New schizophrenia genes uncovered

‘Nature’ magazine on July 30th published that scientists identified 4 gene regions that are mutated that are likely to hold the key to produce new genes that are linked to schizophrenia. The papers reported the findings of two large international schizophrenic research centers the University of Edinburgh and the University of Aberdeen.

These Scottish scientists were instrumental in the discovery of the 1st schizophrenia gene, DISC1 and also showed that 4 mutations or micro deletions –1q21, 15q11, 15q13 and 22q11 were found significantly in the patients. They believe that there are mutations that occur at alarming rates leads to schizophrenic disorders to appear in certain families. Schizophrenic individuals also are known to suffer from various psychological disorders like Autism. Schizophrenic-Autistic individuals Read the story »

Depression and its association with culture

It is a well known fact that East Asian patients show physical symptoms of depression such as headache, loss of appetite and body aches, but such an association of culture with depression hadn’t been established empirically till this particular experiment undertaken by CAMH clinical research director- Dr. R. Michael Bagby and his team.

This test was conducted on roughly 200 patients, half having Chinese origin and the other half belonging to CAMH itself. Two basic hypotheses were tested here, firstly, that East Asian patients would show more physical symptoms of depression as compared to their North American counter parts and secondly, that North American patients would exhibit more psychological than physiological symptoms of depression as compared to their East Asian counterparts. The role of difficulty in expressing in words what is going on in ones mind and the impact of culture on this whole process were also studied in these experiments.

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Association of memory impairment disorder and sound processing disorder.

Difficulty in hearing minute noises from amongst as group of similar noises might have an associated level of mild memory impairment. The authors hold that central auditory dysfunction is a general term used to refer to those who can hear normally or near normal in quite conditions, but have a difficulty in hearing in presence of noise “stressors” or competing noises and t\such patients need special rehabilitation techniques, as amplification and other primitive methods do not help such patients.

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