Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the executive functions in patients with sporadic schizophrenia (SS) and familial schizophrenia (FS), and the executive functions in their parents. Methods: The study included 30 patients with FS and their 37 parents with a positive family history of schizophrenia; 30 patients with SS and their 44 parents; 30 controls matched with the patients for gender, age and education, and 40 controls matched with the parents for gender, age and education (211 subjects in total). All the subjects were interviewed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-Axis I (SCID-I). The executive functions were assessed using the Verbal Fluency Test (VFT), the Trail Making Test (TMT), the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and the Stroop Test. Results: Patients with FS and their parents, and patients with SS performed significantly worse than their controls on the VFT, TMT, WCST and the Stroop test. There were no statistically significant differences between parents of patients with SS and their controls on any of the tests except for the Stroop color score. FS parents performed significantly worse than SS parents on all tests. FS patients performed significantly worse than SS patients on the VFT, TMT, Stroop test. Conclusion: Previous studies that investigated the cognitive functions of relatives of patients with schizophrenia brought out inconsistent results. The present study investigated relatives with and without a family history of schizophrenia separately and found that executive functions were impaired only in parents with a positive family history of schizophrenia. These findings suggest that impairment in executive functions may represent a genetic endophenotype for schizophrenia.

Our results bring more evidence that deficits in ventral, but not dorsal prefrontal executive functions are associated with familial vulnerability to bipolar disorder and ventral prefrontal executive function impairments may represent a potential endophenotype for bipolar disorder.

ObjectivePrevious studies reported gender differences for facial emotion recognition in healthy people, with women performing better than men. Few studies that examined gender differences for facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia brought out inconsistent findings. The aim of this study is to investigate gender differences for facial emotion identification and discrimination abilities in patients with schizophrenia.Methods35 female and 35 male patients with schizophrenia, along with 35 female and 35 male healthy controls were included in the study. All the subjects were evaluated with Facial Emotion Identification Test (FEIT), Facial Emotion Discrimination Test (FEDT), and Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT). Patients' psychopathological symptoms were rated by means of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).ResultsMale patients performed significantly worse than female patients on FEIT total, and negative scores. Male controls performed significantly worse than female controls on FEIT total and negative scores. On all tasks, female patients performed comparable with controls. Male patients performed significantly worse than controls on FEIT, and FEDT.ConclusionWomen with schizophrenia outperformed men for facial emotion recognition ability in a pattern that is similar with the healthy controls. It could be claimed that male patients with schizophrenia need special consideration for emotion perception deficits.

Introduction: In recent years, an increasing number of studies have researched retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) changes in neurodegenerative disorders. In this study, our aim was to determine structural RNFL changes in patients with major depressive disorder. Methods: A total of 30 patients with major depressive disorder and 30 age-and sex-matched controls were recruited. Using optical coherence tomography (OCT), the peripapillary RNFL thickness in major depressive disorder patients and control subjects was measured and compared at each location. Results: Patients with major depressive disorder did not show a statistically significant reduction in overall peripapillary RNFL thickness. Conclusion: Our study showed that RNFL thickness is not reduced in major depressive disorder patients and that OCT is not a useful tool for diagnosing and monitoring the progression of major depressive disorder. This study suggests that the pathophysiology of unipolar depression is different than in neurodegenerative disorders, pervasive developmental disorders, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.

olaylara onun bakış açısı ile bakması, o kişinin duygularını ve düşüncelerini doğru olarak anlaması, hissetmesi ve bu durumu ona iletmesi sürecidir. Zeka bilişsel gelişim için ne kadar gerekliyse, empati de kişilerarası iletişim için o derece önemlidir. Sosyal beceriler ve olumlu sosyal davranışlar çocuklar için hayati önem taşımaktadır. Empatik tepkilerin gelişimi sosyal becerilerin büyük ve önemli bir parçası olarak kabul edilmektedir. Empatik çocukların daha az saldırgan, daha çok yardımsever ve daha gelişmiş ahlaki yargılara sahip oldukları belirtilmektedir. Bu derlemede empatinin tanımı, oluşum süreci, nörobiyolojisi ve önemi tartışılmıştır. ANAHTAR KELIMELER: empati, çocuk EMPATHY: DEFINITION AND IMPORTANCE ABSTRACT: Empathy is the process of experiencing the emotions and cognitions of another person and transmitting this situation to him/her. As intelligence is important for cognitive development, the degree of empathy is crucial for interpersonal communication. Social skills and prosocial behavior are vital for children. The development of empathic response is considered to be an important part of social skills. Empathic children are reported to be less aggressive, more helpful and have more advanced moral judgments. The definition, formation process, neurobiology, and importance of the empathy were discussed in this review.

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