Movement disorders

INTRODUCTION: Essential tremor (ET) is the most common movement disorder in adults, with an estimated incidence of up to 1% of the population and 5% of people older than 65 years of age. ET is manifested primarily by bilateral postural and kinetic tremor of the upper limbs with or without neurological symptoms and cognitive deficits. ET disrupts daily tasks and significantly lowers quality of life. Currently available medications alone are often insufficient to control severe symptoms...

INTRODUCTION: Wearables are potentially valuable tools for understanding mobility behavior in individuals with neurological disorders and how it changes depending on health status, such as after rehabilitation. However, the accurate detection of gait events, which are crucial for the evaluation of gait performance and quality, is challenging due to highly individual-specific patterns that also vary greatly in movement and speed, especially after stroke. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the accuracy, concurrent validity, and test-retest reliability of a commercially available insole system in the detection of gait events and the calculation of stance duration in individuals with chronic stroke...

The mammalian oviduct (or fallopian tube) is a tubular organ hosting reproductive events leading to pregnancy. Dynamic 3D imaging of the mouse oviduct with optical coherence tomography (OCT) has recently emerged as a promising approach to study the hidden processes vital to elucidate the role of oviduct in mammalian reproduction and reproductive disorders. In particular, with an intravital window, in vivo OCT imaging is a powerful solution to studying how the oviduct transports preimplantation embryos towards the uterus for pregnancy, a long-standing question that is critical for uncovering the functional cause of tubal ectopic pregnancy...

AIM: Dietary patterns could have a notable role in shaping gut microbiota composition. Evidence confirms the positive impact of the Mediterranean diet (MD), as one of the most studied healthy dietary patterns, on the gut microbiota profile. We conducted this systematic review to investigate the results of observational studies and clinical trials regarding the possible changes in the gut microbiota composition, metabolites, and clinical outcomes following adherence to MD in healthy cases or patients suffering from metabolic disorders...

This study aims to investigate the specific effects of the EMDR Flash Technique on adolescents with depression. This follow-up study consists of 32 adolescents, 12-17 years of age ( M = 14.34, SD = 1.56), including 7 males and 25 females. They were evaluated with Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children Present, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Children Revised Impact of Event Scale-8 (Crıes-8). These were administered at baseline, at the end of the 4th and 12th weeks of treatment...

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INTRODUCTION: In BIPARK-1 and BIPARK-2, addition of once-daily opicapone to levodopa/carbidopa significantly reduced daily "OFF"-time relative to placebo in adults with Parkinson's disease (PD) and motor fluctuations. Diary data from these studies were pooled and analyzed post hoc to characterize "OFF"-times around nighttime sleep and to explore the effects of opicapone 50 mg. METHODS: "OFF" before sleep (OBS), "OFF during the nighttime sleep period" (ODNSP), early morning "OFF" (EMO), and duration of nighttime sleep and awake periods were analyzed descriptively at baseline...

The role of the cortex in shaping automatic whole-body motor behaviors such as walking and balance is poorly understood. Gait and balance are typically mediated through subcortical circuits, with the cortex becoming engaged as needed on an individual basis by task difficulty and complexity. However, we lack a mechanistic understanding of how increased cortical contribution to whole-body movements shapes motor output. Here we use reactive balance recovery as a paradigm to identify relationships between hierarchical control mechanisms and their engagement across balance tasks of increasing difficulty in young adults...

Collective motion is ubiquitous in nature; groups of animals, such as fish, birds, and ungulates appear to move as a whole, exhibiting a rich behavioral repertoire that ranges from directed movement to milling to disordered swarming. Typically, such macroscopic patterns arise from decentralized, local interactions among constituent components (e.g., individual fish in a school). Preeminent models of this process describe individuals as self-propelled particles, subject to self-generated motion and "social forces" such as short-range repulsion and long-range attraction or alignment...

Saccadic choice tasks use eye movements as a response method, typically in a task where observers are asked to saccade as quickly as possible to an image of a prespecified target category. Using this approach, face-selective saccades have been observed within 100 ms poststimulus. When taking into account oculomotor processing, this suggests that faces can be detected in as little as 70 to 80 ms. It has therefore been suggested that face detection must occur during the initial feedforward sweep, since this latency leaves little time for feedback processing...

Disorders of the gastrointestinal tract in patients suffering from hypokinetic movement disorders, and in particular Parkinson's disease, have increasingly been the subject of more intensive neuromedical research. So far, few data are available for patients with hyperkinetic movement disorders and ataxias. This review article summarizes the currently available and relevant publications on this topic. The particular focus is on essential tremor, restless legs syndrome, Huntington's disease and the group of hereditary ataxias...

Binaural beat (BB) has been investigated as a potential modality to enhance sleep quality. In this study, we introduce a new form of BB, referred to as dynamic BB (DBB), which incorporates dynamically changing carrier frequency differences between the left and right ears. Specifically, the carrier frequency of the right ear varied between 100 and 103 Hz over a period, while the left ear remained fixed at 100 Hz, yielding a frequency difference range of 0 to 3 Hz. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of DBB on sleep quality...

Background: Individuals suffering from PTSD following childhood abuse represent a large subgroup of patients attending mental health services. The aim of phase-based treatment is to tailor treatment to the specific needs to childhood abuse survivors with PTSD with a Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation (STAIR) phase, in which emotion dysregulation and interpersonal problems are targeted, and a trauma-focused phase. Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare STAIR + Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) vs...

Visual crowding, the phenomenon in which the ability to distinguish objects is hindered in cluttered environments, has critical implications for various ophthalmic and neurological disorders. Traditional methods for assessing crowding involve time-consuming and attention-demanding psychophysical tasks, making routine examination challenging. This study sought to compare trial-based Alternative Forced-Choice (AFC) paradigms using either manual or eye movement responses and a continuous serial search paradigm employing eye movement responses to evaluate their efficiency in rapidly assessing peripheral crowding...

BACKGROUND: Limited research has explored the relationship between the valence of olfactory dysfunction and PD clinical symptoms. This study aimed to investigate correlations between the emotional valence of olfactory impairment and different domains of PD symptoms. METHODS: PD patients who fulfilled the clinically probable PD diagnostic criteria of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society Clinical Diagnostic Criteria for Parkinson's Disease were recruited from the Center for Parkinson and Movement Disorders at Taichung Veterans General Hospital between October 2016 and April 2022...

Sinus infection of Saccharomyces cerevisiae accelerates the aggregation of α-synuclein (α-syn) in A53T mice, which was caused by prion protein Sup35. Sup35 promotes α-syn aggregation in vitro and in vivo and leads to Parkinson's disease (PD)-like motor impairment in wildtype mice, suggesting that the yeast Sup35 triggers α-syn pathology in PD.

The rise of psychedelics in contemporary medicine has sparked interest in their potential therapeutic applications. While traditionally associated with countercultural movements and recreational use, recent research has shed light on the potential benefits of psychedelics in various mental health conditions. In this review, we explore the possible role of psychedelics in the management of chronic pain and opioid use disorder (OUD), 2 critical areas in need of innovative treatment options. Pain control remains a significant clinical challenge, particularly for individuals with OUD and those who receive long-term opioid therapy who develop marked tolerance to opioid-induced analgesia...

BACKGROUND: Iatrogenesis is an inevitable global threat to healthcare that drastically increases morbidity and mortality. Cancer is a fatal pathological condition that affects people of different ages, sexes, and races around the world. In addition to the detrimental cancer pathology, one of the most common contraindications and challenges observed in cancer patients is severe adverse drug effects and hypersensitivity reactions induced by chemotherapy. Chemotherapy-induced cognitive neurotoxicity is clinically referred to as Chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment (CICI), chemobrain, or chemofog...

Rhythm perception and synchronisation is musical ability with neural basis defined as the ability to perceive rhythm in music and synchronise body movements with it. The study aimed to check the errors of synchronisation and physiological response as a reaction of the subjects to metrorhythmic stimuli of synchronous and pseudosynchronous stimulation (synchronisation with an externally controlled rhythm, but in reality controlled or produced tone by tapping) Nineteen subjects without diagnosed motor disorders participated in the study...

This paper introduces a novel cable-driven robotic platform that enables six degrees-of-freedom (DoF) natural head-neck movements. Poor postural control of the head-neck can be a debilitating symptom of neurological disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and cerebral palsy. Current treatments using static neck collars are inadequate, and there is a need to develop new devices to empower movements and facilitate physical rehabilitation of the head-neck. State-of-the-art neck exoskeletons using lower DoF mechanisms with rigid linkages are limited by their hard motion constraints imposed on head-neck movements...