Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology
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Studies on lateralization of cerebral metabolism during Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), a well-known paradigm of category learning, have shown mixed results. Moreover, sorting dimension (number, color and shape) is a cofounder of laterality in WCST. Functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) has a high temporal resolution and allows the measurement of mean cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) in the middle (MCA) and anterior cerebral arteries (ACA), which supply lateral and medial parts of the frontal and parietal lobes, respectively. We used fTCD to investigate CBFV changes occurring in both MCA and ACA during WCST and different sorting dimensions. ⋯ Functional transcranial Doppler sonography can be used to assess CBFV during WCST and different sorting dimensions, and the latter modulate reaction time and cerebral hemodynamics.
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Changes in cardiovascular measures have been advocated as sensitive markers of phasic events arising from sleep. The current study was aimed to analyse the effects of periodic leg movements (PLMS) on heart rate variability (HRV) during NREM sleep in patients having restless legs syndrome and periodic leg movements during sleep. ⋯ Spectral HRV measures may offer a simple approach to estimate the degree of autonomic changes occurring in relation to periodic leg movements in restless legs patients.
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To test a technique called Directed Transfer Function (DTF) for the estimation of human cortical connectivity, by means of simulation study and human study, using high resolution EEG recordings related to finger movements. ⋯ The estimation of cortical connectivity can be performed not only with hemodynamic measurements, by using functional MRI recordings, but also with modern EEG recordings treated with advanced computational techniques.
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Comparative Study
Comparison between short train, monophasic and biphasic repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the human motor cortex.
To compare motor evoked potentials (MEPs) elicited by short train, monophasic, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulations (rTMS) with those by short train, biphasic rTMS. ⋯ This means that when using rTMS as a therapeutic tool or in research fields, the difference in waveforms of magnetic pulses (monophasic or biphasic) may affect the results.
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Comparative Study
Long-term prospective on-line real-time seizure prediction.
Epilepsy, one of the most common neurological disorders, constitutes a unique opportunity to study the dynamics of spatiotemporal state transitions in real, complex, nonlinear dynamical systems. In this study, we evaluate the performance of a prospective on-line real-time seizure prediction algorithm in two patients from a common database. ⋯ These results suggest that the proposed seizure prediction algorithm could be used in novel diagnostic and therapeutic applications in epileptic patients.