rudyvdbrink/CitationDatabase huggingface dataset:
Responses to chronic corticosterone on brain glucocorticoid receptors, adrenal gland, and gut microbiota in mice lacking neuronal serotonin.
Brain research, 2021

Dysregulation of the stress-induced activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis can result in disease. Bidirectional communication exists between the brain and the gut, and alterations in these interactions appear to be involved in stress regulation and in the pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric diseases, such as depression. Serotonin (5HT) plays a crucial role in the functions of these two major organs but its direct influence under stress conditions remains unclear. To investigate the role of neuronal 5HT on chronic stress responses and its influence on the gut microbiome, mice lacking the gene for tryptophan hydroxylase-2 were treated with the stress hormone corticosterone (CORT) for 21 days. The intake of fluid and food, as well as body weights were recorded daily. CORT levels, expression of glucocorticoid receptors (GR) in the brain and the size of the adrenal gland were evaluated. Caecum was used for 16S rRNA gene characterization of the gut microbiota. Results show that 5HT depletion produced an increase in food intake and a paradoxical reduction in body weight that were enhanced by CORT. Neuronal 5HT depletion impaired the feedback regulation of CORT levels but had no putative effect on the CORT-induced decrease in hippocampal GR expression and the reduction of the adrenal cortex size. Finally, the composition and structure of the gut microbiota were significantly impacted by the absence of neuronal 5HT, and these alterations were enhanced by chronic CORT treatment. Therefore, we conclude that neuronal 5HT influences the stress-related responses at different levels involving CORT levels regulation and the gut microbiome.
Gene and Cell-Based Therapies for Parkinson's Disease: Where Are We?
Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics, 2020

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that carries large health and socioeconomic burdens. Current therapies for PD are ultimately inadequate, both in terms of symptom control and in modification of disease progression. Deep brain stimulation and infusion therapies are the current mainstay for treatment of motor complications of advanced disease, but these have very significant drawbacks and offer no element of disease modification. In fact, there are currently no agents that are established to modify the course of the disease in clinical use for PD. Gene and cell therapies for PD are now being trialled in the clinic. These treatments are diverse and may have a range of niches in the management of PD. They hold great promise for improved treatment of symptoms as well as possibly slowing progression of the disease in the right patient group. Here, we review the current state of the art for these therapies and look to future strategies in this fast-moving field.
Anaesthesia and neuromuscular disorders: what a neurologist needs to know.
Practical neurology, 2020

Neurologists are often asked for specific advice regarding patients with neuromuscular disease who require general anaesthesia. However, guidelines on specific neuromuscular disorders do not usually include specific guidelines or pragmatic advice regarding (regional and/or general) anaesthesia or procedural sedation. Furthermore, the medical literature on this subject is mostly limited to publications in anaesthesiology journals. We therefore summarise general recommendations and specific advice for anaesthesia in different neuromuscular disorders to provide a comprehensive and accessible overview of the knowledge on this topic essential for clinical neurologists. A preoperative multidisciplinary approach involving anaesthesiologists, cardiologists, chest physicians, surgeons and neurologists is crucial. Depolarising muscle relaxants (succinylcholine) should be avoided at all times. The dose of non-depolarising muscle relaxants must be reduced and their effect monitored. Patients with specific mutations in
Association Between Central and Peripheral Age-Related Hearing Loss and Different Frailty Phenotypes in an Older Population in Southern Italy.
JAMA otolaryngology-- head & neck surgery, 2021

The association between age-related hearing loss (ARHL) and physical or cognitive frailty has been poorly explored. These associations could define new perspectives for delaying frailty-related processes in older age.
The size-weight illusion in visual form agnosic patient DF.
Neurocase, 2020

The size-weight illusion is a perceptual illusion where smaller objects are judged as heavier than equally weighted larger objects. A previous informal report suggests that visual form agnosic patient DF does not experience the size-weight illusion when vision is the only available cue to object size. We tested this experimentally, comparing the magnitudes of DF's visual, kinesthetic and visual-kinesthetic size-weight illusions to those of 28 similarly-aged controls. A modified t-test found that DF's visual size-weight illusion was significantly smaller than that of controls (z
Autoantibodies against type I IFNs in patients with life-threatening COVID-19.
Science (New York, N.Y.), 2020

Interindividual clinical variability in the course of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is vast. We report that at least 101 of 987 patients with life-threatening coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia had neutralizing immunoglobulin G (IgG) autoantibodies (auto-Abs) against interferon-ω (IFN-ω) (13 patients), against the 13 types of IFN-α (36), or against both (52) at the onset of critical disease; a few also had auto-Abs against the other three type I IFNs. The auto-Abs neutralize the ability of the corresponding type I IFNs to block SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro. These auto-Abs were not found in 663 individuals with asymptomatic or mild SARS-CoV-2 infection and were present in only 4 of 1227 healthy individuals. Patients with auto-Abs were aged 25 to 87 years and 95 of the 101 were men. A B cell autoimmune phenocopy of inborn errors of type I IFN immunity accounts for life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia in at least 2.6% of women and 12.5% of men.
Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology: Fiery A. Cushman.
The American psychologist, 2018

The APA Awards for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology recognize psychologists who have demonstrated excellence early in their careers and have held a doctoral degree for no more than 9 years. One of the 2018 award winners is Fiery A. Cushman, "for his groundbreaking research in moral psychology, integrating ideas from cognitive, social, and developmental psychology; moral and legal philosophy; evolutionary biology; cognitive neuroscience; and artificial intelligence. Cushman's award citation, biography, and a selected bibliography are presented here. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
Nonthyroidal Illness Syndrome in Ischaemic Stroke Patients is Associated with Increased Mortality.
Experimental and clinical endocrinology & diabetes : official journal, German Society of Endocrinology [and] German Diabetes Association, 2020

Results of studies on associations between triiodothyronine serum levels and mortality after acute ischemic stroke (AIS) are inconsistent. Therefore, the aim of this prospective study was to evaluate links between serum levels of thyroid axis associated hormones and all-cause mortality during 1 year after AIS.
Origins of emotional consciousness.
The Behavioral and brain sciences, 2016

While the field of emotions research has benefited from new developments in neuroscience, many theoretical questions remain unsolved. We propose that integrating our iterative reprocessing (IR) framework with the passive frame theory (PFT) may help unify competing theoretical perspectives of emotion. Specifically, we propose that PFT and the IR framework offer a point of origin for emotional experience.
Using the Parafilm-assisted Microdissection (PAM) Method to Sample Rodent Nucleus Accumbens.
Bio-protocol, 2020

Microdissection techniques are very important for anatomical and functional studies focused on neuroscience, where it is often necessary microdissect specific brain areas to perform molecular or anatomical analyses. The parafilm
Reduction in MicroRNA-4488 Expression Induces NFκB Translocation in Venous Endothelial Cells Under Arterial Flow.
Cardiovascular drugs and therapy, 2021

Little is known about the molecular interactions among inflammatory responses that damage venous endothelial cells (vECs) during venous-to-arterial flow transition in vein graft diseases. Because arterial flow triggers excessive autophagy and inflammation in vECs, this study aimed to investigate the mediator of inflammation and methods to prevent vEC damage.
The Relationship between Life Course Socioeconomic Conditions and Objective and Subjective Memory in Older Age.
Brain sciences, 2021

While objective memory performance in older adults was primarily shown to be affected by education as indicator of life course socioeconomic conditions, other life course socioeconomic conditions seem to relate to subjective memory complaints. However, studies differ in which life course stages were investigated. Moreover, studies have explored these effects in an isolated way, but have not yet investigated their unique effect when considering several stages of the life course simultaneously. This study, therefore, examined the respective influence of socioeconomic conditions from childhood up to late-life on prospective memory (PM) performance as an objective indicator of everyday memory as well as on subjective memory complaints (SMC) in older age using structural equation modeling. Data came from two waves of the Vivre-Leben-Vivere aging study (n=993, Mage=80.56). The results indicate that only socioeconomic conditions in adulthood significantly predicted late-life PM performance. PM performance was also predicted by age and self-rated health. In contrast, SMC in older age were not predicted by socioeconomic conditions at any stage of the life course but were predicted by level of depression. In line with the cognitive reserve hypothesis, present results highlight the significance of education and occupation (adulthood socioeconomic conditions) for cognitive functioning in later life.
Cerebrospinal fluid lipidomic biomarker signatures of demyelination for multiple sclerosis and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Scientific reports, 2020

Multiple sclerosis (MS) and Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) are demyelinating disorders affecting the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system (PNS), respectively. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is one of the most valuable sources of diagnostic biomarkers in neurological diseases. In the present study high sensitivity shotgun mass spectrometry was used to characterise the CSF lipidome of patients with MS, GBS and controls with non-demyelinating diseases. The quantification of 222 CSF lipid molecular species revealed characteristic changes in the absolute and relative lipid concentrations in MS and GBS compared to the controls. For the GBS group, the fourfold elevation in the total lipid content was a discriminatory and a newly identified feature of PNS demyelination. In contrast, in MS, the accumulation of the myelin-derived cerebrosides represented a specific feature of demyelination. As a common feature of demyelination, we identified upregulated levels of lipid metabolic intermediates. We found strong positive correlation between total protein content and lipid concentrations in both diseases. By exploring the CSF lipidome we demonstrate usefulness of broad-range shotgun lipidomic analysis as a fast and reliable method of biomarker discovery in patients with demyelinating neurological disorders that might be a valuable diagnostic complement to existing examinations.
[Three neural networks that support syntactic processing in language].
Brain and nerve = Shinkei kenkyu no shinpo, 2015

Elucidation of language disorders is one of the fundamental issues in clinical neuroscience. We used magnetic resonance imaging and a syntactic task in Japanese to examine the behavior and brain structures of patients with a left frontal glioma. We successfully showed that they had different types of language disorders (particularly agrammatic comprehension) dependent on the location of the glioma. Moreover, we describe three neural networks that support syntactic processing, including an extensive network within the cerebellum and both hemispheres of the brain.
Bayesian inference for biophysical neuron models enables stimulus optimization for retinal neuroprosthetics.
eLife, 2020

While multicompartment models have long been used to study the biophysics of neurons, it is still challenging to infer the parameters of such models from data including uncertainty estimates. Here, we performed Bayesian inference for the parameters of detailed neuron models of a photoreceptor and an OFF- and an ON-cone bipolar cell from the mouse retina based on two-photon imaging data. We obtained multivariate posterior distributions specifying plausible parameter ranges consistent with the data and allowing to identify parameters poorly constrained by the data. To demonstrate the potential of such mechanistic data-driven neuron models, we created a simulation environment for external electrical stimulation of the retina and optimized stimulus waveforms to target OFF- and ON-cone bipolar cells, a current major problem of retinal neuroprosthetics.
Analyzing In Vivo Cell Migration using Cell Transplantations and Time-lapse Imaging in Zebrafish Embryos.
Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE, 2016

Cell migration is key to many physiological and pathological conditions, including cancer metastasis. The cellular and molecular bases of cell migration have been thoroughly analyzed in vitro. However, in vivo cell migration somehow differs from in vitro migration, and has proven more difficult to analyze, being less accessible to direct observation and manipulation. This protocol uses the migration of the prospective prechordal plate in the early zebrafish embryo as a model system to study the function of candidate genes in cell migration. Prechordal plate progenitors form a group of cells which, during gastrulation, undergoes a directed migration from the embryonic organizer to the animal pole of the embryo. The proposed protocol uses cell transplantation to create mosaic embryos. This offers the combined advantages of labeling isolated cells, which is key to good imaging, and of limiting gain/loss of function effects to the observed cells, hence ensuring cell-autonomous effects. We describe here how we assessed the function of the TORC2 component Sin1 in cell migration, but the protocol can be used to analyze the function of any candidate gene in controlling cell migration in vivo.
Ferroptosis in Friedreich's Ataxia: A Metal-Induced Neurodegenerative Disease.
Biomolecules, 2020

Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent form of regulated cell death, arising from the accumulation of lipid-based reactive oxygen species when glutathione-dependent repair systems are compromised. Lipid peroxidation, mitochondrial impairment and iron dyshomeostasis are the hallmark of ferroptosis, which is emerging as a crucial player in neurodegeneration. This review provides an analysis of the most recent advances in ferroptosis, with a special focus on Friedreich's Ataxia (FA), the most common autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disease, caused by reduced levels of frataxin, a mitochondrial protein involved in iron-sulfur cluster synthesis and antioxidant defenses. The hypothesis is that the iron-induced oxidative damage accumulates over time in FA, lowering the ferroptosis threshold and leading to neuronal cell death and, at last, to cardiac failure. The use of anti-ferroptosis drugs combined with treatments able to activate the antioxidant response will be of paramount importance in FA therapy, such as in many other neurodegenerative diseases triggered by oxidative stress.
From Kidney to Brain: An Uncommon Severe Relapse of Myeloperoxidase Anti-Neutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibody (MPO-ANCA) Vasculitis.
Cureus, 2021

Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV) is a group of rare autoimmune diseases that affect medium and small blood vessels, with uncommon, variable central nervous system (CNS) involvement. It poses diagnosis challenges due to the limited accuracy of conventional imaging and vast differential diagnosis. We describe the case of a 76-year-old man with a previously diagnosed myeloperoxidase (MPO)-positive AAV with exclusive renal involvement. The patient presented to our emergency department (ED) with sudden-onset weakness of the right side of the body, difficulty speaking, fever, and a history of progressive cognitive impairment in the previous three months (loss of memory, time and space disorientation, acalculia). Brain imaging showed multiple acute and subacute ischemic lesions, suggesting CNS vasculitic involvement. The patient was treated with methylprednisolone pulses, followed by rituximab, with motor and cognitive improvement. Timely diagnosis and adequate treatment of AAV as a cause for new-onset neurological symptoms are crucial to improve outcomes. Otherwise, a higher risk of relapse remains, and extensive neurological deficits may become permanent. Evidence regarding the best treatment options in these patients is scarce and case reports provide further data on this topic.
Short-term Synaptic Depression in the Feedforward Inhibitory Circuit in the Dorsal Lateral Geniculate Nucleus.
Neuroscience, 2018

Synaptic short-term plasticity (STP) regulates synaptic transmission in an activity-dependent manner and thereby has important roles in the signal processing in the brain. In some synapses, a presynaptic train of action potentials elicits post-synaptic potentials that gradually increase during the train (facilitation), but in other synapses, these potentials gradually decrease (depression). We studied STP in neurons in the visual thalamic relay, the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN). The dLGN contains two types of neurons: excitatory thalamocortical (TC) neurons, which transfer signals from retinal afferents to visual cortex, and local inhibitory interneurons, which form an inhibitory feedforward loop that regulates the thalamocortical signal transmission. The overall STP in the retino-thalamic relay is short-term depression, but the distinct kind and characteristics of the plasticity at the different types of synapses are unknown. We studied STP in the excitatory responses of interneurons to stimulation of retinal afferents, in the inhibitory responses of TC neurons to stimulation of afferents from interneurons, and in the disynaptic inhibitory responses of TC neurons to stimulation of retinal afferents. Moreover, we studied STP at the direct excitatory input to TC neurons from retinal afferents. The STP at all types of the synapses showed short-term depression. This depression can accentuate rapid changes in the stream of signals and thereby promote detectability of significant features in the sensory input. In vision, detection of edges and contours is essential for object perception, and the synaptic short-term depression in the early visual pathway provides important contributions to this detection process.
Language as a biomarker for psychosis: A natural language processing approach.
Schizophrenia research, 2020

Human ratings of conceptual disorganization, poverty of content, referential cohesion and illogical thinking have been shown to predict psychosis onset in prospective clinical high risk (CHR) cohort studies. The potential value of linguistic biomarkers has been significantly magnified, however, by recent advances in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML). Such methodologies allow for the rapid and objective measurement of language features, many of which are not easily recognized by human raters. Here we review the key findings on language production disturbance in psychosis. We also describe recent advances in the computational methods used to analyze language data, including methods for the automatic measurement of discourse coherence, syntactic complexity, poverty of content, referential coherence, and metaphorical language. Linguistic biomarkers of psychosis risk are now undergoing cross-validation, with attention to harmonization of methods. Future directions in extended CHR networks include studies of sources of variance, and combination with other promising biomarkers of psychosis risk, such as cognitive and sensory processing impairments likely to be related to language. Implications for the broader study of social communication, including reciprocal prosody, face expression and gesture, are discussed.
Diminished Ventral Oligodendrocyte Precursor Generation Results in the Subsequent Over-production of Dorsal Oligodendrocyte Precursors of Aberrant Morphology and Function.
Neuroscience, 2020

Oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) arise sequentially first from a ventral and then from a dorsal precursor domain at the end of neurogenesis during spinal cord development. Whether the sequential production of OPCs is of physiological significance has not been examined. Here we show that ablating Shh signaling from nascent ventricular zone derivatives and partially from the floor plate results in a severe diminishment of ventral derived OPCs but normal numbers of motor neurons in the postnatal spinal cord. In the absence of ventral vOPCs, dorsal dOPCs populate the entire spinal cord resulting in an increased OPC density in the ventral horns. These OPCs take on an altered morphology, do not participate in the removal of excitatory vGlut1 synapses from injured motor neurons, and exhibit morphological features similar to those found in the vicinity of motor neurons in the SOD1 mouse model of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Our data indicate that vOPCs prevent dOPCs from invading ventral spinal cord laminae and suggest that vOPCs have a unique ability to communicate with injured motor neurons.
Using kinematic analyses to explore sensorimotor control impairments in children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.
Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders, 2019

The 22q11.2 deletion is associated with psychiatric and behavioural disorders, intellectual disability and multiple physical abnormalities. Recent research also indicates impaired coordination skills may be part of the clinical phenotype. This study aimed to characterise sensorimotor control abilities in children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) and investigate their relationships with co-occurring IQ impairments and psychopathology.
Blood pressure reduction and cardiovascular prevention: meta-regression using ordered categorical (ordinal) event data.
Journal of hypertension, 2010

Blood pressure (BP)-lowering trials studying efficacy mostly assesses binary outcome events, for example stroke/no stroke. Analysis of ordered categorical vascular events (e.g. three levels: fatal stroke/nonfatal stroke/no stroke) provides information on severity and is more powerful statistically than analyses using binary data, as used in previous meta-regression analyses of BP lowering.
Foveation dynamics in congenital nystagmus IV: vergence.
Documenta ophthalmologica. Advances in ophthalmology, 2020

To evaluate foveation dynamics and characteristics of vergence eye movements during fixation of static targets at different distances and while tracking a target moving in depth in a subject with congenital nystagmus (CN).