Individuals with a history of drug abuse prior to the onset

of psychosis scored higher on pre-psychotic depression and negative symptoms. The two mood-related factors, depression and disorganization /mania, distinguished the eventual first-episode diagnosis of affective psychosis from schizophrenia. Individuals with affective psychosis were also click here more likely to have a ‘mood-related’ sign and symptom as their first psychiatric change than individuals later diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Conclusions. Factors derived from early signs and symptoms reported by a full diagnostic spectrum sample of psychosis can have implications for future diagnostic trajectories. The findings are a step forward in the process of understanding and characterizing clinically important phenomena to be observed prior to the onset of psychosis.”
“The Hedgehog signalling pathway controls numerous developmental processes. In response to Hedgehog, Smoothened (Smo), a seven-pass transmembrane protein, orchestrates pathway

signalling and controls transcription factor activation. In the absence of Hedgehog, the receptor Patched indirectly inhibits Smo in a catalytic manner. Many questions surrounding Smo activation and signalling remain. Recent findings in Drosophila and vertebrate systems have provided strong evidence that Smo acts as a G-protein-coupled receptor. We discuss the role and regulation of Smo and reassess similarities between Smo and G-protein-coupled receptors. We also examine recently identified members of the invertebrate and vertebrate Smo signalling cascades that are typical components of G-protein-coupled receptor pathways. Greater JIB04 in vivo understanding of the mechanisms of Smo activation and its signalling pathways will allow implementation of novel strategies however to target disorders related to disruption of Hh signalling.”
“Binding

is a cognitive function responsible for integrating features within complex stimuli (e.g., shape-colour conjunctions) or events within complex memories (e.g., face-name associations). This function operates both in short-term memory (STM) and in long-term memory (LTM) and is severely affected by Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, forming conjunctions in STM is the only binding function which is not affected by healthy ageing or chronic depression. Whether this specificity holds true across other non-AD dementias is as yet unknown. The present study investigated STM conjunctive binding in a sample of AD patients and patients with other non-AD dementias using a task which has proved sensitive to the effects of AD. The STM task assesses the free recall of objects, colours, and the bindings of objects and colours. Patients with AD, frontotemporal dementia, vascular dementia, lewy body dementia and dementia associated with Parkinson’s disease showed memory, visuo-spatial, executive and attentional deficits on standard neuropsychological assessment. However, only AD patients showed STM binding deficits.