[The influence of severe iodine insufficiency on the character of intellectual deficit].

To study mental deficit in 60 children living in the areas with marked insufficiency of iodine in the soil, water and air, pupils of 3-4 grades of secondary schools in the western regions of Tyva Republic, where researchers of the State Medical Research Institute, Siberian Department of Russian Academy of Sciences, had discovered the hotbed of severe iodine insufficiency in 1997, were examined. Authors also studied 175 children who lived in the same social and economic conditions in the areas with light and moderate degree of iodine insufficiency. Impairments of memory, mental ability, intellectual function and visual motor coordination were found in the structure of mental deficit caused by the severe iodine insufficiency. In children from areas with light and moderate iodine insufficiency these disturbances were more subtle. Disturbances of analytical synthetic function and logical thinking were determined in the intellectual sphere. Processes suggesting between sensory integration disturbances were found in the perceptual sphere.