OBJECTIVE To evaluate the rate of depressive symptomatology and possible underlying factors in adoptive mothers during the transition to motherhood. DESIGN Cohort survey. SETTING General Community. PARTICIPANTS Thirty-nine adoptive mothers of reproductive age registered with international adoption agencies. INTERVENTIONS All women completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the association between hyperemesis gravidarum and altered cognitive, behavioural and emotional well-being in pregnancy. METHODS The study cohort consisted of 3423 nulliparous women recruited in the Screening for Pregnancy Endpoints (SCOPE) study performed in Auckland, New Zealand; Adelaide, Australia; Cork, Ireland; Manchester and London, United Kingdom between Nove...

On the basis of both Geschwind andBehan's (1984) theory—that at least part of the genesis of left-handedness can be ascribed to overexposure to testosterone during fetal development—andDorner's (1980;Dorneretal., 1991) theory—that transsexuality emerges from prenatal overor underexposure to androgens infemale-to-male (FTM) andmale-to-female (MTF) transsexuals, respectively—it was predicted that...

Handedness is a developmental phenomenon that becomes distinctively identifiable during infancy. Although infant hand-use preferences sometimes have been reported as unstable, other evidence demonstrates that infant hand-use preference for apprehending objects can be reliably assessed during the second half of the infant's first year of life. The current study provides further insight into the ...

The BBC television programme Right Hand, Left Hand, broadcast in August 1953, used a postal questionnaire to ask viewers about their handedness. Respondents were born between 1864 and 1948, and in principle therefore the study provides information on rates of left-handedness in those born in the nineteenth century, a group for which few data are otherwise available. A total of 6,549 responses w...

Common polymorphisms in the gene PCSK6, whose protein product mediates the development of brain and body asymmetry through the NODAL pathway, have recently been associated with handedness in three studies, making it a key candidate gene for understanding the developmental and expression of human lateralization. We tested the hypothesis that the PCSK6 VNTR polymorphism rs1053972 influences the e...

Lateralized behavior ("handedness") is unusual, but consistently found across diverse animal lineages, including humans. It is thought to reflect brain anatomical and/or functional asymmetries, but its neuro-molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. Lake Tanganyika scale-eating cichlid fish, Perissodus microlepis show pronounced asymmetry in their jaw morphology as well as handedness in feed...

Right handedness is one of the most prominent markers of human functional brain asymmetry. Deviation from this norm appears to be associated with certain developmental disorders. While many studies have dealt with the genetic contribution to the determination of handedness, few have examined whether environmental factors that are subtler than forced hand switching can modulate the development o...

The author reviewed brain-imaging studies on human handedness reported in major academic journals for the last 12 years, classified them as having anatomical or functional interest, and attempted to determine consensus on findings and limitations among the studies. Present reviews suggest that there have been fewer functional than anatomical examinations into handedness and that findings from t...

Handedness and eye sighting dominance were assessed in a sample of 50 individuals (25 male, 25 female; aged 5-38 years) with Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS). The prevalences of left-handedness and left-eyedness were compared to the normative prevalences in the general population. We found significantly higher prevalences of left-handedness and left-eyedness in the WBS sample. The higher prevalen...