STUDIES ON 'INNER SPEECH' PART I: READING AND SPEECH MOVEMENT

(1) Peripheral speech movements are necessary for ‘inner speech’ of normal infants, deaf children and aphasiacs. (2) In order to comprehend with visual perception alone, it is necessary to grasp the word as a whole. Loud reading helps deaf children and aphasiacs comprehend the word more easily. (3) Memory of letters with visual perception alone, whether it is simultaneous or continuous, is very poor even in normal adults equally to aphasiacs or deaf youngmen. (4) In the case of the congenital deaf, the place where the ‘inner speech’ is felt parts from peripheral organs, as they get advanced in linguistic ability. (5) In the case of normal adults, it is supposed that shortening of minimal speech movements and of ‘inner speech’ will occur in silent reading.     

A comparative study of nucleolar organizer region, proliferating cell nuclear antigen and epidermal growth factor receptor staining in colon tumours

Several studies have reported that proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), nucleolar organizer regions (NOR) and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGF-R) are cellular proliferation parameters in malignant tumours. However, the correlation of EGF-R with PCNA and NOR has not been reported in colon tumours. To clarify this, we investigated the correlation of the expression of EGF-R with PCNA and NOR in colonic epithelial tumours. Using immunohistochemical staining and one-step silver staining techniques, the expressions of EGF-R-, PCNA- and NOR-associated protein were studied in paraffin sections from five normal mucosae, 10 adenomas with mild atypia, 16 adenomas with moderate atypia, 32 adenomas with severe atypia including carcinoma in situ and 47 with invasive colon carcinomas. Significant differences were found among the respective degrees of atypia in Ag-NOR counts, PCNA labelling index (LI), and the expression of EGF-R. However, there were no significant differences among the Ag-NOR counts of the severe atypia and invasive carcinoma. There was a significant positive correlation between Ag-NOR counts and PCNA LI (P<0.001). The Ag-NOR counts and PCNA LI in EGF-R-positive cases were higher than in EGF-R-negative cases (P<0.001). These results indicate that each of the parameters increased significantly with the increase in atypia and the progression of cancer. Epidermal growth factor receptor provokes an exacerbation of protein synthesis and the cell cycle in colonic epithelial tumours.     

Clinical evaluation of titration of hepatitis C virus core antibody and its subclasses

Abstract Titrations of anti-hepatitis C core (anti-HCc) immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies and its subclasses were studied in 90 patients with acute and chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, including 27 patients who underwent interferon (IFN) therapy. The positivity rates for each anti-HCc subclass were as follows: 95.2% for IgG1, 12.0% for IgG2, 69.9% for IgG3 and 19.3% for IgG4. The total anti-HCc IgG titre correlated well with the IgG1 titre, indicating that IgG1 was the main virus-specific IgG. Changes of IgG1 production mainly contributed to fluctuations of the anti-HCc IgG titre and corresponded well to positivity for HCV-RNA during and after IFN therapy. IgG3 was detected prior to IgG1 during the early phase of acute hepatitis in some cases and also appeared with relapse after IFN therapy. The serial assay of anti-HCc subclasses showed the patients' humoral immune response to HCV infection, and might be useful for evaluation of anti-viral immunity influenced by IFN therapy.