Neuroscience
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Philippe Ascher spent his last two decades as an emeritus Professor, working in the heart of Paris. Together with his wife Jacsue they were hosted in Alain Marty's laboratory and enjoyed the happiest retirement. ⋯ This period led us from NMDA receptors to the corelease of acetylcholine and glutamate by spinal motoneurons to Renshaw cells and then to the stoichiometric variants of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Here I present a brief history of our collaboration during this period.
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Psychiatric disturbances are commonly associated with adult-onset isolated dystonia (AOID); however, the mechanisms underlying psychiatric abnormalities in AOID remain unknown. We aimed to investigate the structural and functional brain changes in AOID patients with anxiety, and identify imaging biomarkers for diagnosing anxiety. Structural and functional magnetic resonance was performed on 69 AOID patients and 35 healthy controls (HCs). ⋯ ALFF and ReHo in the ANG. L exhibited an ROC AUC of 0.904 and 0.851, respectively, in distinguishing AOID patients with anxiety from those without and an ROC AUC of 0.887 and 0.853, respectively, in distinguishing AOID patients with anxiety from HCs. These findings provide new insights into the pathophysiology of psychiatric disturbances and highlight potential candidate biomarkers for identifying anxiety in AOID patients.
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This study aimed to evaluate the potential benefits of acetyl-L-carnitine (ALCAR) in the context of valproate-induced autism. After prenatal exposure to valproate (VPA; 600 mg/kg, i.p.) on embryonic day 12.5, followed by ALCAR treatment (300 mg/kg on postnatal days 21-49, p.o.), assessment of oxidative stress, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP), mitochondrial biogenesis, parvalbumin interneurons, and hippocampal volume was conducted. These assessments were carried out subsequent to the evaluation of autism-like behaviors. ⋯ In contrast, administrating ALCAR attenuated behavioral deficits, reduced oxidative stress, improved parvalbumin-positive neuronal population, and properly modified MMP and mitochondrial biogenesis. Collectively, our results indicate that oral administration of ALCAR ameliorates autism-like behaviors, partly through its targeting oxidative stress and mitochondrial biogenesis. This suggests that ALCAR may have potential benefits ASD managing.
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Deception is a complex social behavior that manifests in various forms, including scams. To successfully deceive victims, liars have to continually devise novel scams. This ability to create novel scams represents one kind of malevolent creativity, referred to as lying. ⋯ Additionally, the perception of the victim's emotions (related to right pre-motor cortex) might diminish the quality of highly original scams. Furthermore, an efficient and cohesive neural coupling state appears to be a key factor in generating high-creativity scams. These findings suggest that the right FPC was crucial in scam creation, highlighting a neural basis for balancing malevolent creativity against moral considerations in high-creativity deception.
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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a prevalent and debilitating neurodegenerative disease that leads to substantial loss of quality of life. Therapies currently available for AD do not modify the disease course and have limited efficacy in symptom control. ⋯ Entropy, a novel analysis for better understanding the nonlinear nature of neurophysiological data, has demonstrated consistent accuracy in disease detection. This literature review characterizes the use of entropy-based analyses from functional neuroimaging tools, including electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), in patients with AD for disease detection, therapeutic response measurement, and providing clinical insights.