HYPOTHESIS The contrast validity of the Advanced Dundee Endoscopic Psychomotor Tester (ADEPT) was determined by comparing the performance of "master surgeons" with that of surgical trainees (also called junior surgeons) on the system. DESIGN Twenty master surgeons and 20 junior surgeons were tested on the ADEPT system. The master surgeons, all of consultant grade, were recruited as establishe...

PURPOSE Recent advancements in molecular techniques have greatly contributed to the discovery of genetic causes of unexplained developmental delay. Here, we describe the results of array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) and the clinical features of 27 patients with global developmental delay. METHODS We included 27 children who fulfilled the following criteria: Korean children under 6 ...

Dyke Davidoff Masson syndrome (DDMS) is characterized by seizures, facial asymmetry, contralateral hemiplegia and mental retardation. The characteristic radiologic features are cerebral hemiatrophy with homolateral hypertrophy of the skull and sinuses. We report a case of DDMS in an 18-month-old girl who presented with right sided focal seizures, hemiparesis of the same side, and delayed milest...

High resolution chromosome analysis showed the karyotype 46,XX,del(1)(p22.1 p31.2) in a 30 year old woman with psychomotor retardation and various malformations. Determination of the enzyme phosphoglucomutase 1 (PGM1) showed that she was a heterozygote. Three other cases of interstitial deletion 1p have been reported previously, and one of these cases had several features in common with our cas...

BACKGROUND Depression is a clinically heterogeneous disorder thought to result from multiple genes interacting with environmental and developmental components. A dimensional rather than a categorical approach to depressive phenotype definition may be more useful for identification of susceptibility genes. OBJECTIVES To perform an exploratory factor analysis on a range of depressive and anxiet...

Cohen syndrome is a rare, genetic condition, recessively inherited, associated with specific facial dysmorphism, global developmental delay, hypotonia and ophthalmic abnormalities. A delay in making the diagnosis commonly occurs, because of the lack of a definitive molecular test and also because of the clinical variability of the syndrome. In this paper we describe four cases of Cohen syndrome...

Psychiatric symptoms associated with hypothyroidism are well recognised. The common mental manifestations are slowness and difficulty in apprehension, thought and action; psychomotor retardation with indecision and listlessness suggestive of a depressive syndrome.' ,2 What is perhaps less well recognised is that patients with hypothyroidism may also present with marked irritability, paranoid id...

New computerized techniques allow the precise measurement of psychomotor retardation in patients with a major depressive episode (MDE). One such technique is the analysis of writing and drawing behaviour during figure copying tasks. In the present study, 22 inpatients with an MDE were compared to 22 normal controls. Three tasks were used: the drawing of lines and simple figures, the copying of ...

Non-reinforced preexposure to a to-be-conditioned stimulus (CS) results in retarded development of conditioned excitation and inhibition. In a magazine-approach preparation in rats, we explored the role of background context on this CS-preexposure effect by changing contexts after the preexposure treatment. Experiment 1 demonstrated with a typical three-group design that changing background con...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES In developing countries, caring for the large number of babies in orphanages is very hard work. Whereas the physical needs of most of the children are met, play often gets neglected. Studies have repeatedly shown that babies in such institutionalized settings suffer from severe psychomotor retardation. The aim of this project was to develop an intervention programme of...