We used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to assess motor recovery in a patient with left middle cerebral artery (MCA) stroke. The patient was scanned on three occasions, at one-month intervals using a finger-sequencing paradigm consisting of both overt movement and movement imagery. Each of these finger-to-thumb opposition tasks were carried out in a prescribed sequence and consisted of three conditions, two unimanual and one bimanual. Although the first session showed more ipsilateral sensorimotor cortex activation during movement using the affected hand, later sessions exhibited more contralateral activation, which conforms to the pattern of the vascular response in normal subjects. However, blood flow to ipsilateral parietal cortex increased over sessions, suggesting that the undamaged parietal cortex took over the function of the affected side, even after improved blood flow to the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. Stronger activation was observed in the motor cortex of the lesion side and...

Gustometers have made it possible to deliver liquids in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) settings for decades, and mouthpieces are a critical part of these taste delivery systems. Here, we propose an innovative 3D-printed fMRI mouthpiece inspired by children’s pacifiers, allowing human participants to swallow while lying down in an MRI scanner. We used a large sample to validate the effectiveness of our method. The results suggest that the mouthpiece can be used to deliver taste stimuli by showing significant clusters of activation in the insular and piriform cortex, which are regions that have been consistently identified in taste processing. This mouthpiece fulfills several criteria guaranteeing a gustatory stimulus of quality, making the delivery precise and reliable. Moreover, this new pacifier-shaped design is simple and cheap to manufacture, hygienic, comfortable to keep in the mouth, and flexible to use in diverse cases. We hope that this new method will promote and facilitate the study ...

Introduction: Cranial radiation therapy (CRT) is one of the main contributing factors to long term neurocognitive deficits in survivors of pediatric cancers. The risk for and severity of these deficits are greater in female patients. CRT also induces ne...

Age-related slowing of information processing is widely cited as a primary causal factor in cognitive ageing. Age-related atrophy of white matter (WM) (Peters 2002) and grey matter (GM) (Wang et al. 2005) has been linked to slowing of neuronal responses...

Introduction: Measurements of cerebral function can be obtained using non-invasive imaging techniques across species. Concordant measures are crucial for accurate comparison in both disease states and animal models. Given the ubiquity of various types o...

Descriptors of cytoarchitecture and tissue microstructure such as average axon diameters (AAD) can provide valuable information about the functional organization of normal and pathological white matter. The linear relationship between the diameters of m...

With the present study we set the cornerstone for a systematic catalogue of spatio-temporal brain activity regimes generated with the connectome based brain simulation platform The Virtual Brain. For 50 structural connectomes from healthy adult human br...

Brain calcifications are observed in patients with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Down syndrome and Frontal temporal lobe dementia. Recent study shows that calcification lead to oxidative stress in astrocyte and its neurotoxic ...

Objective: The stem of the superior longitudinal fascicle (SLF) was characterized volumetrically and biophysically (in terms of fractional (FI) and lattice anisotropy (LI) indices) in vivo in four patients with left perisylvian ischemic stroke lesions, and in four healthy adult human subjects using DT-MRI. Quantitative analysis was performed anterior to the site of the lesion to assess the integrity and size of SLF, allowing for the identification of potential secondary degeneration changes of this association fiber pathway. Methods: A Siemens Sonata 1.5 Tesla scanner was used. Scans included MP-RAGE T1 scans and echo-planar diffusion tensor-MRI (DT-MRI). The echo-planar based protocol included diffusion tensor imaging to sample the diffusion tensor, D, using a seven-shot EPI technique with TR=200ms, TE=89ms, 36 averages, image matrix=128x128, voxel size=2x2x2mm3, b=1000s/mm2, 60 contiguous coronal slices for a total acquisition time of approx. 13 min, and a SNR of approx. 40. Custom made software and semi...

Ischemic stroke occurs as a result of arterial occlusion and leads to irreversible brain injury. Upper extremity disability after stroke is the primary factor affecting activities of daily living in stroke patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate...