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Cognitive deficits are prevalent in bipolar disorder even during the euthymic phase, having a negative impact on global functioning and quality of life. As such, more and more mental health professionals agree that neuropsychological assessment should be considered an essential component of the clinical management of bipolar patients. However, no gold standard tool has been established so far. According to bipolar disorder experts targeting cognition, appropriate cognitive tools should be brief, easy to administer, cost-effective and validated in the target population. In this commentary, we critically appraised the strengths and limitations of the tools most commonly used to assess cognitive functioning in bipolar patients, both for screening and diagnostic purposes.

This article focuses on the Romanesque wooden crucifix of the church of Saint-Marcel at Saint-Marcel (Eure, Haute Normandie, France). It is stylistically related to the famous Burgundian crucifix k...

The paper focuses on the Romanesque wooden Crucifix of the church of Sainte-Marie at Cherier Le Vieux Bourg (Loire, Rhones- Alpes, France). It is stylistically related to some other sculptures orig...

The commonest genetic cause of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a hexanucleotide repeat expansion in the chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 gene (C9ORF72).1 ,2 The clinical presentation is heterogeneous.3 Patients with C9ORF72 expansions may exhibit behavioural variant FTD (bvFTD) with or without motor neuron disease, psychosis and non-fluent aphasia, and, more rarely, parkinsonian syndromes such as corticobasal syndrome (CBS). We describe an Italian family carrying the C9ORF72 mutation in which prototypical features of FTD were, unusually, combined with an isolated left hand dystonia occurring in the absence of extrapyramidal signs or apraxia. The family was native to a small village in the Marche region of Italy. To preserve anonymity, family members are referred to by the abbreviation (AN) of the province (Ancona) where they were examined. Eight family members had dementia (see figure 1 for genealogical tree). Figure 1 AN family pedigree. Four family members were available for assessment: two sisters with FTD (AN1 and AN2), and a healthy brother (AN3) and cousin (AN4). AN6 and AN7 were reported to have died after a 6–10-year history of dementia beginning with behavioural problems/psychosis. AN8, AN9 and AN10 were also said to suffer from dementia, although no details were available. ### Patient AN1 AN1, a 59-year-old right-handed woman, a native Italian housewife, presented with a 2-year history of behavioural problems. Early …

Gene coding for progranulin, GRN, is a major gene linked to frontotemporal lobar degeneration. While most of pathogenic GRN mutations are null mutations leading to haploinsufficiency, GRN missense mutations do not have an obvious pathogenicity, and only a few have been revealed to act through different pathogenetic mechanisms, such as cytoplasmic missorting, protein degradation, and abnormal cleavage by elastase. The aim of this study was to disclose the pathogenetic mechanisms of the GRN A199V missense mutation, which was previously reported not to alter physiological progranulin features but was associated with a reduced plasma progranulin level. After investigating the family pedigree, we performed genetic and biochemical analysis on its members and performed RNA expression studies. We found that the mutation segregates with the disease and discovered that its pathogenic feature is the alteration of GRN mRNA splicing, actually leading to haploinsufficiency. Thus, when facing with a missense GRN mutation, its pathogenetic effects should be investigated, especially if associated with low plasma progranulin levels, to determine its nature of either benign polymorphism or pathogenic mutation.