Brain and behavior
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Although recent studies have shown that botulinum toxin-A (BTX-A) has a good analgesic effect on trigeminal neuralgia (TN) and peripheral neuropathic pain (PNP), the quality of evidence is low due to limited data. This meta-analysis is used to synthesize existing evidence for the treatment of these conditions with BTX-A. ⋯ Pooled data from our meta-analysis suggest that BTX-A is efficacious and safe in treating TN and PNP. However, due to the limited sample size and heterogeneity, further larger and well-designed RCTs are imperative to validate these findings.
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Comparative Study
Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging versus task-based activity for language mapping and correlation with perioperative cortical mapping.
Preoperative language mapping using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) aims to identify eloquent areas in the vicinity of surgically resectable brain lesions. fMRI methodology relies on the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) analysis to identify brain language areas. Task-based fMRI studies the BOLD signal increase in brain areas during a language task to identify brain language areas, which requires patients' cooperation, whereas resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI) allows identification of functional networks without performing any explicit task through the analysis of the synchronicity of spontaneous BOLD signal oscillation between brain areas. The aim of this study was to compare preoperative language mapping using rsfMRI and task fMRI to cortical mapping (CM) during awake craniotomies. ⋯ Resting-state fMRI for presurgical language mapping is easy to implement, allowing the identification of functional brain language network with a greater sensitivity than task-based fMRI, at the cost of some precautions and a lower specificity. Further study is required to compare both the sensitivity and the specificity of the two methods and to evaluate the clinical value of rsfMRI as an alternative tool for the presurgical identification of brain language areas.
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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that generally starts slowly and leads to deterioration over time. Finding biomarkers more effective to predict AD transition is important for clinical medicine. And current research indicated that the lesion regions occur in both gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM). ⋯ These results indicated that there is a wide range of disconnection between WM and GM in AD, and association between WM and GM based on fMRI only is an effective strategy, and the FC between WM and GM could be a potential biomarker in the process of cognitive impairment and AD.