rudyvdbrink/CitationDatabase huggingface dataset:
Computed tomography angiography in acute stroke (revisiting the 4Ps of imaging).
The American journal of emergency medicine, 2016

Imaging in acute stroke has traditionally focussed on the 4Ps-parenchyma, pipes, perfusion, and penumbra-and has increasingly relied upon advanced techniques including magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate such patients. However, as per European Magnetic Resonance Forum estimates, the availability of magnetic resonance imaging scanners for the general population in India (0.5 per million inhabitants) is quite low as compared to Europe (11 per million) and United States (35 per million), with most of them only present in urban cities. On the other hand, computed tomography (CT) is more widely available and has reduced scanning duration. Computed tomography angiography of cervical and intracranial vessels is relatively simpler to perform with extended coverage and can provide all pertinent information required in such patients. This imaging review will discuss relevant imaging findings on CT angiography in patients with acute ischemic stroke through illustrated cases.
A Hydrophobic Tissue Clearing Method for Rat Brain Tissue.
Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE, 2020

Hydrophobic tissue clearing methods are easily adjustable, fast, and low-cost procedures that allows for the study of a molecule of interest in unaltered tissue samples. Traditional immunolabeling procedures require cutting the sample into thin sections, which restricts the ability to label and examine intact structures. However, if brain tissue can remain intact during processing, structures and circuits can remain intact for the analysis. Previously established clearing methods take significant time to completely clear the tissue, and the harsh chemicals can often damage sensitive antibodies. The iDISCO method quickly and completely clears tissue, is compatible with many antibodies, and requires no special lab equipment. This technique was initially validated for the use in mice tissue, but the current protocol adapts this method to image hemispheres of control and transgenic rat brains. In addition to this, the present protocol also makes several adjustments to preexisting protocol to provide clearer images with less background staining. Antibodies for Iba-1 and tyrosine hydroxylase were validated in the HIV-1 transgenic rat and in F344/N control rats using the present hydrophobic tissue clearing method. The brain is an interwoven network, where structures work together more often than separately of one another. Analyzing the brain as a whole system as opposed to a combination of individual pieces is the greatest benefit of this whole brain clearing method.
Timing is crucial for the integration of angry facial expressions with motor responses: Investigation of subliminal and supraliminal emotion-action bindings.
Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 2019

Our brain codes perceptual features and actions in a distributed fashion, causing a binding problem: How does the brain recognize that information pertains to a specific object and not to other concurrently processed objects? Hommel (1998) suggested the
Predictors of quality of life for autistic adults.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2018

Research with adults on the autism spectrum is as yet limited in scope and quality. The present study describes quality of life (QoL) of a large sample of autistic adults in the UK and investigates characteristics that may be predictive of QoL. A total of 370 autistic adults from the Adult Autism Spectrum Cohort-UK (ASC-UK) completed the WHOQoL-BREF, and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS, autism symptom severity), along with the ASC-UK registration questionnaire giving information on mental health and their life situation. QoL for autistic adults was lower than for the general population for each WHOQoL domain. Younger participants reported higher QoL than older participants in psychological and environment domains. Males reported higher physical QoL than females, and females reported higher social QoL than males. Significant positive predictors of QoL were: being employed (physical QoL), receiving support (social and environment QoL), and being in a relationship (social QoL). Having a mental health condition and higher SRS total score were negative predictors of QoL across all four domains. Autistic adults require access to effective mental health interventions, and informal and formal support for their social difficulties, to improve their quality of life. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1138-1147. © 2018 The Authors Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: There has been limited research into the lived experience of autistic adults. Using the World Health Organization quality of life measure, we found that autistic people (370) in the UK reported their quality of life to be lower than that of the general population. Better quality of life was associated with being in a relationship; those with a mental health condition had poorer quality of life. This research suggests some ways in which autistic people can be helped to improve their quality of life.
Balancing exploration and exploitation with information and randomization.
Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 2021

Explore-exploit decisions require us to trade off the benefits of exploring unknown options to learn more about them, with exploiting known options, for immediate reward. Such decisions are ubiquitous in nature, but from a computational perspective, they are notoriously hard. There is therefore much interest in how humans and animals make these decisions and recently there has been an explosion of research in this area. Here we provide a biased and incomplete snapshot of this field focusing on the major finding that many organisms use two distinct strategies to solve the explore-exploit dilemma: a bias for information ('directed exploration') and the randomization of choice ('random exploration'). We review evidence for the existence of these strategies, their computational properties, their neural implementations, as well as how directed and random exploration vary over the lifespan. We conclude by highlighting open questions in this field that are ripe to both explore and exploit.
It takes a village: an interview with Willias Masocha on the importance of networking in science.
Communications biology, 2021

Willias Masocha is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics at Kuwait University where he studies the pathophysiology and treatment of neuropathic pain. Professor Masocha obtained a Bachelor of Pharmacy Honours from the University of Zimbabwe followed by a PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Granada before undertaking his postdoctoral training and International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) fellowship at the Karolinska Institutet. He began his independent research career at Kuwait University in 2006. In this Q&A he tells us about his current work and his perspectives on neuroscience research in the Middle East and Africa. He also shares tips for young scientists—particularly those based in Africa.
Pubertal Testosterone Tracks the Developmental Trajectory of Neural Oscillatory Activity Serving Visuospatial Processing.
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2020

Puberty is a period of substantial hormonal fluctuations that induce dramatic physical, neurological, and behavioral changes. Previous research has demonstrated that pubertal hormones modulate cortical development, as well as sex- and age-specific patterns of cognitive development during childhood and adolescence. However, the influence of pubertal hormones on the brain's functional development, specifically neural oscillatory dynamics, has yet to be fully examined. Thus, in the current study, we used magnetoencephalography to investigate the oscillatory dynamics serving visuospatial perception and attention, and testosterone levels and chronological age as measures of development. Within a sample of typically developing youth, age was associated with changes in alpha, theta, and gamma oscillatory activity. Novel testosterone-by-sex interactions in the gamma range were identified in critical areas of the visual and attention networks. Females had increased gamma activity with increasing testosterone in the right temporal-parietal junction and occipital cortices, while males showed increased gamma activity in the right insula with increasing testosterone. These findings reveal robust developmental alterations in the oscillatory dynamics serving visuospatial processing during childhood and adolescence and provide novel insight into the hormonal basis of sexually dimorphic patterns of functional brain development during the pubertal transition that is at least partially mediated by endogenous testosterone.
Association between stroke lesions and videofluoroscopic findings in acute stroke patients.
Journal of neurology, 2021

We aimed to assess stroke lesions, which play a key role in determining swallowing dysfunction, and findings of videofluoroscopy (VF), which provides the most accurate instrumental assessment for evaluating swallowing function, in patients with acute stroke.
Digital narrative medicine for the personalization of epilepsy care pathways.
Epilepsy & behavior : E&B, 2020

Among neurological conditions, epilepsy is the disorder best suited to a narrative approach. In epilepsy, the disease, i.e., the condition from the clinical and therapeutic point of view, the illness, the personal experience and impact of the condition, and the sickness, the representations, and social imaginary of epilepsy, are strongly interdependent. Within this context, the Italian League Against Epilepsy (LICE) has launched a multiyear narrative program in Italy resulting in the foundation of a specific Study Group on Narrative Medicine in Epileptology. The Epimena Study is part of this program and involves the "Epilepsy Center, Department of Human Neurosciences, Sapienza University of Rome and Umberto 1° Hospital". The study consists of a pilot project whose aim is to assess the usefulness and feasibility of integrating narrative medicine methodologies into routine clinical practice through a digital platform. The carrying out of the study is based on the acquisition of narrative elements of the patient that the referring doctor uses, integrating them with clinical data, to share and customize the diagnostic-therapeutic pathway of patients. The Epimena Study preliminary results look encouraging. Over 12 months, 57% of the invited patients (37 out of a total of 65) decided to formalize their registration in the digital diary, and 46% responded to one or more narrative prompt generating the story of their experience. Every patient story was then analyzed according to a methodology (Illness Digital StoryMap - IDS) that made it possible to detect the existential impact of the disease and the perception of care. Patients' overall judgment on the project was positive. Through it, they were able to better focus on themselves, bringing out and communicating information to the physician that otherwise would not have been taken into consideration. The majority of patients involved believe that the methodology should be included in the regular clinical practice or in any case would like to continue using it. The data collected confirmed that the time spent on story sharing contributed objectively to a clinical practice of greater quality and effectiveness.
Histone deacetylase knockouts modify transcription, CAG instability and nuclear pathology in Huntington disease mice.
eLife, 2020

Somatic expansion of the Huntington's disease (HD) CAG repeat drives the rate of a pathogenic process ultimately resulting in neuronal cell death. Although mechanisms of toxicity are poorly delineated, transcriptional dysregulation is a likely contributor. To identify modifiers that act at the level of CAG expansion and/or downstream pathogenic processes, we tested the impact of genetic knockout, in
Age-dependent epileptic encephalopathy associated with an unusual co-occurrence of ZEB2 and SCN1A variants.
Epileptic disorders : international epilepsy journal with videotape, 2020

Mowat-Wilson syndrome is a genetic disorder associated with a variable phenotype including peculiar facial features associated with intellectual disability, epilepsy, language impairment, and multiple congenital anomalies caused by heterozygous mutation of the ZEB2 gene. The ZEB2 protein is a complex transcription factor that encompasses multiple functional domains that interact with the regulatory regions of target genes including those involved in brain development. Recently, it has been documented that ZEB2 regulates the differentiation of interneuron progenitors migrating from the medial ganglionic eminence to cortical layers by repression of the Nkx2-1 homeobox transcription factor. It has therefore been suggested that the deficit in ZEB2 may induce an imbalance of neuronal inhibition/excitation leading to epileptic seizures. Given the phenotypic variability of Mowat-Wilson syndrome, to date, a distinctive genotype-phenotype correlation has not been delineated. Here, we report a patient with a severe phenotype of Mowat-Wilson syndrome, associated with a novel heterozygous de novo frame-shift variant in the ZEB2 gene, as well as an additional novel heterozygous missense variant in the SCN1A gene, the mutation of which is known to affect NaV1.1-mediated sodium current in GABAergic interneurons. We hypothesize that the severe neurological phenotype of our patient may be influenced by the coexistence of both genetic mutations. [Published with video sequence].
Morality and the Brain: The Right Hemisphere and Doing Right.
Cognitive and behavioral neurology : official journal of the Society for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology, 2020

Morality, the set of shared attitudes and practices that regulate individual behavior to facilitate cohesion and well-being, is a function of the brain, yet its localization is uncertain. Neuroscientific study of morality has been conducted by examining departures from moral conduct after neurologic insult and by functional neuroimaging of moral decision-making in cognitively intact individuals. These investigations have yielded conflicting results: Acquired sociopathy, a syndromic surrogate for acquired immorality, has been reported predominantly after right frontotemporal lesions, whereas functional neuroimaging during moral decision-making has demonstrated bilateral activation. Although morality is bilaterally represented, the right hemisphere is clinically more critical in light of focal lesion data suggesting that moral behavior is subserved by a network of right frontotemporal structures and their subcortical connections. Evolution may have endowed the brain with bilaterally represented but unilaterally right-dominant morality. The unilateral dominance of morality permits concentration of an essential social cognitive function to support the perceptual and executive operations of moral behavior within a single hemisphere; the bilateral representation of morality allows activation of reserve tissue in the contralateral hemisphere in the event of an acquired hemispheric injury. The observed preponderance of right hemisphere lesions in individuals with acquired immorality offers a plausible hypothesis that can be tested in clinical settings. Advances in the neuroscience of morality promise to yield potentially transformative clinical and societal benefits. A deeper understanding of morality would help clinicians address disordered conduct after acquired neurologic insults and guide society in bolstering public health efforts to prevent brain disease.
Spatial readout of visual looming in the central brain of 
eLife, 2020

Visual systems can exploit spatial correlations in the visual scene by using retinotopy, the organizing principle by which neighboring cells encode neighboring spatial locations. However, retinotopy is often lost, such as when visual pathways are integrated with other sensory modalities. How is spatial information processed outside of strictly visual brain areas? Here, we focused on visual looming responsive LC6 cells in
Current and potential pharmacological treatment options for insomnia in patients with alcohol use disorder in recovery.
Neuropsychopharmacology reports, 2020

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is characterized by dysfunction in motivational, mood-stress regulation, and sleep systems that interact in complex ways to heighten the risk of relapse during abstinence. Emerging data suggest that excessive and chronic alcohol use disrupts sleep homeostasis and, in abstinence, subjects with AUD are known to experience insomnia that may persist for weeks to years, which we propose to refer to as insomnia associated with alcohol cessation (IAAC). The purpose of this review is to provide an update of pharmacological approaches to therapy including compounds in development, to raise awareness of the prevalence of and unmet need in IAAC and highlight differences in treatment consideration for IAAC as compared to insomnia disorder. We performed a search of select electronic databases to identify studies of pharmacological agents used to treat sleep disturbances in abstinent or treatment-seeking patients with alcohol use disorder. The search, conducted in June 2019 and updated in December 2019, yielded 1,188 abstracts after duplicates were removed, of which 36 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility. Eighteen studies were included, 15 randomized controlled trials and three open-label studies. Several classes of medications including antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and antipsychotics have been evaluated for their effectiveness in treating sleep disturbances in abstinent or treatment-seeking patients with AUD. None of these medications are approved by the FDA for the treatment of IAAC, and the currently available evidence for these agents is limited. Randomized, controlled clinical trials are warranted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of medications in the treatment of IAAC.
Neuropathic pain increases spontaneous and noxious-evoked activity of locus coeruleus neurons.
Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry, 2021

The noradrenergic locus coeruleus nucleus is an important station in both the ascending and descending pain regulatory pathways. These neurons discharge in tonic and phasic modes in response to sensory stimuli. However, few studies have set out to characterize the electrophysiological response of the locus coeruleus to noxious stimuli in conditions of neuropathic pain. Thus, the effects of mechanical nociceptive stimulation of the sciatic nerve area on spontaneous (tonic) and sensory-evoked (phasic) locus coeruleus discharge were studied by extracellular recording in anesthetized rats seven, fourteen and twenty-eight days after chronic constriction injury. Minor significant electrophysiological changes were found seven and fourteen days after nerve injury. However, alterations to the spontaneous activity in both the ipsilateral and contralateral locus coeruleus were found twenty-eight days after nerve constriction, as witnessed by an increase of burst firing incidence and irregular firing patterns. Furthermore, noxious-evoked responses were exacerbated in the contralateral and ipsilateral nucleus at twenty-eight days after injury, as were the responses evoked when stimulating the uninjured paw. In addition, mechanical stimulation of the hindpaw produced a significant sensitization of neuronal tonic activity after 28 days of neuropathy. In summary, long-term nerve injury led to higher spontaneous activity and exacerbated noxious-evoked responses in the locus coeruleus to stimulation of nerve-injured and even uninjured hindpaws, coinciding temporally with the development of depressive and anxiogenic-like behavior.
Feasibility study of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) in people with an at-risk mental state (ARMS) for psychosis: study protocol.
BMJ open, 2020

Trauma can play an important role in the development of psychosis, yet no studies have investigated whether a trauma-focused psychological therapy could prevent the onset of psychosis in people at high risk of developing this condition. This study aims to establish whether it would be feasible to conduct a multicentre randomised controlled trial (RCT) to investigate the clinical and cost-effectiveness of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy to prevent the onset of psychosis in people with an at-risk mental state (ARMS).
Modulation of mitochondrial respiration rate and calcium-induced swelling by new cromakalim analogues.
Chemico-biological interactions, 2020

A cellular model of cardiomyocytes (H9c2 cell line) and mitochondria isolated from mouse liver were used to understand the drug action of BPDZ490 and BPDZ711, two benzopyran analogues of the reference potassium channel opener cromakalim, on mitochondrial respiratory parameters and swelling, by comparing their effects with those of the parent compound cromakalim. For these three compounds, the oxygen consumption rate (OCR) was determined by high-resolution respirometry (HRR) and their impact on adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production and calcium-induced mitochondrial swelling was investigated. Cromakalim did not modify neither the OCR of H9c2 cells and the ATP production nor the Ca-induced swelling. By contrast, the cromakalim analogue BPDZ490 (1) induced a strong increase of OCR, while the other benzopyran analogue BPDZ711 (2) caused a marked slowdown. For both compounds, 1 displayed a biphasic behavior while 2 still showed an inhibitory effect. Both compounds 1 and 2 were also found to decrease the ATP synthesis, with pronounced effect for 2, while cromakalim remained without effect. Overall, these results indicate that cromakalim, as parent molecule, does not induce per se any direct effect on mitochondrial respiratory function neither on whole cells nor on isolated mitochondria whereas both benzopyran analogues 1 and 2 display totally opposite behavior profiles, suggesting that compound 1, by increasing the maximal respiration capacity, might behave as a mild uncoupling agent and compound 2 is taken as an inhibitor of the mitochondrial electron-transfer chain.
[Functional organisation of the cerebellum: a neuroanatomical approach].
Revue neurologique, 2011

Knowledge of the functional organisation of the cerebellum has progressed. The phylogenetic and anatomical divisions within the cerebellum, which have long been used to describe cerebellar functions, are now too simplistic. The understanding of cerebellar motor functions requires knowledge of a neuroanatomical division based on the afferents and the corticonuclear organisation of the cerebellum. Non-motor cerebellar functions are even more poorly systematised, but the rapid progress being made in neuroscience and neuroimaging techniques should enable them to be better understood.