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PubMed1992

[Neurotic symptoms of borderline patients: a case review study].

The author investigated neurotic symptoms of borderline patients by reviewing the clinical charts of twenty-six patients of longer than one year treatment period (8 men, 18 women; 23 patients with DSM III-R borderline personality disorder (BPD), 14 with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD), (11 BPD-SPD overlaps); age at the first contact: mean = 24.3 y. o., SD = 6.7 y. o.; treatment period: mean = 51 months, SD = 35 months). The diagnoses of the comorbid neurotic disorders were obsessive compulsive disorder: 5 cases (19% (BPD: 22%, SPD: 7%)), somatoform disorder: 5 (19% (BPD: 22%, SPD: 21%)), panic disorder: 4 (15% (BPD: 17%, SPD: 14%)), social phobia: 2 (8% (BPD: 9%, SPD: 7%)), dissociative disorder: 2 (8% (BPD: 9%, SPD: 0%)), and generalized anxiety disorder: 1 (4% (BPD: 4%, SPD: 7%)). The neurotic symptoms identified in the charts of the subjects were as follows; symptoms of social phobia: 11 cases (42% (BPD: 43%, SPD: 43%)) including 6 with anthropophobic symptoms (23% (BPD: 26%, SPD: 36%)), obsessive compulsive symptoms and diffuse and floating anxiety: 9 (35% (BPD: 39%, SPD: 38%)), panic attacks: 8 (31% (BPD: 35%, SPD: 36%)), conversion symptoms: 7 (27% (BPD: 30%, SPD: 21%)), dissociative episodes: 6 (23% (BPD: 26%, SPD: 7%)), depersonalization: 5 (19% (BPD: 22%, SPD: 14%)), multiple apprehensive expectations: 4 (15% (BPD: 17%, SPD: 14%)), derealization: 3 (12% (BPD: 13%, SPD: 14%)), hyperventilation attacks: 3 (12% (BPD: 13%, SPD: 7%)), and somatization: 1 (4% (BPD: 4%, SPD: 7%)). In short, 54% (BPD: 61%, SPD: 43%) of the subjects had comorbid neurotic disorders, and 92% (BPD: 91%, SPD: 93%) reported at least one, and 54% (BPD: 61%, SPD: 50%), more than two kinds of neurotic symptoms, though no specific symptom correlating with BPD or SPD diagnosis was found. These findings suggest that neurotic symptoms and neurotic disorders cannot be ignored as peripheral in the borderline symptomatology. By analyzing in detail the neurotic experiences, the author pointed out as their characteristics, ego syntonicity, deterioration of reality sense and symptomatic polymorphism, ambiguity and multiplicity (panneurosis). In the symptoms the author observed signs of defective personality functioning such as disavowal of reality, low anxiety tolerance, various forms of identity disturbances. The findings counted above, suggest that the borderline neurotic symptoms are more severe in nature than those of neurotics, and could be situated in between neurotic and psychotic levels of symptomatic severity. The results indicate that the neurotic experiences of borderline patients are, as a whole, deeply ingrained in the borderline psychopathology.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Transient epileptic amnesia differentiated from psychogenic "fugue": neuropsychological, EEG, and PET findings.

A patient had repeated episodes of transient loss of memory, which had been attributed to psychogenic causes. Preservation of his sense of personal identity and the presence of repetitive questioning indicated an organic basis, however, and the multiplicity of the attacks and their brief duration suggested an epileptic aetiology. Although three standard EEGs, CT and MRI were all normal, two sleep EEGs confirmed bilateral foci in the temporal lobes. The attacks responded to an anticonvulsant. A fluoro-deoxyglucose PET scan, performed a few months after the most recent attack, was normal. The patient also had impaired anterograde memory that persisted six months after recovery from the acute attacks.

Amnesia↗
PubMed2005

Rule-based category learning is impaired in patients with Parkinson's disease but not in patients with cerebellar disorders.

The basal ganglia and cerebellum have both been implicated in motor skill acquisition. Recent hypotheses concerning cognitive functions of the basal ganglia and cerebellum have emphasized that these subcortical structures may also contribute to nonmotor learning. To explore this issue, patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and patients with cerebellar lesions (CB) were tested on two category-learning tasks. Identical stimulus displays were used for the two tasks, consisting of a reference line and target line. In the length task, the two categories were defined based on the length of the target line. In the distance task, the two categories were defined by the distance between the target and reference lines. Thus, both categories could be defined by a simple rule in which attention must be restricted to a single relevant dimension. Consistent with previous results, the patients with PD were impaired on both tasks compared with neurologically healthy controls. In contrast, the CB patients performed similar to the control participants. Model-based analyses indicate that the patients with PD were able to select the appropriate categorization rule, but that they adopted suboptimal category boundaries in both conditions and were more variable in the application of the selected rule. These results provide an important neuropsychological dissociation on a non-motor-learning task between the effects of basal ganglia and cerebellar lesions. Moreover, the modeling work suggests that at least part of the Parkinson patients' impairment on these tasks reflect a tendency to exhibit strong response biases.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

A genetic analysis of individual differences in dissociative behaviors in childhood and adolescence.

BACKGROUND: Dissociation--a pattern of general disruption in memory and consciousness--has been found to be an important cognitive component of children's and adults' coping with severe trauma. Dissociative experiences include amnesia, identity disturbance, age regression, difficulty with concentration, and trance states. Stable individual differences in dissociative behaviors may represent a dissociative tendency trait that varies in the population independent of the influence of trauma. METHOD: In the current study, we examined genetic and environmental sources of variance in some of these behaviors by comparing 86 pairs of adoptive siblings and 102 pairs of full siblings from the Colorado Adoption Project (parents' and teachers' ratings), and 218 pairs of identical and 173 pairs of same-sex fraternal twins from the British Register for Child Twins (parents' ratings). The study used a dissociation scale comprised of six CBCL items. RESULTS: Developmentally, there was no change in mean dissociation scores across middle childhood and adolescence, and individual differences were moderately stable. Both parents' and teachers' ratings showed moderate to substantial amounts of genetic and nonshared environmental variance and negligible shared environmental variance, and most of the parent-teacher agreement in their ratings was accounted for by overlapping genetic variance. CONCLUSIONS: The results support further research into possible genetic and environmental factors that contribute to dissociative tendencies in children and adolescents.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

On the early history of male hysteria and psychic trauma. Charcot's influence on Freudian thought.

This paper discusses the influence of Jean-Martin Charcot's views on Sigmund Freud's early theory of hysteria and the notion of psychical trauma. We consider the early history of both psychical trauma and male hysteria, for in Charcot's view traumatic hysteria and male hysteria are identical. Freud's two 1886 lectures on male hysteria, delivered after his return from Paris, are crucial to the subject because they present Freud's first impressions of Charcot and his teaching. Some of the ideas presented in the two lectures foreshadow Freud's later generalization of the etiological role of trauma and his theory of the role of psychical trauma in the genesis of hysteria; that is, each hysterical symptom is due to a psychical trauma reviving an earlier traumatic event--the so-called principle of deferred action (Nachträglichkeit). Several arguments substantiate the thesis that Freud's notion of psychical (sexual) trauma was developed in reference to Charcot's notion of traumatic hysteria, and that the early psychoanalytic theory of psychical trauma is clearly indebted to Freud's encounter with Charcot's male traumatic hysterical patients. The discussed Freudian development points out the major role of (physical) traumata in eliciting psychopathological pictures and in this way is of definite historical relevance for the present-day discussion on the traumatic nature of the so-called multiple personality syndrome and other dissociative disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorders.

Austria↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Varieties of functional deficits in prosopagnosia.

Prosopagnosia is a neurologically based deficit characterized by the inability to recognize faces of known individuals in the absence of severe intellectual, perceptual, and memory impairments. The nature of the underlying disturbance was investigated in three patients in an attempt to identify the structural and functional levels at which the processing of faces breaks down, the relation between prosopagnosia and associated deficits, and the specificity of the prosopagnosic disturbance. The breakdown of face processing resulted from unilateral damage in different cerebral structures of the right hemisphere in the three patients, and it involved different functional levels of face processing, but all three patients displayed perceptual impairments of unequal severity. In one patient (R.M.), the deficit encompassed all perceptual operations on faces, including matching identical views of the same faces, but it did not extend to all categories of objects characterized by a close similarity among their instances; the second patient (P.M.) exhibited a less severe perceptual impairment but was unable to derive the configurational properties from a facial representation and to extract its physiognomic invariants; the third patient (P.C.) had not lost the capacity to differentiate faces on the basis of their configurations but could not associate a facial representation with its pertinent memories. Associated deficits were present in each patient but differed depending on the anatomofunctional locus of the breakdown, although all patients were impaired at recognizing noncanonical views of objects that they readily recognized when shown from a conventional viewpoint. However, performance dissociation within patients and double dissociation between patients suggest that these associated deficits are not necessary concomitants of prosopagnosia.

Agnosia↗
PubMed2004

Depersonalisation disorder: a contemporary overview.

Depersonalisation disorder is characterised by prominent depersonalisation and often derealisation, without clinically notable memory or identity disturbances. The disorder has an approximately 1 : 1 gender ratio with onset at around 16 years of age. The course of the disorder is typically long term and often continuous. Mood, anxiety and personality disorders are often comorbid with depersonalisation disorder but none predict symptom severity. The most common immediate precipitants of the disorder are severe stress, depression and panic, and marijuana and hallucinogen ingestion. Depersonalisation disorder has also been associated with childhood interpersonal trauma, in particular emotional maltreatment. Neurochemical findings have suggested possible involvement of serotonergic, endogenous opioid and glutamatergic NMDA pathways. Brain imaging studies in depersonalisation disorder have revealed widespread alterations in metabolic activity in the sensory association cortex, as well as prefrontal hyperactivation and limbic inhibition in response to aversive stimuli. Depersonalisation disorder has also been associated with autonomic blunting and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation. To date, treatment recommendations and guidelines for depersonalisation disorder have not been established. There are few studies assessing the use of pharmacotherapy in this disorder. Medication options that have been reported include clomipramine, fluoxetine, lamotrigine and opioid antagonists. However, it does not appear that any of these agents have a potent anti-dissociative effect. A variety of psychotherapeutic techniques has been used to treat depersonalisation disorder (including trauma-focused therapy and cognitive-behavioural techniques), although again none of these have established efficacy to date. Overall, novel therapeutic approaches are clearly needed to help individuals experiencing this refractory disorder.

Comorbidity↗
PubMed2000

[Identity measurement with the Frankfurt self concept scales and their relationship to parental bonding].

Psychiatric inpatients and nonpatients were compared using the Frankfurt Self-Concept Scales (FSKN). Firstly, we tried to validate FSKN as a measure of identity using the DSM-III-R identity rating as an external criterion. Then the FSKN ratings of patients and nonpatients were compared. Lastly, we correlated individual FSKN ratings with certain demographic variables, clinical diagnoses, and the two dimensions of the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI). All FSKN scores of patients with identity disorders differentiated significantly from those without identity disorder, thus confirming FSKN validity. The most significant differences were found in practically all FSKN results comparing patients with nonpatients of both sexes, always in favor of nonpatients. Male patients presented better self-concepts than female patients, whereas practically no significant relationships were found between FSKN scales and sex in nonpatients or between FSKN, vocational category, and diagnosis. Also, the relationship between the scales and age appears to be slight, showing positive in patients and negative in nonpatients. Many significant correlations were found between FSKN scales and PBI dimensions which were negative between the scales and PBI "control" and positive between the scales and PBI "care", both especially in men with regard to their relationship with the father.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Reduced thrombin binding and aggregation in Bernard-Soulier platelets.

Platelets from two patients with Bernard-Soulier disease showed a reduction in their ability to bind human thrombin. Thrombin binding studies in the high affinity range showed 1,500 sites for the Bernard-Soulier platelets as against 4,000 for normal controls. However, the dissociation constant was the same for both normals and patients (4.4 nM) indicating identical affinity for thrombin at the available sites. In the low affinity range, the Bernard-Soulier platelets showed 8,800 thrombin binding sites as against 24,000 for the controls, but again with identical values of Kd (37 nM). In addition, platelets from these Bernard-Soulier patients showed a decreased rate of aggregation with thrombin at both optimal (300 mU/ml) and suboptimal (60 and 120 mU/ml) thrombin concentrations. The decreased amount of thrombin which can bind to Bernard-Soulier platelets and the decrease in thrombin-induced aggregation may partly explain the hemostatic defect in these patients. In addition, the identical ratios of high affinity and low affinity binding sites in normals and in patients (0.37 and 0.36, and 0.36, respectively) supports the idea of a single class of binding sites for thrombin on the platelet surface.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Spindle characteristics in prepubertal major depressives during an episode and after sustained recovery: a controlled study.

In a previous publication, this group reported a dissociation between multiple sleep complaints and polysomnographic abnormalities in prepubertal major depressive children. Spindle activity has been thought by some to be a correlate of restorative sleep. On this basis, it was hypothesized that prepubertal depressives might exhibit differences in sleep spindle characteristics when compared with normal and psychiatric control groups, and with their former state during sustained recovery in a drug-free state. Further, it was thought that clinical complaints of disrupted sleep might be related to differences in spindle characteristics. Spindle frequency (Hz) was the only significant finding among the groups, but it was not specific to depressive disorder, since all psychiatric groups presented higher frequencies than did normal children. As expected, significant differences across halves of the sleep period time (SPT) were also found for the number of spindles, frequency (Hz), duration (ms), spindle density (rate), and the amount of stage 2 sleep (min). The presence or absence of sleep complaints had no bearing on spindle characteristics, thus indicating a lack of apparent relationship between the two. Upon recovery the depressives exhibited no changes across clinical state, and a cross-sectional comparison of the recovered data with the original control data gave results essentially identical to the first (active illness) comparisons. It is suggested that high spindle frequency may be a nonspecific correlate of emotional disorders in prepuberty, which, at least in depressives, does not change with clinical state.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

The instability of the membrane skeleton in thalassemic red blood cells.

The thalassemias are a heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by accumulation either of unmatched alpha or beta globin chains. These in turn cause the intramedullary and peripheral hemolysis that leads to varying anemia. A partial explanation for the hemolysis came our of our studies on material properties that showed that beta-thalassemia (beta-thal) intermedia ghosts were very rigid but unstable. A clue to this instability came from the observation that the spectrin/band 3 ratio was low in red blood cells (RBCs) of splenectomized beta-thal intermedia patients. The possible explanations for the apparent decrease in spectrin content included deficient or defective spectrin synthesis in thalassemic erythroid precursors or globin chain-induced membrane changes that lead to spectrin dissociation from the membrane during ghost preparation. To explore the latter alternative, samples from different thalassemic variants were obtained, ie, beta-thal intermedia, HbE/beta-thal, HbH (alpha-thal-1/alpha-thal-2), HbH/Constant Spring (CS), and homozygous HbCS/CS. We searched for the presence of spectrin in the first lysate of the standard ghost preparation. Normal individuals and patients with autoimmune hemolytic anemia, sickle cell anemia, and anemia due to chemotherapy served as controls. Using gradient sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis, no spectrin was detected in identical aliquots of the supernatants of normals and these control samples. Varying amounts of spectrin were detected in the first lysate supernatants of almost all thalassemic patients. The identification of spectrin was confirmed by Western blotting using an affinity-purified, monospecific, rabbit polyclonal antispectrin antibody. Relative amounts of spectrin detected were as follows in decreasing order: splenectomized beta-thal intermedia including HbE/beta-thal; HbCS/CS; nonsplenectomized beta-thal intermedia, HbH/CS; and, lastly, HbH. These findings were generally confirmed when we used an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay technique to measure spectrin in the first lysate. Subsequent analyses showed that small amounts of actin and band 4.1 also appeared in lysates of thalassemic RBCs. Therefore, the three major membrane skeletal proteins are, to a varying degree, unstably attached in severe thalassemia. From these studies we could postulate that membrane association of abnormal or partially oxidized alpha-globin chains has a more deleterious effect on the membrane skeleton than do beta-globin chains.

Actins↗
PubMed1999

Psoralen photo-cross-linking by triplex-forming oligonucleotides at multiple sites in the human rhodopsin gene.

Targeting DNA damage by triplex-forming oligonucleotides (TFOs) represents a way of modifying gene expression and structure and a possible approach to gene therapy. We have determined that this approach can deliver damage with great specificity to sites in the human gene for the G-protein-linked receptor rhodopsin, mutations of which can lead to the genetic disorder autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa. We have introduced DNA monoadducts and interstrand cross-links at multiple target sites within the gene using TFOs with a photoactivatable psoralen group at the 5'-end. The extent of formation of photoadducts (i.e., monoadducts and cross-links) was measured at target sites with a 5'-ApT sequence at the triplex-duplex junction and at a target site with 5'-ApT and 5'-TpA sequences located four and seven nucleotides away, respectively. To improve psoralen reactivity at more distant sites, psoralen moieties were attached to TFOs with nucleotide "linkers" from two to nine nucleotides in length. High-affinity binding was maintained with linkers of up to 10 nucleotides, but affinities tended to decrease somewhat with increasing linker length due to faster dissociation kinetics. DNase I footprinting indicated little, if any, interaction between linkers and the duplex. Psoralen-TFO conjugates formed DNA cross-links with high efficiency (56-65%) at 5'-ApT sequences located at triplex junctions. At a 5'-ApT site four nucleotides away, the efficiency varied with linker length; a four-nucleotide linker gave the highest efficiency. Duplexes with 5'-TpA and 5'-ApT sites two nucleotides away, in otherwise identical sequences, were cross-linked with efficiencies of 56 and 38%, respectively. These results indicate that TFO-linker-psoralen conjugates allow simultaneous, efficient targeting of multiple sites in the human rhodopsin gene.

Base Sequence↗
PubMed2006

The nickel site of Bacillus pasteurii UreE, a urease metallo-chaperone, as revealed by metal-binding studies and X-ray absorption spectroscopy.

UreE is a homodimeric metallo-chaperone that assists the insertion of Ni(2+) ions in the active site of urease. The crystal structures of UreE from Bacillus pasteurii and Klebsiella aerogenes have been determined, but the details of the nickel-binding site were not elucidated due to solid-state effects that caused disorder in a key portion of the protein. A complementary approach to this problem is described here. Titrations of wild-type Bacillus pasteurii UreE (BpUreE) with Ni(2+), followed by metal ion quantitative analysis using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), established the binding of 2 Ni(2+) ions to the functional dimer, with an overall dissociation constant K(D) = 35 microM. To establish the nature, the number, and the geometry of the ligands around the Ni(2+) ions in BpUreE-Ni(2), X-ray absorption spectroscopy data were collected and analyzed using an approach that combines ab initio extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) calculations with a systematic search of several possible coordination geometries, using the Simplex algorithm. This analysis indicated the presence of Ni(2+) ions in octahedral coordination geometry and an average of two histidine residues and four O/N ligands bound to each metal ion. The fit improved significantly with the incorporation, in the model, of a Ni-O-Ni moiety, suggesting the presence of a hydroxide-bridged dinuclear cluster in the Ni-loaded BpUreE. These results were interpreted using two possible models. One model involves the presence of two identical metal sites binding Ni(2+) with negative cooperativity, with each metal ion bound to the conserved His(100) as well as to either His(145) or His(147) from each monomer, residues found largely conserved at the C-terminal. The alternative model comprises the presence of two different binding sites featuring different affinity for Ni(2+). This latter model would involve the presence of a dinuclear metallic core, with one Ni(2+) ion bound to one His(100) from each monomer, and the second Ni(2+) ion bound to a pair of either His(145) or His(147). The arguments in favor of one model as compared to the other are discussed on the basis of the available biochemical data.

Absorptiometry, Photon↗
PubMed1999

Is monochromatic irradiation testing useful in the differentiation of drug-induced photosensitivity from chronic actinic dermatitis?

Chronic actinic dermatitis (CAD) is an uncommon, eczematous photosensitive eruption affecting predominantly elderly men and to which drug-induced photosensitivity may sometimes appear clinically identical. This retrospective study compares the monochromatic irradiation results in 11 patients with CAD and 14 patients with drug-induced photosensitivity, to assess whether such testing is useful in the differentiation of these two conditions. Thus, the action spectra of the drug photosensitivity patients were plotted and compared with those of 12 nonphotosensitive control patients: 10 patients were found to be photosensitive in the UVA range; the implicated drugs included quinine, sparfloxacin, amiodarone, doxycycline, mefenamic acid, nalidixic acid, fenbrufen, diclofenac, enalapril, diltiazem and prochlorperazine maleate. One patient on doxycycline was photosensitive in both the UVA and UVB ranges. The remaining three patients were not tested until after discontinuation of their drug and their light tests were then normal. In the CAD group, five patients were photosensitive in the UVA, UVB and visible light ranges and six were photosensitive in the UVA and UVB ranges. Comparison of the mean minimal erythema dose responses then demonstrated dissociation of the drug-induced from the CAD group in the UVB region; the result was statistically significant. This suggests that UVA-sensitivity dissociated from UVB-sensitivity is a relative indicator of drug-induced photosensitivity and monochromatic irradiation testing may therefore be helpful in the differentiation of these two disorders.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Evolutionary autonomous agents and the nature of apraxia.

BACKGROUND: Evolutionary autonomous agents are robots or robot simulations whose controller is a dynamical neural network and whose evolution occurs autonomously under the guidance of a fitness function without the detailed or explicit direction of an external programmer. They are embodied agents with a simple neural network controller and as such they provide the optimal forum by which sensorimotor interactions in a specified environment can be studied without the computational assumptions inherent in standard neuroscience. METHODS: Evolutionary autonomous agents were evolved that were able to perform identical movements under two different contexts, one which represented an automatic movement and one which had a symbolic context. In an attempt to model the automatic-voluntary dissociation frequently seen in ideomotor apraxia, lesions were introduced into the neural network controllers resulting in a behavioral dissociation with loss of the ability to perform the movement which had a symbolic context and preservation of the simpler, automatic movement. RESULTS: Analysis of the changes in the hierarchical organization of the networks in the apractic EAAs demonstrated consistent changes in the network dynamics across all agents with loss of longer duration time scales in the network dynamics. CONCLUSION: The concepts of determinate motor programs and perceptual representations that are implicit in the present day understanding of ideomotor apraxia are assumptions inherent in the computational understanding of brain function. The strength of the present study using EAAs to model one aspect of ideomotor apraxia is the absence of these assumptions and a grounding of all sensorimotor interactions in an embodied, autonomous agent. The consistency of the hierarchical changes in the network dynamics across all apractic agents demonstrates that this technique is tenable and will be a valuable adjunct to a computational formalism in the understanding of the physical basis of neurological disorders.

Apraxias↗
PubMed1975

[Comparison of clinical effects of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol with the classic effects of hashish].

Moreau de Tours's classical studies about haschisch had pointed out to a rich symptomatology: visual and auditive hallucinations preceded by the "primordial effect": "the dissociation of ideas". This delirious state was assimilated to dream. Modern studies, conducted with Delta-9-THC, in healthy voluntaries, again suggest the comparison or even the identity of the modifications caused by cannabis with sleep and dream. 10 mg of Delta-9-THC was absorbed in sesame oil by the voluntaries, and all of them presented disturbances of their vigilance, changes of their mood, now with euphoris and now with dysphoria, and slight psycho-sensorial alterations. The voluntaries EEG showed important and specific individual reactivity. Three subjects presented an arousal tendency, three other a greater towards sleep. Slight morphological changes have appeared, such as desynchronised periods, rapid shifts between I A, I B, II stages of sleep or an hypovariable I B stage of sedation with period of occular movements resembling to REM-stage.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Implicit memory in patients with schizophrenia and normal controls: effects of task demands on susceptibility to priming.

Two experiments employing a stem-completion priming paradigm are reported. The first of these compared patients with schizophrenia (SC) to normal controls and demonstrated impaired implicit memory in the SC patients under task conditions identical to those used previously with other patient groups. The second experiment was designed to examine the effects of implicit task demands and stimulus selection upon susceptibility to priming, with a second group of SC patients and normal controls. Results indicated that the ability to carry out the task demands of the implicit condition (i.e., generate completions for word-stems) was inversely related to susceptibility to priming in both the SC patients and controls. In addition, the baseline probability of specific completions was found to be correlated with the ease of priming those completions, suggesting a possible mechanism for producing statistical dissociations between implicit and explicit retrieval conditions with this paradigm. These findings suggest that certain implicit tasks may be susceptible to nonmemory psychological influences that have not been adequately investigated to date; these may be responsible for "normalizing" the performance of amnesic patients as well as producing statistical dissociations from explicit memory tasks.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

[Disturbance of active sleep components in neonates with congenital hypothyroidism].

In order to investigate the effect of hypothyroidism during the early development on the functional brainstem maturation, polysomnograms were recorded on 7 patients with congenital hypothyroidism detected by neonatal screening before treatment. The following two sleep indices for phasic muscle activity during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep were evaluated: dissociation index (DI) and % body movements in REMs burst (% BM). The DI is defined as the ratio of the number of twitch movements (TMs) during REM sleep to the sum of TMs and localized movements (LMs) during REM sleep. The % BM is the percentage of TMs and LMs which occur during bursts of REMs in relation to the sum of TMs and LMs during REM sleep. The DI and % BM can reflect maturation of the tonic and phasic inhibitory system functioning during REM sleep, respectively. In congenital hypothyroidism, DI was lower than that in controls, while % BM was identical. The tonic inhibitory system was specifically involved, whereas the phasic one was preserved. It is suggested that thyroid hormone could play an important role on the functional brainstem maturation. We propose to investigate their neuropsychological development over the long term to elucidate the influence of hypothyroidism.

Brain Stem↗