The Val158Met polymorphism was detected by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length BI 10773 ic50 polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) in 287 schizophrenia patients and 84 healthy control subjects. P300 recordings were obtained in a subsample. A significant difference was not observed between the patients and control subjects in the genotype distributions and allele frequencies. P300 amplitude in schizophrenia patients was significantly lower than that of controls. The P300 latency in schizophrenia patients was also significantly longer than that of controls. The P300 latency of Met homozygotes was significantly

shorter than that of Val/Met and of Val/Val carriers at Cz and Pz. The latency of Val/Met carriers was significantly shorter than that of Val/Val carriers at Pz. The results did not suggest an association between the polymorphism in the COMT gene and susceptibility to schizophrenia in the Chinese Han population. However, the COMT Val158Met polymorphism might be a susceptibility variant for P300 abnormality in Chinese Han schizophrenia. (C)

2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Neural activation of slow acoustic variations that are important for syllable identification is more lateralized to the selleck right hemisphere than activation of fast acoustic changes that are important for phoneme identification. It has been suggested that this complementary function at different hemispheres is rooted in a different degree of white matter

myelination in the left versus right MRIP hemisphere.

The present study will investigate this structure-function relationship with Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and Auditory Steady-State Responses (ASSR), respectively. With DTI we examined white matter lateralization in the cortical auditory and language regions (i.e. posterior region of the superior temporal gyrus and the arcuate fasciculus) and white matter integrity in the splenium of the corpus callosum. With ASSR we examined interhemispheric coherence to slow, syllabic-rate (i.e. 4 Hz) and fast, phonemic-rate (i.e. 20 Hz) modulations. These structural and functional techniques were applied in a group of normal reading adults and a group of dyslexic adults for whom previously reduced functional interhemispheric connectivity at 20 Hz has been reported (Poelmans et al. (2012). Ear and Hearing, 33, 134-143). This sample was chosen since it is hypothesized that in dyslexic readers insufficient hemispheric asymmetry in myelination might relate to their auditory and phonological problems.

Results demonstrate reduced white matter lateralization in the posterior superior temporal gyrus and the arcuate fasciculus in the dyslexic readers. Additionally, white matter lateralization in the posterior superior temporal gyrus and white matter integrity in the splenium of the corpus callosum related to interhemispheric coherence to phonemic-rate modulations (i.e. 20 Hz).