Swallowing dysfunctions in patients with disorders of consciousness: Evidence from neuroimaging data, assessment, and management.

Following severe brain injuries, a subset of patients may remain in an altered state of consciousness; most of these patients require artificial feeding. Currently, a functional oral phase and the presence of exclusive oral feeding may constitute signs of consciousness. Additionally, the presence of pharyngo-laryngeal secretions, saliva aspiration, cough reflex and tracheostomy are related to the level of consciousness.

[Globus pharyngeus : etiologies, diagnosis and management. A narrative review].

Globus pharyngeus is a very common symptom in the general population. It is defined as a sensation of lump or foreign body in the throat, generally not accompanied by pain and relieved by eating. This last notion makes the differential diagnosis with dysphagia, which requires a different management.

Links Between Swallowing and Consciousness: A Narrative Review.

This literature review explores a wide range of themes addressing the links between swallowing and consciousness. Signs of consciousness are historically based on the principle of differentiating reflexive from volitional behaviors. We show that the sequencing of the components of swallowing falls on a continuum of voluntary to reflex behaviors and we describe several types of volitional and non-volitional swallowing tasks.

Vibration, a treatment for migraine, linked to calpain driven changes in actin cytoskeleton.

Understanding how a human cell reacts to external physical stimuli is essential to understanding why vibration can elicit localized pain reduction. Stimulation of epithelial cells with external vibration forces has been shown to change cell shape, particularly in regards to structures involved in non-muscle cell motility. We hypothesized that epithelial cells respond to vibration transduction by altering proteins involved in remodeling cytoskeleton.