[Abnormal expansion of C9orf72 gene in familial frontotemporal dementia].

Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) and Motor Neuron Disease (MND) may share similar pathogenic mechanisms. An abnormal hexanucleotide expansion in C9orf72 gene is the most common genetic abnormality of these conditions and explains their concurrence in the same family. We report a 77-year-old female presenting with non-fluent aphasia leading to mutism and a mild Parkinsonism.

[Guy de Maupassant: medical aspects of his lustful and creative life].

The French writer Guy de Maupassant is considered one of the most important story-tellers of all times. In his short life, he produced relevant works which are full of interesting medical descriptions, as sleep palsy and unconscious memory, depicted on his famous tale The Horla. Furthermore, many of his novels and tales contain precise and very insightful descriptions of physicians, many of whom he contacted because of suffering severe migraine.

[Robert Walser: the loneliest writer. The influence of his disease on his literary work].

Robert Walser (1878-1956) is an important but unknown European writer of the twentieth century. He was also a mysterious and solitary man who lived at the margins of society. After the questionable diagnosis of schizophrenia, he nearly stopped writing and spent almost three decades in two Swiss psychiatric hospitals.

[The influence of madness in the literary production of Gerard de Nerval].

Gerard de Nerval was a French writer, poet and essayist, precursor of surrealism that used for the first time this word in literature and influenced many modern writers. Since the age of 32, Nerval had recurrent psychotic episodes mixed with a severe depression, leading to many hospitalizations, and finally to his death. This mental disease clearly influenced his works and provided originality to his prose and poetry.