Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry
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Ion channels provide the basis for the regulation of electrical excitability in the central and peripheral nervous systems. This review deals with the techniques that make the study of structure and function of single channel molecules in living cells possible. These are the patch clamp technique, which was derived from the conventional voltage clamp method and is currently being developed for automated and high throughput measurements; and fluorescence and nano-techniques, which were originally applied to non-biological surfaces and are only recently being used to study cell membranes and their proteins, especially in combination with the patch clamp technique. The characterisation of the membrane channels by techniques that resolve their morphological and physical properties and dynamics in space and time in the nano range is termed nanoscopy.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Nov 2003
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialStroke motor recovery: active neuromuscular stimulation and repetitive practice schedules.
To investigate progress toward motor recovery in patients with chronic hemiparesis (mean time since stroke 3.2 years), comparing different types of practice schedules. ⋯ Upper extremity rehabilitation intervention of active stimulation and blocked practice performed as well as stimulation/random practice. Moreover, these purposeful voluntary movement findings support and extend sensorimotor integration theory to both practice schedules.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Nov 2003
The longitudinal relation between brain lesion load and atrophy in multiple sclerosis: a 14 year follow up study.
Studies have suggested that T2 lesion activity is prominent in early relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, whereas brain atrophy, while seen early, appears more evident in later progressive disease. The temporal relation between these processes remains unclear. ⋯ From this, it appears that early rather than later focal lesion accumulation relates to subsequent brain atrophy, but factors unconnected directly with lesion formation probably also play a significant role in determining such atrophy.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Nov 2003
Medical and environmental risk factors for sporadic frontotemporal dementia: a retrospective case-control study.
A retrospective case-control study was carried out on 80 patients with sporadic frontotemporal dementia and 124 age, sex, and surrogate informant matched controls with respect to various medical and environmental risk factors. Head trauma was associated with an odds ratio of 3.3 (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.3 to 8.1). ⋯ Thyroid disease was associated with a 2.5 times increased risk of frontotemporal dementia (95% CI, 0.9 to 7.9), which was not statistically significant (p = 0.09) owing to limited power. As altered thyroid hormone status has been observed before in frontotemporal dementia, future studies will be important to confirm this observation.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Nov 2003
Psychopathology in people with epilepsy and intellectual disability; an investigation of potential explanatory variables.
There are few studies on epilepsy and psychopathology in people with intellectual disability (mental retardation) despite epilepsy prevalence rates that are thirty times higher than in the general population. The aims of this study, therefore, were to identify reliable, epilepsy-specific predictors of psychiatric and behavioural disorder in these patients, and to investigate reliable predictors of carer stress. ⋯ Although epilepsy in itself may be a risk factor for psychopathology in a minority of people with intellectual disability, some epilepsy-specific factors may predict psychiatric disorder. Behavioural problems need to be considered separately from psychiatric disorder because general factors, more closely associated with disability, are stronger predictors of their occurrence.