Journal of neuroimaging : official journal of the American Society of Neuroimaging
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Case Reports
An Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis-Like Illness in the Elderly: Neuroimaging and Neuropathology Findings.
Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) is a rare demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS) that classically occurs in children and adolescents. It characteristically presents with acute inflammation, resulting in demyelination, often following an infectious disease. ADEM has been described in adult patients, but the incidence in the adult and especially elderly population is low. ⋯ Each of these patients was found to have pathological findings of acute demyelination on tissue diagnosis, suggesting ADEM or ADEM-like disease. The initial presentation and imaging was pointing toward other diagnoses. Broad differential diagnosis is important, especially for older patients, and pathological proof might be warranted for a conclusive diagnosis.
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African Americans with multiple sclerosis (AAwMS) have different disease phenotypes when compared to Caucasians Americans with MS (CAwMS). The pathologic basis of this difference in disease presentation is unknown. ⋯ AAwMS and CAwMS patients differ with regard to global and regional cortical thickness and thalamic volume. This diverging pattern of gray matter volumetrics among otherwise matched patients suggests that racial-specific disease differences may exist.
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Major Axis-I disorders including major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BD), anxiety disorder, and schizophrenia are associated with a host of aberrations in the way social stimuli are processed. Face perception tasks are often used in neuroimaging research of emotion processing in both healthy and patient populations, and to date, there exists a mounting body of evidence, both behavioral and within the brain, indicating that emotional faces compared to neutral faces are processed abnormally by those with Axis-I disorders relative to healthy control (HC) groups. The use of neutral faces as a "baseline control condition" is predicated on the assumption that neutral faces are processed in the same way HCs and individuals with major Axis-I disorders. ⋯ Specifically, increased amygdala activation was consistently reported in response to neutral faces in anxiety disorders and schizophrenia. Abnormal medial PFC activity was reported in patients with MDD, and patients with BD exhibit decreased activity in the DLPFC and ACC relative to HCs. In addition, specific suggestions to overcome these obstacles with new research and additional analyses are discussed.
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Review
Wallerian Degeneration Beyond the Corticospinal Tracts: Conventional and Advanced MRI Findings.
Wallerian degeneration (WD) is defined as progressive anterograde disintegration of axons and accompanying demyelination after an injury to the proximal axon or cell body. Since the 1980s and 1990s, conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences have been shown to be sensitive to changes of WD in the subacute to chronic phases. More recently, advanced MRI techniques, such as diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), have demonstrated some of earliest changes attributed to acute WD, typically on the order of days. ⋯ This article reviews the utility of conventional and advanced MRI techniques for assessing WD, by focusing not only on the corticospinal tract but also other neural tracts less commonly thought of, including corticopontocerebellar tract, dentate-rubro-olivary pathway, posterior column of the spinal cord, corpus callosum, limbic circuit, and optic pathway. The basic anatomy of these neural pathways will be discussed, followed by a comprehensive review of existing literature supported by instructive clinical examples. The goal of this review is for readers to become more familiar with both conventional and advanced MRI findings of WD involving important neural pathways, as well as to illustrate increasing utility of advanced MRI techniques in providing important prognostic information for various pathologies.
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Observational Study
An Observational Study to Assess Brain MRI Change and Disease Progression in Multiple Sclerosis Clinical Practice-The MS-MRIUS Study.
To describe methodology, interim baseline, and longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acquisition parameter characteristics of the multiple sclerosis clinical outcome and MRI in the United States (MS-MRIUS). ⋯ The MS-MRIUS study linked the clinical and brain MRI outcomes into an integrated database to create a cohort of fingolimod patients in real-world practice. Variability was observed in MRI acquisition protocols overtime.