of foot clearance distance to obstacle height), and response reaction times (both direct and as a relative cost because of obstacle avoidance).

Results

The TBI group had well-recovered walking speeds and a general ability to avoid obstacles. However, these subjects did show lower trail limb toe clearances (P=.003) across all conditions. Response reaction times to the Stroop tasks were longer in general for the TBI group (P=.017), and this group showed significant increases in response reaction times for the visual modality within the more challenging obstacle avoidance task that was not observed for control subjects. A measure of multitask costs related to differences in response reaction times between obstructed and unobstructed trials also only showed increased attention costs for the visual over the auditory stimuli for the TBI group (P=.002).

Conclusions

Mobility is a complex construct, and the present results provide preliminary findings that, even after good locomotor recovery, subjects with moderate to severe TBI show residual locomotor deficits in multitasking. Furthermore, our results suggest that sensory modality is important, and greater multitask costs occur during sensory competition (ie, visual interference).     

Photodynamic therapy vs limited macular translocation in the management of subfoveal choroidal neovascularization in pathologic myopia: a two-year study

PURPOSE: To compare the results of limited macular translocation and photodynamic therapy (PDT) in subfoveal choroidal neovascularization (CNV) attributable to pathologic myopia with a 24-month follow-up. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of nonrandomized interventional clinical study. METHODS: Retrospective review of 66 consecutive patients: 34 myopic eyes with subfoveal neovascularization treated by PDT and 32 operated on with the translocation technique. Translocation was considered principally when the lesion size was adequate (nasal inferior margin of the membrane less than half a disk diameter away from the center of the fovea) with duration of symptoms of less than four months. Main outcome measure was the postoperative change in visual acuity. RESULTS: In the translocation group, mean gain in visual acuity was greater than in the PDT group (+2.8 lines and -1.8 line, respectively, P = .001). In the translocation group, 55% of eyes gained 3 lines or more at two years compared with 10% in the PDT group. Sixty percent of eyes in the translocation group vs 40% in the PDT group had an improvement of at least five letters. Mean foveal displacement after translocation was 906 mum; postoperative complications included retinal detachment (three eyes), macular fold (one eye), and transient diplopia (four eyes). In young patients, the postoperative gain was better in both groups. In the translocation group, mean survival time for choroidal neovascularization recurrence was 40 months for patients younger than 40 years and 20 months for older patients. CONCLUSIONS: Translocation showed better results than PDT at two years. Further studies are required to confirm these findings.     

A subjective report of inadvertent hypnosis

Hypnotic susceptibility scores were compared in a crosssectional sample of 1,232 Ss, ranging in age from 5 to 78 years. The sample was comprised of 579 high school and college students, and a family sample of 653 parents and children. A peak of hypnotizability in the age interval 9-12 years, with a gradual decline thereafter, confirms earlier studies. A comparison of scores by age and sex showed a significant difference (p = .001) for ages 21-32; this difference was produced by a significant rise in scores for the young mothers of the family sample and was not found for students at the same age level. It was concluded that this finding demands replication before too much can be made of it.     

Longitudinal resting state fMRI analysis in healthy controls and premanifest Huntington's disease gene carriers: A three‐year follow‐up study

Background: We previously demonstrated that in the premanifest stage of Huntington's disease (preHD), a reduced functional connectivity exists compared to healthy controls. In the current study, we look at possible changes in functional connectivity occurring longitudinally over a period of 3 years, with the aim of assessing the potential usefulness of this technique as a biomarker for disease progression in preHD. Methods: Twenty‐two preHD and 17 healthy control subjects completed resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans in two visits with 3 years in between. Differences in resting state connectivity were examined for eight networks of interest using FSL with three different analysis types: a dual regression method, region of interest approach, and an independent component analysis. To evaluate a possible combined effect of gray matter volume change and the change in blood oxygenation level dependent signal, the analysis was performed with and without voxel‐wise correction for gray matter volume. To evaluate possible correlations between functional connectivity change and the predicted time to disease onset, the preHD group was classed as preHD‐A if ≥10.9 years and preHD‐B if <10.9 years from predicted disease onset. Possible correlations between burden of pathology score and functional connectivity change in preHD were also assessed. Finally, longitudinal change in whole brain and striatal volumetric measures was assessed in the studied cohort. Results: Longitudinal analysis of the resting state‐fMRI (RS‐fMRI) data revealed no differences in the degree of connectivity change between the groups over a period of 3 years, though a significantly higher rate of striatal atrophy was found in the preHD group compared to controls in the same period. Discussion: Based on the results found in this study, the provisional conclusion is that RS‐fMRI lacks sensitivity in detecting changes in functional connectivity in HD gene carriers prior to disease manifestation over a 3‐year follow‐up period. Hum Brain Mapp, 36:110–119, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Visual pointing and speed / accuracy trade-off in schizophrenia

There is a challenge to understand schizophrenia cognitive deficits in terms of a common unifying hypothesis (i.e., context-processing deficit). We suggest that analysis of a low level of cognition, such as the natural tendency to adapt pointing movement time to the task difficulty, could provide the basis for understanding higher level processing, in the sense of context processing. In the present study, three-dimensional visually guided pointing movements were compared among patients with schizophrenia and healthy control subjects. Seventeen patients with schizophrenia and 13 controls, all right-handed, performed pointing movements on adversely sized targets displayed on a touch-screen. Results showed that, under this experimental procedure, the speed/accuracy trade-off was respected by the two groups, in that controls and patients achieved a constant level of precision whereas they increased reaction time and movement time when target size decreased. In addition, we provide a measurement of the pointing impact pressure, that is also affected by the target size in both groups. Our results suggest that schizophrenic patients did not exhibit a deficit in processing simple intrinsic context (target size) for the control of simple action.