CHANGES OF PELVIC FLOOR MUSCLE FUNCTION DURING PREGNANCY

Objective: It is known, that incontinence rarely develops during pregnancy. The authors examined pelvic floor muscle function changes during pregnancy. Study Design: Authors examined 156 women and performed vaginal squeeze pressure measurements. Statistical data were analyzed by t-test, differences were considered to be significant at p<0.05. Results: Significant difference was found concerning maximum voluntary contraction (p=0.002) and duration of maximum muscle contraction (p=0.012) in young nulliparous women compared to average results of pregnant women. This result can be proved in young nulliparous women and among pregnant women in the 2nd (p=0.045), and 3rd trimesters (p=0.005). Comparing only the results of pregnant women a significantly decreased pelvic floor muscle strength was observed (p=0.032) in women exercising occasionally. Significantly weaker muscle strength was demonstrated in those young nulliparous women (n=21) who experienced vaginal wind (p=0.003) than in young nulliparous women without symptoms. Conclusions: Vaginal contraction strength decreases during pregnancy

Könyvismertetés

Magatartástudományok [Buda Béla és Kopp Mária (szerk.), Nagy Emese (társszerk.) A klinikai magatartástudomány kézikönyve]    Williams-szindróma, avagy egy kognitív idegtudományi modell [U. Bellugi, M. St. George (szerk.) Journey from Cognition to Brain to Gene. Perspectivesof the Williams Syndrome]  Hová lett a pszichológia múzsája, avagy az irodalom és a tudomány kapcsolatáról [Oliver Sacks: Antropológus a Marson]   A féltékenység evolúciós pszichológiája [David M. Buss: Veszélyes szenvedély:szerelem, szex és féltékenység

Altered Neural Activity during Irony Comprehension in Unaffected First-Degree Relatives of Schizophrenia Patients—An fMRI Study

Irony is a type of figurative language in which the literal meaning of the expression is the opposite of what the speaker intends to communicate. Even though schizophrenic patients are known as typically impaired in irony comprehension and in the underlying neural functions, to date no one has explored the neural correlates of figurative language comprehension in first-degree relatives of schizophrenic patients. In the present study, we examined the neural correlates of irony understanding in schizophrenic patients and in unaffected first-degree relatives of patients compared to healthy adults with functional MRI. Our aim was to investigate if possible alterations of the neural circuits supporting irony comprehension in first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia would fulfill the familiality criterion of an endophenotype. We examined 12 schizophrenic patients, 12 first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and 12 healthy controls with functional MRI while they were performing irony and control tasks. Different phases of irony processing were examined, such as context processing and ironic statement comprehension. Patients had significantly more difficulty understanding irony than controls or relatives. Patients also showed markedly different neural activation pattern compared to controls in both stages of irony processing. Although no significant differences were found in the performance of the irony tasks between the control group and the relative group, during the fMRI analysis, the relatives showed stronger brain activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the context processing phase of irony tasks than the control group. However, the controls demonstrated higher activations in the left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and in the right inferior frontal gyrus during the ironic statement phase of the irony tasks than the relative group. Our results show that despite good task performance, first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients had alterations in the neural circuits during irony processing. Thus, we suggest that neural alteration of irony comprehension could be a potential endophenotypic marker of schizophrenia