The COMT p.Val158Met Polymorphism and Cognitive Performance in Adult Development, Healthy Aging and Mild Cognitive Impairment

Background: The impact of genetic polymorphisms on cognition is assumed to increase with age as losses of brain resources have to be compensated for. We investigate the relation of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) p.Val158Met polymorphism and cognitive capacity in the course of adult development, healthy aging and the development of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in two birth cohorts of subjects born between 1930 and 1932 or between 1950 and 1952. Methods: Thorough neuropsychological assessment was conducted in a total of 587 participants across three examination waves between 1993 and 2008. The COMT genotype was determined as a restriction fragment length polymorphism after PCR amplification and digestion with Nla III. Results: Significant effects of the COMT p.Val158Met polymorphism were identified for attention and cognitive flexibility in the younger but not the older cohort. Conclusion: These results confirm the importance of the COMT p.Val158Met genotype on tasks assessing attention and cognitive flexibility in midlife but not in healthy aging and the development of MCI. Our findings suggest that the influence of COMT changes as a function of age, decreasing from midlife to aging

Структура капитальных вложений корпорации Pembina Pipeline

В статье был проведён анализ производственно-экономической деятельности канадской компании Pembina Pipeline Corporation. Определены показатели экономической эффективности, основные направления капиталовложений. Раскрыты направления деятельности корпорации в разрезе мировой экономики. Авторами сделан вывод о дальнейших перспективах на долгосрочный период

Prestimulus vigilance predicts response speed in an easy visual discrimination task

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Healthy adults show considerable within-subject variation of reaction time (RT) when performing cognitive tests. So far, the neurophysiological correlates of these inconsistencies have not yet been investigated sufficiently. In particular, studies rarely have focused on alterations of prestimulus EEG-vigilance as a factor which possibly influences the outcome of cognitive tests. We hypothesised that a low EEG-vigilance state immediately before a reaction task would entail a longer RT. Shorter RTs were expected for a high EEG-vigilance state.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>24 female students performed an easy visual discrimination task while an electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. The vigilance stages of 1-sec-EEG-segments before stimulus presentation were classified automatically using the computer-based Vigilance Algorithm Leipzig (VIGALL). The mean RTs of each EEG-vigilance stage were calculated for each subject. A paired t-test for the EEG-vigilance main stage analysis (A vs. B) and a variance analysis for repeated measures for the EEG-vigilance sub-stage analysis (A1, A2, A3, B1, B2/3) were calculated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Individual mean RT was significantly shorter for events following the high EEG-vigilance stage A compared to the lower EEG-vigilance stage B. The main effect of the sub-stage analysis was marginal significant. A trend of gradually increasing RT was observable within the EEG-vigilance stage A.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We conclude that an automatically classified low EEG-vigilance level is associated with an increased RT. Thus, intra-individual variances in cognitive test might be explainable in parts by the individual state of EEG-vigilance. Therefore, the accuracy of neuro-cognitive investigations might be improvable by simultaneously controlling for vigilance shifts using the EEG and VIGALL.</p

Goethe: A bipolar personality? Periodicity of affective states in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as reflected by Paul Julius Mo¨ bius

This paper aims to investigate the character and etiological basis of German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s mental disorder. From 1898, German neuropsychiatrist Paul Julius Mo¨ bius developed the hypothesis that Goethe’s work provided several hints for the notion that the German poet suffered from a distinct bipolar disorder. The paper investigates Mo¨ bius’s psychopathographic study on Goethe and his hypothesis of a mood periodicity in Goethe against the mirror of modern concepts. Mo¨ bius came to the conclusion that Goethe’s illness was bipolar in character and became visible at intervals of seven years and lasted for about two years. The majority of Mo¨ bius’s contemporary psychiatric colleagues (Emil Kraepelin, Max Isserlin, Ernst Kretschmer, Josef Breuer) supported this view which has still not been convincingly challenged. In present-day terms, Mo¨ bius’s hypothesis can be best mirrored as a subclinical foundation of mood disorder. Furthermore, with his extensive study, Mo¨ bius disproved the common notion that Goethe had suffered from an illness as the result of a syphilitic infection

Knowing me, knowing you: Spontaneous use of mentalistic language for self and other in autism

Recent studies on mentalizing have shown that autistic individuals who pass explicit mentalizing tasks may still have difficulties with implicit mentalizing tasks. This study explores implicit mentalizing by examining spontaneous speech that is likely to contain mentalistic expressions. The spontaneous production of meta-statements provides a clear measure for implicit mentalizing that is unlikely to be learned through experience. We examined the self- and other-descriptions of highly verbally able autistic and non-autistic adults in terms of their spontaneous use of mentalistic language and metarepresentational utterances through quantitative and qualitative analysis. We devised a hierarchical coding system that allowed us to study the types of statements produced in comparable conditions for the self and for a familiar other. The descriptions of autistic participants revealed less mentalistic content relating to psychological traits and meta-statements. References to physical traits were similar between groups. Within each group, participants produced a similar pattern of types of mental utterance across ‘self’ and ‘other’ conditions. This suggests that autistic individuals show a unique pattern of mental-state-representation for both self and other. Meta-statements add a degree of complexity to self- and other-descriptions and to the understanding of mental states; their reduction in autism provides evidence for implicit mentalizing difficulties. Lay abstract Autistic people can have difficulties in understanding non-autistic people’s mental states such as beliefs, emotions and intentions. Although autistic adults may learn to overcome difficulties in understanding of explicit (overt) mental states, they may nevertheless struggle with implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states. This study explores how spontaneous language is used in order to specifically point to this implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states. In particular, our study compares the spontaneous statements that were used in descriptions of oneself and a familiar other person. Here, we found that autistic and non-autistic adults were comparable in the number of statements about physical traits they made. In contrast, non-autistic adults made more statements about mentalistic traits (about the mental including psychological traits, relationship traits and statements reflecting about these) both for the self and the other. Non-autistic and autistic adults showed no difference in the number of statements about relationships but in the number of statements about psychological traits and especially in the statements reflecting on these. Each group showed a similar pattern of kinds of statements for the self and for the other person. This suggests that autistic individuals show the same unique pattern of description in mentalistic terms for the self and another person. This study also indicates that investigating spontaneous use of language, especially for statements reflecting about mental states, enables us to look into difficulties with implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states

Hunt et al.pmd

Introduction: In Alzheimer&apos;s disease (AD), accelerated neurofibrillary tangle formation occurs which is associated with increased tau protein release into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Recent studies found significantly increased CSF tau already in patients at risk of developing AD, indicating its potential as a biochemical marker of AD. Cerebral glucose metabolism is reduced in frontotemporoparietal and cingulate cortices in patients with mild AD. However, few studies have investigated CSF tau protein and cerebral glucose metabolism changes in patients at risk to develop AD. Methods: 48 patients with AD, 88 patients with aging-associated cognitive decline (AACD), and 39 healthy controls were included. In all participants, CSF levels of tau were determined by ELISA at baseline and compared between the diagnostic groups. 14 AACD patients and 14 controls underwent 18 F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET). Results: AD patients showed the highest CSF tau levels compared with AACD patients and controls. AACD patients had significantly higher tau levels than the controls but lower than the AD patients. AACD patients were characterized by reduced glucose metabolism in bilateral middle temporal cortex, left posterior cingulate cortex, right angular gyrus, and right precuneus compared with controls. Conclusion: In conclusion, our findings reflect and confirm the clinical judgment of an incipient neurodegenerative disorder in a considerable portion of AACD patients. In patients with AACD, CSF tau levels and cerebral glucose metabolism show an altered pattern comparable with that found in AD and thus may facilitate early diagnosis

The COMT p.Val158Met Polymorphism and Cognitive Performance in Adult Development, Healthy Aging and Mild Cognitive Impairment

Background: The impact of genetic polymorphisms on cognition is assumed to increase with age as losses of brain resources have to be compensated for. We investigate the relation of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) p.Val158Met polymorphism and cognitive capacity in the course of adult development, healthy aging and the development of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in two birth cohorts of subjects born between 1930 and 1932 or between 1950 and 1952. Methods: Thorough neuropsychological assessment was conducted in a total of 587 participants across three examination waves between 1993 and 2008. The COMT genotype was determined as a restriction fragment length polymorphism after PCR amplification and digestion with Nla III. Results: Significant effects of the COMT p.Val158Met polymorphism were identified for attention and cognitive flexibility in the younger but not the older cohort. Conclusion: These results confirm the importance of the COMT p.Val158Met genotype on tasks assessing attention and cognitive flexibility in midlife but not in healthy aging and the development of MCI. Our findings suggest that the influence of COMT changes as a function of age, decreasing from midlife to aging

The COMT p.Val158Met Polymorphism and Cognitive Performance in Adult Development, Healthy Aging and Mild Cognitive Impairment

Background: The impact of genetic polymorphisms on cognition is assumed to increase with age as losses of brain resources have to be compensated for. We investigate the relation of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) p.Val158Met polymorphism and cognitive capacity in the course of adult development, healthy aging and the development of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in two birth cohorts of subjects born between 1930 and 1932 or between 1950 and 1952. Methods: Thorough neuropsychological assessment was conducted in a total of 587 participants across three examination waves between 1993 and 2008. The COMT genotype was determined as a restriction fragment length polymorphism after PCR amplification and digestion with Nla III. Results: Significant effects of the COMT p.Val158Met polymorphism were identified for attention and cognitive flexibility in the younger but not the older cohort. Conclusion: These results confirm the importance of the COMT p.Val158Met genotype on tasks assessing attention and cognitive flexibility in midlife but not in healthy aging and the development of MCI. Our findings suggest that the influence of COMT changes as a function of age, decreasing from midlife to aging