Medical and Biomedical Researches

Cortical plasticity: A proposed mechanism by which genomic factors lead to the behavioral and neurol

June 28th, 2008
Cortical plasticity: A proposed mechanism by which genomic factors lead to the behavioral and neurological phenotype of autism spectrum and psychotic-spectrum disorders. Crespi & Badcock (C&B) hypothesize that biases toward expression of paternally or maternally imprinted genes lead to the symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) ...

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Why is creativity attractive in a potential mate?

June 28th, 2008
Why is creativity attractive in a potential mate? A number of studies suggest that women find artistically creative men attractive, especially in the short-term mating context. Artistic creativity (but not mathematical or technical creativity) is linked to psychosis-proneness. I hypothesise that in preferring artistically creative men, ...

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Hypo- or hyper-mentalizing: It all depends upon what one means by “mentalizing”

June 28th, 2008
Hypo- or hyper-mentalizing: It all depends upon what one means by \"mentalizing\" By conceiving of autism and psychosis as diametrically opposite phenotypes of underactive and overactive mentalizing, respectively, Crespi & Badcock (C&B) commit themselves to a continuum view of intercorrelated mentalizing functions. This view fails to ...

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Problems with the imprinting hypothesis of schizophrenia and autism.

June 28th, 2008
Problems with the imprinting hypothesis of schizophrenia and autism. Crespi & Badcock (C&B) convincingly argue that autism and schizophrenia are diametric malfunctions of the social brain, but their core imprinting hypothesis is less persuasive. Much of the evidence they cite is unrelated to their hypothesis, is ...

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Are schizophrenics more religious? Do they have more daughters?

June 28th, 2008
Are schizophrenics more religious? Do they have more daughters? Combined with recent evolutionary psychological theories, Crespi & Badcock\'s (C&B\'s) intragenomic conflict theory of the social brain suggests that schizophrenics are more religious, and autistics are less religious, than the normal population. Combined with the generalized Trivers-Willard ...

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Kinship asymmetries and the divided self.

June 28th, 2008
Kinship asymmetries and the divided self. Imprinted genes are predicted to affect interactions among relatives. Therefore, variant alleles at imprinted loci are promising candidates for playing a causal role in disorders of social behavior. The effects of imprinted genes evolved in the context of patterns of ...

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Imprinting and psychiatric genetics: Beware the diagnostic phenotype.

June 28th, 2008
Imprinting and psychiatric genetics: Beware the diagnostic phenotype. Studies of the role of imprinted genes in psychological phenomena are long overdue. The target article is comprehensive, presenting a wealth of important and convergent evidence, and provides an excellent point of departure for further research. However, the ...

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Private speech, cognitive-computational control, and the autism-psychosis continuum.

June 28th, 2008
Private speech, cognitive-computational control, and the autism-psychosis continuum. Autism and psychosis manifest private speech disruptions analogous to their diametrical opposition along the autism-psychosis continuum. Autism has naturally suppressed private speech with predictable structural deficits when it does surface; psychosis has overt but ineffectual private speech with ...

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Creativity, psychosis, autism, and the social brain.

June 28th, 2008
Creativity, psychosis, autism, and the social brain. In the target article, Crespi & Badcock (C&B) propose a novel hypothesis based on observations that a large set of phenotypic traits exhibit diametrically opposite phenotypes in autism-spectrum versus psychotic-spectrum conditions. They propose that development of these conditions is ...

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Is this conjectural phenotypic dichotomy a plausible outcome of genomic imprinting?

June 28th, 2008
Is this conjectural phenotypic dichotomy a plausible outcome of genomic imprinting? What is the status of the dichotomy proposed and the nosological validity of the contrasting pathologies described in the target article? How plausibly can dysregulated imprinting explain the array of features described, compared with other ...

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Heterogeneity and hypothesis testing in neuropsychiatric illness.

June 28th, 2008
Heterogeneity and hypothesis testing in neuropsychiatric illness. The confounding effects of heterogeneity in biological psychiatry and psychiatric genetics have been widely discussed in the literature. We suggest an approach in which heterogeneity may be put to use in hypothesis testing, and may find application in evaluation ...

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Genomic imprinting and disorders of the social brain; shades of grey rather than black and white.

June 28th, 2008
Genomic imprinting and disorders of the social brain; shades of grey rather than black and white. Crespi & Badcock (C&B) provide a novel hypothesis outlining a role for imprinted genes in mediating brain functions underlying social behaviours. The basic premise is that maternally expressed genes are ...

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Animal models may help fractionate shared and discrete pathways underpinning schizophrenia and autis

June 28th, 2008
Animal models may help fractionate shared and discrete pathways underpinning schizophrenia and autism. Crespi & Badcock (C&B) present an appealing and parsimonious synthesis arguing that schizophrenia and autism are differentially regulated by maternal versus paternal genomic imprinting, respectively. We argue that animal models related to schizophrenia ...

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The “mechanism” of human cognitive variation.

June 28th, 2008
The \"mechanism\" of human cognitive variation. The theory of psychosis and autism as diametrical disorders offers a tractable and testable view of normal and abnormal human cognitive variation as a function of opposing traits grouped by their selection for maternal and paternal reproductive fitness. The theory ...

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Mapping autism and schizophrenia onto the ontogenesis of social behaviour: A hierarchical-developmen

June 28th, 2008
Mapping autism and schizophrenia onto the ontogenesis of social behaviour: A hierarchical-developmental rather than diametrical perspective. Co-morbidity of schizophrenia and autism is low because interpersonal concerns of schizophrenic patients presuppose developmental achievements that are absent in autism. Autism may arise if primary anxiety is not overcome ...

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Theory of mind in autism, schizophrenia, and in-between.

June 28th, 2008
Theory of mind in autism, schizophrenia, and in-between. Autism and schizophrenia are presented as the extremes of disorders affecting the social brain. By viewing human cognition impairment in terms of competence and performance, a variety of social brain disorders can be identified along the autistic-psychotic continuum. Abu-Akel ...

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Psychosis and autism as diametrical disorders of the social brain.

June 28th, 2008
Psychosis and autism as diametrical disorders of the social brain. Autistic-spectrum conditions and psychotic-spectrum conditions (mainly schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression) represent two major suites of disorders of human cognition, affect, and behavior that involve altered development and function of the social brain. We describe ...

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The ENT emergency clinic: a prospective audit to improve effectiveness of an established service.

June 28th, 2008
The ENT emergency clinic: a prospective audit to improve effectiveness of an established service. Background:Ear, nose and throat emergency clinic services vary greatly between trusts. Their common aim is to enable acute conditions to be seen quickly and effectively within an optimum environment. There is however ...

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Giant petrous carotid aneurysm: persistent epistaxis despite internal carotid artery ligation.

June 28th, 2008
Giant petrous carotid aneurysm: persistent epistaxis despite internal carotid artery ligation. Objectives:We report a rare case of giant petrous carotid aneurysm.Method:Case report and a review of the literature regarding treatment options for such aneurysms.Results:A 30-year-old man presented with epistaxis, headaches and visual disturbance. Definitive diagnosis was ...

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Nodular fasciitis: a case series.

June 28th, 2008
Nodular fasciitis: a case series. Background:Given its rarity, varied histological presentation and often pseudosarcomatous appearance, nodular fasciitis is frequently misdiagnosed on pre-operative, intra-operative and final analyses.Methods:Four cases of nodular fasciitis are reviewed.Results:Physical and radiological findings were consistent with a parapharyngeal tumour, probably neurogenic, a level four ...

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Anorexia nervosa trios: behavioral profiles of individuals with anorexia nervosa and their parents.

June 28th, 2008
Anorexia nervosa trios: behavioral profiles of individuals with anorexia nervosa and their parents. BACKGROUND: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is associated with behavioral traits that predate the onset of AN and persist after recovery. We identified patterns of behavioral traits in AN trios (proband plus two biological parents).MethodA ...

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A developmental twin study of symptoms of anxiety and depression: evidence for genetic innovation an

June 28th, 2008
A developmental twin study of symptoms of anxiety and depression: evidence for genetic innovation and attenuation. BACKGROUND: Little is known about the pattern of genetic and environmental influences on symptoms of anxiety and depression (SxAnxDep) from childhood to early adulthood.MethodParental- and self-reported levels of SxAnxDep were ...

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A population-based twin study of functional somatic syndromes.

June 28th, 2008
A population-based twin study of functional somatic syndromes. BACKGROUND: The mechanisms underlying the co-occurrence of the functional somatic syndromes are largely unknown. No empirical study has explicitly examined how genetic and environmental factors influence the co-morbidity of these syndromes. We aimed to examine how the co-morbidity ...

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Evidence for the cognitive mediational model of cognitive behavioural therapy for depression.

June 28th, 2008
Evidence for the cognitive mediational model of cognitive behavioural therapy for depression. BACKGROUND: Although empirical support for the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as a treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD) is well established, its mechanism of action is uncertain. In this investigation, we examined ...

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Neurological soft signs and brain morphology in first-episode schizophrenia.

June 28th, 2008
Neurological soft signs and brain morphology in first-episode schizophrenia. BACKGROUND: Although minor motor and sensory deficits, or neurological soft signs (NSS), are a well-established finding in schizophrenia, the cerebral changes underlying these signs are only partly understood. We therefore investigated the cerebral correlates of NSS by ...

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