Stereotaxic neurosurgery in large animals is used widely in different sophisticated models, where precision is becoming more crucial as desired anatomical target regions are becoming smaller. Individually calculated coordinates are necessary in large an...

Pre-clinical studies in rodent models of stroke suggest that deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the lateral cerebellar nucleus (LCN) may be a promising treatment to enhance recovery after stroke.Our aim here was to map, both anatomically and functionally, ...

The deficiency of remyelination processes in multiple sclerosis (MS) contributes to the formation of the chronic demyelinated plaques that leads to irreversible neurological deficits. Long-term cuprizone treatment of C57BL/6 mice resulted in pronounced ...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies indicate that episodic simulation (i.e., imagining specific future experiences) and episodic memory (i.e., remembering specific past experiences) are associated with enhanced activity in a common set of neural regions referred to as the core network. This network comprises the hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, and left angular gyrus, among other regions. Because fMRI data are correlational, it is unknown whether activity increases in core network regions are critical for episodic simulation and episodic memory. In the current study, we used MRI-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to assess whether temporary disruption of the left angular gyrus would impair both episodic simulation and memory (16 participants, 10 females). Relative to TMS to a control site (vertex), disruption of the left angular gyrus significantly reduced the number of internal (i.e., episodic) details produced during the simulation and memory tasks, with a concomitant i...

Rationale: Grief is considered an appropriate and time-constrained response to a loss. Yet, mothers who lose their children often experience overwhelming sense of grief that may last for years and decade. The profound grief is often triggered by memorie...

Previous studies consistently found age-related brain structural and functional disruptions in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). DLPFC plays important roles in higher cognitive functions including working memory, inhibition, episodic memory, decis...

About 1.2 million Americans and a much larger world-wide population have lost a limb as a consequence of trauma or disease. Loss of a limb usually leads to abnormal sensory and affective feelings from the missing and/or residual limb, the most troubling...

It is a fundamental question whether the medial temporal lobe (MTL) supports only long-term memory encoding, or contributes to working memory (WM) processes as well. Recent data suggest that the MTL is activated whenever multiple items or item features are being maintained in WM. This may rely on interactions between the MTL or the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and content-specific areas in the inferior temporal (IT) cortex. Here, we investigated the neural mechanism through which the MTL, PFC, and IT cortex interact during WM maintenance. First, we quantified phase synchronization of intracranial EEG data in epilepsy patients with electrodes in both regions. Second, we used directional coupling analysis to study whether oscillatory activity in the IT cortex drives the MTL or vice versa. Finally, we investigated functional connectivity in functional magnetic resonance imaging data of healthy subjects with seeds in the MTL and PFC. With increasing load, EEG phase synchronization between the IT cortex and anterior...

The purpose of this study was to determine which cerebral structures are activated by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). To this end, we measured the effective depth (ED) of TMS, defined as the maximal distance from coil to scalp at which a motor response could be evoked. These physiological measurements were correlated with anatomical measurements obtained by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded by EMG from the first dorsal interosseus (FDI) muscle. Two intensities of stimulation (1.1 x Motor Threshold (MT) and 2 x MT) and two levels of contraction (at rest and 10% of maximal voluntary contraction, MVC) were tested with two different sized figure-of-eight coils. At rest, the ED at 1.1 x MT was 3 ± 1 mm and 6 ± 2 mm, with the small and the big coil respectively. With a stimulus of 2 x MT, the EDs increased to 12 ± 1 mm and 19 ± 3 mm. Remarkably, for all stimulus intensities the ED increased when the FDI was voluntarily activated. For example, stimulation with...

Human motor activity possesses fractal structures as characterized by similar fluctuation patterns across multiple time scales from seconds to hours. Such fractal regulation (FR) is robust in healthy young subjects and is degraded with aging. Our recent...