Journal of neuroimaging : official journal of the American Society of Neuroimaging
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Extending communication for patients with disorders of consciousness.
The difficulty of distinguishing disorders of consciousness from certain disorders of communication leads to the possibility of false diagnosis. Our aim is to communicate with patients with disorders of consciousness through asking them to answer questions with "yes/no" by performing mental imagery tasks using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). ⋯ The results from 2 patients provide independent support of similar work by others with 3 T fMRI, and demonstrate broader clinical utility for these tests at 1.5 T despite lower signal-to-noise ratio. Based on the control results, mental calculation adds a robust imagery task for use in future studies of this kind.
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Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) with nontumoral amygdala enlargement (AE) has been reported to be a possible subtype of TLE without hippocampal sclerosis (HS). The purpose of this study was to clarify morphologic and functional characteristics of TLE with AE (TLE + AE). ⋯ TLE + AE is different from MTLE + HS from morphologic and functional points of view, and the enlarged amygdala per se is potentially an epileptic focus in patients with partial epilepsy.
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Comparative Study
No regional gray matter atrophy differences between pediatric- and adult-onset relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.
To investigate differences in region-specific gray matter (GM) damage between adults with pediatric-onset (PO) multiple sclerosis (MS) and adult-onset (AO) MS. ⋯ Regional GM differences were not found between POMS adults and MS controls matched for age or disease duration. Although of limited sample size, these findings suggest that there are no regional GM atrophy differences between RR POMS and AOMS.
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We report the case of a 67-year-old man with repeating cerebral embolism caused by a dolichoectatic right common carotid artery. The patient had a history of hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, cigarette smoking, and a postoperative abdominal aortic aneurysm. He presented with a sudden onset of weakness of the left arm and leg. ⋯ Carotid duplex ultrasonography showed a dolichoectatic right common carotid artery with a maximum diameter of 39 mm with thick plaque and strong spontaneous echo contrast. The flow velocity was considerably reduced, which caused thrombus formation, and strong antithrombotic therapy was required. This case provides a rare example of ischemic stroke caused by extracranial carotid artery dolichoectasia.
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Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I)-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) is a disabling neurological disorder characterized by inflammatory changes in the spinal cord. We used a semiautomatic technique to quantify spinal cord volume from 3-dimensional MR images of patients with HAM/TSP. ⋯ Semiautomatic spinal cord volume quantification is a sensitive technique for quantifying the extent of spinal cord involvement in HAM/TSP.