Background: The degree of overlap between schizophrenia (SCZ) and affective psychosis (AFF) has been a recurring question since Kraepelin’s subdivision of the major psychoses. Studying nonpsychotic relatives allows a comparison of disorder-associated phenotypes, without potential confounds that can obscure distinctive features of the disorder. Because attention and working memory have been proposed as potential endophenotypes for SCZ and AFF, we compared these cognitive features in individuals at familial high-risk (FHR) for the disorders. Methods: Young, unmedicated, first-degree relatives (ages, 13–25 years) at FHR-SCZ (n=41) and FHR-AFF (n=24) and community controls (CCs, n=54) were tested using attention and working memory versions of the Auditory Continuous Performance Test. To determine if schizotypal traits or current psychopathology accounted for cognitive deficits, we evaluated psychosis proneness using three Chapman Scales, Revised Physical Anhedonia, Perceptual Aberration, and Magical Ideation, and assessed psychopathology using the Hopkins Symptom Checklist -90 Revised. Results: Compared to controls, the FHR-AFF sample was significantly impaired in auditory vigilance, while the FHR-SCZ sample was significantly worse in working memory. Both FHR groups showed significantly higher levels of physical anhedonia and some psychopathological dimensions than controls. Adjusting for physical anhedonia, phobic anxiety, depression, psychoticism, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms eliminated the FHR-AFF vigilance effects but not the working memory deficits in FHR-SCZ. Conclusions: The working memory deficit in FHR-SZ was the more robust of the cognitive impairments after accounting for psychopathological confounds and is supported as an endophenotype. Examination of larger samples of people at familial risk for different psychoses remains necessary to confirm these findings and to clarify the role of vigilance in FHR-AFF. (JINS, 2016, 22, 1026–1037)

This paper discusses the importance of female breasts in gender construction in Maya art and explains artistic conventions and choices in their deployment. The visual analysis focuses on Late Classic pictorial vases and ceramic figurines. Rather than reflecting a natural body, the female breast was filtered through a cultural lens that drove its highly conceptual rendering in Maya art, mirrored in a breast hieroglyph. Through the principle of contrast, including morphology and absence vs. presence of breasts in specific pictorial contexts, Maya artists constructed female personae varying in age, class, supernatural status, and gender ambiguity. In order to flesh out the layered meaning of the breast, the paper turns to ethnographic studies of modern Maya medicine concerning the hot-cold system. It is argued that ethnographic data on women's bodies in medical discourse shed light on how the breast served as an index of age-based female stereotypes.

Rubber had important utilitarian, symbolic, and ritual roles in ancient Mesoamerica. Among the latter is the use of rubber balls as burnt offerings. This paper examines characteristic iconographic manifestations of rubber-ball offerings in Mesoamerican art. One of these, the spiral, seen in the Postclassic Maya codices, is shown to have had greater temporal and geographic distribution than previously thought. Another is the Standard Rubber Offering, a widespread motif in Mesoamerican art that links rubber balls to feathers and rope bindings. In considering why rubber balls were shown bound in rope, the paper examines the physical properties of natural rubber. Understanding the iconographic nuances of rubber balls as ritual offerings sheds new light on the symbolism of rubber balls in ballgame scenes and allows identification of certain images as rubber balls that were previously unrecognized.