Echotomography of craniosynostosis: review of literature.

Ultrasound examination of the foetal cranium can diagnose fetal cranial defects and abnormal skull shape and it's aim is to detect in prenatal age most various abnormalities of the skull, brain and foetal face. The changes of each of these components frequently determine the growth of the other two.The abnormalities of the foetal head frequently appear and can associate serious pathological sceneries of high foetal and perinatal morbidity and mortality.

The role of the dorsal anterior cingulate in evaluating behavior for achieving gains and avoiding losses.

Effective goal-directed behavior relies on a network of regions including anterior cingulate cortex and ventral striatum to learn from negative outcomes in order to improve performance. We employed fMRI to determine if this frontal-striatal system is also involved in instances of behavior that do not presume negative circumstances. Participants performed a visual target/nontarget search game in which they could optionally abort a trial to avoid errors or receive extra reward for highly confident responses.

Fetal cystic lymphangioma of the neck: a case report.

Objective: A case of fetal neck lymphangioma is reported

Methods: A 34-year-old primigravida presented with a fetus at 21+5 weeks' gestation with a neckl cystic mass.

Results: Diagnosis of neck lymphangioma was made; the couple opted for termination of pregnancy a 22 weeks; they refused fetal autopsy.

Conclusion: Counseling in case of neck lynphangioma is still difficult.

Visual sensory processing deficits in Schizophrenia and their relationship to disease state.

Context: Visual Evoked Potential (VEP) abnormalities have been a fairly consistent finding in patients with schizophrenia, and it has been suggested that electrophysiological markers of early sensory processing may be useful as trait markers for the illness, and for development as potential diagnostic measures.

Objective: Clear amplitude reductions in the occipital P1 component of the VEP (approximately 100 ms), have been repeatedly demonstrated in patients with schizophrenia. Here, we investigated whether the extent of this deficit was related to age, clinical symptoms, medication status and length of illness, in a large cohort of ethnically homogenous patients.

Are auditory-evoked frequency and duration mismatch negativity deficits endophenotypic for schizophrenia? High-density electrical mapping in clinically unaffected first-degree relatives and first-episode and chronic schizophrenia.

Background: Mismatch negativity (MMN) is a negative-going event-related potential (ERP) component that occurs in response to intermittent changes in constant auditory backgrounds. A consistent finding across a large number of studies has been impaired MMN generation in schizophrenia, which has been interpreted as evidence for fundamental deficits in automatic auditory sensory processing. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which dysfunction in MMN generation might represent an endophenotypic marker for schizophrenia.

Early visual processing deficits in dysbindin-associated schizophrenia.

Background: Variation at the dysbindin gene (DTNBP1) has been associated with increased risk for schizophrenia in numerous independent samples and recently with deficits in general and domain-specific cognitive processing. The relationship between dysbindin risk variants and sensory-level deficits in schizophrenia remains to be explored. We investigated P1 performance, a component of early visual processing on which both patients and their relatives show deficits, in carriers and noncarriers of a known dysbindin risk haplotype.

Self-reference during explicit memory retrieval: an event-related potential analysis.

Is there a specific neurocognitive system underlying the subjective sense of having a unitary continuous self across time? If so, it should be possible to isolate functions involved in the sense of self from those supporting mental activities that the self is currently engaged in. We report a study of real-time noninvasive recordings of the brain's electrical activity (event-related potentials, ERPs). We found a common neural signature that is associated with self-referential processing regardless of whether subjects are retrieving general knowledge (noetic awareness) or reexperiencing past episodes (autonoetic awareness).

Early visual sensory deficits as endophenotypes for schizophrenia: high-density electrical mapping in clinically unaffected first-degree relatives.

Context: The imperative to establish so-called endophenotypes-quantifiable measures of risk for neurological dysfunction-is a growing focus of research in schizophrenia. Electrophysiological markers of sensory processing, observable in human event-related potentials, hold great promise in this regard, lying closer to underlying physiology than descriptive clinical diagnostic tests.

Objective: Early visual processing deficits, as measured by clear amplitude reductions in the occipital P1 component of the visual event-related potential, have been repeatedly demonstrated in patients with schizophrenia.

The anterior cingulate and error avoidance.

The precise role of the anterior cingulate cortex in monitoring, evaluating, and correcting behavior remains unclear despite numerous theories and much empirical data implicating it in cognitive control. The present event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study was able to separate monitoring from error-specific functions by allowing subjects to reject a trial so as to avoid errors. Cingulate and left dorsolateral prefrontal activity was greatest on rejection trials but comparable for correct and error trials, whereas an error-specific response was observed in bilateral insula.