Pre frontal cortex

BACKGROUND: Although donepezil is a commonly used drug for treating Alzheimer's disease (AD), the mechanisms by which it affects patients' functional brain activity, and thus modulates clinical symptoms, remain unclear. METHODS: In the present study, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and regional homogeneity (ReHo) to investigate the effects of donepezil on local brain activity in AD patients. Resting-state functional MRI data were collected from 32 subjects: 16 healthy controls and 16 AD patients...

BACKGROUND: Post-stroke lateropulsion is prevalent and has been associated with varied lesion locations, but existing imaging studies are limited by small participant cohorts. Evidence to guide lateropulsion rehabilitation is also limited. Improved understanding of lesion localization associated with lateropulsion post-stroke may inform more targeted intervention approaches. OBJECTIVES: This study investigated the associations between stroke neuroimaging data and presence of lateropulsion at inpatient rehabilitation admission...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Impaired inhibitory control accompanied by enhanced craving is hallmark of addiction. This study investigated the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on response inhibition and craving in Internet gaming disorder (IGD). We examined the brain changes after tDCS and their correlation with clinical variables. METHODS: Twenty-four males with IGD were allocated randomly to an active or sham tDCS group, and data from 22 participants were included for analysis...

The relationship between schizophrenia (SCZ) and cancer development remains controversial. Based on the disease-gene association platform, it has been revealed that tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR) could be an important mediatory factor in both cancer and SCZ development. TNF-α also increases the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB) in the development of SCZ and tumor, but the role of TNFR in mediating the association between the two diseases remains unclear...

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is believed to be an effective treatment for chronic pain due to its association with cognitive and emotional factors. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of magnetoencephalography (MEG) investigations elucidating its underlying mechanisms. This study investigated the neurophysiological effects of CBT employing MEG and analytical techniques. We administered resting-state MEG scans to 30 patients with chronic pain and 31 age-matched healthy controls. Patients engaged in a 12-session group CBT program...

We retrospectively analyzed data from 15 patients, with a normal pre-operative cognitive performance, undergoing awake surgery for left fronto-temporal low-grade glioma. We combined a pre-surgical measure (fMRI maps of motor- and language-related centers) with intra-surgical measures (MNI-registered cortical sites data obtained during intra-operative direct electrical stimulation, DES, while they performed the two most common language tasks: number counting and picture naming). Selective DES effects along the precentral gyrus/inferior frontal gyrus (and/or the connected speech articulation network) were obtained...

BACKGROUND: Histopathologic studies of Alzheimer's disease (AD) suggest that extracellular amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques promote the spread of neurofibrillary tau tangles. However, these two proteinopathies initiate in spatially distinct brain regions, so how they interact during AD progression is unclear. OBJECTIVE: In this study, we utilized Aβ and tau positron emission tomography (PET) scans from 572 older subjects (476 healthy controls (HC), 14 with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), 82 with mild AD), at varying stages of the disease, to investigate to what degree tau is associated with cortical Aβ deposition...

Recent neuroimaging studies have shown that the visual cortex plays an important role in representing the affective significance of visual input. The origin of these affect-specific visual representations is debated: they are intrinsic to the visual system versus they arise through reentry from frontal emotion processing structures such as the amygdala. We examined this problem by combining convolutional neural network (CNN) models of the human ventral visual cortex pre-trained on ImageNet with two datasets of affective images...

Methods of cognitive enhancement for humans are most impactful when they generalise across tasks. However, the extent to which such "transfer" is possible via interventions is widely debated. In addition, the contribution of excitatory and inhibitory processes to such transfer is unknown. Here, in a large-scale neuroimaging individual differences study with humans (both sexes), we paired multitasking training and non-invasive brain stimulation (transcranial direct current stimulation; tDCS) over multiple days and assessed performance across a range of paradigms...

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a significant contributor to disability across the world. TBIs vary in severity, and most cases are designated mild TBI (mTBI), involving only brief loss of consciousness and no intracranial findings on imaging. Despite this categorization, many persons continue to report persistent cognitive changes in the months to years after injury, with particular impairment in the cognitive and executive functions of the pre-frontal cortex. For these persons, there are no currently approved medications, and treatment is limited to symptom management and cognitive or behavioral therapy...

PURPOSE: Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is a devastating chronic pain disorder, defined by unilateral shock like pain in at least one division of the trigeminal nerve. Although several studies have investigated structural brain plasticity in TN patients, treatment-induced alterations remain largely uninvestigated. MATERIALS/METHODS: Combining T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and multiple-regression analyses, we assessed gray matter maps of TN patients to investigate changes in gray matter volume (GMV) from before to half a year after stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS)...

Blast-related traumatic brain injury (bTBI) is a major cause of neurological disorders in the U.S. military that can adversely impact some civilian populations as well and can lead to lifelong deficits and diminished quality of life. Among these types of injuries, the long-term sequelae are poorly understood because of variability in intensity and number of the blast exposure, as well as the range of subsequent symptoms that can overlap with those resulting from other traumatic events (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder)...

Synucleinopathies are a group of diseases characterized by brain aggregates of α-synuclein (α-syn). The gradual accumulation of α-syn and the role of inflammation in early-stage pathogenesis remain poorly understood. We explored this interaction by inducing chronic inflammation in a common pre-clinical synucleinopathy mouse model. Three weeks post unilateral intra-striatal injections of human α-syn pre-formed fibrils (PFF), mice underwent repeated intraperitoneal injections of 1 mg/ml lipopolysaccharide (LPS) for 3 weeks...

Transcranial electrical stimulation has demonstrated the potential to enhance cognitive functions such as working memory, learning capacity, and attentional allocation. Recently, it was shown that periodic stimulation within a specific duration could augment the human brain's neuroplasticity. This study investigates the effects of repetitive transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS; 1 mA, 5 Hz, 2 min duration) on cognitive function, functional connectivity, and topographic changes using both electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)...

Schizophrenia patients have abnormalities in white matter (WM) integrity in brain regions. S100B has been shown to be a marker protein for glial cells. The atypical antipsychotics have neuroprotective effects on the brain. It is not clear whether antipsychotics can induce S100B changes and improve symptoms by protecting oligodendrocytes. To investigate WM and S100B changes and associations and determine the effect of quetiapine on WM and S100B in schizophrenia patients, we determined serum S100B levels with solid phase immunochromatography and fractional anisotropy（FA）values of 36 patients and 40 healthy controls...

INTRODUCTION: Electronic Sports (eSports) is a popular and still emerging sport. Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) and First/Third Person Shooting Games (FPS/TPS) require excellent visual attention abilities. Visual attention involves specific frontal and parietal areas, and is associated with alpha coherence. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is a principally suitable tool to improve cognitive functions by modulation of regional oscillatory cortical networks that alters regional and larger network connectivity...

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is an age-related neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive memory loss and cognitive impairment, affecting 35 million individuals worldwide. Intracerebroventricular (ICV) injection of low to moderate doses of streptozotocin (STZ) in adult male Wistar rats can reproduce classical physiopathological hallmarks of AD. This biological model is known as ICV-STZ. Most studies are focused on the description of behavioral and morphological aspects of the ICV-STZ model. However, knowledge regarding the molecular aspects of the ICV-STZ model is still incipient...

Microgravity alters vestibular signaling and reduces body loading, driving sensory reweighting. The unloading effects can be modelled using head-down tilt bedrest (HDT). Artificial gravity (AG) has been hypothesized to serve as an integrated countermeasure for the declines associated with HDT and spaceflight. Here, we examined the efficacy of 30 min of daily AG to counteract brain and behavior changes from 60 days of HDT. Two groups received 30 min of AG delivered via short-arm centrifuge daily (n = 8 per condition), either in one continuous bout, or in 6 bouts of 5 min...

In this study, we develop a novel recurrent neural network (RNN) model of pre-frontal cortex that predicts sensory inputs, actions, and outcomes at the next time step. Synaptic weights in the model are adjusted to minimize sequence prediction error, adapting a deep learning rule similar to those of large language models. The model, called Sequence Prediction Error Learning (SPEL), is a simple RNN that predicts world state at the next time step, but that differs from standard RNNs by using its own prediction errors from the previous state predictions as inputs to the hidden units of the network...

Although highly effective on average, exposure-based treatments do not work equally well for all patients with anxiety disorders. The identification of pre-treatment response-predicting patient characteristics may enable patient stratification. Preliminary research highlights the relevance of inhibitory fronto-limbic networks as such. We aimed to identify pre-treatment neural signatures differing between exposure treatment responders and non-responders in spider phobia and to validate results through rigorous replication...