With the rapid growth of popularity and user-base of Facebook, a significant portion of the individuals are susceptible to develop addictive behaviors related to Facebook use. Loneliness is a factor which influences addiction to Facebook.
Arachnoid cysts are benign space-occupying brain lesions that contain cerebrospinal fluid. Most cases are congenital in origin, caused by failed fusion of the arachnoid membrane early in fetal development. Cases are often incidentally detected on neuroimaging; however, rarely patients present with neuropsychiatric manifestations when cysts expand and cause a midline shift, compression of nearby brain tissue or cerebrospinal fluid compartments or both. We report a case of a 56-year-old woman with no past history or family history of psychiatric illness who developed acute-onset right-sided weakness, depressive symptoms, and other neuropsychiatric deficits. A diagnosis of organic mood disorder caused by an arachnoid cyst was made. Her symptoms and neuropsychiatric deficits remitted after cyst marsupialisation by open craniotomy. Therefore, it is important to investigate the organic aetiology in elderly patients who present with simultaneous mood disorder and cognitive dysfunction.
Epigenetics is defined as the changes in gene expression that lead to predictable, stable and possibly heritable alterations in cell function that are not due to changes in DNA sequence. It is of major relevance in psychiatry since environmental factors like stress or substance abuse, significant contribute in causing psychiatric pathologies like depression, anxiety, depression, etc. Epigenetics research in psychiatry would give an opportunity to extend the outlook and approach towards psychiatric pathologies. Hence timely interventions would be sought for. This would also allow gaining access to ‘brain tissue’ from live patients with mental illness and predicting occurrence of or vulnerability to psychiatric illnesses by evaluation of biomarkers, thus preventing, reversing or atleast curbing the progress at an initial stage. There are evidences of work done in the field of epigenetics both in pre-clinical as well as clinical settings. It is remarkable to see how the DNA methylation at various sites can result in alteration of the mental health of an individual and also how this can affect as early as during the first week of life. This is an exciting frontier in psychiatry, providing long sought biomarkers for predicting complex and devastating human behaviours as well as mental illnesses.
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