Phenotypic markers as risk factors in schizophrenia: neurocognitive functions.

OBJECTIVE: To review the literature on neurocognitive measures as risk markers for schizophrenia and to present data from the Perth family study of schizophrenia. Of all the risk markers that have been identified, the most promising are deficits in sustained attention. METHOD: Inclusion in the review was determined by whether the research addressed a number of key questions: methods of assessing sustained attention; evidence of sustained attention deficits in patients and first-degree relatives including children; the importance of attentional dysfunction in the schizophrenic process and functional outcome; and the biological basis of sustained attention deficits. RESULTS: Sustained attention deficits are evident in both patients and a proportion of their first-degree relatives, a finding replicated in preliminary data from the Perth family study. The literature suggests that the attention deficit is a stable enduring trait that is independent of clinical state. The neural basis of the deficit may be a functional disconnection between prefrontal and parietal cortex. Attention impairment is an important predictor of functional outcome in patients and the development of social dysfunction in adulthood in the at-risk offspring of patients. However, sustained attention deficits that are measured in childhood results in an unacceptable high false-positive rate (21%) when predicting which at-risk offspring of parents with schizophrenia will develop a schizophrenia spectrum disorder, although the overall classification accuracy (78%) is impressive. CONCLUSIONS: The main findings are that sustained attention deficits are important risk markers for schizophrenia but need to be supplemented by other neurocognitive risk markers to improve predictive accuracy.

The nucleotide sequence of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome XIII.

Systematic sequencing of the genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae has revealed thousands of new predicted genes and allowed analysis of long-range features of chromosomal organization. Generally, genes and predicted genes seem to be distributed evenly throughout the genome, having no overall preference for DNA strand. Apart from the smaller chromosomes, which can have substantially lower gene density in their telomeric regions, there is a consistent average of one open reading frame (ORF) approximately every two kilobases. However, one of the most surprising findings for a eukaryote with approximately 6,000 genes was the amount of apparent redundancy in its genome. This redundancy occurs both between individual ORFs and over more extensive chromosome regions, which have been duplicated preserving gene order and orientation. Here we report the entire nucleotide sequence of chromosome XIII, the sixth-largest S. cerevisiae chromosome, and demonstrate that its features and organization are consistent with those observed for other S. cerevisiae chromosomes. Analysis revealed 459 ORFs, 284 have not been identified previously. Both intra- and interchromosomal duplications of regions of this chromosome have occurred.

Blurring the image does not help disabled readers.

Previous research has found that poor readers performed a visual search task more slowly than good readers, but that this difference was virtually eliminated by blurring of the search array. Whereas blurring had little effect on the performance of the good readers, it led to a dramatic improvement in the search rate of the poor readers. The present study set out to replicate this research with groups of 10-12 yr old disabled and average readers but with methodological improvements in the procedure and the analysis. It was found that the disabled readers performed the search task as well as the average readers, and that blurring of the display conferred no advantage on either group. The results are discussed in relation to the transient deficit theory of reading disability.