Brain training

Alzheimer's disease (AD), a neurodegenerative disease that mostly affects the elderly, slowly impairs memory, cognition, and daily tasks. AD has long been one of the most debilitating chronic neurological disorders, affecting mostly people over 65. In this study, we investigated the use of Vision Transformer (ViT) for Magnetic Resonance Image processing in the context of AD diagnosis. ViT was utilized to extract features from MRIs, map them to a feature sequence, perform sequence modeling to maintain interdependencies, and classify features using a time series transformer...

Neurofeedback (NF) training is a closed-loop brain training in which participants learn to regulate their neural activation. NF training of alpha (8-12 Hz) activity has been reported to enhance working memory capacity, but whether it affects the precision in working memory has not yet been explored. Moreover, whether NF training distinctively influences performance in different types of working memory tasks remains unclear. Therefore, the present study conducted a randomized, single-blind, sham-controlled experiment to investigate how alpha NF training affected the capacity and precision of working memory, as well as the related neural change...

Interdisciplinary fetal-neonatal neurology (FNN) training considers a woman's reproductive and pregnancy health histories when assessing the "four great neonatal neurological syndromes". This maternal-child dyad exemplifies the symptomatic neonatal minority, compared with the silent majority of healthy children who experience preclinical diseases with variable expressions over the first 1000 days. Healthy maternal reports with reassuring fetal surveillance testing preceded signs of fetal distress during parturition...

AIM: To develop and validate models based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) radiomics for predicting the efficacy of epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) in EGFR-mutant non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with brain metastases. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 117 EGFR-mutant NSCLC patients with brain metastases who received EGFR-TKI treatment were included in this study from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2021. Patients were randomly divided into training and validation cohorts in a ratio of 2:1...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Transvenous embolization has emerged as a novel technique for treating selected brain AVMs with high reported occlusion rates. However, it requires anatomic and technical skills to be successful and to ensure patient safety. Therefore, training and testing are essential for preparing clinicians to perform these procedures. Our aim was to develop and test a novel, patient-specific brain AVM in vitro model for transvenous embolization by using 3D printing technology...

The benefits of physical exercise (PE) on memory consolidation have been well-documented in both healthy and memory-impaired animals. However, the underlying mechanisms through which PE exerts these effects are still unclear. In this study, we aimed to investigate the role of hippocampal protein synthesis in memory modulation by acute PE in rats. After novel object recognition (NOR) training, rats were subjected to a 30-minute moderate-intensity acute PE on the treadmill, while control animals did not undergo any procedures...

BACKGROUND: Organophosphates and pyrethroids are two major groups of insecticides used for crop protection worldwide. They are neurotoxicants and exposure during vulnerable windows of brain development may have long-term impact on human neurodevelopment. Only few longitudinal studies have investigated associations between prenatal exposure to these substances and intelligence quotient (IQ) at school age in populations with low, mainly dietary, exposure. OBJECTIVE: To investigate associations between maternal urinary concentrations of insecticide metabolites at gestational week 28 and IQ in offspring at 7-years of age...

The development of new molecules for the treatment of calmodulin related cardiovascular or neurodegenerative diseases is an interesting goal. In this work, we introduce a novel strategy with four main steps: (1) chemical synthesis of target molecules, (2) Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) biosensor development and in vitro biological assay of new derivatives, (3) Cheminformatics models development and in vivo activity prediction, and (4) Docking studies. This strategy is illustrated with a case study...

Recent research shows prominent effects of pregnancy and the parenthood transition on structural brain characteristics in humans. Here, we present a comprehensive study of how parental status and number of children born/fathered links to markers of brain and cellular ageing in 36,323 UK Biobank participants (age range 44.57-82.06 years; 52% female). To assess global effects of parenting on the brain, we trained a 3D convolutional neural network on T1-weighted magnetic resonance images, and estimated brain age in a held-out test set...

Thailand entered an aged society phase in 2000, with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and frailty becoming prevalent among the older adult population. However, no studies have yet examined these issues specifically within rural communities. This study aims to explore the relationship between frailty and MCI among older adults in rural Thailand. It was a cross-sectional study conducted between December 2022 and June 2023. A questionnaire was administered by trained village health volunteers. The survey targeted older adults aged 60 years and above, residing in rural Chiang Mai, Thailand, with those having a history of dementia, depression, and brain injury being excluded from participation...

The identification of EEG biomarkers to discriminate Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) from Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) conditions is a complex task which requires great clinical effort and expertise. We exploit the self-attention component of the Transformer architecture to obtain physiological explanations of the model's decisions in the discrimination of 56 SCD and 45 MCI patients using resting-state EEG. Specifically, an interpretability workflow leveraging attention scores and time-frequency analysis of EEG epochs through Continuous Wavelet Transform is proposed...

External ventricular drain (EVD) is a common, yet challenging neurosurgical procedure of placing a catheter into the brain ventricular system that requires prolonged training for surgeons to improve the catheter placement accuracy. In this paper, we introduce NeuroLens, an Augmented Reality (AR) system that provides neurosurgeons with guidance that aides them in completing an EVD catheter placement. NeuroLens builds on prior work in AR-assisted EVD to present a registered hologram of a patient's ventricles to the surgeons, and uniquely incorporates guidance on the EVD catheter's trajectory, angle of insertion, and distance to the target...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of Cogmed Working Memory Training (Cogmed) in improving working memory (WM) and decision making (DM) in childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI), and any associated increases in functional outcomes such as academic achievement in mathematics, behavior, social skills, and quality of life. METHOD: A randomized controlled trial of the Cogmed (RM version) intervention for children with TBI. A total of 69 children post-TBI were screened for WM impairments, of which 31 eligible participants ( M age : 10...

BACKGROUND: Total marrow (lymphoid) irradiation (TMI/TMLI) is a radiotherapy treatment used to selectively target the bone marrow and lymph nodes in conditioning regimens for allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. A complex field geometry is needed to cover the large planning target volume (PTV) of TMI/TMLI with volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT). Five isocenters and ten overlapping fields are needed for the upper body, while, for patients with large anatomical conformation, two specific isocenters are placed on the arms...

Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging is an important tool for mapping tissue microstructure and structural connectivity non-invasively in the in vivo human brain. Numerous diffusion signal models are proposed to quantify microstructural properties. Nonetheless, accurate estimation of model parameters is computationally expensive and impeded by image noise. Supervised deep learning-based estimation approaches exhibit efficiency and superior performance but require additional training data and may be not generalizable...

Given the aging population, finding solutions to retain optimal cognitive capacity is a research priority. The potential of physical activity to reduce the risk of cognitive decline and to enhance cognitive functioning is established. Combining physical with cognitive activity has been put forward as a potentially even more effective way to promote healthy cognitive aging. Most studies on combined interventions have however been conducted in laboratory settings. This paper reports on a two-phased pilot study evaluating the acceptability and feasibility of a newly developed real-life cognitively enriched walking program for adults aged 65+ years...

Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) affecting the posterior cerebral artery (PCA) represents a unique clinical challenge, necessitating a multifaceted approach to rehabilitation. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of physiotherapeutic interventions tailored specifically for individuals with AIS involving the PCA territory. The PCA supplies critical areas of the brain responsible for visual processing, memory, and sensory integration. Consequently, patients with PCA infarcts often exhibit a distinct set of neurological deficits, including visual field disturbances, cognitive impairments, and sensory abnormalities...

BACKGROUND: The ability to relearn a lost skill is critical to motor recovery after a stroke. Previous studies indicate that stroke typically affects the processes underlying motor control and execution but not the learning of those skills. However, these prior studies could have been confounded by the presence of significant motor impairments and/or have not focused on motor acuity tasks (i.e., tasks focusing on the quality of executed actions) that have direct functional relevance to rehabilitation...

Grade IV glioma, formerly known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive and lethal type of brain tumor, and its treatment remains challenging in part due to extensive interpatient heterogeneity in disease driving mechanisms and lack of prognostic and predictive biomarkers. Using mechanistic inference of node-edge relationship (MINER), we have analyzed multiomics profiles from 516 patients and constructed an atlas of causal and mechanistic drivers of interpatient heterogeneity in GBM (gbmMINER)...

In the realm of motor rehabilitation, Brain-Computer Interface Neurofeedback Training (BCI-NFT) emerges as a promising strategy. This aims to utilize an individual's brain activity to stimulate or assist movement, thereby strengthening sensorimotor pathways and promoting motor recovery. Employing various methodologies, BCI-NFT has been shown to be effective for enhancing motor function primarily of the upper limb in stroke, with very few studies reported in cerebral palsy (CP). Our main objective was to develop an electroencephalography (EEG)-based BCI-NFT system, employing an associative learning paradigm, to improve selective control of ankle dorsiflexion in CP and potentially other neurological populations...