Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:P50583 (asymmetrical)
 12,197 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

In 15 lithium-treated psychotic patients, the following variables were examined over two years at 6-monthly intervals; seru lithium levels, serum electrolytes, thyroid function, urinary creatinine and urea, and clinical EEG. The mean serum lithium level was 0.64 mval/l and did not change during the two years. When compared to the pretreatment EEG, visual analysis did not indicate any specific potentials, focal signs, or asymmetrical phenomena such as have been reported in the literature. Only at the beginning of treatment could a small increase in unspecific, abnormal changes be demonstrated, which, however, decreased during the following 18-month period of investigation.
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PMID:[Routine EEG examinations accompanying lithium therapy over two years (author's transl)]. 38 2

Attempts to draw a line of genetic demarcation between schizophrenic and affective illnesses have failed. It must be assumed that these diseases are genetically related. A postmortem study has demonstrated that enlargement of the temporal horn of the lateral ventricle in schizophrenia but not in Alzheimer-type dementia is selective to the left side of the brain. This suggest that the gene for psychosis is the 'cerebral dominance gene', the factor that determines the asymmetrical development of the human brain. That the psychosis gene is located in the pseudoautosomal region of the sex chromosomes is consistent with observations that sibling pairs with schizophrenia are more often than would be expected of the same sex and share alleles of a polymorphic marker at the short-arm telomeres of the X and Y chromosomes above chance expectation. That the cerebral dominance gene also is pseudoautosomal is suggested by the pattern of verbal and performance deficits associated with sex-chromosome aneuploidies. The psychoses may thus represent aberrations of a late evolutionary development underlying the recent and rapid increase in brain weight in the transition from Australopithecus through Homo habilis and Homo erectus to Homo sapiens.
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PMID:The continuum of psychosis and its genetic origins. The sixty-fifth Maudsley lecture. 227 27

With evidence that determinants of psychosis are present early and influence brain development, and in the absence of a significant environmental contribution, schizophrenia may be regarded as a genetic encephalopathy. Morphological abnormalities are particularly apparent in the temporal lobe and on the left side of the brain, and in a number of studies significant diagnosis x side interactions have been detected. Such interactions suggest an intimate relationship between the disease process and the mechanisms that determine asymmetrical brain development. These mechanisms presumably relate to the human capacity for speech and communication, and they may have played a critical role in the evolution of the human brain. A candidate locus for an asymmetry determinant and the psychosis gene within the exchange region of the sex chromosomes is proposed. Some sex differences in schizophrenia (e.g., with respect to age of onset and brain structure) may relate to subtle differences in the rate of asymmetry development in the two sexes.
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PMID:Temporal lobe asymmetries as the key to the etiology of schizophrenia. 228 33

The extent to which concordance rates for schizophrenia in monozygotic twins (between 36 and 58%) fall short of 100% is often taken as an index of the role of an environmental factor in schizophrenia, but such an agent remains elusive. That schizophrenic symptoms are observed in some viral illnesses suggests that schizophrenia might be due to a gene-virus interaction, but analysis of age of onset in pairs of siblings with the disease rules out horizontal transmission. An alternative hypothesis is proposed that onset of disease is due to the expression of a 'provirus', which is integrated in the genome, having been acquired either by prenatal infection or in the germ-line from an affected parent; this could explain why the season of birth effect is accentuated in, and perhaps confined to the group of patients without a family history of the disease. Germ-line integration is known to occur following infection with agents of the retrovirus class. Such agents can integrate at many sites in the host genome, but their interactions with proto-oncogenes (cellular genes which may act as growth factors) identify one type of integration site, and are associated with some of their pathogenic effects. Some characteristics of schizophrenic illness, particularly their selectivity for the dominant hemisphere, can be understood on the assumption that the virus (perhaps a retrovirus) responsible for the disease interacts with a proto-oncogene, which induces the asymmetrical brain growth responsible for laterality and cerebral dominance. The aetiologies of manic-depressive illness and schizophrenia may be related (the season of birth and onset effects are the same for the two conditions) and there is some evidence that the former transmutes into the latter in succeeding generations. The persistence of the functional psychoses may be due to the ability of the psychosis gene (or 'provirus') to induce change in the genetic mechanisms responsible for the development of laterality.
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PMID:A re-evaluation of the viral hypothesis: is psychosis the result of retroviral integration at a site close to the cerebral dominance gene? 608 45

In the past 15 years, investigators have attempted to relate psychiatric disorders to our developing knowledge about the asymmetrical organization of the cerebral hemispheres. This paper summarizes the varied, limited, and often conflicting results. The authors suggest that progress in this fascinating and potentially fruitful area will be improved by: a) more critical evaluation of the current literature with regard to its contradictions and to the techniques and theories utilized; b) systematic study of carefully diagnosed, large groups of patients; c) concurrent attempts to identify and carefully assess unusual patients; d) control of laterality measures for drug effects, institutionalization, and such cognitive and affective states as anxiety, depression, paranoia, and psychosis; and e) validation of the localizing value of neuropsychological tests in psychiatric patients by the study of previously diagnosed psychiatric patients with acquired focal brain disease.
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PMID:Psychopathology and hemispheric dysfunction: a review. 702 72

Ten patients with the stable syndrome of hysteria were matched for age, sex, handedness, and full-scale WAIS IQ with ten controls, ten psychotic depressives and ten schizophrenics. All were subjected to an extensive neuropsychological test battery. Compared to the controls, the hysteria group exhibited bifrontal impairment (R = L) and, globally, greater dysfunction of the nondominant hemisphere. A G analysis provided a complete separation between the hysteria and controls. However, a D-index analysis showed that the hysteria group was more impaired than normals and depressives because of greater dysfunction of the dominant hemisphere, whilst schizophrenia showed greater nondominant hemisphere dysfunction than hysteria. Further, a cluster analysis on the 40 subjects produced three clusters: normal controls, depressives, and a schizophrenia-hysteria grouping. These findings are interpreted as suggesting that dominant hemisphere dysfunction is fundamentally related to the syndrome of hysteria and that the dysfunction of the nondominant hemisphere is brought about by associated features: the female excess, the emotional instability and dysphoric mood, the presence of asymmetrical pain, and conversion symptomatology. It is further argued, in view of the familial associations, that hysteria in the female is a syndrome equivalent to psychopathy in the male (who also exhibits dominant hemisphere dysfunction) and might represent in the female a (relatively benign) variant of schizophrenia characterized by imprecise verbal communications, a subtle form of affective incongruity, together with the conversion parameter.
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PMID:A neuropsychological study of the stable syndrome of hysteria. 727 78

The work of Matte-Blanco is little understood by psychoanalysts largely because he used mathematical logic as an essential method to elucidate psychoanalytic theory. His findings, however, seem to be important and warrant this simple introductory paper explaining key ideas. Two fundamentally distinct processes, defined as asymmetrical and symmetrical logics are introduced and illustrated. Asymmetrical logic is analogous to secondary process while symmetrical logic has affinity with primary process. Both logic seem to interweave in any thought processes but with asymmetry predominating in scientific thought while symmetrical logic is most evident in psychosis and dreams. It is furthermore argued that the various characteristics of the unconscious, as described by Freud, can be seen as different mental outcomes with symmetrical logic at the base of all of them. A parallel is discovered by Matte-Blanco between the characteristics of symmetrical logic and those of infinite sets as defined mathematically. This leads to an investigation of the concept of infinity and of psychological infinite experiences. These can be readily detected in omnipotence, omniscience, and idealization, but they also seem to occur in extreme emotional states such as being in love, dread and grief. If nuclei of extreme states are contained in any affect, then it is likely that all affects in their cognitive aspects contain experiences of infinity. Symmetrical logic may thus be a common background both to the characteristics of the unconscious and emotionality generally.
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PMID:Infinite experiences, affects and the characteristics of the unconscious. 731 92

According to Darwin's theory of sexual selection some features that differentiate the two sexes evolve by a process of "male competition" and "female choice". The sex difference in age of onset of psychotic illness in man may relate to a sexual dimorphism in cerebral organisation (the male brain being more lateralised or asymmetrical than the female brain), a difference consistent with a role for sexual selection in the evolution of the human brain. Differing criteria (reflected in a cross-culturally stable difference in mean age at marriage) in males and females for selecting personality characteristics in a mate may generate diversity in the balance of growth between the hemispheres, and this could maintain the high and relatively constant rates of psychosis in human populations.
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PMID:Sexual selection, Machiavellian intelligence, and the origins of psychosis. 790 58

In previous studies, low amplitudes and asymmetrical topography with right-sided peaks of the P300-evoked response have been repeatedly described in schizophrenic patients. A total of 18 patients with cycloid psychosis fulfilling the criteria of Perris and Brockington and 18 controls were investigated with a standard auditory odd-ball paradigm and multichannel-evoked potential recordings. Patients had normal P300 topographies and latencies but significantly higher amplitudes than controls. Higher than normal P300 amplitudes have not been described in any other psychiatric disorder until now, and indicate an enhanced level of arousal. Future studies are expected to shed light on the question of whether high P300 amplitudes are transitory sequelae of the acute psychotic episode or a trait of cycloid psychosis.
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PMID:Specific P300 features in patients with cycloid psychosis. 902 Oct 2

In previous studies, low amplitudes and asymmetrical topography with right-sided peaks of the P300-evoked response have been repeatedly described in schizophrenic patients. A sample consisting of 18 patients with cycloid psychosis fulfilling the criteria of Perris and Brockington and 18 controls was investigated with a standard auditory odd-ball paradigm and multichannel evoked potential recordings. Patients had normal P300 topographies and latencies but significantly higher amplitudes than the controls. Higher than normal P300 amplitudes have not been described in any other psychiatric disorder until now, and indicate an enhanced level of arousal. Future studies are expected to shed light on the question of whether high P300 amplitudes are transitory sequelae of the acute psychotic episode or a trait of cycloid psychosis.
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PMID:Specific P300 features in patients with cycloid psychosis. 905 Nov 64


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