Attentional network task in schizophrenic patients and theirs unaffected first degree relatives: a potential endofenotype.

Introduction: In recent years, reports of attentional deficits in schizophrenic patients and in their biological relatives have rapidly increased, including an important effort to search for the endophenotypes in order to link specific genes to this illness. Posner et al. developed a test, the Attention Network Test (ANT), to study the neural networks.

Diagnosis and surgical treatment of orbital tumors.

Orbital disorders, especially tumors, are rare and may be dealt with by different specialists, making it difficult for any one group to gain substantial experience with these conditions. However, orbital tumors, like many other rare diseases, are optimally managed by those with the greatest expertise. In this article, we review our diagnostic and therapeutic experience managing 172 patients, 103 who required surgery, over a 17-year period.

Heritability of Trail Making Test performance in multiplex schizophrenia families: implications for the search for an endophenotype.

The impairment of the Trail Making Test (TMT) performance as a measure of executive function deficits has been found both in patients with schizophrenia and in their unaffected first-degree relatives, suggesting that it might be considered as a familial vulnerability marker, but its heritability estimates are not well known. This study investigated the genetic heritability of impairments in TMT performance using a sample of 80 schizophrenia patients, 145 unaffected first-degree relatives and 127 healthy controls from families with multiple members with schizophrenia. Consistent with previous reports in the literature, relatives performed in between healthy controls and schizophrenia patients.

[Neuro-cognitive condition of 8 year old children with congenital hypothyroidism treated early].

Introduction: Congenital hypothyroidism is the most important cause of preventable mental retardation. Since the use of programmes for early detection, mental retardation due to cretinism has been abolished and current investigations seek to detect subtle damage due to foetal hypothyroidism and strategies to minimize such deficits.

Objective: This study presents the results of neurocognitive assessment of a group of 19 children aged 8 in the Cuban Programme for the early detection of Congenital Hypothyroidism.