Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Oct 2003
Multicenter StudyMulticentre European study of thalamic stimulation in essential tremor: a six year follow up.
Thalamic stimulation is an efficient treatment for disabling essential tremor, as previously shown, but follow up has mostly been short term. ⋯ Good reduction in tremor can be maintained for more than six years in the majority of these severely disabled patients. Thalamic stimulation can be recommended in essential tremor where there is insufficient response to drug treatment. Surgical procedures and follow up should be concentrated in relatively few centres, which will thereby acquire a high degree of expertise.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Oct 2003
Case Reports"Bottom-up" and "top-down" effects on reading saccades: a case study.
To investigate the role right foveal/parafoveal sparing plays in reading single words, word arrays, and eye movement patterns in a single case with an incongruous hemianopia. ⋯ The presence of a word length effect (typically associated with pure alexia) can be caused by a macular splitting hemianopia. Right parafoveal vision is not critically involved in single word identification, but is when planning left to right reading saccades. The influence of top-down attentional processes during text reading can be visualised in parafoveal V1 using PET.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Oct 2003
Case ReportsBrain lesions in the course of generalised tetanus.
A 47-year-old woman developed left hemiparesis primarily affecting the lower limbs during the course of severe generalised tetanus. MRI on the 82nd hospital day revealed cortical and subcortical lesions predominantly in the right frontal and parietal lobes in addition to marked brain atrophy. Three months later, the enhancing lesions were still present on follow up MRI. We postulate that structures above brainstem may be involved in severe generalised tetanus.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Oct 2003
Review Case ReportsChronic deep brain stimulation for the treatment of tremor in multiple sclerosis: review and case reports.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) offers a non-ablative alternative to thalamotomy for the surgical treatment of medically refractory tremor in multiple sclerosis. However, relatively few outcomes have been reported. ⋯ Few of the studies reviewed used highly standardised quantitative outcome measures, and follow up periods were generally one year or less. Nonetheless, the data suggest that chronic DBS often produces improved tremor control in multiple sclerosis. Complete cessation of tremor is not necessarily achieved, there are cases in which tremor control decreases over time, and frequent reprogramming appears to be necessary.
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J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. · Oct 2003
ReviewNeuroimaging tools to rate regional atrophy, subcortical cerebrovascular disease, and regional cerebral blood flow and metabolism: consensus paper of the EADC.
Neuroimaging is a mainstay in the differential diagnosis of patients with cognitive impairment. The often equivocal clinical pictures, the prognostic uncertainty of the earliest stages of mild cognitive impairment, and the subtle brain changes mean that neuroimaging techniques are of potentially great incremental diagnostic value. ⋯ The choice of the method is not obvious, and current guidelines provide no indications on which tools should be preferred. In this paper, we give indications for tools with demonstrated accuracy for detecting regional atrophy, cerebrovascular disease, and regional brain function, and discuss these according to increasing technological complexity, ranging from those with high feasibility that can be used at the patient's bedside to highly technological ones that require trained personnel and specific hardware and software.