Neuroscience letters
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Neuroscience letters · Apr 2020
ReviewAutomated quantitative assessment of cerebral edema after ischemic stroke using CSF volumetrics.
Reduction in CSF volume from baseline to follow-up CT at or beyond 24 -hs can serve as a quantitative biomarker of cerebral edema after stroke. We have demonstrated that assessment of CSF displacement reflects edema metrics such as lesion volume, midline shift, and neurologic deterioration. ⋯ Finally, we have created a stroke repository that can archive and process images from thousands of stroke patients in order to measure CSF volumetrics. We plan on applying this metric as a quantitative endophenotype of cerebral edema to facilitate early prediction of clinical deterioration as well as large-scale genetic studies.
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Neuroscience letters · Mar 2020
Sevoflurane anesthesia-mediated oxidative stress and cognitive impairment in hippocampal neurons of old rats can be ameliorated by expression of brain derived neurotrophic factor.
Postoperative cognitive dysfunction in elderly patients has been related to neurodegenerative disorders and mortality. Sevoflurane anesthesia has been implicated in both postoperative cognitive dysfunction and neurotoxicity. Given the advantages of using inhaled anesthetics like sevoflurane, it is important to understand how their usage results in neurotoxicity and subsequently devise ways to circumvent or attenuate the anesthetic-mediated induction in neurotoxicity. ⋯ And the activation of PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling pathways are attenuated in sevoflurane-mediated anesthesia. Adeno-associated virus (AAV)-mediated expression of Bdnf, but not controls EGFP, attenuated sevoflurane-induced oxidative stress and cognitive impairment in the rats. Our results highlight that AAV-mediated gene therapy might offer a potential therapeutic opportunity to treat post-operative cognitive impairment resulting from inhaled anesthetics.
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Neuroscience letters · Mar 2020
A novel mouse model of mild traumatic brain injury using laser-induced shock waves.
Blast-induced mild traumatic brain injury (mild bTBI) has been a frequent battlefield injury in soldiers during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Understanding the pathophysiology and determining effective treatments for mild bTBI has become an international problem in the field of neurotrauma research. Contributing to this problem is a lack of an experimental model that accurately mimics the characteristics of mild bTBI. ⋯ We also observed an increase in 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine-positive, proliferating cells in the dentate gyrus during the acute phase and a subsequent decrease during the chronic phase. This model appears to be an accurate representation of the damage occurring in actual mild bTBI patients. We also found that an increase in cell proliferation in the dentate gyrus during the acute phase is the most prominent feature after a TBI.
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Neuroscience letters · Feb 2020
Alterations of grey matter volumes and network-level functions in patients with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The purpose of this study was to investigate structural and functional alterations of the brain in the patients with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) and further investigate how these alterations correlated to parameters of pulmonary function test, cognitive function and disease duration in patients with COPD. ⋯ Our findings provided evidence that COPD patients showed decreased GMV and regional and network-level functional alterations within the visual network, frontoparietal network and other networks. We speculated that atrophic GMV and FC of visual network and frontoparietal network are involved in the neural mechanism of mild cognitive impairment in stable COPD patients.
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Neuroscience letters · Feb 2020
A systematic review of the proposed mechanisms underpinning pain relief by primary motor cortex stimulation in animals.
Experimental treatments for treating neuropathic pain include transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and invasive electric motor cortex stimulation (iMCS) of the primary motor cortex (M1). Mechanisms of action of both methods, however, remain largely elusive. Within this paper, we focus on animal-based experiments in order to investigate the biological mechanisms that are involved in alleviating pain by use of TMS and/or iMCS. ⋯ Furthermore, structural and functional changes within the thalamus, striatum, periaqueductal grey, rostral ventromedial medulla and dorsal horn were reported to occur. Although widespread, all areas in which structural and functional changes occurred after TMS and iMCS have been found to be interconnected anatomically. This could provide a rationale for future investigations of treating neuropathic pain by use of neuromodulation.