Reduced hippocampal activation during encoding and recognition of words in schizophrenia patients.

Objective: In patients with schizophrenia, impaired hippocampal activation either during encoding or recognition tasks has been observed in a few functional imaging experiments. In this fMRI study, the authors report results of word encoding and recognition in schizophrenia patients and healthy comparison subjects, with a special focus on correcting for behavioral recognition success in order to prevent a bias related to lower task performance in the schizophrenia patients.

Method: The verbal encoding and recognition tasks were both first analyzed irrespective of recognition success.

Subjective memory complaints of family members of patients with Alzheimer's disease and depression.

Background: First-degree relatives of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and major depression (MD) carry an increased genetic risk for the same disorders. Subjective memory complaints of the family members of patients might be an early sign or an indicator of an increased risk of either dementia or depression. Alternatively, they might be the consequence of the increased subjective awareness of relatives and spouses of patients of their own age-associated memory failures.

Lifetime symptoms of depression in Alzheimer's disease.

Introduction: Depression is common in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The symptomatology of depression in dementia may differ from depression alone. Consequently, the reports on lifetime depressive symptoms were compared in AD patients and age-matched non-demented participants.

Depression in Alzheimer's disease: is there a temporal relationship between the onset of depression and the onset of dementia?

Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients often present with concurrent major depression (MD). To investigate the reasons for this comorbidity, e.g.

Psychiatric disorders in relatives of subjects with Alzheimer's disease. No evidence for common genetic risk factors.

Introduction: The clustering of two or more disorders in the same family might indicate the presence of common genetic risk factors. The prevalence of various psychiatric disorders in relatives of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients has rarely been investigated. Consequently, family study data were reinvestigated to assess, if there are indications for an overlap of genetic risk factors of AD and other psychiatric disorders.