Front Hum Neurosci
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Depending on severity, traumatic brain injury (TBI) induces immediate neuropathological effects that in the mildest form may be transient but as severity increases results in neural damage and degeneration. The first phase of neural degeneration is explainable by the primary acute and secondary neuropathological effects initiated by the injury; however, neuroimaging studies demonstrate a prolonged period of pathological changes that progressively occur even during the chronic phase. ⋯ Neuroimaging quantification in TBI demonstrates degenerative effects from brain injury over time. An adverse synergistic influence of TBI with aging may predispose the brain injured individual for the development of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders long after surviving the brain injury.
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We wanted to find out whether people who suffer from dizziness take longer than people who do not, to perform a motor imagery task that involves implicit whole body rotation. Our prediction was that people in the "dizzy" group would take longer at a left/right neck rotation judgment task but not a left/right hand judgment task, because actually performing the former, but not the latter, would exacerbate their dizziness. Secondly, we predicted that when dizzy participants responded to neck rotation images, responses would be greatest when images were in the upside down orientation; an orientation with greatest dizzy-provoking potential. ⋯ Results showed that participants in the "dizzy" group were slower than controls at both tasks (p = 0.015), but this was not related to task (p = 0.498). Similarly, "dizzy" participants were not proportionally worse at images of different orientations (p = 0.878). Our findings suggest impaired performance in dizzy people, an impairment that may be confined to motor imagery or may extend more generally.
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Patients with chronic pain often show disturbances in their body perception. Understanding the exact role played by pain is however complex, as confounding factors can contribute to the observed deficits in these clinical populations. To address this question, acute experimental pain was used to test the effect of lateralized pain on body perception in healthy subjects. ⋯ These opposite patterns suggest that the shift in SBM is likely to be specifically linked to the stimulation modality. It is concluded that acute experimental pain can induce an SBM shift toward the stimulated side, which might be functionally beneficial to protect the painful area of the body. Interestingly, it appears to be easier to bias SBM toward the right side, regardless of the modality and of the stimulated side.
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Schizophrenia is characterized by aberrant intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) within and between intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs), including the Default Mode- (DMN), Salience- (SN), and Central Executive Network (CEN). The anterior insula (AI) of the SN has been demonstrated to modulate DMN/CEN interactions. Recently, we found that the dependence of DMN/CEN interactions on SN's right AI activity is altered in patients with schizophrenia in acute psychosis and related to psychotic symptoms, indicating a link between aberrant AI, DMN, CEN, and psychosis. ⋯ Furthermore, decreased intra-iFC of the left AI correlated with both severity of negative symptoms and increased inter-iFC between SN and CEN. Our result provides first evidence for a relationship between AI dysfunction and altered between-network interactions in schizophrenia during psychotic remission, which is related to the severity of negative symptoms. Together with our previous results, data suggest specific SN/DMN/CEN reorganization in schizophrenia with distinct insular pathways for distinct symptom dimensions.
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Prism adaptation improves a wide range of manifestations of left spatial neglect in right-brain-damaged patients. The typical paradigm consists in repeated pointing movements to visual targets, while patients wear prism goggles that displace the visual scene rightwards. Recently, we demonstrated the efficacy of a novel adaptation procedure, involving a variety of every-day visuo-motor activities. ⋯ A similar trend was found for the visual task in both groups. Finally, participants rated the ecological procedure as more pleasant, less monotonous, and more sustainable than the pointing procedure. These results qualify ecological visuo-motor activities as an effective prism-adaptation procedure, suitable for the rehabilitation of spatial neglect.