Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that is typically diagnosed late in its progression. There is a need for biomarkers suitable for monitoring the disease progression at earlier stages to guide the development of novel neuroprotective therapies. One potential biomarker, α-synuclein, has been found in both the familial cases of PD, as well as the sporadic cases and is considered a key feature of PD. α-synuclein is naturally present in the retina, and it has been suggested that early symptoms of the visual system may be used as a biomarker for PD. Here, we use a viral vector to induce a unilateral expression of human wild-type α-synuclein in rats as a mechanistic model of protein aggregation in PD. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether adeno-associated virus (AAV) mediated expression of human wild-type α-synuclein alter functional activity in the visual system. A total of 16 rats were injected with either AAV-α-synuclein ( n  = 7) or ...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) elicits an inflammatory response in the CNS that involves both resident and peripheral immune cells. In this pilot study, we characterize a cryoinjury animal model of TBI using MRI and histopathology, to study its pathogenes...

Untreated age-related hearing loss increases audiovisual integration and impacts resting state functional brain connectivity. Further, there is a relation between crossmodal plasticity and audiovisual integration strength in cochlear implant patients. However, it is currently unclear whether amplification of the auditory input by hearing aids influences audiovisual integration and resting state functional brain connectivity. We conducted a randomized controlled pilot study to investigate how the McGurk illusion, a common measure for audiovisual integration, and resting state functional brain connectivity of the auditory cortex are altered by six-month hearing aid use. Thirty-two older participants with slight-to-moderate, symmetric, age-related hearing loss were allocated to a treatment or waiting control group and measured one week before and six months after hearing aid fitting with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Our results showed a statistical trend for an increased McGurk illusion after six mo...

Endogenous pain control mechanisms have long been known to produce analgesia during “flight or fight” situations and to contribute to cognitively driven pain modulation, such as placebo analgesia. Afferent nociceptive information can also directly activate supraspinal descending modulatory systems, suggesting that these mechanisms may participate in feedback loops that dynamically alter the processing of nociceptive information. The functional significance of these feedback loops, however, remains unclear. The phenomenon of offset analgesia—disproportionately large decreases in pain ratings evoked by small decreases in stimulus intensity—suggests that dynamic activation of endogenous pain inhibition may contribute to the temporal filtering of nociceptive information. The neural mechanisms that mediate this phenomenon remain currently unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that several regions of the midbrain and brainstem are differentially activated during offset analgesia. These ac...

The hippocampus (HP) is a brain structure implicated in Alzheimer's Disease and is thought to play a role in memory formation. The HP contains a number of subfields among which the Subiculum, CA1, CA2/3, CA4 and Dentate Gyrus. However, the functional ch...

Introduction: The vestibular system is crucial for posture, gait, and the perception of head and body in space. Damage to this system manifests as dizziness, imbalance, and poor postural control. Recording of vestibular short evoked potentials (VsEPs) i...

Alcohol use disorders (AUD) are associated with neuropathology and autonomic nervous system (ANS) disruption, either of which contribute to AUD severity including high craving and relapse risk. Specific disruption of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (...

A non invasive method that would monitor longitudinally tau-related neuropathology would be very valuable for assessing the effect of tau aggregation on neuronal activity in live animals, as well as to monitor in vivo therapeutic strategies targeting ta...

In this study we aim to investigate the brain’s responses to gentle touch in patients that undergo clinical intracranial stereo-encephalography (SEEG). The perception of touch to hairy skin is mediated by slow conducting C-tactile (CT) afferents and fas...

Background: Focused ultrasound (FUS)-mediated blood-brain barrier opening (BBBO) is a noninvasive method to enhance drug delivery to targeted regions of the brain. FUS BBBO has been used to deliver a variety of agents to the brain (e.g. chemotherapeutic...