Intrastriatal implantation of human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells attached to gelatin microcarriers (GM) produces long-term motor improvement in humans with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Sustained activity has also been demonstrated in both rodent and monkey models of PD with post-mortem histological evidence of microcarrier-attached RPE cells. Recently, cell labeling methods have been described that allow the in vivo follow-up of implanted cells through non-invasive imaging methods such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We describe here the safety and efficacy of labeling RPE cells with dextran-coated superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles for future in vivo MR imaging. Feridex I.V. (a ferumoxide solution composed of a dextran coated SPIO nanoparticle suspension), in combination with the transfection agent protamine sulfate (Pro), is used as a pre-labeling agent that is taken up by RPE cells in vitro. Using an immortalized, commercial RPE cell-line (RPE-19), SPIO-labeled RPE-19 cells we...

It has been hypothesized that the auditory system is hierarchically organized, with the primary auditory cortex (AI) encoding the stimulus in the most direct fashion, and upper levels in the hierarchy extracting more complex features of the stimulus. Blood-oxygenation level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate the functional organization of the cortical response to various complex, non-speech stimuli, including pure tones, band-passed noise, and upward and downward frequency modulated (FM) sweeps. 15 right-handed normal volunteers performed a one-back task while attending to binaurally presented 30s blocks of the four stimuli classes, each block consisting of stimuli of differing frequencies from the same class. Statistical maps measuring the association between hemodynamic response and stimulus class were made for each subject and combined in stereotaxic space. Bandpass noise showed greater activation than FM sweeps in right auditory cortex and inferior frontal gyrus. Th...

Latent vertical eye position imbalances are physiologically compensated by vertical fusional vergence to prevent diplopia. In some people, such imbalances develop early in life and increase gradually so that enhanced vertical fusional vergence can inter...

Introduction: Chronically paralyzed spinal cord injured (SCI) patients have shown the ability to generate voluntary step-like movements via electrical spinal stimulation. Intraspinal microstimulation (ISMS) is a technique which has shown promise in rest...

The majority of people over the age of 80 are affected by sarcopenia, or loss of muscle mass and strength, resulting in impaired physical function and increased risk of mortality. Interestingly, after the age of 80 humans may lose up to 50% of their mot...

Successful memory formation and retrieval crucially depends on the ability to distinguish between overlapping memory representations. The CA3 and dentate gyrus (DG) subfields of the hippocampus (HC) have been implicated in the orthogonalization of mnemo...

Previous research investigating cortical plasticity in age-related hearing loss provides evidence for cross-modal reorganization in the auditory cortex, additional recruitment of the frontal lobe and increased coupling of visual and auditory cortex for ...

Research provides compelling evidence that non-Hispanic Blacks (NHB) engage in pain catastrophizing (a maladaptive tendency to negatively evaluate one’s ability to cope with pain) more often than non-Hispanic Whites (NHW), while NHWs more often use othe...

Studies of human neuroanatomy have advanced from the pseudoscience of phrenology, to the localization of functions with ablation research, and recently culminated in studies of brain wiring or the “connectome”. Future innovations in brain science depend...

Erratum: In the December 1, 1996 issue, a transcription error resulted in incorrect first names being published in the article by Porro et al. (pp. 7688–7698). The correct first names for Drs. Cettolo and Zuiani should be Valentina and Chiara, respectively